Jean-François+Lyotard

Jean-François Lyotard __** The Postmodern Condition **__ John Francis Lyotard was a french philoshper whose most notable work was The Postmodern Condition. This text highlights postmodernism as 'incredulity towards metanarratives.' In which metanarratives are seen as stories which encapsulate the entire human history and its goals that legitimise its cultural and intellectual practises. In essence what Lyotard was trying to say is that the postmodern era, is the era in which the metanarrative became bankrupt, (whereas modernism was seen as the age of the metanarrative). This lead Lyotard along with other s to come to the idea that postmodernism was a time of fragmentation and pluralism. For those who have no idea what these are, here are some definitions from wikipedia:
 * Metanarrative: In [|postmodern] philosophy, a metanarrative is an untold story that unifies and totalizes the world, and justifies a culture's power structures. Examples of these stories are [|nationalisms], [|religion] , and [|science] , to name a few. **Metanarratives** are not usually told outright, but are reinforced by other more specific narratives told within the culture. In the case of Christianity, the school [|Nativity play] is a good example of this.
 * Pluralism: In philosophy, **Pluralism** is as opposed to //monism// and //dualism//. The debates center around different sets of concepts depending on whether the context is metaphysics or the context is epistemology.
 * In [|metaphysics], **pluralism** claims a plurality of basic [|substances] making up the world. The philosopher Descartes defined each //substance// as that analytical point at which "we can understand nothing else than an entity which is in such a way that it need no other entity in order to be." [|Monism] holds a godlike oneness of being in an existence of a single substance. [|Dualism] visualizes two substances — material and mind.
 * Fragmentation: In [|urban sociology], **fragmentation** refers to the absence or the underdevelopment of connections between the [|society] and the groupings of some members of that society on the lines of a common [|culture] ,[|nationality] , [|race] , [|language] , occupation, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0645ad; text-decoration: none;">[|religion] , income level, or other common interests. This gap between the concerned group and the rest might be social, indicating poor interrelationships among each other; economical based on structural inequalities; institutional in terms of formal and specific political, occupational, educative or associative organizations and/or geographic implying regional or residential concentration. (not sure about this one, as it comes from a wiki with a sociological perspective).

The book then explored the nature of knowledge and technology, especially the world of early computerisation and multinational corporations. The main focus was perhaps the storing of knowledge in the era of computers. In a world full of databases and computers, Lyotard tried to question who was responsible for what information was to be stored and saved. He answered this saying that large multinational countries should be the ones that are held accountable. While this text was his most popular it was, perhaps, one of his lesser works in terms of quality or ideas, (this is not to say that the issues addressed are not of high value).

It was //The Differend// that Lyotard labelled as his most philosophical and his most important. <span style="color: #23262a; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">"A differend is a case of conflict between parties that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both."

<span style="color: #23262a; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Go to this site for the best info (you may find there are many similarities, this may be due to coincidence, but it probably isn't): http://www.iep.utm.edu/lyotard/