A widely used term to denote the sensitivity of advanced capitalist countries since at least the 1960s.
In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard writes:
“Simply put, I would define the postmodern as distrust of metanarratives” (1979 [1984], XXIV).
Still, according to him (Jean-François Lyotard), postmodernism raises suspicions of being a metanarrative.
The Postmodern Condition was an influential book. However, Lyotard himself later admitted that he had a “less than limited” knowledge of the science he wrote about, and to compensate for this knowledge, he “made stories up” and referred to a number of books that he hadn’t actually read. In retrospect, he called it “a parody” and “simply the worst of all my books“.
The poet Frederick Turner writes that, like many post-structuralist works, The Postmodern Condition “has not worn well.” However, he sees it as more readable than other post-structuralist works, and credits Lyotard with covering “a good deal of ground in a lively and economical fashion.”
