A Postmodern Fable on Postmodernity, or: In the Megalopolis
Jean-François Lyotard · 1994
Abstract 1. I HAVE BEEN kindly invited by William Lillyman and David Neuman to conclude this conference by taking the bearing of postmodernity ten years after the publication of my text The Postmodern Condition.1 With this invitation, I understand that I have been asked to answer the question: What is post-postmodernity? The trap doesn’ t lie where it seems to; the mind is able to double the post as many times as it wants to. According to the basic property of time and number series that mathematics calls “the successor of,” every number n, considered as an ordinal number, implies that it is followed by a number n + 1, whatever the one may be. The trap lies rather in the request for a conclusive ebearing of post-postmodernity; for what I would underline first and foremost is the relativity in which thinking is obliged to operate under postmodern conditions. With relativity, such a conclusion is excluded and a bearing may only be taken arbitrarily.