1. Biography
Jean-François Lyotard was born in
Vincennes, France, on August 10, 1924. His father, Jean-Pierre Lyotard, was a
sales representative. His mother's maiden name was Madeleine Cavalli. He was
schooled at the Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand, and his youthful
aspirations to be a Dominican monk, a painter, an historian, or a novelist
eventually gave way to a career in philosophy. He studied philosophy and
literature at the Sorbonne (after twice failing the entrance exam to the Ecole
Normale Supérieure), where he became friends with Gilles Deleuze. His early
interest in philosophies of indifference resulted in his M.A. dissertation Indifference
as an Ethical Notion. Lyotard describes his existence up until the Second
World War as a 'poetic, introspective and solitary way of thinking and living.'
The war disrupted both his way of life and his thought; he acted as a first-aid
volunteer in the fight for liberation in the Paris streets in August 1944, and
gave up the idea of indifference for a commitment to the investigation of
reality in terms of social interactions. Lyotard became a husband and father at
a young age, marrying Andrée May in 1948 and subsequently having two children,
Corinne and Laurence. Lyotard passed the agrégation (the examination
required in order to teach in France) and took up a position teaching
philosophy at a boy's lycée (school) in Constantine in French-occupied East
Algeria in 1950. From 1952-59 he taught at a school for the sons of military
personnel at La Flèche. In Constantine Lyotard read Marx and became acquainted
with the Algerian political situation, which he believed was ripe for socialist
revolution. In 1954 Lyotard joined the socialist revolutionary organisation Socialisme
ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism). Other members of the organisation
included Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, and Pierre Souyris. Lyotard had
met Souyris at a union meeting late in 1950, and they had a long and close
friendship, eventually troubled by political and theoretical differences.
Lyotard became an intellectual militant, and asserts that for fifteen years he
was so dedicated to the cause of socialist revolution that no other aspect of
life (with the sole exception of love) diverted him from this task. His writings
in this period are solely concerned with ultra-left revolutionary politics,
with a sharp focus on the Algerian situation (the war of independence had
broken out in 1954). He contributed to and edited the Socialisme ou Barbarie
journal, and wrote pamphlets to distribute to workers at protests and at
factory gates. In 1964 a schism erupted in Socialisme ou Barbarie over
Castoriadis' new theoretical direction for the group. Lyotard, along with
Souyris, became a member of the splinter group Pouvoir Ouvrier (Worker's
Power), but resigned in 1966. He had lost belief in the legitimacy of Marxism
as a totalising theory, and returned to the study and writing of philosophy.
From 1959 to 1966 Lyotard was maître-assistant at the Sorbonne, and then
gained a position in the philosophy department at the University of Paris X,
Nanterre. There he took part in the May 1968 political actions, organising
demonstrations for the "March 22 Movement."
Lyotard attended the radical psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's seminars in the mid-60s,
and his reaction to Lacan’s theories resulted in Discours, figure, for
which he received the degree of doctorat d'état. From 1968 to 1970
Lyotard was chargé de recherches at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique. In the early 1970s Lyotard was appointed to the University of
Paris VIII, Vincennes, where he was a popular teacher and a prolific writer. In
1972 he was made maître de conferences, and in 1987 he became Professor
Emeritus at Vincennes. The 1979 publication of The Postmodern Condition
brought Lyotard worldwide fame, and in the 1980s and 90s he lectured widely
outside of France. Lyotard was professor of French and Italian at the
University of California, Irvine, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of French at
Emory University, and a founding member and sometime president of the Collège
International de Philosophie. Lyotard was a visiting professor at numerous
universities, including John Hopkins, the University of California, Berkeley
and San Diego, the University of Minnesota, the Université de Montréal, Canada,
the Universität Siegen, West Germany, and the University of Saõ Paulo, Brazil.
Lyotard married his second wife Dolorès Djidzek in 1993 and had a son, David.
Lyotard died of leukaemia in Paris on April 21, 1998.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/Lyotard.htm#H1