Lyotard and Critical Practice

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Jean-Franois Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the previous centurys most provocative thinkers. Can his work help us address the crisis currently facing the humanities The dominant economic discourse sees the humanities as low-value, an irritation at best. Lyotard helps us to think against this pervasive dismissal of creative activity, not by defending the honor of the humanities, but by inviting critical practices which aggravate this irritation. Critical practices trouble what counts as critique, embrace incertitude, and listen for silenced voices. Twelve essays by artists and researchers take up Lyotard's invitation and begin to develop the idea of critical practice in the contemporary context. Three sections titled What resists thinking; Long views and distances and Why art practice address contemporary concerns like affectivity, aesthetics, economic imperatives, militarism, pedagogy, posthumanism, and the closure of what in Lyotard's time was called "the West." Four short pieces by Lyotard intervene in and buttress the discussion: Apathy in Theory and Interview with Art Prsent, here published in English for the first time, and Affect-phrase and The Others Rights republished here to highlight his prescient concern for that which cannot be articulated.

Reviews

In Lyotard and Critical Practice, Kiff Bamford and Margret Grebowicz have assembled an exciting time machine of philosophical cultural criticism. With its poly-vocal passage through hitherto little-heard and little-considered aspects of Lyotards work, the inventor of postmodernism is credited not only with a special presentness, but with an enormous ability for the future. Reading the book is an empathic invitation to think transversally and to sharpen an idea of critique that is deeply rooted in sensual experience, especially at a time when our existence is becoming increasingly technical. * Siegfried Zielinski, Michel-Foucault-Professor for Techno-Aesthetics and Media Archaeology, The European Graduate School / EGS, Switzerland *

Author Bio

Kiff Bamford is Reader in Contemporary Art in the School of Art, Architecture and Design, Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is author of Lyotard and the figural in Performance, Art and Writing (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Jean-Franois Lyotard: The Interviews and Debates (Bloomsbury, 2020). Margret Grebowicz is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. She is the author of Whale Song (Bloomsbury, 2017) and editor of Gender after Lyotard (2007).