TEXTUAL ENACTMENT OF METANARRATIVES COLLAPSE: A LYOTARDIAN COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SELECTED POSTMODERN FICTION

Abstract

This study investigates the textual production of postmodern discourse through a comparative analysis of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, Don DeLillo’s White Noise, and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Grounded in Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of incredulity toward metanarratives, the research examines how these novels do not merely represent postmodern conditions but actively generate them through their narrative, linguistic, and discursive configurations. Methodologically, the study operationalizes Lyotard’s philosophical framework through Catherine Belsey’s model of textual analysis, employing a post-structuralist approach to demonstrate how meaning is constructed through language, ideology, and discourse rather than reflected from reality. Addressing a significant gap in existing scholarship, this research brings Belsey’s analytical method into a sustained comparative dialogue across three formally and historically distinct texts. Through close textual analysis, the study reveals that grammatical indifference, discursive fragmentation, and systems-based paranoia function as key mechanisms through which grand narratives are destabilized. Furthermore, it demonstrates that juridical discourse, consumer culture, pharmaceutical language, and scientific rationality operate as competing language games that displace universal truth claims with localized and performative modes of legitimation. By integrating Lyotard’s theoretical insights with Belsey’s methodological precision, this study offers a systematic framework for analyzing the relationship between language, power, and meaning in postmodern literature.