The Postmodern Explained

Lyotard, Jean-François. (1993). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Chapter 1. Answers to the Question, What is the Postmodern? (p. 1-16)

Lyotard describes the key concept of the postmodern as "war on totality" (p. 16). In the conceptualization, he opposes in particular to Habermas on his quest of modernity through unifying experiences. Lyotard writes succinctly:

In short, Habermas demands of the arts and the experience they provide that they form a bridge over the gap separating the discourses of knowledge, ethics, and politics, thus opening the way for a unity of experience. (p. 3)

Opposing the concept of unity, Lyotard asserts that the postmodernity reexamines the thought of the Enlightenment, the idea of a uniform end of history, and the idea of the subject.

[Lyotard's idea of the postmodernity revolves primarily around aesthetic judgment.] He holds, "aesthetic judgment would only have to reach a verdict on whether a particular work conforms to the established rules of the beautiful...political academicism understands and imposes a priori criteria of the 'beautiful,' criteria that can, in one move and once and for all, select works and their public." (p. 7).

According to Lyotard, art and literary work is threatened by cultural politics coupled with a capital market order. Thus reality in such work is now to be confirmed by both science and capitalism, and we discover the lack of reality in reality. It is a condition of modernity, he argues.

Lyotard distinguishes modern/avant-guard art and postmodern/transavantguard art in terms of the representation of the "unpresentable". He states:

"[T]he avant-guardes continually expose the artifices of presentation that allow thought to be enslaved by the gaze and diverted from the unpresentable...The postmodern would be that which in the modern invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself, that which refused the consolation of correct forms, refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia for the impossible, and inquiries into new presentation--not to take pleasure in them, but to better produce the feeling that there is something unpresentable." (pp. 12-15).

For Lyotard, postmodern artists are a philosopher who constantly investigates the preestablished rules to establish new ones.

Chapter 2. Apostil on Narratives (pp. 17-21)
Defining the project of modernity as the realization of universality, Lyotard argues that the project is "liquidated". He contests that, while contemporary capitalist technoscience was instrumental to fulfilling the project, it became part of the subject that humans tried to master. As a result, contemporary technoscience profoundly "destablized" the project, as seen the populicide at Auschwitz, for instance. Within this context, Lyotard discredits the grand narratives of legitimation and calls for postmodernity, not as the end of modernity but as its anti-thesis.

Chapter 4. Memorandum on Legitimation (pp. 39-59)
In this chapter, Lyotard approaches totalitarianism from the perspective of legitimation. In the quest, he shows his political perspective. He states:

[R]ight cannot be de facto; real society draws legitimacy not from itself but from a community that is not properly nameable, merely required. One cannot deduce what a people ought to be from what it is today, nor can one deduce the concept of the universal citizen from its French or American name--only the reverse is possible. This is why, as I remarked earlier, the ferment and decomposition of the real community are inscribed in the principle of republicanism and in the history it develops. Sovereignty belongs not to the people but to the Idea of the free community. History simply marks the tension of this lack. The republic invokes freedom against security. (p. 51)

This statement implies that republicanism is based on the power of universality. Lyotard argues that totalitarianism borrows its universalizaing power from republicanism and decompose people into "masses" as its identity through authorized parties.

Chapter 7. Note on the Meaning of Post
A simple distinction Lyotard makes between modern and postmodern is that post means "a new direction from the previous one" (p. 76). On the other hand, he states as to modernity:

"The very idea of modernity is closely correlated with the principle that it is both possible and necessary to break with tradition and institute absolutely new ways of living and thinking." (p. 76).

[Lyotard, however, argues that the ideal of modernity has been destroyed for the reasons described earlier.]