Labyrinth and Rhizome: On the Work of Walid Raad

Abstract

In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean-François Lyotard posits that postmodernity’s skepticism towards modernist metanarration is key to understanding this epochal shift. Constructed continuities attempted to inform the individual’s orientation and modern society’s ability to make sense of its past, present, and future. These overarching “grand narrative[s]” presented themselves as institutionalized, universalist truth-claims.[1] Others, including Fredric Jameson, theorize that this loss of orientation and historicity has given way to a sort of pastiche, a collection of empty signifiers that no longer bear true relation to the past.