Information and Event

Dr Ashley Woodward (Dundee University)

This paper interprets Lyotard’s remarks on information in the wider context of information theory and philosophy of information. It situates him as a philosopher of information who, despite a lack of specialist, technical knowledge of information theory, contributes to a reflective, philosophical understanding of information on two levels: the social impact of information, and the ontology of information. The paper concludes with a programmatic outline for how Lyotard’s critical intervention in the “linguistic turn” in The Differend might be developed for a critical intervention in the “informational turn,” an intervention which  revolves around the question of how the event in the Lyotardian sense might be thought within an information-theoretic context.

Ashley Woodward is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, a member of The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, and an editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. His research interests gravitate around problems of existential meaning and issues in philosophy of art. He is author and editor of several books including, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press, Lyotard: The Inhuman Condition. Reflections on Nihilism, Information, and Art.