The Paradox of Future-Anteriority

“A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by pre-established rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgement, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for.

The artist and the writer are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done. Hence the fact that work and text have the character of an event; hence also, they always come too late for their author, or, what amounts to the same thing, their being put into work, their realisation  (mise en oeuvre) always begins too soon. Post modern would have to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo).”

Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge