Story and Meta-story

This was the theme of BT501 last night.  The guest lecturer was one of the prof's doctoral students and research fellows.  He was ... oh ... 28?  Buzz cut, mod glasses, scruffy beard, dull colored camp shirt with tail hanging out, over khakis. 

Hm.  He seemed familiar somehow.

He talked with an "aw, shucks" kind of demeanor and said "okay" a lot (especially when he was collecting his thoughts, preparing to go on.)  I wondered if he was a representative example of the next generation of teachers coming up.  

Hm.

Anyway, he talked about story, and about modernism's suspicion of story as a means of communicating truth.  Most of the Bible is of the narrative genre, and most of narrative... is story.  

So modernism comes to the Bible with suspicion, simply because of the way it communicates.  It's not a work of scholarly history or science, not a research paper laden with fact and proof.  It's... story.  Story is not intellectually transformative.

Story resonates with Postmodernism, however.  Story is emotionally transformative, it's told from a frame of reference, has a context.  Story is subjective, and (to postmoderns) subjective... is the real deal.  What postmoderns object to, though, is authoritative story.  What defines them, in an academic sense, is a basic incredulity toward meta-narrative.  

To them, there is no overarching, unifying grand story that unites and frames all individual stories, within their community or across communities.  There is no objective truth (which such a meta-narrative would represent), since subjectivity trumps objectivity, and individuality trumps community. 

So instead postmodernism has many disconnected micro-narratives, none of which are authoritative or normative.  Postmoderns would never claim to have truth that is not only true for them, but true for others as well, not even within their own community.  Even the stories they tell (their own stories) are subjective, and can't be trusted to communicate truth.  They don't trust themselves or others.

Thus, while modernists distrust the Bible because it is story and not science, postmodernists relate well to the story, but not at all to its truth claims.

Hm.  Interesting discussion.

The lecturer also maintained that all genres of literature contain story to some degree.  "Even poetry has story", he said.

On the break I promptly went to the blackboard and offered this up:

narrative haiku

imagery with direction

pointing to a scene

I don't think anyone noticed.