Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives

Revisits the work of postmodern French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard.

Lyotard shook the cultural world in the late twentieth century by announcing postmodernism and the end of grand narratives. He captured a feeling of unease about the standpoint of great modern thinkers, who claimed to have resolved the big problems of epistemology, society, and history. Now, after the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it pays to look back at what he had to say. There was always more to Lyotard than a set of soundbites about the end of modernity, just as there is more to Hegel and Marx than the passing of modernist certainties. Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives reviews the whole of Lyotard's work, adopting a critical attitude to his thinking. Likewise, it does not take the thought of Hegel, Marx, and other grand theorists for granted; it reviews them carefully and creates a critical reframing of modern thought in the light of Lyotard's postmodern perspective.

Gary Browning is associate dean of the Department of Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University.