| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis I explore the intimate relationship that exists between technological advancement and narrative. More specifically, this thesis maps, or tests, the contention, most notably put forward by Keith Ansell Pearson and Rosi Braidotti, that today technological advancement is consistently embedded in a contemporary ‘grand narrative’, or ‘metanarrative’. Taking into account the work of Jean-François Lyotard, who claims that postmodernity witnesses the collapse of the typically modern notion of the grand narrative, this would signal a return of the metanarrative. In departing from the assumption that we can identify the re-erection of the grand narrative, I explore how this contemporary metanarrative is structured around technology and technological progress specifically. In doing so, I provide readings of several texts, ranging from literature, popular science and philosophy. In addition to this, I also address several narratives that seem to refrain from partaking in the contemporary tendency to entrench technological progress in a grand narrative. Hence I hope to answer the call of several critics that advance the need for more subtle narratives of humanity’s co-evolution with technology that desist from the all-encapsulating, directional tendencies of the grand narrative. | |
