POSTMODERNISM AND GRAND NARRATIVES

We have so far been using the word ‘narrative’ as if it had a clear and agreed meaning, but this is, of course, not so. For the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, for example, narrative not merely tells a story, but, of itself, constitutes a kind of ‘knowledge’ – a particular way of understanding the world.

In contrast with the kind of ‘objective’ knowledge of the material world supposedly provided by science, for Lyotard, narrative provides an essentially subjective and personal view of things. We have within us all a personal ‘story’ which we tell ourselves, and which we constantly modify and alter in the light of experience. Indeed it has been argued that our very mental health and stability depends upon the kind of internal narrative we construct. A fractured and incoherent self-construction can be both symptom and cause of profound psychic dislocation.