Miguel Beistegui / Robert Eaglestone

12.30-2pm | Thursday 12 March 2009
Room J116 (Cañada Blanch Room), Cowdray House, European Institute, LSE

Speakers
Miguel Beistegui, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick
Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London

In 1979 a short book was produced at the request of Conseil des Universites of the government of Quebec. In the introduction the author distinguished ‘the philosopher’ from ‘the expert’ and said ‘the latter knows what he knows and what he does not know: the former does not. One concludes, the other questions – two very different language games. I combine them here.’ Jean-François Lyotard’s book was later translated into English under the now famous title The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. To mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication, we held this special Dialogue, not on a thinker but on a text, in order to undertake an appreciation of Lyotard’s conception of the postmodern condition, as presented in his extraordinary book, thirty years on.