However, experts have not been able to accurately describe the term; while some individuals may believe that the term may describe wonderful opportunities in the world today, some others may be quite fearful of the term, because of its relative ambiguity and vagueness. The term postmodernism can be aptly explained by one expert who has said that it is an indicator that the previous 'modernism' is at an end, and that something else has come to take over in its place. The postmodern age is a time of unlimited cho

This is because Jean Francois Lyotard is more of a political philosopher, perhaps extremely concerned with the manner in which our lives are controlled and manipulated by the societies in which we live, and the various rules that are written within the society, which we are expected to follow. All the various analyses of art and literature and culture that Jean Francois Lyotard undertook were to contribute to this basic understanding of how society would eventually influence the way in which an individual leads his life. However, even though the term postmodernism is used quite a lot in all of Jean Francois Lyotard's works, it must be stated that the definition of the term is still quite unclear, and in addition, the term has acquired a bad name in recent years. (Malpas, 2002)

In a foreword to 'The Lyotard Reader' by Jean Francois Lyotard, Jean Francois talks about how when his colleague Andrew Benjamin requested him to write a short foreword to his book, the 'Lyotard Reader', almost like it was in fact the most natural thing in the world to do, even though it wasn't, he wrote the foreword as a 'key' to the work. He then went on to say that when a person writes, then it would mean that he himself becomes his own 'first reader', and this can even be taken to mean that reading has a priority over writing. This would mean that one cannot write without reading, and one can also hear himself writing, even if one tries his best not to listen to it. However, 'listening' to oneself writing does not necessarily mean the same as 'hearing' oneself writing, because of the fact that when one hears, then it would mean that one merely hears something that has to be written, without paying any attention to the style in which it has to be written, and this would in turn mean that the style is often left to take care of itself. One ends up listening to style when one is not at all sure of one's style of writing, and there is nothing at all wrong in doing this, says Jean Francois Lyotard. (Lyotard, 1989)

Knowledge has today also become one of the main and principle forces of production, and this has had its own impact on the composition of the workforce of the developed countries of the world, and today, as we are living in the postmodern and post industrial era, science will no doubt be able to not only maintain but also to strengthen its importance in the productive capabilities of the developed nations of the world. Perhaps this will turn out to be one of the more important causes for the gap between developed and developing countries to grow even wider in the future. The relationship between economic and state powers has also today threatened to arise rapidly, and nowhere is this truth more evident than in the simple fact that in the past few decades, economic powers have managed to reach the point where they are capable of threatening the stability the state through the new forms of capital that are known today as the 'multi-national corporations'.

Therefore, it can be said that for Jean Francois Lyotard, the most important and the key task of a postmodern thinker and philosopher would be to confront both the apparent loss of values in the modern day 'anything goes' standards of thinking and consumerism, and the seemingly irresistible power of the market driven economies of the West that seem to believe that 'profit' must be placed before 'values' and 'justice'. (Malpas, 2002) Jean Francois Lyotard raises such questions like: what exactly is the end that has been envisaged by the project of modernity? Does it refer to the constitution of a socio cultural unity, at the center or heart of which all the various and numerous elements of normal and daily life and thought would have a definite place, like it would have within an organic whole? Or, on the other hand, does it entail a virtual path being cut through heterogeneous language games, of knowledge, and of politics, and also of ethics, so that there is an entirely different order

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Approximate Word count = 4525
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)