Lyotard’s postmodernism and philological imagology: Points of contact

Abstract

The study of metanarrative has served as a significant impetus for the development of humanistic knowledge in the second half of the 20th century. The critical re-evaluation of the role of metanarratives in shaping knowledge about the surrounding reality, proposed by the French researcher Jean-François Lyotard, allowed for the identification and description of a turning point in global research practice, marking a change of eras, a transition from modernism to postmodernism. The postmodern era is characterized by the emergence of a whole range of new interdisciplinary fields of knowledge, among which is imagology, studying foreign national images in various types of discourse, specifically philological imagology, whose primary focus is on images in fiction. The aim of this research is to reveal the connection between the crisis of metanarratives, which marked the transition from modernism to the postmodern era, and the fundamental ideas of imagology, situated at the intersection of philological, ethnographic, and philosophical studies. The article describes the change in the status and role of knowledge at the turning point of the two eras, provides a distinction between the concepts of narrative and scientific knowledge, presents Lyotard’s views on ways of legitimizing knowledge, and draws parallels with the key postulates of imagology in general and philological imagology in particular. The impossibility of legitimizing scientific knowledge through consensus or efficiency parameters suggests the search for a non-standard, paralogical solution to pressing socio-cultural questions related to issues of identity and identification, relations between “us” and “others”, and the establishment of intercultural and interethnic dialogue. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the fact that it demonstrates for the first time the connection between the crisis of metanarratives identified by Jean-François Lyotard and the formation of imagology as a separate interdisciplinary scientific field. One of the key directions of this field is philological imagology, with its focus on foreign national images in fiction and other elements of the artistic world of a literary work, which actualize the theme of alienation and otherness, as well as identity and identification. Due to the boundary position of imagology at the intersection of comparative literature, philosophy, sociology, and linguoculturology, the research is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on the philosophical views of Jean-François Lyotard on humanistic knowledge through the lens of the problematics of postmodern literature, which has tremendous potential in the figurative-symbolic expression of imagological meanings and narratives. The research findings have shown a regular relationship between the collapse of the dominance of metanarrative in the views of postmodernists and the fundamental functions of imagology. These functions were to debunk myths and stereotypes about the image of “others”, which have lost their relevance.