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rmtbray 's review for:
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
by Jean-François Lyotard
Reasonably accessible, as French philosophy/critical theory goes. The Translator’s Foreword is also really helpful in setting out the basic argument before you start, or to refresh your memory.
Lyotard’s basic premise is that in this postmodern & postindustrial age, knowledge is a commodity and a source of power- perhaps the most important tool of control. He looks at how this has happened and will play out in a number of ways, ranging from examining the ‘language games’ of social discourse (of which knowledge is a type of discourse, apparently), to looking at the difference between ‘scientific knowledge’ and ‘narrative knowledge’ - yes, scientific knowledge is not the only form of knowledge! It was this aspect on narrative knowledge that I had to concentrate on for my class, but you can’t really just skip straight to that part as he spends a long time setting out his ideas and building upon them.
It’s pretty confusing stuff at times but, as I’ve already said, not as bad as some of the texts I’ve had to read!
Lyotard’s basic premise is that in this postmodern & postindustrial age, knowledge is a commodity and a source of power- perhaps the most important tool of control. He looks at how this has happened and will play out in a number of ways, ranging from examining the ‘language games’ of social discourse (of which knowledge is a type of discourse, apparently), to looking at the difference between ‘scientific knowledge’ and ‘narrative knowledge’ - yes, scientific knowledge is not the only form of knowledge! It was this aspect on narrative knowledge that I had to concentrate on for my class, but you can’t really just skip straight to that part as he spends a long time setting out his ideas and building upon them.
It’s pretty confusing stuff at times but, as I’ve already said, not as bad as some of the texts I’ve had to read!