This is a philosophical development of the Freudian concept of 'libidinal economy' and one of Lyotard's most important works. In part a response to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, it can also be seen as culminating a line of modern thought ranging from de Sade, Nietzsche and Batialle, to Deleuze, Klossowski, Irigaray and Cixous. It is thus important in the context of modern French philosophy, and also in its relevance to contemporary thinking on a broad range of questions, including sexual politics, semiotics and literary studies. --- from book's dustjacket

Libidinal Economy (Theories of Contemporary Culture)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Jean-François Lyotard

Psychology & Counseling

Indiana Univ. Pr

Toward the Postmodern contains thirteen of Jean-Francois Lyotard's most representative essays on literature, aesthetics, and the psycho-political dimensions of discourse. These compelling essays, selected in consultation with the author and arranged chronologically, give a clear view of Lyotard's trajectory over the past three decades. They will enable Lyotard's English-speaking audience to comprehend the range of his principal preoccupations both before and after his engagement with the debate over the postmodern, and also to appreciate the polemical vigor of his aesthetic critique.Toward the Postmodern contains several previously untranslated essays and two unpublished recent studies. Edited with a perceptive introduction, a comprehensive current bibliography, and a thorough index, this volume will be an invaluable tool for both students and researchers.

Toward the Postmodern

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Humanities Press

Just Gaming (Theory & History of Literature)

Jean-Loup Thebaud

Literature & Fiction

Manchester University Press

Just Gaming

J. Thebaud

Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

Philosophical aesthetics has seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of aesthetic experience―and in particular of the limits of the aesthetical―can be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open model for human understanding. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed than the complex paragraphs modestly inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: the Analytic of the Sublime.
 This book is a rigorous explication de texte, a close reading of these sections. First, Lyotard reconstitutes, following the letter of Kant's analysis, the philosophical context of his critical writings and of the European Enlightenment. Second, because the analytic of the sublime reveals the inability of aesthetic experience to bridge the separate realms of theoretical and practical reason, Lyotard can connect his reconstitution of Kant's critical project with today's debates about the very conditions―and limits―of presentation in general.
 Lyotard enables us to see the sublime as a model for reflexive thinking generally via his concept of the "differend," which emphasizes the inevitability of conflicts and incompatibilities between different notions and "phrases." The Analytic of the Sublime, he points out, tries to argue that human thought is always constituted through a similar incompatibility between different intellectual and affective faculties. These lessons thus highlight the analysis of a "differend of feeling" in Kant's text, which is also the analysis of a "feeling of differend," and connect this feeling with the transport that leads all thought (critical thought included) to its limits.

History

Stanford University Press

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.

Postmodern Condition The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory and History of Literature)

Reference

University of Minnesota Press

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10)

In "Heidegger," the second essay, Lyotard sets a number of rules for "explicating" the :Heidegger affair," most of which prescribe a close textual reading and the careful maintenance of the specific form in which the affair is represented: an unheimliche.

Heidegger and "the Jews"

World

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Jean-Francois Lyotard introduced the term "postmodern" into current discussions within philosophy, politics, society and social theory. His "The postmodern condition" is seminal within the current debates over the relationship of theory and epistemology to history and political practice. For Lyotard, the postmodern condition is one in which the "meta- narratives of legitimation" the enlightenment, Hegelian thought, Marxism have fallen into disuse and can no longer analyze myriad labyrinthine social texts that have been forged from their ruins. Meta- narratives assume the role of privileged discourses not inflected by historical contingencies, and each situate local social and political practices within a broader totalizing and legitimizing framework. Lyotard claims that various local practices can no longer be legitimized by these meta-discourses; legitimation itself descends to the level of praxis as practitioners assume the responsibility for legitimizing their own practices.; "Political writings" is a collection of Lyotard's writings mostly published between 1956 and 1969 in "Socialisme ou Barbarie", the influential journal of the non-Communist French left. The political Motivation Implicit In Lyotard's Arguments In "The Postmodern Condition" become quite explicit in this collection. The articles outline the relevance of political struggles to contemporary debates about social and political theory; the limitations of Marxist models applied to concrete situations; and the development of the analytical categories that Lyotard himself currently uses in his critical practices.; In a rigorous examination of the strategies and passions of various groups, Lyotard demonstrates that the emancipatory models at work in specific local struggles are different from the universalist ones proposed by the Enlightenment, occurring as they do in First World and Third World Contexts In Which Specificity And Difference Are Negotiated And Determined.

Political Writings

Essays & Correspondence

The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence 1982-1985

History & Criticism

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Books by Jean-François Lyotard