Driftworks

by Jean-François Lyotard

In this collection of essays and interviews from 1970-72, Jean-François Lyotard explores and drifts, as we drift, between art and politics, the "figural" and representation, silence and libidinal energy.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Jean-François Lyotard (DrE, Literature, University of Paris X, 1971) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and for his analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

He went to primary school at the Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand and later began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. After graduation, in 1950, he took a position teaching philosophy in Constantine in French East Algeria. He married twice: in 1948 to Andrée May, with whom he had two daughters, and for a second time in 1993 to the mother of his son, who was born in 1986.

Reviews

[James Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A leading figure in French philosophy, Lyotard is one of the most important critics of academic thought processes. The essays collected in Drifworks, which cover the late sixties to the early seventies have not, for the most part, been translated elsewhere, making the collection one of the rare resources available to anyone interested in this fascinating thinker and innovator. A must read for all those concerned with Lyotard's evolution, be it on the political, on the literary or on the purely philosophical plane.

[Monster · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read Lyotard elsewhere, I feel confident in saying that this is a sloppier, less coherent, perhaps just more-exploratory text. Reads like semi-psychedelic musings on the subjects and theorists Lyotard has taken up in previous texts. Felt lazy.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

revisiting Lyotard and remembering that he's one of my favorite writers, not just a famous figure who announced the advent of post-modernism

The passage about Mao swimming across the Yangtse-Kiang in 'Several Silences' is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I've come across

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven’t read Lyotard before, so this was an interesting overview of his ideas and voice. The opening interview allowed you to hear him express himself candidly (he was much more civil and encouraging than other philosopher’s interviews I’ve read). His writing on the other hand, occasionally felt hallucinogenic. Having read works by Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, there wasn’t anything dramatically ‘new’ about the ideas, he simply slotted in with the rest of his cohort; analysis of language signifiers, reference to Freud and James Joyce’s Ulysses, calls to challenge the status quo, reference to the Other, gifts, trace, absence-presence, and so on. That said, my favourite neologism is “Dadareality” the space in which ‘reality’ has gaps, unspeakable, unsignifiable perceptions, a space where art is made, beyond the boundary of words. I was also taken with his (super strange) passage about Oedipus encountering the Sphinx and finding his ‘words are full of eyes’ as he went off to meet his destiny.

[Joy-Aisling · Rating 2 out of 5]

The translation is not clear enough to communicate Lyotard's ideas. It requires more footnotes and glosses, because as it is, part of Lyotard's work is extremely unclearly expressed.