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In this day and age, we hear phrases like “That’s your truth,” “Who gets to decide what knowledge is?” “That’s your perspective,” and “Science is one way of knowing.” All these phrases indicate that this way of thinking comes from postmodernism.
These statements imply that truth is not universal and that knowledge production is a political act. Postmodernism is difficult to define because it resists any fixed definition as a matter of principle. Any fixed definition would violate its core commitment to fluidity, contingency, and anti-essentialism. Nevertheless, Jean-François Lyotard’s formulation in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge remains the most cited definition: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”
A metanarrative, also known as a grand narrative, is a story that claims to explain everything. Incredulity does not mean disproof or refutation; it simply means disbelief or a loss of faith.
Christianity (or, indeed, every religion) is a grand narrative because it claims to understand and explain how the world works in its entirety. The world and everything in it is created by God. This is the grand narrative.
Similarly, Marxism is a grand narrative because it claims to explain how everything works, that everything operates on the basis of class structure, etc.
According to postmodernism, these claims contain contradictions that became visible over time, and they fail to explain the full complexity and diversity of human experience.
