The Différend (1983) as “The Postmodern Condition, Part Two” Defining the Différend Although Le Différend was the natural outcome of The Postmodern Condition, this book is also an overt return to politics and a reassertion of a life-long concern with...
JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD (1927 – 1998) THE METANARRATIVE The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) A brief book, a small study, “an occasional one” that Lyotard himself did not consider either important or a work of philosophy, The...
THEORIES OF POSTMODERNISM Feminism, Post-Colonialism, and the Loss of Mastery Over the World Picture In 1986 Postmodern painter Mark Tansey (1949-) produced a large orangish monochrome painting of a long white fallen column. Broken in three places and lying next to a...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905-1980) EXISTENTIALISM “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.” Existentialism set the tone for Postmodern thinking by being negative: it is defined in terms of what it is not and discards previous systems rooted in the...
JACQUES LACAN (1901 – 1981) PART FIVE: THE FORMATION OF THE SUBJECT Anyone who has read the writings of Jacques Lacan came to the humbling realization that in any meaningful way s/he simply didn’t exist. Having gone through the boot camp of the Oedipal...