Political Writings Translated by Bill Readings with Kevin Paul Geiman. Foreword by Bill Readings

The first collection of Lyotard's political works to appear in English. Published between 1956 and 1989 in Socialisme ou Barbarie and other journals of the noncommunist French left, these essays and articles address issues of imperialism and decolonization, the student rebellions of 1968-69, and the modern state as a political form. The political moments implicit in Lyotard's arguments in The Postmodern Condition are made explicit in these writings, which trace the shifts in political thinking necessitated by the emergence of the postmodern.

"Political Writings in an invaluable collection of Lyotard's work, of his unerring sense of political commitment, of his own turmoil over questions that have proven to be among the most significant and challenging of the age, and of his political imagination which enables him to recast hegemonic stories, old narratives, and exhausted utopias in forms that present new political possibilities for resistance." ?Surfaces

Jean-François Lyotard (1925-­1998) was one of the principal French philosophers and intellectuals of the twentieth century. His works include The Differend (1989) The Postmodern Condition (1984), Just Gaming (1985), Heidegger and "the jews" (1990), The Postmodern Explained (1992), Postmodern Fables (1997), and Signed, Malraux (1999).

Bill Readings is associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Montreal.