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

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Post-Nuclear Philosophical Fallout
One of the must read works on postmodernism
Challenging and relevant
Provacative and significant work
nice!

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10)
Jean-Francois Lyotard
Manufacturer: University of Minnesota Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0816611734

Customer Reviews:

Post-Nuclear Philosophical Fallout.......2007-05-08

If, as William Barrett once remarked, existentialism is "philosophy for the atomic age," then the atomic age's look into the future - by way of Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition - is nothing short of a nightmarish vision of what post-nuclear philosophy would be like. If the Cold War was ultimately the product of two totalizing visions - the two remaining totalizing visions of the modern age, namely liberal democracy and socialism - locked into prolonged, agonizing conflict behind facades such as international diplomacy, then the postmodern condition is the worldview of a world brought back from the brink of total annihilation. Postmodernism, claims Lyotard at the beginning of his book, is "incredulity towards metanarratives" (xxiv). Rather than seeking a new way of understanding the world en toto - a new totalizing vision/metanarrative - the postmodern condition backs away from the philosophical One and seeks what it seeks - itself or, rather, the disparate fragments that indicate the existence of itself - among the philosophical Many. As Lyotard also writes, postmodernism "refines our sensitivity to differences" - the exact opposite of the totalitarian visions that caused so much death in the 20th century.

The Postmodern Condition is a work that is as fascinating as it is complicated. Lyotard is heavily interested in the question of legitimation - specifically, how knowledge is made and validated. What defines knowledge? One could, in many ways, see this work as fundamentally epistemological, for he spends a considerable amount of time in this work focusing on how it is that the university system, in particular, can survive if knowledge is both under the sway of the forces of capital and no longer considered emancipatory. I am not entirely sure if Lyotard wants a return to a pre-postmodern world; the book is written in such a straight, matter-of-fact style that it is hard to tell whether or not he is for or against that which he writes of. Perhaps there is some irony in the fact that he appears so disinterested in describing a worldview - or, perhaps better, an anti-worldview - in which the notion of disinterested knowledge or unbiased reporting is conceived as being nothing more than a fiction. If there is any irony here, it is of the driest sort.

There is a certain Marxist hue, however, to many of the analyses contained in these pages. The ability of economic interests to determine the shape of research in a university with the subsequent result that some knowledge is found to sell and other kinds aren't - that which sells is therefore seen as more legitimate than that which doesn't - causes Lyotard considerable concern. Rather than philosophy or metaphysics being seen as capable of validating claims - truth, he notes, is no longer the main concern - science proves itself by way of its functionality. What it does and how that makes life on earth better becomes the sine qua non of our own material interests - and knowledge is therefore conceived as material, rather than ideal/metaphysical. There is no meta-language game that serves as the ground for other games: what matters is what you can *do* with a particular type of research, or a given object. Science is thus isolated from other fields, just as philosophy is. There is no longer a "queen of the sciences." Knowledge, in a holistic sense, is thus fragmented and all is placed under the final sway of capital - or, more specifically, market forces. Lyotard's analysis is nothing short of brilliant.

Included as an appendix to the present volume is one of Lyotard's most widely re-published essays: "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?" A short work - not quite 10 full pages in length - it is a perfect compliment to Lyotard's longer consideration of the matter. However, unlike the Report, the appendix deals little with the question of scientific knowledge, and much more with aesthetics. Whereas the Report is concerned with academia, the appendix turns towards popular culture, specifically fashion: "Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture" (76). Thus, the appendix can be scene as something like the popular counterpart to the more densely argued Report - popular in its focus, and in terms of the audience that it is geared to. Whether or not this means that postmodern philosophy is ultimately intended to leave the academy - the philosophical-institutional One - where knowledge cannot be validated and live, instead, among the philosophical-cultural Many remains a point of debate still today. Perhaps this is good reason for believing, then, that we do live in a postmodern age - and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition remains as prescient (future anterior) for understanding that age as ever.

