Postmodernism is a standpoint of universal skepticism against "metanarratives" or "grand narratives"--universalizing stories that purport to encompass and illuminate every non-universal story throughout time and geography. Of course, it takes
very little cleverness to see the "metanarrative" inside of postmodernism itself. Yet there is still value in the postmodernist point. If nothing else, we now have a language about "metanarratives", so that even if we cannot help but to create and live by one or another metanarrative, we can now, at least, more clearly see them for what they are, ask questions that were not asked before, and ascertain the relative value, the ultimacy, the adequacy, and the truth of metanarratives.
Of course, it is impossible to step "outside of" all metanarratives and so look at them like so many billiard balls on a table. The ones to proclaim that they have done so are still captive of a naivette that needs a healthy dose of postmodernism before they can become helpful dialogue partners. No claim, no matter how loudly, to "reason", to "common sense", to "logic" can yet presume to hold all of the cards, to know all the outcomes, to determine all points of view with a cold, exposing light. Yes, a person may be a general of his own metanarrative, and so will easily win followers who were already captivated by the same. But general and soldiers alike may, without a certain openness and a certain prodding, be imprisoned by a small metanarrative and never see the light of a narrative which is more
meta than their own.
And that's the key. We might regard "metanarratives" as being like billiard balls on a table, equally insufficient, equally worthy of skepticism. But through some mystery of understanding, we can see the table as
meta to the balls; the pub as
meta to the table(s); the district as
meta to the pub(s). And perhaps we are unable to arrive at a metanarrative which is actually
ultimate--for we always arrive at the same point, namely, that there is something
meta to our
meta-izing; and there may be something
meta even to that.
From this juncture we can go in (at least) two directions. First we may ask what is common to minds such that they, in common with one-another, can recognize common relationships of "meta"--like, for example, the popular postmodernist project itself, by which many people have come to see skepticism as
meta to the various available metanarratives. That is the speculative road. Second, we may ask: by what process does the mind change, perhaps not to a belief contradicting a previous belief, but toward a narrative which is more
meta than a previous narrative? Or how can a mind be deceived, and so be confused into believing a
less meta narrative to be the
more? As if a billiards player were to become more consumed by the glimmer of a single ball than the game, or by the game than by the pub and the relationships that constitute the possibility of the game? A question we will discover on the way is: what is the relationship between a metanarrative and its subordinate narratives? This is the practical road.
Both roads are ultimately necessary. The first road needs to be followed if we are to fortify the project against radical skepticism and relativism. Radical relativism is a popular cognitive option in the face of superficially irreconcilable differences of opinion; yet it appears to be falsified by the phenomenon of
shared understandings--even if these understandings are never 100%universal. One might argue that
shared understandings can be explained away by a theory of
memes that treats beliefs as independent, self-reproducing organisms with no link to a yet-elusive "objectivity". Yet this theory
presupposes (rather than
observes) the origin of shared understandings. It seems to be falsified by the immanent phenomenon of
non-constructed otherness. The postmodernist may argue that there is no such thing as
non-constructed otherness--for all otherness, even if it is "natural", is reconstructed in our minds by language. But this is a mistake. There is no
non-constructed understanding. But even if we accept that language structures all understanding, this presupposes that there is an
other to be structured.
The second road--the concrete road--is perhaps the more interesting of the two, because here we can begin to survey the history of ideas, not as an infinite series of discrete units of belief, but as vast collectives, associations, and above all, as hierarchies of
metanarratives and
subnarratives.
I will not lie--I labor under a metanarrative myself. It is subnarrative to my Catholic faith, and it goes something like this: Very early in human history, the seeds of two primordial metanarratives and grown and sprouted "children", and philosophy has ever since been a dialogue, or a battle, between subnarratives variously pledging their alleigance to one or the other unspoken, implicit, metanarrative. It sounds almost Manichean, I admit, but this is the thread I would like to follow to its conclusion.
