Exploring Rupture of Metanarratives, Historiographic Metafiction and Hyperreality in The Diary of a Social Butterfly

Pakistani Anglophone writers not only connect local and international readerships but also provide valuable perspectives on the intricacies and complexities of Pakistani life and society, playing a significant role in enriching the vibrant and diverse literary landscape. The contemporary grand narratives of religion, science, nationalism, caste, gender, colonialism, knowledge, justice, and culture are all called into question by postmodern fiction. The postmodern condition idea put forward by Lyotard in his report titled The Postmodern Condition is contextualized in this study. According to Lyotard, “the term postmodern designates the state of our culture following the transformations which have changed the rules of science, literature, and the arts since the end of the nineteenth century” (Lyotard, 1984, p.7). He expresses his incertitude about the hegemony of metanarratives by pointing out that there are many viable interpretations rather than a single, definitive one. The selected novel is also explored by employing the postmodern historiographic metafictional technique developed by Linda Hutcheon. Additionally, the selected novel is examined using Baudrillard's idea of hyper-reality. According to Baudrillard's (1994) notion of hyper-reality, reality has been supplanted by images. The current research study explores literary postmodernism that is further divided into three categories, i.e., historiographic metafiction, disbelief towards metanarratives, and hyper-reality in the selected novel The Diary of a Social Butterfly. The study is grounded in the theoretical framework of postmodernism, and the research approach chosen for the current study is textual analysis.