This document summarizes key concepts from postmodern philosophy. It discusses theorists like Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, and feminist philosophers. Some of the main ideas discussed are Lyotard's concept of postmodernity as a shift in perception due to changes in knowledge production; Derrida's concept of differance and how it destabilizes meaning; Foucault's studies of power and marginalization; and Deleuze and Guattari's rejection of psychoanalytic theories. It also summarizes Lyotard's concepts of event, differend, and the sublime.

2. JINSU SUSAN ABRAHAM
I MA ENGLISH
St.MARY’S COLLEGE, MANARCADU

3.  A literary critic,social critic and critical theorist
 Currently, a professor of English Literature at
Northumbria University
 Known for his researches on globalization,
postmodernism,poststructurlism,postmarxism,contine
ntal philosophy,cultural theory and critical theory.
 Written numerous journel articles and book chapters
and his work has been translated into 17 languages.

4.  This essay appears as the first essay to the book
entitled The Routledge Companion to
Postmodernism.
 Sim considers the book The Postmodern Condition
by Jean Francois Lyotard as the most important and
powerful theoritical expression of postmodernism.
 According to Lyotard, postmodernity is a shift of
mood or persception brought about by the changes in
the organization of knowledge since late 19th century.

5.  A traditional importance of labour declined in a pst
industrial society
 A post industrial society is heavily depended on
production of knowledge than physical commodities
 In this senerio knowledge itself became a commodity
to be sold and bought
 The prestige of traditional intellectuals fades and the
world becomes increasingly incredules about the
grand narratives.

6.  Base form of postmodernism is highly indepted to
Nietzche who proposed ‘revaluation of alla values’.

7.  Structuralism is considered as an authoritarian theory
since the theory prescribe how system had to operate.
 By the late 1960’s a radical reaction emerge.
 Jacques Derrida and other poststructuralist launched a
series of devasting criticism against structuralism
 Derrida proved that the conventional link between
signifier and signified and signified is fragile and
slippery, thus meaning is more elusive than
structuralist.

8.  Derrida proved this slippage in action by means of a
concept called ‘differance’.
 Metaphysics of presence is a term coined by Derrida.
 Thought that full meaning of a word is present in the
speakers mind.
 According to derrida, difference always stand as an
impediment in stablishing a complete meaning.

9.  Postmodern philosopher who quetioned the system
building tendencies of structuralism
 He focused on how system building happens in
politics by the use of power.
 The excluded or marginalised groups,whose
difference keeps them excluded from political
poewer-people.
 Foucault studied how this marginalization developed
in post Renaissance culture.

10.  History of Sexuality by Foucault ,is a study of how
homosexuality function in Greek and Roman culture
and later in postrenaissance and contemporary
culture.

11.  Postmodern philosophers considers psychoanalytical
thoery as authoritarian and set to control the
expressions of human desire.
 Anti Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, is
a strong attack on the authoritarinism associated with
psychoanalyist.
 Psychoanalysis heavily depended upon Oedipal
structure that reduced everything to “pappa, mamma
and me”
 For Deleuze and Guattari, individuals can’t be
branded under any psychoanalytical theories.

12.  According to them they are desiring machine.
 Individual lacks any unified identity and the
opportunity to realise their desire desire is being
curved by socio-political authorities.

13.  The rigidity of gender categorization was questioned
by Difference Feminism.
 The key argument of Difference Feminism is that
gender identity isn’t fixed instead it is flexible and
fluid flows that can’t be reduced into anyessence or
norm of behaviour.
 According to Difference Feminism a singular identity
is not possible with woman as, women has
overlapping shades of experiences and identity – such
differences as race, class, religion and ethinicity.

14.  Lyotard was a marxist in his earlier career: a member
of Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or
Barbarianism)
 Lyotard distance himself from the organization on the
ground the marxism failed to encompase the various
desires of the people.
 Another reason for disenchantment was the
proestablishment stand of French communist party
after 1968 Paris Evenments.

15.  He expressed his frustration towards marxism in his
work Libidinal Economy.
 EVENT,DIFFEREND AND SUBLIME
 EVENT :According to Lyotard event is any incident
that can dramitically alter the view for the way in
which view the world.
 Auschwitz is such an event.Such events can’t be
explained by any grand narrative theories.
 DIFFEREND (irrisolvable dispute) : To Lyotard
differend is a dispute that arises when each party is
employing a form of language.

16.  Differands are normally suppressed by means of
brute power.
 Lyotard wants these differands to be acknowledge
and not taken advantage by the stronger unity.
 SUBLIME: It is unpresentable the elements in our
experience which works against the complete
understanding of the world.
 The sublime always lay beyond our power to
represent or explain.

17.  Grand narratives may acknowledge or refute the
sublime but phase to provide an explanation of these.

18.  Science as a threat to difference
 Acoording to Lyotard, science is trying to make
‘thought possible without a body’.
 Such scientific values should be resist because it aims
at a world without difference.
 In such a world there will no longer be ‘events.’
 One need to work against such ‘techno-
science’world, where individuals and littile narratives
are letout or will be silenced under the authority.