The End of Small Narratives: Transcending the Postmodernist Thesis

Abstract

The postmodernist claim is that the time for grand narratives on progress, enlightenment, revolution, and the like is over. It also claims that the present age is one of smaller narratives that revolve around nurturing the self, the pursuit of “individual enjoyment of commodities,” and securing a desired quality of life for themselves as individuals, families, or small groups. Kadhim’s study is premised on the fact that smaller narratives have, however, played themselves out and become mute. He notes that although it is true that current developments have played their part in the erosion of grand narratives, and a decline in the spirit of enlightenment, liberation, revolution, and change, this debilitating “spirit of the times” does not stop with the collapse of collective hope and breaking the “utopian spirit”. This exhaustion, he maintains, has also crept over the smaller narratives and the regular, everyday lives of people, including their right to “individual enjoyment of commodities,” products, services, and goods. If the concepts of enlightenment, liberation, revolution, and world change have lost their legitimacy, become lackluster, and no longer have justification to exist, many smaller narratives have too, in turn, suffered the same fate.