Why criticizing grand regional narratives matters

Abstract

Writing regional narratives of the sort envisaged in this article is much more fraught with difficulties than acknowledged by its author. Four conditions are identified for avoiding the glib story telling that afflicts the genre: reflecting on the limits of previous narratives, particularly the foundational myth of the disinterested observer of timeless truths; being clear about the metanarratives that unavoidably inform meaningful descriptive narratives; avoiding the call of elite and popular appeal at the expense of scholarly integrity; and cultivating an outsider status that speaks to the epistemological fragility of all regional narratives including those we might write, particularly when the emphasis in academia, for good philosophical as well as practical reasons, is on more analytic endeavors. The barriers set by these conditions suggest reasons why the genre is so little practiced.