Product Description

Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed. This book extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information is controlled in the Western world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47336 in Books
• Published on: 1984-08-09
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Essential for any study of postmodernity
This is it. Lyotard does to postmodernity what Karl von Clausewitz did to war. Not only does he propound the now-famous theory of the 'little narrative' following the death of the meta-narratives (faith, truth, progress, etc), but this book offers the first public discourse on 'technoscience', the "massive subordination of the cognitive facility to the greatest possible performance", a concept later expanded on in 'The Inhuman'. 'The Postmodern Condition' is however, a generally optimistic look at the post-metaphysical world, aiming to encourage the following of personal narratives rather than society-specific ones such as salvation or truth and argues convincingly, along similar lines to Kuhn, that scienticfic knowledge is subservient to narrative knowledge. 'What is Postmodernism', appended at the end of the book, is the definative definition of the condition of the world in 1979. Little has changed since.

A frustrating blend of sophistry and sharp prose
For anyone interested in postmodern theory this book offers a frustrating blend of obscurified sophistry, succinct prose and conceptual deadends.
Lyotard follows the freeform-association school of stylism where ideas roll on for a bit only to fork off, unexpectedly intersect, come to an abrupt halt, then just as suddenly shoot off in another direction.

Of course any method such of this will, if the writer is sufficiently intelligent (certainly no problems there) almost by accident rather than design generate a fairly decent number of provocative lucid ideas. In this sense Lyotard is no exception. The underlying problem with this method however is that for ideas to make sense and achieve coherency generally requires them be followed through to their logical conclusion and ultimate end.
And it's this lack of coherency that, despite the snatches of intermittent brilliance here and there, lets the postmodern condition down.
This is frustrating because postmodernism is really not atall a difficult theory to understand and there's certainly no reason why it should be obscured beneath layers of densely packed inscrutable prose.
For those uninitiated: Post modernism is simply the sub-division and specialisation of knowledge. As society progresses the knowledge it generates and acquires increasingly becomes context bound to exclusive disciplines, fragmenting off into what E.O.Wilson would call 'borderland sciences'.
The end result is that any sort of unified consensus, or 'grand narrative' becomes meaningless and incomprehensible by default.
Instead we simply have lots of 'little narratives' with which to arrange and construct our localised/self-referential ideas.

There are of course many interesting and mportant questions that arise out of all of this, namely: what role does the politician/religious leader/nationalist have left in the absence of these unifying 'grand narratives'?
What happens to a society which can no longer tell stories to itself that will be meaningful and relevant for the whole?
What occurs to a psyche which is increasingly called upon to hold mutually mis-aligned ideas about a single substance or object?
These are all basic questions that need to be addressed, all of which however are either clumsily talked around or just side-stepped altogether. Instead society and its inventions are presented as models of efficiency - always seeking to maximise stability and minimise instability.
Which there is a very convincing case to be made for, unfortunately its a point which isnt particularly related to postmodernism atall, or if it is, Lyotard never really gets himself round to connecting it to the original premise.
Again it's this lack of intellectual transparency and 'interconnectedness' that lets this book down.
A more fitting title may have been 'postmodernism: a collection of ideas in no particular order'.
Some interesting and inspiring thoughts here and there of course no doubt (hence the 2 stars) but altogether poorly arranged and badly structured.

A seminal work of the late twentieth century
I'm not sure a rating is particularly appropriate, but that's another story. The Postmodern Condition (or PMC for brevity) is sometimes outrageous, often thought-provoking, and probably worth not ignoring. Commissioned by one or another of Quebec's many bueracratic institutions as a report on education, the PMC instead is an attempt at a sweeping analysis of late-20th century knowledge.

This isn't college so I'm not going to pretend to remember all my fancy debate techniques, but a few things stick out. Lyotard asserts that the late 20th century is characterized by experts who generate self-perpetuated claims to legitimacy (he calls this process legitimation and alludes to Wittgenstein, which I have to admit was always too boring for me to read or understand due to my simple-minded nature). This small group of technocratic experts wields an unbalanced amount of influence in the shaping of knowledge, from governmental gnomes to university academics. I also remember becoming interested in the idea of "intervention". At one point can one intervene in a situation, that is, to seek to alter it? What are the rules of an ethical intervention, as opposed to what Lyotard does, which is to document the destruction? It is interesting to read Habermas as a radical contrast to Lyotard.