‘The Report of My Death Was an Exaggeration’: Metanarrative, Legitimacy, and History (with apologies to Mark Twain)
Luke O’Sullivan – In The Postmodern Condition Jean-François Lyotard defined a metanarrative as a vision of the historical process that served some legitimatory role. A metanarrative did not need to make claims regarding historical necessity, but it must function as a justification of a political position of some kind. Subsequent developments suggest that while his definition was sound, his prediction that metanarratives were in decline was falsified by events.
