Jean-Francois Lyotard : The Later Interviews and Debates

With contributions selected from the last fifteen years of his life, this second volume of Jean-François Lyotard’s interviews and debates includes hard-to-find and previously untranslated material. Taking place between 1984 and 1997 they follow in the wake of Lyotard’s most notable publications, including The Postmodern Condition (1979) and The Differend (1983). Whilst continuing to contest and reconfigure the claims of these writings, Lyotard and his interlocutors help to contextualise the questions raised within the fields of art, philosophy, literature and politics. Discussions in Paris and London include contributions from thinkers such as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; Christine Buci-Glucksmann and Alain Badiou whilst significant interviews elsewhere in Europe, North and South America elucidate the consequences of the varied reception given to his work. The importance of Kant, Freud and Wittgenstein is readily apparent as are the themes now closely associated with Lyotard: the inhuman, infancy and resistance to ‘the system’. These interviews and debates record an evident delight in the activity of thinking which is not about rhetorical flourish or rehashing staid assumptions but of grappling with some of the most important questions confronting thought today.