A master narrative is the idea that events should be interpreted through a linear fashion in order to give an overarching meaning to existence. Karl Marx explained History through the division of it into 5 phases from Primitive Communism all the way to Communism. Marx believed that the meaning of history and existence was so that human society would eventually advance to a stage where everyone had class consciousness and were no longer divided into social classes. Meta-narratives do not have to be as lofty as to give meaning to history/life but can also be simpler ones that deal with morals and ethics.
President Bush also created a master narrative of his own, which I’ll refer to due to lack of a better name as the 9/11 master narrative. The 9/11 master narrative, which forms the direct backdrop to the book the Reluctant Fundamentalist, seeks to establish the the legitimacy of the war on terror. The 9/11 master narrative draws inspiration from Christian doctrine where sinners are cast into hell and the pious brought into the kingdom of God. Likewise, the 9/11 narrative portrays the West as the Kingdom of God while the Middle East as Hell. President Bush even claimed to a senior Palestinian official that “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq“. So in a way, the 2003 invasion of Iraq could be thought of a neo-crusade by the Godly United States of America against the barbaric and despotic hordes of Iraq.
One of the problem with Meta-narratives like this is “So…… what’s next?”. The proletariat have gained class consciousness and society has become communism. God has brought the pious to the Kingdom of Heaven and the sinners are burning in hellfire. The Americans have defeated the Iraqi and toppled the Hussien regime. So…. What’s next?
Americans are still trying to find out in 2018.
Meta-narratives such as 9/11 also tend to be too simplistic. Historical meta-narratives tend to create an endpoint in time, then establish arbitrary phases of history to support their idea of linear thought and change that lead to this endpoint. Francis Fukuyama argued that the modern Liberal democracy was the end point of history (Later retracted). Hegel attempted to argue that Prussia in the 1800’s was the final form of government and end of History back in the 19th century (Insert Holocaust and both World Wars). The only reason that Marx’s final stage of communism cannot be disproved is because it’s so far in the unforeseeable future to be even debated.
The 9/11 narrative not only established an arbitrary endpoint supported by nonsensical and nonexistent goals, but also lumped humanity into groups of good and bad, famously proclaiming that “If you aren’t with us, you are with the terrorists.” This resulted in not just negative global opinion towards the Americans but also the inability to establish a stable peace in the Middle East.
(Darkly amusingly, the United States killed more civilians in its month long invasion of Iraq than ISIS did in the entire year of 2014. 7,269 versus 4,325.)
Hamid launches a counterattack against the master narrative of 9/11 through his book the Reluctant Fundamentalist through two [mathematical] planes of attack. The first method was a bit more manifest and straightforward in nature. Contrary to the portray of Muslims as singleminded extremists with only the destruction of America and all it stands for in mind, the protagonist Changez is shown as a conflicted character caught between his love of both America and Pakistan.
In a sense his longingness for the idealism and wealth that America offers is symbolised by his love for Erica. But subconsciously, he holds a deep love for Pakistan that is shown sporadically such as when he visits Manila and feels shameful after comparing its infrastructure with Lahore. Those deep rooted nationalistic feelings finally implode after the events of 9/11 and he eventually decides to return to Pakistan while his love of America, symbolised by Erica, never really fades either.
This complex cognitive dissonance that Changez experiences is utterly at odds with the simplistic notion of good and evil typically applied to Americans and Arabians respectively.
As literature itself is concerned with the human condition, then it is obvious that Hamid was using this novel as a mouthpiece for his own thoughts. Humans are not two dimensional. This simple statement invalidates the entire causa belli of the entire War on Terror. The United State’s of America is not God’s people and cannot whimsically launch invasions of countries that just happen to share the same ethnicity as terrorists based on negligible and sometimes even fabricated evidence. Lambasting the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan then doing the exact same a few decades later is hypocritical in nature.
But then, if we take Changez’s story to be an allegory, then isn’t it too a meta narrative, albeit a bit more narrow in scope? But first, on to the second plane of attack.
Hamid also attacks the idea of a meta-narrative on a deeper level since,
There is absolutely no reason why we should believe any of Changez’s story to be true.
In spite of his assertions that the waiter at the cafe was harmless, this “waiter” eventually follows the American back to his hotel with Changez constantly attempting to mislead the American by trying to convince him that it was an illusion and the American was confusing people.
This shows Changez to be an unreliable narrator and compromises essentially everything he says as being potentially a falsehood.
On a deeper level, Hamid may have been trying to assert that there is no reason to believe meta narratives because meta narratives themselves are written by peoples with agendas. Changez was clearly playing a game of his own and could have made up or fabricated parts of his story as part of his goal to keep the American in place.
Of course, the idea that Hamid is completely rejecting meta narratives is going a bit off the deep end too. As mentioned before, literature is primarily concerned with exploring the human condition. Borrowing from the recently deceased Stan Lee, a story without a message is essentially like a man without a soul, therefore literature is invariably a meta-narrative in a way or another. Yet the idea that Hamid would write meta narratives whilst simultaneously rejecting them is paradoxical.
I don’t think the conclusion that Hamid simply wants us all to indulge in the mind exercise of double- think is very suitable in any case.
More likely, he was attempting to show a idea that we call in Chinese, “盡信書不如無書” or “It is better not to have a book than to mindlessly believe it.” Indeed, Hamid seems to be saying that while the meta-narrative he offers is better than the 9/11 narrative, you should not mindlessly believe in any meta narrative regardless of who says it.
As any other assertions regarding what Hamid intended or may have subconsciously implied will largely reveal what the author him/herself believes, I’ll just assuming ownership of everything coming next.
Absurdism is the philosophical idea that life is inherently chaotic, random and has no meaning. Yet humans attempt to apply meaning to it, whether it be through social constructs such as religion or meta-narratives that try to show sort sort of meaning or value to existence. This paradox between the unsympathetic nature of the universe and the imaginary worlds that humans attempt to create is called the absurd.
“The absurd is born out of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
– Albert Camus
Absurdism is not nihilism, as absurdism is also the act of accepting that life itself is absurd and living one’s life to the fullest. While the logical conclusion to nihilism is suicide, absurdism views suicide as being even more absurd.
In conclusion, Meta-narratives are thus fundamentally incompatible with reality as they seek to create order where there is none. Entities such as morals, ethics, nation-states, corporations are social constructs that exist merely within the framework of the human mind.
“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
– Nikos Kazantzakis
Postscript: I feel like I should mention that the fact that I believe in absurdism doesn’t mean that I am utterly immoral and don’t believe in ethics but rather that they are irrelevant in the grand scale of… well, everything. I still uphold moral standards and indulge in hedonism because…. I enjoy them? I merely accept the absurdity of the fact that they mean absolutely nothing to anything.
Sources
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2014/