A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; french: métarécit) is a narrative ''about'' narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society
legitimation
Legitimation or legitimisation is the act of providing legitimacy. Legitimation in the social sciences refers to the process whereby an act, process, or ideology becomes legitimate by its attachment to norms and values within a given society. It ...
through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.
Etymology
"
Meta" is Greek for "beyond"; "narrative" is a
story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events)
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
* Story (American English), or storey (British ...
that is characterized by its telling (it is communicated somehow).
Although first used earlier in the 20th century, the term was brought into prominence by
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
in 1979, with his claim that the postmodern was characterised precisely by a mistrust of the "grand narratives" (
Progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
,
Enlightenment,
Emancipation
Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure economic and social rights, political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchis ...
,
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
) that had formed an essential part of
modernity
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the " ...
.
Skepticism
In ''
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'' (1979), Lyotard highlights the increasing skepticism of the ''
postmodern condition
Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the ...
'' toward the
totalizing nature of metanarratives and their reliance on some form of "transcendent and universal truth":
Lyotard and other
poststructuralist
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
thinkers (like
Foucault) view this as a broadly positive development for a number of reasons. First, attempts to construct grand theories tend to unduly dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe, the power of the individual event.
Sociology.org.uk states that it is unclear whether Lyotard is ''describing'' a
global condition of
skepticism
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
towards metanarratives in postmodernity, or ''prescribing'' such skepticism. His critics point out the awkward fact that meta-narratives clearly continue to play a major role in the current postmodern world.
Replacing grand, universal narratives with small, local narratives
Lyotard proposed that metanarratives should give way to ''petits récits'', or more modest and "localized" narratives, which can
''throw off" the grand narrative by bringing into focus the singular event. Borrowing from the works of
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
and his theory of the "models of discourse", Lyotard constructs his vision of a
progressive politics
Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techn ...
, grounded in the cohabitation of a whole range of diverse and always locally legitimated
language-game
A language-game (german: Sprachspiel) is a philosophical concept developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring to simple examples of language use and the actions into which the language is woven. Wittgenstein argued that a word or even a sentence h ...
s.
Postmodernists attempt to replace metanarratives by focusing on specific local contexts as well as on the diversity of human experience. They argue for the existence of a "multiplicity of theoretical standpoints" rather than for grand, all-encompassing theories.
Narratology and communication
According to John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, a metanarrative "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative
schema
The word schema comes from the Greek word ('), which means ''shape'', or more generally, ''plan''. The plural is ('). In English, both ''schemas'' and ''schemata'' are used as plural forms.
Schema may refer to:
Science and technology
* SCHEMA ...
which orders and explains
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
and
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
" – a story ''about'' a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" within
conceptual model
A conceptual model is a representation of a system. It consists of concepts used to help people knowledge, know, understanding, understand, or simulation, simulate a subject the model represents. In contrast, physical models are physical object su ...
s that assemble the "little stories" into a whole. Postmodern narratives will often deliberately disturb the formulaic expectations such cultural codes provide, pointing thereby to a possible revision of the social code.
In
communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
and
strategic communication, a master narrative (or metanarrative) is a "transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture".
[Halverson, Jeffry R., H.L. Goodall Jr. and Steven R. Corman. ''Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. p. 14] A master narrative is therefore a particular type of narrative, which is defined as a "coherent ''system'' of interrelated and sequentially organized ''stories'' that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form".
[
The ]Consortium for Strategic Communication
The Consortium for Strategic Communication (or CSC) is a think tank at Arizona State University.
History
The Consortium for Strategic Communication is an initiative of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. It wa ...
also maintains a website on master narratives.
Others have related metanarratives to masterplots, "recurrent skeletal stories, belonging to cultures and individuals that play a powerful role in questions of identity, values, and the understanding of life."
Criticism of Lyotard's thesis
J. W. Bertens and D. Fokkema argued that, in so far as one of Lyotard's targets was science, he was mistaken in thinking science relies on a grand narrative for social and epistemic validation, rather than upon the accumulation of many lesser narrative successes.[J. W. Bertens/D. Fokkema, ''International Postmodernism'' (1997) p. 94]
Lyotard ''himself'' also ''criticised his own thesis'' as "simply the worst of all my books".
See also
References
Sources
* Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
. ''The Postmodern Condition
''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'' (french: La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir) is a 1979 book by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, in which the author analyzes the notion of knowledge in postmodern society as ...
: A Report on Knowledge''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 979
Year 979 ( CMLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place Byzantine Empire
* March 24 – Second Battle of Pankaleia: An Ibero-Byzantine expeditionary ...
reprint 1997. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi.
Further reading
* David Carr, ''Time, Narrative, and History'' (Indiana UP, 1986)
* Geoffrey Bennington
Geoffrey Bennington (born 1956) is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University in Georgia, United States, and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerlan ...
, ''Lyotard: Writing the Event'' (1988)
External links
*
A Postmodern Strategy: Language Games
{{Meta-prefix
Literary criticism
Modernism