Master Narrative

Academia often goes in cycles, empiricism and reductionism, semiotics vs. structuralism, idealist vs. materialist, etc. In the late 1960s, authors such as Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and others began critiquing the structuralist foundations of philosophy. From Marxism to bougeouis economics to positivist sociology, these theorists argued that instead of modeling reality, these deterministic strains of thought structured reality, thereby limiting the strains of possibility and creating normative visions of human life. Ultimately, their critique was on any form of so called master narratives as normative and oppressive (though it must be noted that to say there is no master narrative is also a master narrative or sorts).

However, recently, spurned by the recent dire events precipitated by the Bush administration and its overt desire for Empire, the master narrative has returned in the form of a sort of less structural neo-Marxism which basically added post modern theory to a broad Marxist structure. The results have been fruitfull, particularly authors David Harvey and Massimo DeAngelis. However, I find the structure to still be somewhat limited as it privileges economic life over other realms, and continues to draw the ire of feminist and cultural theorist, correctly in my view.

Feminist and cultural theorists often construct straw men to deconstruct - such as the proverbial "white" and "man," and others deconstruct the notion of modernity, white supremacy, and patriarchy - the latter three being more intellectually and philosophically sound since their focus is more systematic and less polemic. Of note are Donna Haraway and Arturo Escobar in their thought concerning the latter. Academia remains divided between the two camps with little hope of reconciliation except through the return of the master narrative.

It has recently occured to me that capital as an economic system, white supremacy, modernity, and patriarchy stem from one philosophical axiom - humanism. Humanism is the philosophical development which elevates the individual to the organizing structure of society, and subsequently defines what the individual contains. The individual is the construct of human as containing specific exclusionary rights which stem from an inherent rationality independent of ruling organizations, not a small development in the face of the King and Church, dominant institutions of power of the day. However, as the individual went from a revolutionary rallying cry to institutional ideology, the idea of rationality had to be defined in ways that would reproduce and solidify the power of the new ruling elite. Using natural science, itself a development of humanism depending on rational observation of the individual by those on the "outside," the ruling elited defined rationality in such a way as white, male, and capitalist became the avatar for rationality. Indeed, liberal democracy emerged as a foil for divine right, but voting was reserved for landed, white men, those who were rational by scientific "right."

The answer for a grand narrative that could both unify radical thinkers and actually strike at the heart of oppressive conditions is a narrative that broadly critiques humanistic thinking and the individual. As the post-humanist authors that I am reading suggest, the foil to a philosophical construct of the individual is the construct of an individual.