Jean-Francois Lyotard: The Post-modern Condition 

RIP Dr Sugrue. Thank you for all the knowledge you gave us!

So cool this guy, “there was a time when indignation was an emotion, now it’s a job”

whenever he's transitioning and hits us with the "nowww..." it is always deeply gratifying

4:29 “There was a time when indignation was an emotional, now it’s a job.” My favorite line of his ever.

very few professors can speak about such topic like this man. This is master class lecturing

Thank you very much Dr. Sugrue... I dread the day that there are no new uploads. Your lectures are absolutely priceless and a glowing legacy of your academic work that, God willing, will serve as a guiding light for countless generations of humanity.

"The result of this scrupolosity is not intellectual cleanliness, it is intellectual sterility". That's my sense too. Thank you!

I love the way you're able to make a lecture on philosophy sound like the narration of a chess match with one set of ideas battling another.

"The was a time when indignation was an emotion. Now it's a job." Brilliant description of academic professionalization corrupting the humanities.

Such a good time to post this lecture.

Rejecting everything except the self… great summary of postmodernism. Beautiful lectures; clear, fluid, and to the point

Sugrue is legendary.

"There was a time, long ago, that indignation was an emotion, now it's a job". Brilliant!

Such a fitting subject for the times we're in

This man has been pwning the intellectual elite for 30 years. Damn, Michael, you truly are a gem. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be able to access this.

Thank you for posting your old lectures! I wished more professors would have done so for posterity

Brilliant and so prescient that it hurts.

I very much appreciate these lectures. Even when all of my professors say to pursue another subject worthy of my time, or could achieve income necessary to retirement. Philosophy isn't meant to be profited off of and compartmentalized into a monetization scheme. And it isn't just a language game to confirm my rhetorics. It is a place to learn, live and grow. We are all human and although we may reject each other we should not reject life itself.

RIP. Your lectures are diamond in a flow of information

Wow. What a blisteringly riveting account of today.

45:23 "And the result of this scrupulosity is not intellectual cleanliness; it's intellectual sterility." Hard hitting!

"There was a time long ago, when indignation was an emotion, now it's a job." Truer words have never been spoken.

Vert grateful for helping me understand Lyotard’s fascinating ideas.

What a guy! Thanks for the knowledge Dr Sugrue, RIP

The best channel on RU-vid. An extremely enlightening introduction to philosophy and the history of Western thought. Thanks, Messrs. Sugre and Staloff!

“I can be confused on my own.” Story of my life.

TO THE POINT, CLEAR. LOVE DR. SUGRUE❤️

I wish you success with this channel, professor. Excellent content.

What an entertaining lecture. And so funny too. Thank you for enlightening us.

Thank you for the great lecture. It feels like attending a live class.

Straight 45 mins. Thanks for the Journey professor ♥️

Dang Michael, tell us how you really feel

This. Was. Awesome.

God bless you sugrue ❤️

Excellent lecture

Thank you Professor!

you helped me go through my master's program smoothly.

“Indignation used to be an emotion, now it’s a job.”

Release all of the Sugrue archives…

Continously Brilliant 🌹

HIs final lines relieved my strained attitude toward post-modernism,

This guy was so far ahead of the curve.

This guy is fab. Great lectures. I got hooked a few days ago. I've always been negative about Pomos since Alan Sokal, Gross + Levitt, etc, but I'm not brainy enough to take it apart like Dr Sugrue.

Was just about to ask you to post this one :-) Where I first heard about Systems Theory and Performativity.

Well done!

Thank You!

Excellent talk. Ten points for gryffindor!

I need this dumbed down one more level.

Man, he is on fire here

Love this one, even better than the Heideggger one, have to rewatch it again

“There’s a tendency in post-modernism to reject the external world because it gets in the way of our egocentrism.” (32:12)

"it is intellectual sterility" I think I agree. It seems to me that this idea of paralogy as it is explained in this lecture requires grand meta narratives just to exist. If the rate of rebellion against these meta narratives grows faster than the rate at which meta narratives grow then what do we do when there are no more meta narratives to rebel against? What do we do when mt. Everest is gone?

Prof. Sugru has quite a kind of machine gun delivery. Still quite interesting, learning a lot from this lecture. Thank you.

THANK YOU

Engagement. Thank ya kindly.

This Man is , a genuine. I like all kinds of things bout this fool. Like the way he sways back and forth with his one hand on his coat pocket.. and sips . Dude I'm a slimeball but he's Cool and I want MORE

“Why are you criticizing this?” Why, because it’s there 😂😂 lmao

Dunno when this was recorded or when Lyotard wrote his works but given the content I'd easily be fooled into thinking it was all post 2018.

This is great. It is so great that the lecturer seems scared of the idea! Great stuff!

And thus why we are living in a world of “ intellectual sterility”, he was like an Oracle talking about our modern reality.

