Postmodern critiques: Foucault, Lyotard and modern political ideologies

Abstract

’Postmodernism’, or rather aspects of it, has posed a challenge to modern political ideologies. In particular, the works of Michel Foucault and Jean‐François Lyotard, through their attacks on the epistemology of modernity, have articulated persuasive critiques of modern ideologies as mechanisms of domination and injustice. Both writers extend their critiques to formulate new strategies of political action and struggle, creating modes of political prescription in both succession and opposition to these ideologies. However, these new prescriptions are problematic, contradictory and disabling, and can be shown partially to emulate the very political ideologies they attack and supersede. Ultimately Foucault and Lyotard's work needs to be placed in a symbiotic relationship with modern political ideologies, to create an astuter, if less‐defined, critical apparatus.