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. ...

through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.

Etymology

" Meta" is Greek for "beyond"; "narrative" is a story 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 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 w ...

Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

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 disenfranchi ...

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialec ...

) 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 norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reas ...

Skepticism

In '' The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'' (1979), Lyotard highlights the increasing skepticism of the '' postmodern condition'' 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 critiques ...

thinkers (like

Foucault Foucault may refer to: *Foucault (surname) *Léon Foucault (1819–1868), French physicist. Three notable objects were named after him: **Foucault (crater), a small lunar impact crater ** 5668 Foucault, an asteroid **Foucault pendulum *Michel Fouca ...

) 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 p ...

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 and his theory of the "models of discourse", Lyotard constructs his vision of a progressive politics, grounded in the cohabitation of a whole range of diverse and always locally legitimated language-games. 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 disti ...

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 invol ...

" – a story ''about'' a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" within conceptual models 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 inqu ...

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 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".

References

Sources

* Jean-François Lyotard. '' The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 979 reprint 1997. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi.

External links

*
A Postmodern Strategy: Language Games
{{Meta-prefix Literary criticism Modernism