Jean-Francois Lyotard

born August
10, 1924, Versailles, France
died April 21, 1998, Paris
French
philosopher and leading figure in the
intellectual movement known as
postmodernism.
As a youth,
Lyotard considered becoming a monk, a
painter, and a historian. After studying at
the Sorbonne, he completed an agrégation
(teaching degree) in philosophy in 1950 and
joined the faculty of a secondary school in
Constantine, Algeria. In 1954 he became a
member of Socialisme ou Barbarie (“Socialism
or Barbarism”), an anti-Stalinist socialist
group, contributing essays to its journal
(also called Socialisme ou barbarie) that
were vehemently critical of French colonial
involvement in Algeria. In 1966 he began
teaching philosophy at the University of
Paris X (Nanterre); in 1970 he moved to the
University of Paris VIII
(Vincennes–Saint-Denis), where he was
appointed professor emeritus in 1987. In the
1980s and ’90s he taught widely outside
France. He was professor of French at the
University of California, Irvine, from 1993
and professor of French and philosophy at
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.,
from 1995.
In his
first major philosophical work,
Discourse/Figure (1971), Lyotard
distinguished between the meaningfulness of
linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of
plastic arts such as painting and sculpture.
He argued that, because rational thought or
judgment is discursive and works of art are
inherently symbolic, certain aspects of
artistic meaning—such as the symbolic and
pictorial richness of painting—will always
be beyond reason’s grasp. In Libidinal
Economy (1974), a work very much influenced
by the Parisian student uprising of May
1968, Lyotard claimed that “desire” always
escapes the generalizing and synthesizing
activity inherent in rational thought;
instead, reason and desire stand in a
relationship of constant tension.
In his
best-known and most influential work, The
Postmodern Condition (1979), Lyotard
characterized the postmodern era as one that
has lost faith in all grand, totalizing
“metanarratives”—the abstract ideas in terms
of which thinkers since the time of the
Enlightenment have attempted to construct
comprehensive explanations of historical
experience. Disillusioned with the grandiose
claims of metanarratives such as “reason,”
“truth,” and “progress,” the postmodern age
has turned to smaller, narrower petits
récits (“little narratives”), such as the
history of everyday life and of marginalized
groups. In his most important philosophical
work, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute
(1983), Lyotard compared discourses to
“language games,” a notion developed in the
later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889–1951); like language games, discourses
are discrete systems of rule-governed
activity involving language. Because there
is no common set of assumptions in terms of
which their conflicting claims or viewpoints
can be adjudicated (there is no universal
“reason” or “truth”), discourses are for the
most part incommensurable. The basic
imperative of postmodern politics,
therefore, is to create communities in which
the integrity of different language games is
respected—communities based on
heterogeneity, conflict, and “dissensus.”
Richard Wolin