![]() ![]() In the US for example, the decline in the effectiveness of meta-narratives in the second half of the 20th century can be attributed to a number of factors, including unfavourable public opinion about the Vietnam War the Watergate scandal an increased awareness of racial, political, economic, and gender diversity a lingering post-nuclear distrust of science and militaristic machinery in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and distrust bred by cold war paranoia. The further along that societies progress from modernism to postmodernism, the less willing they are to exalt the stories of the past, and thus their doubt about the truth of these stories grows. ![]() Modernism and postmodernism meet in the realm of doubt, which seeks to question existing truths and undermine them, whether in order to find a new truth (modernism), or to show that there is no absolute truth (postmodernism). Orthodox reiteration of narratives from the past is considered old-fashioned and reactionary. Modernism displaces memory generally, and national memory specifically, in favour of imagination, creativity, sobriety and criticism. Postmodernism sees experience as fundamentally random, disorganised and ambiguous, while strongly resisting all influences that might threaten to bring order, continuity and explanation to bear on the particulars of our world. ![]() Lyotard viewed the construction, existence and influence of grand narratives as limiting and reductive, the critique of which is definitive of the postmodern discourse. This ‘incredulity’ or disbelief towards grand narrative was articulated by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard in his seminal document The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979). It has been one of the hallmarks of postmodernism to consciously break up all meta-narratives to see them as inherently bad. From this follow the sanctity and authority of the meta-narrative and the resistance to, and difficulty of, questioning or changing it. The recurring and repeated story of the meta-narrative is intended not only to establish the people’s belief system, but primarily to infuse these beliefs with emotions that motivate action of the sort that is needed for defence of the people and the homeland: admiration, identification, aspiration to emulate, and a powerful motivation to belong to the community and to adopt its values. Organised religion, established folklore, national histories, social experiments and myth of progress via science all fall under the auspices of grand narratives.Ī meta-narrative is a super or grand-story it is the holistic, hierarchical framework that embraces the national narratives and creates and feeds them, while the national narratives revive, reinforce, and feed the meta-narrative. The sheer diversity of human experience is discarded in favour of one monolithic ideology. Concepts and opinions are presented as facts. The history of things is chiselled accordingly. Furthermore, grand narratives are laid down and maintained by political structures that seek to subordinate physical and natural laws to any given ideology. The national meta-narratives include the ideological and moral foundation of the nation being formed, and they represent its ethos as well as the legitimacy of, and justification for, its establishment and existence. ![]()
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