Lyotard held posts at many universities in France and the United States, although his works influenced literary theorists as much as or more than philosophers. Starting life as a Marxist he eventually rejected all ‘totalizing’ theories or grand ‘metanarratives’ such as Marxism itself, or liberal or other Enlightenment philosophies, in favour of more piecemeal, contingent, local historical understandings. His books translated into English include Phenomenology (1954), The Libidinal Economy (1974), The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (1983), Peregrinations (1988), The Inhuman (1988), and two collections, Political Writings (1993) and the Lyotard Reader (1989).