Lyotard defines postmodernism as a refusal to mourn lost totality

Evidence

The main thrust of Lyotard’s argument, however, involves the claim that Postmodernism is a tendency within Modernism characterized by its refusal to mourn, and indeed its willingness to celebrate our inability to experience reality as an ordered and integrated totality. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 100

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down Lyotard’s central definition of postmodernism against which Callinicos mounts his critique.
• XREF: Ties to the reader’s strategic essentialism work — non-totalizing identity as celebrated fragmentation.