Reading Order
La Condition postmoderneLa Condition postmoderne Reading Order
La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1979) by Jean-François Lyotard is the text that introduced the concept of postmodernism into philosophical discourse and defined the postmodern condition as the 'incredulity toward metanarratives.' The book was commissioned by the Conseil des Universités of the Government of Quebec as a report on the state of knowledge in the most highly developed societies; Lyotard turned the commission into a philosophical analysis of the transformation of knowledge in the computer age, arguing that the grand narratives that had legitimized Western knowledge (the emancipation of humanity through reason, the speculative development of the spirit) were losing their legitimacy, to be replaced by a multiplicity of local language games and pragmatic criteria of performance. The book was enormously influential in literary and cultural theory through the 1980s and 1990s and generated a decade-long debate about the nature and value of postmodernism. Lyotard himself was dissatisfied with the book and considered it a minor work; his more considered philosophical positions are developed in Le Différend (1983) and Les Immatériaux (1985).
Where to start
Read La Condition postmoderne in one sitting — it is short (less than 100 pages) and deliberately accessible (it is a report, not a monograph). Read Lyotard's own disclaimer that he considers it a minor work, then judge for yourself. Read Le Différend (1983) for the more serious philosophical statement; and Fredric Jameson's introduction to the English translation for the Marxist response to the postmodern.
Complete La Condition postmoderne Book List
- 1Buy
La Condition postmoderne
Jean-François Lyotard·1979·Start here — short and readable; the introduction of postmodernism to philosophy; read in one sitting; note that Lyotard considered it a minor work - 2Buy
Le Différend
Jean-François Lyotard·1983·The Differend — the more serious philosophical statement; differends, language games, and the impossibility of universal judgment; the major Lyotard; read after La Condition postmoderne - 3Buy
L'Économie libidinale
Jean-François Lyotard·1974·Libidinal Economy — the earlier and more radical Lyotard; desire, intensity, and the critique of political economy; the book Lyotard later considered his most embarrassing and most honest - 4Buy
La Phénoménologie
Jean-François Lyotard·1954·The early introduction to phenomenology — before the postmodern turn; useful for understanding the philosophical trajectory from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty to the rejection of grand narratives - 5Buy
Postmodern Fables
Jean-François Lyotard·1993·Moralités postmodernes — the late Lyotard in short fable form; a good complement to La Condition postmoderne for the late postmodern ethical thought
La Condition postmoderne — Frequently Asked Questions
What is a metanarrative and why does Lyotard claim it has lost credibility?
A metanarrative (grand récit) is a legitimating story that grounds a claim to knowledge or to a political program — a story that explains why this knowledge or this program is valid by reference to a larger goal or a larger history. The two great metanarratives of Western modernity that Lyotard identifies are: the emancipation narrative (knowledge is legitimate because it serves the liberation of humanity from ignorance, superstition, and oppression) and the speculative narrative (knowledge is legitimate because it contributes to the self-realization of the Idea or the Spirit). Lyotard's claim is that these metanarratives have lost their credibility in the 'postmodern condition' — they are no longer believed, because their promises (emancipation, progress) have been discredited by the events of the twentieth century (Auschwitz, the Gulag, the failure of the communist project).
What is a language game?
Language game (jeu de langage) is a concept Lyotard borrows from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953) — the idea that different types of utterance (scientific statements, narrative statements, prescriptive statements, performative statements) follow different rules and are judged by different criteria. Science is not better than narrative — it just plays a different game, with different rules about what counts as evidence, what counts as a valid move, what counts as winning. Lyotard's postmodern condition is characterized by a proliferation of incommensurable language games, none of which has the authority to judge the others from a neutral position — there is no metanarrative that can adjudicate between them.
What is the difference between postmodernism and post-structuralism?
Post-structuralism (Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze) and postmodernism (Lyotard, Baudrillard, Jameson) overlap but are not the same. Post-structuralism is primarily a methodological and theoretical development within French academia of the 1960s and 1970s, focused on the critique of structuralism's claims to scientific objectivity and the analysis of language, power, and the subject. Postmodernism is a broader cultural and historical concept — the name for a period or condition characterized by incredulity toward metanarratives, the collapse of distinctions between high and low culture, the dominance of simulation and spectacle. Lyotard's La Condition postmoderne is the book that introduced postmodernism into philosophical discourse and gave it a theoretical definition; it is a postmodern text that uses post-structuralist methods.
What is the performativity criterion in La Condition postmoderne?
Lyotard argues that in the postmodern condition, the legitimate criterion for judging knowledge claims has shifted from 'is it true?' to 'is it efficient?' — from truth-value to performativity, the ability to produce the best input-output ratio. This is the criterion of the techno-scientific apparatus and of capitalism generally: knowledge is legitimate if it is useful, if it produces results, if it can be optimized. Lyotard is pessimistic about this shift — the performativity criterion marginalizes other language games (narrative, aesthetic, ethical) and produces a knowledge system that is organized around optimization rather than emancipation. The information society that La Condition postmoderne anticipates is one in which knowledge is primarily a commodity.
Who was Jean-François Lyotard?
Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) was a French philosopher whose career moved from phenomenology (La Phénoménologie, 1954) through political militancy (he was a member of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie in the 1950s and 1960s) to post-structuralism and postmodernism. He held positions at the universities of Paris-VIII (Vincennes) and Paris-X (Nanterre), and also taught in the United States (UC Irvine, Emory University). His most important philosophical works are generally considered to be L'Économie libidinale (1974) and Le Différend (1983) rather than La Condition postmoderne, which he regarded as a simplified and somewhat hasty report. His late work engaged with art, technology, and the category of the sublime.
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