ABSTRACT
A term associated with Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard’s account of postmodernism. A grand narrative (or meta-narrative) is a narrative form which seeks to provide a definitive account of reality (e.g. the analysis of history as a sequence of developments culminating in a workers’ revolution offered by classical Marxism). In terms of Lyotard’s later work, meta-narratives (or meta-genres of discourse) founded on the logical aporia (or ‘double bind’) of class as discussed by analytic philosopher Bertrand Russell: ‘either this genre is part of the set of the genres, and what is at stake in it is but one among others, and therefore its answer is not supreme. Or else, it is not part of the set of genres, and it does not therefore encompass all that is at stake, since it excepts what is at stake in itself ’ (The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, section 189).
