Insocial theory, ametanarrative (alsomaster narrative, ormeta-narrative andgrand narrative;French:métarécit orgrand récit) is an overarching narrative about smaller historical narratives, which offers a societylegitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea. The term was popularized by the writing ofFrenchphilosopherJean-François Lyotard in 1979. Metanarrative is considered a foundational concept ofpostmodernism.[1][2][3][4]
Master narrative and synonymous terms likemetanarrative are also used innarratology to mean "stories within stories," as coined byliterary theoristGérard Genette.[4]
Examples of master narratives can be found in U.S.high schooltextbooks according to scholar Derrick Alridge: "history courses and curricula are dominated by such heroic and celebratory master narratives as those portrayingGeorge Washington andThomas Jefferson as the heroic 'Founding Fathers,'Abraham Lincoln as the 'Great Emancipator,' andMartin Luther King, Jr., as themessianic savior ofAfrican Americans."[5]
"Meta" is Greek for "beyond"; "narrative" is astory that is characterized by its telling (it is communicated somehow).[6]
Although first used earlier in the 20th century, the term was brought into prominence byJean-François Lyotard in 1979, with his claim that the postmodern was characterized precisely by mistrust of the "grand narratives" (such as ideas aboutProgress,Enlightenment,Emancipation, andMarxism) that had formed an essential part ofmodernity.[7] Metanarrative may be related and is often used interchangeably with metafiction but there is a distinction. The latter foregrounds or discloses the fictionality of a narrative while metanarrative does not undercut fiction.[8]
InThe Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), Lyotard highlights the increasing skepticism of thepostmodern condition toward the supposeduniversality ("totalizing nature") of metanarratives and their reliance on some form of "transcendent and universal truth":[9]
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. ... The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language ... Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?
Lyotard and otherpoststructuralist thinkers (likeMichel Foucault)[10] view this as a broadly positive development. They assert that attempts to construct grand theories unduly dismiss the natural chaos and disorder of the universe, and the power of an individual event.[11]
Sociology.org.uk[better source needed] (primarily the personal blog of Chris Livesey, as sustained over perhaps 12 years, in parallel to a long career in sociology education) states that it is unclear whether Lyotard's work is describing aglobal condition ofskepticism towards metanarratives in postmodernity, orprescribing such skepticism. Lyotard's critics emphasize that metanarratives continue to play a major role in the postmodern world.[12]
Lyotard proposed that metanarratives should give way topetits récits, or more modest and "localized" narratives, which can "throw off" a grand narrative by bringing into focus a singular event.[13] Borrowing from the works ofWittgenstein and his theory of the "models of discourse",[14] Lyotard constructs his vision of aprogressive politics, grounded in the cohabitation of a whole range of diverse and always locally legitimatedlanguage-games; multiple narratives coexisting.[15] Lyotard drew from Wittgenstein's notion of the language-game to reveal the multiplicity of meanings found within different contexts, including the meanings impact on our understanding of truth.[16] The key concepts of Lyotard's thesis include:
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"[17] rather than for grand, all-encompassing theories.
Johannes Willem Bertens and Douwe Fokkema argued that, in so far as one of Lyotard's targets was science, he was mistaken in thinking that science relies upon a grand narrative for social and epistemic validation, rather than on the accumulation of many lesser narrative successes.[18]
Lyotard himself also criticized the scientific content ofhis thesis and referred to it as "simply the worst of all my books."[19]
Metanarrative has a specific definition innarratology and communications theory. According to John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, a metanarrative "is a global or totalizing cultural narrativeschema which orders and explainsknowledge andexperience"[20] – a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" withinconceptual models that assemble the "little stories" into a whole. Postmodern narratives will often deliberately disturb the formulaic expectations such cultural codes provide,[21] pointing thereby to a possible revision of the social code.[22]
Incommunication andstrategic communication, a master narrative (or metanarrative) is a "transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture".[23] 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".[23]
TheConsortium for Strategic Communication also maintains a website on master narratives.[24]
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."[25]
Media related toMetanarratives at Wikimedia Commons