Grand Narrative Definition

Any theory or intellectual system which attempts to provide a comprehensive explanation of human experience and knowledge. Religion, science, Freudian psychology and political ideologies such as Marxism, nationalism and neoliberalism all produce competing grand narratives (also referred to as master narratives and metanarratives). Grand narratives are particularly associated with Enlightenment ( q.v. ) and modernist thinking, in that they are organized around the ‘story’ of human progress and perfectibility. Postmodern thinkers, most prominently Jean-François Lyotard, have pointed to what they see as the dangers inherent in such ‘totalizing’ visions of history. 

In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) Lyotard contends that blind faith placed in the singular explanations provided by the grand narratives of modernity has led to an intolerance of difference. This intolerance led directly to the horrors of the 20th c. Instead, Lyotard argues, we should embrace a multiplicity of theoretical viewpoints in order to appreciate the heterogeneity of human experience, and employ petits récits , ‘little narratives’, to enable a better comprehension of and ability to respond to, local, contingent and temporary circumstances.