Beyond Modernity: Irony, Fantasy and the Challenge to Grand Narratives in Subcomandante Marcos's Tales

Abstract

Modernity has long been under attack: eminent scholars, including Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault have engaged in intense critiques that involve the dominance of ideology in modernity, the use of language and the role of reason. Heavily critical of vanguards and “armchair revolutionaries”, Subcomandante Marcos challenges the necessity for a grand narrative and a mighty narrator. But while he is relatively successful in challenging the conventional approach to politics, this paper contends that his discourse reveals that he does not, indeed could not, completely escape the grand narrative and the individualism that, for a long time, have characterised Western thought.*