The Narrative Function and the Legitimation of Knowledge

Narrative knowledge is looked at disdainfully by advocates of scientific knowledge because it doesn’t put legitimation as its foremost priority when forming statements. Ironically, scientific knowledge must resort to narratives in order to legitimate itself, as arguments and proofs are merely dialectics. The new function of narrative knowledge is characterized by both denotative utterances concerning truth, and prescriptive utterances concerning justice. “The people” decide that what is needed to determine the legitimacy of truth or justice is simply their debate and consensus.F

 Narratives of the Legitimation of Knowledge

The two predominant versions of the narrative of legitimation. The first is “humanity as the hero of liberty.” Humanity becomes the validator of knowledge: laws that are created are just because the citizens who create them desire them to be just, and so it follows that they must be just. Knowledge is valuable insofar as it serves to meet the goals of the collective. The second positions science as a path to morality, ethical action, and spirituality. Legitimation then becomes the subject of the philosophical, of the spirit.F
 

 Delegitimation

In the postindustrial society, the grand narrative is dead. A process of deligitimation was inherent in terms of positive science, as its version of ‘knowledge’ was legitimated by itself  “by citing its own statements in a second-level discourse,” and is therefore not true knowledge at all. Instead, science can be seen as a speculative game that is defined by a certain set of rules. As the rules are being bent, fields of science are converging, and areas of inquiry are applicable to a greater range of disciplines. No one can master all the languages, and in the absence of a metalanguage,legitimation leaves the realm of being based on performativity and is accepted to be based on the social bond, consensus and communications.F