Information, a private code, innervates and saturates the social body. From morning till evening, unceasingly, streets and buildings are haunted by narratives. [The narratives] articulate our existences by teaching us what they should be…. Seized from the moment of awakening by the radio (the voice of the law), the listener walks all day through a forest of narrativities, journalistic, advertising and televised, which, at night, slip a few final messages under the door of sleep. More than the God recounted to us by the theologians of the past, these tales have a function of providence and predestination: they organize our work, our celebrations – even our dreams – in advance. Michel de Certeau
Benjamin Myers at Faith and Theology has drawn my attention to Michel de Certeau the Jesuit writer who seems to be drawing on the ideas of metanarratives from Jean-François Lyotard who wrote:
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on [...] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?Lyotard's question is entirely reasonable. The loss of the grand narratives which defined peoples' identities often in a totalizing way has led to fragmentation and a multiplicity of small narratives. This ultimately cultivates an ultra-individualism which really isn't helpful in a world full of people seeking meaning , purpose and direction. This has thrown us into a vast debate about authenticity, truth and perspectivalism. In all of this what we are left with is philosophically a closed universe, a dead universe. But our existence without transcendence ultimately leads to death. Without transcendence we cannot have life. But without relationship we cannot have life, without a naming relationship, without recognition we are lifeless. Recognition permits us to make claims on transcendence, ultimately on God.
The image is of Dumas' man in the iron mask, who is playing while trapped in his prison. As long he has an audience perceived however much recognized the universe, his little world, is open. Bars do not a prison make.
We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. 1 John 5;19
