The Degeneration of Grand Narratives into Local Narratives: A Postmodern Analysis of the Shazaf Fatima Haider’s Novel “How It Happened”

Abstract

The present study is a postmodern analysis of the Pakistani author Shazaf Fatima Haider’s novel “How It Happened” which is built on meta-narratives about marriages, religion, sects and gender in local culture. Metanarratives can be defined as interpretive frameworks or ways of understanding the world and are considered valid and true regardless of the spatial and temporal boundaries. The study explores the sociocultural metanarratives and the process of their replacement by local narratives’ by applying Jean Francis Lyotard (1979)’s theoretical framework of postmodernism. Lyotard believes that micro-narratives provide a more detailed picture of the fragmented society and comparatively grand narratives hold very little credibility regardless of what mode of unification it uses, i.e. speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation. The study answers how the novel challenges long-existing sociocultural metanarratives and which local narratives have replaced them in Pakistani society. The study concludes that Shazaf Fatima Haider, through her postmodern characters, challenges the long-standing metanarratives of Pakistani culture and replaces them with local narratives.