It's hard to tell how much of this lecture is eisegesis, and how much is importation from Lyotard's other works. In any event, while apt in many places, it also ends up relying too heavily on caricatures and summary arguments--most regularly, the peritrope (tail-eating trick). As such, it doesn't represent a close reading of 'The Postmodern Condition,' and isn't particularly charitable to Lyotard. Just for example, it may be a little a little sardonic to characterize Lyotard as 'gesturing in the void,' and 'talking about God knows what, for God knows what reason.' Lyotard explains in the appendix, for instance, that postmodern aesthetics inhabit the modernist gap opened between the conceivable and the presentable, in which reality slips away: it finds at once a nostalgia for the limits of presentation, and exultation in the power to conceive--to conceive new 'rules of the game,' new artistic forms in this case, like the high modernist motto, 'make it new!' It is equally a political project, in which freedom, creativity, and differential space for the Other are valorized--but these are no more ersatz values for Lyotard than they were for Nietzsche, or Lévinas, or Derrida--or indeed continue to be for any western liberal! Indeed, these values appear crucial whenever the threat of totalitarianism bulks large. In this case, the threat follows from the scientific progress of late/high modernity, with its rationalization, computerization, and systems-control of all things (thus references to Luhmann)--that is, the threat of technocracy. As Keith Chrome rightly notes, Lyotard's greatest concern is with the prospect of techno-scientific control of all of life. His rallying cries to experimentation & avant-gardism, and to the same creative 'performativity' in postmodern science, are intended to resist this technocracy... and one can scarcely fail to see its relevance to today's digital age, with its 'big data,' algorithmic manipulation of both social media & marketplace, and technology capitalism beyond what Lyotard might have imagined. 'Paralogy' is the emblem of anti-technocratic resistance, but it doesn't connote mere nonsense. See note 211, for example: "“It has not been possible within the limits of this study to analyze the form assumed by the return of narrative in discourses of legitimation. Examples are: the study of open systems, local determinism, antimethod-in general, everything that I group under the name paralogy.” References to open systems and locality simply name anti-totalitarianism; narrative simply denominates one locus of resistance. Let's take Sugrue's example of Singapore. It's supposed to be a contradiction of Lyotard, per Sugrue, that Singaporeans don't all feel 'terrorized' by their 'soft authoritarian' government. But it is nowhere clear that one must *feel* or *express* terror to be so, and Lyotard does not employ a psychological definition of 'terror' at any rate. Terror, he says, is forceful elimination from the play of language games. If one does not perceive the latent danger of such eliminations--the threat to free speech, the spectre of thought control, the silencing of all marginality--then perhaps Lyotard has little to say to them. Such actions are not in the domain of language games or free play; they do not arise from local & organic determinism. On the contrary, they represent a metadiscourse (or metaprescriptive) imposed by heteronomous power upon players. 'Soft authoritarianism,' is not 'just another language game' then, according to which Lyotard would contradict himself. It's rank context control & domination--the metadiscourse of power & efficiency... instead of clouds, networks, and dispersions of local discourses (games)--the kind of intermediary associations (for example) that real democracy thrives on. For those curious, I suggest reading Lyotard yourselves and joining the lively conversations that postmodern theory has variously spurred.

Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! 👏👏👏

This guy is the boss. Peace out.

35:00 really funny that this was mentioned. this was exactly what i was saying to my mother the other day in light of the supreme court’s recent decision. had no idea mr lyotard came up with this idea already but it’s something i definitely believe about modern politics. these people dont even agree on the axioms, so how could they possibly agree on conclusions.

Anyone help me with the name of the radical mentioned prior to Thoma Kuhn at 23:11? Subtitles phonetically produced “fire robin.”

I think maybe these points of view are not more widely disseminated because they would lead to the loss of a considerable amount of intellectual camoflage essential to the currency of a number of academic positions.

Discourse is dead Gesture is the new god, Knowledge replaced by opinion, persuasion has won over the need to convince Gesturing into the void Gesturing into the direction of talking to ourselves It seems the Frankfurt school and the postmodernists have kind of perfectly predicted the modern man, I understand there is a certain amount of jest in the last quarter of the lecture, towards this way of thinking but it has no doubt come to fruition. So what now!

Great cls

Please ,Which year this lecture was covered? Thanks

Question Doctor. The video quality, the decor and even your own head look like they were recorded in the 80s or 90s. But the critique of the post modernists seems post 2010 (or as I say post occupy wall st) could you please clarify? (For the benefit of my subjective objectivity) thanks.

I gotta hand it to you... you got a lot of class, stay classy my friends

Victor J. Vitanza Jean-François Lyotard Chair and Professor of Rhetoric and Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS.

What is the opening music?

Wow what a masterpiece. Thank you for your ontological contribution :)

What a genius interpretation. Maybe though he’d add something given the global situation. The final word “sterility” seems particularly ironic.

