Lyotard’s Notion of Metanarratives in High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese

Abstract

High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese is a digital poem, but an interactive experience. Developed through an interdisciplinary effort of eleven Canadian artists, programmers, and community members, the project comprises an interactive website, eight videos, and a gallery installation. The digital text explores the theme of Chinese immigration to Canada’s West Coast, highlighting both historical and contemporary issues faced by diasporic communities in the host country. This research examines the work through the postmodernist framework of French theorist Jean-François Lyotard, particularly his claim regarding the demise of metanarratives or grand narratives. Postmodernism is marked by scepticism towards established beliefs and absolute truths. Lyotard challenges the validity of Western metanarratives, arguing that such grand narratives have lost their authority in the postmodern world. As High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese engages deeply with diasporic issues, it implicitly rejects dominant narratives surrounding immigration to Western societies. Like other digital texts, it incorporates texts, images, videos, and sound, all of which will be analysed through Lyotard’s lens to support the argument for the death of metanarratives. The text confronts and critiques prevailing narratives of multiculturalism, racial harmony, materialism, and economic prosperity in Western, particularly Canadian, contexts.