Description: A collection of interviews and debates with French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, focusing on his later work and the period from 1984 to 1997.
Brief description: Jean-François Lyotard(1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. He was the author of classic philosophical texts such as Discourse, Figure;Libidinal Economy; The Differendand The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge.
Review Quotes: "Framed by the editor's perceptive contextual introduction, this carefully curated collection of Lyotard's later interviews and debates opens exciting avenues into the philosopher's understanding of his approach to "the differend" and his commitment to mining the political engagement of textual and artistic form. Key is Lyotard's acknowledgement in these hard-to-find documents of his unintended dialogue between the phrases of The Differend and the technologies of education in The Postmodern Condition that so deeply influenced his teaching, his pioneering Pompidou exhibition, Les Immatériaux and subsequent texts, and his extensive philosophical dialogues with international artists. Readers of this collection will come to embrace Lyotard's passion for "debate" as the dialogical scene of artistic and political thought par excellence." --Timothy Murray, Cornell University