Postmodern Fables

Description

A collection of 15 fables from a founding figure of postmodernism that ask in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live and why?" Here Lyotard provides a mixture of anarchistic, irreverent and more sober philosophical reflection on a range of topics - with attention to issues of justice and ethics, and aesthetics and judgement. He unravels and reconfigures idealistic notions of subjects - such as the French Revolution, the Holocaust, the reception of French theory in the Anglo-American world, the events of May 1968, the Gulf War, the collapse of communism, and his own work in the context of others.

Jean-Francois Lyotard is one of the principal French philosophers and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Best known for having coined the term "postmodern," he is the author of numerous works, including The Postmodern Condition (Minnesota, 1984), The Differend (Minnesota, 1988), Heidegger and "the jews" (Minnesota, 1990), and The Postmodern Explained (Minnesota, 1992). Lyotard is professor emeritus at the University of Parfis and professor of French at Emory University.