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In social theory, a metanarrative (also master narrative, or meta-narrative and grand narrative; French: métarécit or grand récit) is an overarching narrative about smaller historical narratives, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.
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 the end of 'grand narratives' or metanarratives, which he considers a quintessential feature of modernity.
In this influential work, Lyotard provided the following definition: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives". [ 145 ] [ i ] By "metanarratives", Lyotard meant such overarching narrative frameworks as those provided by Christianity , G. W. F. Hegel , and Karl Marx that unite and determine our basic ...
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ideas regarding culture, identity, history, or language that were developed during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment.
As metanarratives fade, science suffers a loss of faith in its search for truth, and therefore must find other ways of legitimating its efforts. Connected to this scientific legitimacy is the growing dominance for information machines .
Postmodernism has received significant criticism for its lack of stable definition and meaning. The term marks a departure from modernism, and may refer to an epoch of human history (see Postmodernity), a set of movements, styles, and methods in art and architecture, or a broad range of scholarship, drawing influence from scholarly fields such as critical theory, post-structuralist philosophy ...
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By 1980 postmodern sensibilities undercut confidence in overarching metanarratives. As Jacques Revel notes, the success of the Annales school, especially its use of social structures as explanatory forces, contained the seeds of its own downfall, for there is "no longer any implicit consensus on which to base the unity of the social, identified ...