One of the must read works on postmodernism.......2007-01-02

This work, by Jean Francois Lyotard, is one of the signature works of postmodern theory. Say what you will of this perspective, this book is necessary reading in understanding the subject. This is not an easy work; however, those who persevere will be rewarded with interesting insights, whether or not one agree with postmodern thinking.

Lyotard defines Postmodern thought in contrast to modernism. Modernism, he claims, is ". . .any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind [i.e., philosophy] making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth." Postmodernism, in turn, is ". . .incredulity toward metanarratives."

Science and technology, especially information sciences based on computers, are increasingly an important commodity and the focus of worldwide competition. Knowledge and political power have become linked. Thus: ". . .[W]ho decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided? In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government."

A central issue then becomes who has access to the information, since access will produce power. Lyotard sees it as inevitable that bureaucrats and technocrats will be the ones to master this basic resource of power, information. This will strengthen their hand in political circles. Research is expensive, and the pursuer of truth must purchase equipment to make the scientific process work. Thus, wealth begins to set the agenda for the scientist; scientists will go where the bucks are! The criterion for research becomes less the quest for truth and more "performativity," what is the immediate or intermediate payoff, performance value, of the scientific process and of technology. Power helps to shape what research gets funded.

Lyotard argues that the Postmodern moment should emphasize "paralogy," or dissensus. He argues: ". . .it is now dissension that must be emphasized. Consensus is a horizon that is never reached. Research that takes place under the aegis of a paradigm tends to stabilize; it is like the exploitation of a technology, economic, or artistic 'idea.'"

Postmodern science, in his view, encompasses: "The function of differential or imaginative or paralogical activity of the current pragmatics of science is to point out these. . .'presuppositions and to petition the players to accept different ones. The only legitimation that can make this kind of request admissible is that it will generate ideas, in other words, new statements." Thus, new statements, new presuppositions maintain science as an open system of discourse, characterized by paralogy (dissensus) as individuals strive to generate new knowledge, not imprisoned by existing consensus on what one should study and how one should study it.

This book is difficult reading, but to understand postmodernism, this is one of the works that demands that readers confront its arguments, whether in agreement or not.

Challenging and relevant.......2006-09-19

The basic analysis is correct. For some time the conditions of information-overload, de-legitimation of authoritative sources, lack of acceptibility of grand stories about reality or human history, has resulted in a condition of dislocation/disorientation, reaction, and disempowerment that is very confusing, and very bound up in abusive power structures, the confusions of language and over-loaded symbols and games of language, and struggle to communicate.

The text is very difficult to process, it is a translation from French, and his use of very large conglomerate terms makes it difficult to join together the meanings contained within some of his terms, reading it often is an experience of information overload built into his language.

The challenge he presents is relevant whatever one may think about 'postmodernISM' itself. There is great value in the descriptiveness of his explorations and speculations. He saw years ago how the coming information overload and delegitimation of authoritative sources was coming, and now in the internet age he is as relevant as ever, particularly with the challenge faced between the dis-communication between Islamic culture and the West.

I do not affirm or endorse 'postmodernISM' or the sort of radical relativism or extreme focus upon language games that are associated with postmodernISM -- I find these troubling. But I also find the conservative reactions to postmodernism to be extremely troubling. The condition of information overload, delegitimation of what was once considered authoritative information, the erosion of confidence in grand metanarratives of human nature or history, the symbolic overload resulting from contact between cultures and symbol systems, all of these conditions are very real, and the internet age has made the crisis more acute. There is no hiding from it, yet it is not pleasant to behold, to affirm it/endorse it as good, or to try to deny it as if one can return to some past simplicity, is equally problematic/impossible to maintain.

I think this work is very important to sorting out the problems of our times, albeit the answer is not clear, and reading Lyotard makes clarity seem yet more distant. Yet read Lyotard we must, if we wish to deal with these issues.

Provacative and significant work.......2005-10-18

I'm mostly taking it upon myself to write this review in response to much of the negative criticism it's been getting here. First, Lyotard's claim that metanarratives have been dismantled is an observation of the world he sees around him, NOT a political tactic that he's endorsing. The elements of specialization and performativity that function as tiny legitmating narratives are what have done this, and Lyotard feels that something should be done IN RESPONSE to it. In fact, what he says we should use as the major political touchstone in the somewhat fractured environment is in some sense a metanarrative: justice.