I learned from Professor Sugrue about Singapore and why I don't agree with a friend of mine who loves Singapore and lived there. I realized that one point the prof mad about it was mistaken . The "terror" is not directed toward the rewarded who somehow are living there but toward the punished who don't espouse capiatlism probably as enthusiastically as those who are rewarded by it. It's like so many who think of the U.S. as a wonderful place. These are those perhaps addicted to it's rewards and able to attain them, not those suffering poverty and homeless, who may be terrorized by their "negative" opinions.

The Postmodern condition can be defined as the rejection of Industrialism as the defining methodology of society. Or by disenfranchisement from Industry, both of which lead individuals to focus on the Self. For some, this can lead to a more authentic life. For others, it leads to the lifestyle of January 6. Now, with common folk having access to computers, trucks, and guns, someone will have to define the Self in a postmodern milieu.

Isn't P.M a necessary 'check and balance' mechanism by which power of once group is kept in check by the ever emerging marginal elements and participants that were previously unrepresented in the Democratic process. It is those many factions being able to hold the symbolic dagger to plunge in to the symbolic 'Caesar' that tries to take total control? Not saying anything is good or bad about it though through this lens it does have some function.

If Ezra Pound's "Make It New!" is the mantra of modernism, then surely Sugrue's clever turn of phrase here, "Systematic Suspicion", must be a strong candidate as postmodernism's mantra.

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated

Damn, the last 60 secs is a powerful conclusion. "Intellectual sterility"

Great ontology

Unrestrained narcissism…sums up the age we find ourselves in.

Surely this means that to maintain that 2 + 2 = 4 is unjust and totalitarian and is unfair to those who believe otherwise, e.g. 2 + 2 = 3. But this would make so everyday a task as shopping impossible. We aren't even allowed to tell the time. Or weigh out food. He is deeply involved in a performative contradiction.

Nice thread...good read although I maybe a tad pro 11clappt, Sugrue is teaching and he does it well and as unbiased as well, however LKoffie's remark, " positioning yourself as the arbiter of what constitutes culture must be very flexible". Okay...we all need to think what makes "you the arbiter". Food for thought. TY

At 3:40 does anyone feel that there is a nod to Rand?

Sir. This is an absolutely wonderful encapsulation of Leotards thought. I know you did this a while ago, but your critique lends to the explanation of Leotards post modern condition. I can only hope to be as wonderful of a philosopher as you are.

Someone help: He keeps using the word "perology" toward the end of the video but I can't find that word anywhere.. am I spelling it wrong?

What a joy to hear someone interrogate the pomo interrogators with such ‘Scrupulousity’

Visited this like an old family photo album. Was once interested in postmodernism. Now it seems mostly irrelevant -- or even clueless considering the online threat and recent turn or return to authoritarianism in American and World politics... A thing at best to be nostalgic about. Edit _:_ should add, though _:_ Great lecture _!_

I think the question of Silencing the Different is not whether the majority feels the terror, or whether a minority feels terror in a given moment, but that when some established line is crossed, overt physical terror is very likely to emerge. If something is prohibited, then eventually coercive force and carceral behavior will be expressed. This implication and potentiality is apparently what is being opposed. We seem to be left with coordinating feelings and arriving by experiment at what arrangements of subjectivities will achieve equilibrium and lasting adherence. It wouldn't be "right" or "wrong" but that set of assumptions that relatively few dislike. Until, of course, people are "convinced" to expand the line of taboo by a new mass feeling that catches on. So a Constitutional order would not say what is right but make appeals to what most people find acceptable in terms of how change is managed.

Lyotard is the measure of all things. The tragic outcome would be the obsolescence of judges and lawyers.

It seems to me that Sugrue does not give a fair account of Lyotard's work. Like many American commentators, Sugrue seems to fall in to the trap of suggesting that Lyotard is advocating a Postmodern way of thinking, or a way of doing philosophy, but Lyotard's book is arguably much more of an account of how we 'do think' rather than how we 'should think'. Lyotard linked the rise of Postmodernism to the development of "late capitalism." He argued that consumer culture and mass media, key features of late capitalism, create a fragmented and superficial experience of knowledge. Although Lyotard highlighted the inadequacies of grand narratives, he also questioned the absolute dismissal of all grand narratives, arguing that some narratives can offer valuable guidance, even if they are not universally applicable.

The irony of Post-Modernism becoming a Meta-Narrative.

Hmmm, Postmodernists as Romantics? According to Jakobsen's schema of arranging cultural historical periods along syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, Romanticism and Modernism are both paradigmatic (metaphor, e.g.) and Realism and Postmodernism are both syntagmatic (metonymy, tangents, etc.).

There was a time when indignation was an emotion and not job!

How do you pronounce his last name?

Even Nietzsche says we should be "Yea" sayers. I think there is truth, and we should find it.

Romanticism squared 😀!

Wow, when was this recorded late 80s/early 90s? How little things have changed culturally in the past 30 years