French philosopher who defined postmodernism as incredulity toward grand narratives of legitimation, developed the notion of the differend, and analyzed the sublime as the postmodern aesthetic.
The Postmodern Condition: legitimation by grand narratives (Enlightenment emancipation, Hegelian dialectic) is exhausted; knowledge is legitimated by performativity rather than truth. The Differend: some wrongs cannot be expressed in the available idiom — they are silenced by the very language of the dispute, producing a differend (unresolvable dispute).
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