Second, it's simply disingenuos to say that the actions of science don't derive their legitimacy from the government or big business. Lyotard doesn't mean that empiricism as an epistemological framework comes from governmental authority, but scientists' opportunities to use it come from such authority. Evidence for this? The National Science Foundation, governmental grants to research universities--the evidence is all around us.

Finally, Lytoard doesn't exactly say all this is bad. There are negative consequences to it--dislocation due to specialization is one of the major ones--but he's not an ignorant man and isn't saying that we should destroy the methods of science or try to go back to the way things were in the sixteenth century.

And though there is some element of practical advice in this essay, it's not wise to come to it as if it were a manual for how to lead the revolution. That's not what it's intended to be; it was, after all, funded by the university system.

nice!.......2004-09-03

A fine book that espouses a Post-Modern philosophy, akin to Baudrillard, Derrida and others.
Most people who come to this book, so do because they would like to know what Post-Modernism is.
Well, a definition would require some sort of truth, some sort of objective character (rather than agreement between the speakers), and, well, according to Post-Modernism, there probably isn't any (so long as we have an understanding of time, and the translation of the perceptual into the conceptual, and how mistranslation is at any time possible, and without guarantee.) However, you can still get your own idea, your own truth, to use Nietzsche's expression, of what Post-Modernism is. That, I suppose, would be the main reason to read this book, rather than to appear chic and cultured, and to know about everything that is in vogue intellectually, which can motivate many people to read many a book.
"To be edified without ostentation."
Also recommended: Toilet: The Novel by Michael Szymczyk (A Tribute to the Literary Works of Franz Kafka)

Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology

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Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology
Niall Lucy
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction
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ASIN: 0631210288

Book Description

Literature today is a very different concept from that of only a generation ago, and this difference is attributed usually to 'postmodernism' as a powerful signifier of the radically new and challenging. Most radical of all is the possibility that the very notion of literature is rendered untenable by postmodernism. How did this possibility arise? Who are the key figures responsible for its emergence; which are the key texts of its expression? This Anthology provides ways of responding to such questions and at the same time to show that postmodern literary theory cannot be understood in terms of an archive or a method. Its defining feature is an attitude of questioning, which neither derives from a manifesto nor constitutes a movement. Yet postmodern literary theory hasn't come from nowhere. Its beginnings lie in certain ideas associated with the likes of Barthes and Foucault in the 1970s, and in the disavowal of values and the questioning of literature associated with the eighteenth-century Romantics. Although postmodern literary theory does have some foundational texts and founding figures, these work to undo the very notion of 'foundations' - including the very notion of literature itself. It is this work (rather than some archive) which Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology is designed to show. What is anthologized here, in short, are concepts, arguments, practices and debates. Without careful guidance, students cannot be expected to understand many of the terms, claims, concepts and arguments of postmodern literary theory. Postmodern writing is often notoriously difficult and experimental, and postmodern theorizing is often conceptually dense and presumes a certain knowledge of philosophy. Students will be guided to read each chapter as a particular response to a specific problem or concept relating to the overall theme: that postmodernism is concerned with only one thing - the question of literature.

Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology

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Note - this review is for the Classroom Guide only
this book rates 6 stars
Existentialist/postmodern intellectual's heaven
Inspirational
enlightening, uplifting

Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology

Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393310906

Customer Reviews:

Note - this review is for the Classroom Guide only.......2007-02-15

For some reason, the reviews for the anthology itself are posted here, instead of reviews of just the Classroom Guide. Maybe this review will also end up with the reviews of the anthology, but it doesn't belong there.

As many observe, the anthology itself is great. However, I don't think much of the Classroom Guide, and I was disappointed by its content. I'm not an instructor, and I didn't buy this book to help me teach the subject. I had hoped it would provide additional insight into the separate poems and poets, and actually provide some "inside" information or ideas that would help me go deeper into the poems, but it really is just a bunch of questions that an instructor could have students answer, think about, or write about, related to each poet's work that appears in the anthology. Call me a dummy, but I want to read a question, think about it, and then see an informed answer or discussion of it.

