Narrative and Narratives: The Incoherence of Postmodern Pluralism

Abstract

Despite the continued prestige of narratology as a field of inquiry, narrative itself in both fictional and factual form, has come to be viewed with increasing suspicion, especially by Postmodernists. The standard analyses of early narrative fiction invariably point out that narrative must be understood as intrinsically ideological, while more recent accounts of both fictional and non-fictional narrative argue that it is necessarily linked to realism in art and humanism in thought, and therefore open to the limitations of both. By contrast it is argued here that a formal analysis of history such as the one undertaken by Danto, as well as instances of literary modernism such as the work of Aobbe-Grillet, both attest to the fact that the presence of narrative in no way vitiates either their critical or epistemic claims. Instead, the attack mounted by Post-modernists on narrative must rather be seen as stemming from the incoherence of Post-modern pluralism.

Opsomming
Ten spyte van die status van narratologie as 'n ondersoekveld, word vertelling in sigself in sowel sg. fiksionele en nie-fiksionele vorm toenemend met agterdog bejeen, en dan veral deur die postmodernisme. Die standaard analise van vroee vertellende fiksie beweer sonder uitsondering dat vertelling verstaan moet word as intrinsiek ideologies van aard, terwyl meer onlangse beskouinge van sower fiksionele as nie-fiksionele vertelling beweer dat die verskynsels noodwendig verbonde is aan realisme in kuns en aan humanisme in denke en dus vatbaar is vir die swakhede van albei. In teenstelling hiermee word in hierdie artikel betoog dat 'n formele analise van geskiedenis, soos die wat Danto onderneem, sower as gevalle van literere -modernisme soos byvoorbeeld die werk van Aobbe-Grillet, albei getuig van die feit dat die teenwoordigheid van die vertelling nie hulle epistemolo­giese kritiese eienskappe ondermyn nie. In plaas daarvan behoort die aanval van die postmodernisme op die vertelkunde eerder beskou te word as die gevolg van die onsame­hangendheid van postmodernistiese pluralisme.