Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information and Art

Ashley Woodward

Jan 2016 · Edinburgh University Press

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Argues for the pivotal importance of Lyotard in light of the emerging discipline of posthumanism. Ashley Woodward presents a series of studies to explain Lyotard's specific interventions in information theory, new media arts and the changing nature of the human. He assesses their relevance and impact in relation to a number of important contemporary thinkers including Bernard Stiegler, Luciano Floridi, Quentin Meillassoux and Paul Virilio. Jean-FranÃʹois Lyotard was one of the leading French philosophers of his generation, whose wide-ranging and highly original contributions to thought were overshadowed by his brief, unfortunate association with 'postmodernism.' Woodward demonstrates what a new generation of scholars are just discovering: that Lyotard's incisive work is essential for current debates in the humanities. Lyotard's ideas about the arts and the confrontations between humanist traditions and cutting-edge sciences and technologies are today known as 'posthumanism'.

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Ashley Woodward is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee and is a founding member of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo (The Davies Group, 2009).