But questions do not a guide make. Unless the guide itself is the author's contribution to the canon of postmodern poetry. Then I would have to reconsider. Or would I?

this book rates 6 stars.......2005-04-01

If you're serious about poetry - you need this book.
If you stopped reading before the Postmoderns - you need this book.
If you want to get serious about poetry - you need this book.
If you think you've read it all on the Postmoderns - you need this book.

Existentialist/postmodern intellectual's heaven.......2004-12-01

Wow! If you're well read, this book is for you. It makes me wish I actually were alive when these people wrote. It is somewhat culturally biased, but I could easily excuse it as just being specific. There is a lot of name droppings in these artful poems, so if you're not used to it, beware! A lot of the poems are spaced out (physically) thoughtfully. This is a book for the thinkers and aspiring poets. Most of these poems were written in the 1950s, as the editors say. Gregory Corso is a highlight, as well as Ginsberg and some of the female writers. This book is long and well worth the price (or a visit to your local library). I am a struggling working class college student, but I'd easily pay $100 for this underrated gem. These are highly personal in nature, but people who like to imagine things would love this book. These inspiring personal reflections are artfully defiant, it will for sure paint a picture in your mind.

Happy reading!

Your all-American community college Vale-D.

Inspirational.......2002-08-24

As a writter this book opens up many diffrent forms of writting styles to experiment with. This is my favortie poetry book and it is filled with poems for what ever mood you may be in. Anyone that loves poetry or loves to read should own a copy of this book.

enlightening, uplifting.......2002-02-25

A deeply informative and devoted anthology, containing some of the best poetry written in America. The detailed author biographies and extensive sections on poetics are a delight, such a rarity! The rich and powerful voices of postmodern American poets -- be they from any cultural background -- can be found here. An anthology that has become my inspiration in many ways -- to read it is to feel inspired to write, as well. Paul Hoover's selection is impeccable, and uplifting.

To date the best anthology I have on the subject.

Postmodern Narrative Theory (Transitions)

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Postmodern Narrative Theory (Transitions)
Mark Currie
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

This is an accessible and stimulating summary of the often over-complex theories that have transformed the study of narrative in recent decades. Mark Currie establishes direct links between the workings of fictional narratives and those of the non-fictional world, arguing that it is their inseparability which characterizes postmodern fiction, criticism and culture. The book charts the transition in narrative theory from its formalist beginnings, through deconstruction, various new historicisms and psychoanalysis, towards its current concerns with the social and cultural function of narrative. Through its two principal themes--the relationship of narrative to identity and the role of time in experience--the book plots the connections between fiction, criticism and ideology that represent the contribution of narrative theory to an understanding of postmodern culture.

The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Antonio Benitez-Rojo
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822318652

Book Description

In this second edition of The Repeating Island, Antonio BenÃtez-Rojo, a master of the historical novel, short story, and critical essay, continues to confront the legacy and myths of colonialism. This co-winner of the 1993 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize has been expanded to include three entirely new chapters that add a Lacanian perspective and a view of the carnivalesque to an already brilliant interpretive study of Caribbean culture. As he did in the first edition, BenÃtez-Rojo redefines the Caribbean by drawing on history, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and nonlinear mathematics. His point of departure is chaos theory, which holds that order and disorder are not the antithesis of each other in nature but function as mutually generative phenomena. BenÃtez-Rojo argues that within the apparent disorder of the Caribbeanâthe area’s discontinuous landmasses, its different colonial histories, ethnic groups, languages, traditions, and politicsâthere emerges an âislandâ of paradoxes that repeats itself and gives shape to an unexpected and complex sociocultural archipelago. BenÃtez-Rojo illustrates this unique form of identity with powerful readings of texts by Las Casas, GuillÃ©n, Carpentier, GarcÃa MÃ¡rquez, Walcott, Harris, Buitrago, and RodrÃguez JuliÃ¡.

