This talk is a part of the Narrative Studies Seminar
Time: 2:15 pm (EEST); Place: Pinni B4115 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
After the Ends of History: A Look at Historical Metanarratives vs. Micronarratives in Contemporary Political Thought
At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama presented his provocative thesis of liberal democracy as an “end of history,” as the culmination of political history in a system of maximal freedom and mutual recognition. Fukuyama invokes the teleological philosophy of history of Hegel, Marx, and Alexandre Kojève that sees the historical process as fueled by intellectual, social, and economic contradictions whose ultimate resolution will remove the driving force behind substantial historical transformations. Fukuyama’s thesis contrasted conspicuously with Jean-François Lyotard’s equally provocative 1979 diagnosis of the ongoing loss of credibility of grand “metanarratives” – post-Hegelian teleological and totalizing narratives of universal history – as a result of the increasing fragmentation of knowledge. Instead of an end of history, Lyotard predicts the end of History as a universal narrative and its replacement by “small narratives” or micronarratives – local histories whose limited scopes accommodate the existence of other, incommensurate narratives. In the light of Heideggerian and Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics and Foucauldian discursive genealogy, micronarratives can here be understood as a heuristic, temporary, and situated narrative interpretations that are never total or definitive, but are constantly being renarrated for the changing purposes of changing presents.
I suggest that the dispute between grand and small narratives of history is an ongoing one and an aspect of the wider complex conflict between the legacies of the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment. The primarily theoretical and intellectual conflict has a central and volatile political dimension. While the critique of totalizing metanarratives has typically been seen as an emancipatory critique and can be connected to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the structure of totalitarian ideology, it has in recent decades been associated with “post-truth” phenomena and has also been increasingly appropriated by radical-conservative and “ethnopluralistic” ideologists such as Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin. An example of an opposite but no less controversial historical narrative strategy is Steven Pinker’s recent rehabilitation and vindication of Enlightenment universal progress narratives.
The Narrative Studies Seminar is open to all interested persons. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.