I.

The beginning of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979) establishes that the object of his study is the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies, which implies an exploration of the state of the science, literature, and the arts within the context of “the crisis of narratives” (xxiii). From this vantage point, Lyotard goes on to define this condition as postmodern. There are plenty of contemporary interpretations of the concept of postmodernity that despite rejecting the teleological task of providing a “final” definition of the term do recognize it as an interdisciplinary framework of dynamic interactions. There are some approaches that seem to suggest that postmodernity implies a form of nihilism, and there are even others that simply suggest that postmodernity is a meta-concept that synthesizes a multidisciplinary articulation of global interactions. In many ways, these approaches towards the concept of postmodernity have obscured the initial inception of the term by Lyotard and more precisely his overt task of providing a novel understanding of the “condition of knowledge” in what he recognized as “the most highly developed societies.”

Undoubtedly, the interrogation of the “condition of knowledge” allows an even broader inspection more so as this interrogation aims at establishing a “new” term that will define an epoch through the transformations of the relationships that societies engage with the sciences and the arts through language and socialized narratives. Postmodernity even allows, if not simply demands, the study of the articulation of modernity itself in order to provide a satisfactory explanation of the so-called crisis of narratives noted by Lyotard, which it is just another form to imply a crisis within the socialized channels of communication when it comes to permitting knowledge to flow among societies. It is this possibility to interrogate modernity itself what conforms the epistemological underpinnings of postmodernity not simply as a term, but also as a category to understand a new era of human knowledge and technological development within the global realm(s).

There are plenty of interrogations of the concept of modernity, including early modernity. It is this quality of self-awareness that makes modernity so pervasive in the sense that it is anchored in the so-called history, or historicity, of human consciousness and the development of individuality. In this sense, early modern studies interrogate the condition of knowledge during a historical period that has been understood in terms of the novel developments in the sciences and the arts -including literature- which overall positioned certain European societies as more developed than those not defined by the cultural movements labeled as the renaissance. It is not my intention to engage the set of discrepancies that have emerged from this approach that positioned European culture, until very recently, at the top of social and civic evolution through the assimilation of a very defined understanding of culture and technological advancements -positivist if a labeled is required-, which to be honest is just another way to define individuality and the recognized cognitive and cultural value that societies hold at the global scale.

Instead, the object of this overture is the condition of knowledge -paraphrasing Lyotard- in the context of the crisis of narratives that has defined western culture throughout the narrative relationships that it has articulated in relation to the understanding of individuality, dialogic interactions, and technological and cognitive development (still under construction…)