The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture

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The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture
Ricki. Tannen
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415385318

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The Female Trickster presents a Post-Jungian postmodern perspective regarding the role of women in contemporary Western society by investigating the re-emergence of female trickster energy in all aspects of popular culture. Ricki Tannen explores the psychological aspects of what happened when women's imagination was legally and psychologically enclosed millennia ago and demonstrates how the re-emergence of Trickster energy through the female imagination has the radical potential to effect a transformation of western consciousness. Examples are drawn from a diverse range of sources, from Jane Austen, and female sleuth narratives, to Madonna and Sex and the City, illustrating how Trickster energy is used not to maintain power and control but to integrate and unite the paradoxical through humour. Subjects covered include: · Imagination and Metaphor · The Traditional Trickster · Law and the Imagination · Humour: Eros Using Logos · The Postmodern Female Trickster This highly original perspective on women's role in contemporary culture will offer readers a new vision of how humour psychologically operates as a healthy adaptation to trauma and adversity. It will be of great interest to all analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts as well as those in women's, cultural, legal and literary studies.

The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

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The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
Toby Miller
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media (Technologies of Truth)
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Book Description

"This is a major work on the connection of theoretical to political practice under postmodernity. At once rigorous and readable, its academic concerns will be both accessible and useful to readers asking--as contemporary readers indomitably do--what these debates in cultural theory have to do with the conduct of theirsocial lives."--Meaghan Morris, author of The Pirate's Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism.

"Miller's work is extremely engaging, original, and successful in producing a set of innovative analyses of the formation of cultural subjects."--Douglas Kellner, University of Texas, Austin

The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture

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Worth the read.
Accessible and Comprehensive

The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture

Manufacturer: New Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century (October Books)
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ASIN: 1565847423

Book Description

A handsome new edition of the seminal collection of late-twentieth-century cultural criticism. Named a Best Book of the Year by the Village Voice and considered a bible of contemporary cultural criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic is reissued now in a handsome new paperback edition. For the past twenty years, Hal Foster has pushed the boundaries of cultural criticism, establishing a vantage point from which the seemingly disparate agendas of artists, patrons, and critics have a telling coherence. In The Anti-Aesthetic, preeminent critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman's film stills, to Barbara Kruger's collages. With a redesigned cover and a new afterword that situates the book in relation to contemporary criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic provides a strong introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism. New afterword by Hal Foster; 12 b/w photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Worth the read........2006-03-24

This is a collection of essays that relate to contemporary art and concepts of postmodernism. Hal Foster (who wrote the acclaimed "Return of the Real") served as an editor for this book, although the writing itself is more diverse. There are a number of notable contributors represented, with a number of differing takes on art and culture post 1990's.
The most interesting articels in my opinion deal with "sculpure's expanded fields" (by Rosalind Krauss) and diverse gender and political issues. These essays express the sense that definitions and distinctions are blurring and fluid in postmodern society, which is a common theme throughout the book. The writing also frequently addresses discources outside of the art world, which is another element of the expanded roles of art and theory.
The writing can be a little dry at times, but overall I think it's worth the read, and a great reference for postmodern philosophy.

Accessible and Comprehensive.......2000-04-25

The majority of the essays are well-written in an approachable rhetoric that can be understood by a reader with relatively limited knowledge of the subject-matter. It also serves as a concise anthology of essays written by some of the leading critical thinkers in this area, making this both an excellent introductory book as well as a collection worthy to be on the expert's shelf.

The Postmodern Novel in Latin America: Politics of Culture and the Crisis of Truth

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The Postmodern Novel in Latin America: Politics of Culture and the Crisis of Truth
Raymond Leslie Williams
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction (Suny Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture)

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This book examines the foremost postmodern Latin American writers of the past 25 years and places the current literary scene in its proper political and cultural context. Focusing on fiction from the 1970s to the present, Williams discusses the new generation of postmodern writers.

The Quest for God in the Novels of John Banville 1973-2005: A Postmodern Spirituality

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The Quest for God in the Novels of John Banville 1973-2005: A Postmodern Spirituality
Brendan Mcnamee
Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0773455434

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