Grand Narrative

Most qualitative researchers will ground their work within certain epistemologies. One such epistemology is based upon postmodern thinking and influences how we view Western society. Grand narrative or master narrative is a term introduced by Jean-François Lyotard in his classic 1979 work The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, in which Lyotard worked to critique institutional and ideological forms of knowledge. Lyotard suggested that there is a modern or grand narrative that society has used to define itself. The grand narrative is usually linked to the mainstream or status quo. Some examples of the grand narrative in the modern world are capitalism, the Enlightenment, Christian ideology, Freudian psychology, political democracy, natural science, positivism, and patriarchal order. Outside of these narratives is the other.

In postmodernism, the grand narrative of the modern story is a privileged competition between the polarities of those who are in the story and those who are not. The other is always present and will work to [Page 373]disrupt or interrupt the grand narrative in some way. At the same time, the grand narrative needs the other to justify the modern story. For example, modernists used women to justify the patriarchal dominance of the modern reality. The essence of postmodernism is to disrupt the modern story and the grand narrative.

Within the grand narrative are privileged sites. The goal of people within the modern story is to hold as many of the privileged sites as possible. The goal of marginalized communities is to acquire these privileged sites so that they can join the modern story. The other option is to try to rewrite the grand narrative so that the voices of marginalized communities are included. For example, the privileged color in the modern Western world is White. The privileged gender is male. The privileged race is Caucasian. The privileged age is 25 to 40. Our relationship to nature is consumers. Our preferred means of production is mass production.

According to Lyotard, grand narratives are seen as oppressive because one grand narrative excludes another. With this continual conflict and attack on the modern grand narrative, modern society has opened up the narrative to include and to absorb the other. The notion is that the other has a legitimate history that can be added to the social story of our time; for example, including Aboriginals in the intellectual history of North America.

This process has created a lot of confusion in the modern grand narrative as a pastiche of influences impact the story. In this mix of signs, images, and stories, members of the grand narrative no longer have a clear vision of how they fit into the mainstream story. In this confusion, members of society can look to a remembrance of the good old days when we knew what the grand narrative was and how we fit into it. At the same time, we are searching for new signs and schemata that will more adequately describe and explain the grand narrative we are creating because the old ones do not work anymore. The shift from a mere consumer of knowledge to a knower of knowledge or a meta-narrative is the essence of the new grand narrative.

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