Introducing Lyotard

by Bill Readings

The first truly introductory text on Lyotard, this book situates Lyotard's interventions in the postmodern debate in the wider context of his rethinking of the politics of representation. Bill Readings examines Lyotard's relationship to structuralism, Marxism and semiotics, and contrasts his work with the literary deconstruction of Paul de Man; he positions Lyotard's work so as to draw out the implications of poststructurlaism's attention to difference in reading. Lyotard's willingness to question the political and examine the relationship between art and politics is shown to undermine the charge that deconstruction abdicates political and social articulation.

Genres: Philosophy

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 1991

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pleasure to read. Readings is pretty deep into Lyotard's work, but is also able to extrapolate on the consequences of Lyotard's ideas into art, politics, culture, and philosophy. In particular, Readings zeros in on the differend, as a central concept to how Lyotard breaks up the transcendental idealism of semiotics and phenomenology. There is some attempt for Readings to rely on other philosophers to compare and explicate what makes Lyotard different, but for the most part he sticks with Lyotard instead of trying to favor one of the other thinkers. What might also have helped position Lyotard is to also provide how he would different from other interpretations of works -- and how Lyotard is positioned within his own philosophical tradition.

Readings however, does not tone down the writing too much. He isn't writing in the post-structuralist manner of using metaphors or by jumping from example to example. He sticks with a kind of Anglo-Saxon rhetorical style of 'direct speaking' but with the fullness of academic writing. Most likely this book would not be comprehensible to your average undergraduate student, so be warned. You may have to read this book somewhat slowly with careful notes. A general knowledge of 20th century continental philosophy would probably help as well.

For what this book is, it is extremely good. What keeps me back from writing 5 stars is that I think that if Readings approached Lyotard in a more creative manner, he might have been able to do an even better job, but then this wouldn't necessarily be so academic. Readings is writing an academic text, after all.

[Abdullah Başaran · Rating 5 out of 5]

No doubt it is more helpful and well-structured than Geoffrey Bennington's "Lyotard: Writing the Event". What is more, Readings mostly focuses on Lyotard's monumental dissertation "Discourse, Figure".