Doug Henwood wrote,
>Metanarratives are evil, man. Just ask Lyotard.
Sorry for the deviation from the strict Lyotard usage, but I use
metanarrative to refer to a analytical result that somehow makes sense of
the disparate policy stories and counter-stories. Lyotard uses metanarrative
to refer to the grand legitimizing narratives of capital "S" Science,
Capital "P" Progress, and capital "H" History. They're both still
metanarratives, in the sense of each being a "narratives of narratives".
However, one is legitimizing, the other is analytical.
Lyotard's "incredulity toward metanarratives" (the defining post modern
condition) is itself a _critical_ metanarrative. And strictly speaking,
Lyotard isn't saying "metanarratives are evil, man," he is saying that the
master narratives of modernism have imploded in a kind of self-destructive
self-reflection, the famous mise-en-abyme.
>Postmodern? Nothing postmodern about this conclusion:
- snip -
>...the coincident
>plausibility of conflicting, even contradictory, stories."
Well, I guess the only way to be consistent in replying to Doug's certainty
that my conclusion isn't postmodern is to say that there may well be a
metanarrative in which both of our claims are plausible -- that is to say a
metanarrative in which my conclusion both is and isn't "postmodern".
Regards,
Tom Walker
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