The
“metanarratives” I was concerned with
in The Postmodern Condition are those that have marked modernity: the
progressive emancipation of reason and freedom, the progressive or catastrophic
emancipation of labour (source of alienated value in capitalism), the enrichment of all humanity through the progress of capitalist technoscience, and even - if we include Christianity
itself in modernity (in opposition to the classicism of antiquity) - the salvation of creatures through the conversion of souls to the Christian narrative of martyred love. Hegel’s
philosophy totalizes all of
these narratives and, in
this sense, is itself a distillation of speculative
modernity.