Minima Memoria: In the Wake of Jean-Francois Lyotard

Minima Memoria attests to the impact of the works of Jean-Francois Lyotard, one of the most influential French philosophers of the twentieth century, and the continuing effects of these works across a wide array of fields: philosophy, literature, political theory, gender theory, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis. Particular attention is paid to Lyotard’s repeated warnings regarding the way in which the complexity of events can be occluded in the very attempt to represent them. Indeed, through the contributors’ careful and critical analysis, Lyotard’s complex intellectual trajectory-all the way up to the posthumously published works The Confession of Augustine and The Misery of Philosophy-is traced in different and often conflicting manners, which bring out the different currents that traverse his writings and the sites of tension that such terms as different,
affect, and infancy mark. What emerges is not a grand narrative that would organize Lyotard’s life and work around one unifying idea, but multifaceted approaches that extend in new and unforeseen directions.