Humanities & Social Sciences 7 (2015 8) 1360-1365 ~ ~ ~ УДК 82–01 The Problem of Metanarratives in the Postmodern Age Pavel E. Spivakovsky* Moscow State University 1-51 Leninskie Gory, 1 Humanities Building, Moscow, 119991, Russia Received 19.03.2015, received in revised form 04.04.2015, accepted 18.05.2015 The article is devoted to the analysis of metanarratives in contemporary art. <...> Arguing with J.-F. Lyotard’s famous statement that Postmodern is defi ned as incredulity towards metanarratives, the author asserts that in the Postmodern age metanarratives have not become a thing of the past, but acquired new features, thus becoming an essential component of postmodern aesthetics. <...> Old metanarratives, which invariably carried ideological implications and thereby lost their relevance, are now replaced with new ones, associated with contemporary problematics and a particularly postmodern reception of the tragic. <...> The methodology of the article is based on an interdisciplinary approach. <...> It involves explora-tion of metanarratives, expressed not only in fi ction, but also in Willy Decker’s staging of the opera “La Traviata,” shown at the 2005 Salzburger Festspiele. <...> Particular attention is given to the problem of the empty metaphysical center, which itself can be a source of pluralistic metanarration, free from ideology. <...> Metanarration is a complex and paralogically comprehensive phenomenon. <...> Such “ideological correctness” is fraught with obvious dangers, but metanarration itself is noticeably wider than its utilitarian modus. <...> For instance, non-ideological metanarrative (a tragic opposition to the repression of freedom or an unnatural way of life etc.) is not always associated with authoritarianism or Pavel E. Spivakovsky. <...> Thus, at the starting point of postmodernist theory, the necessity to describe the limits of Postmodernism comes into being. <...> Amongst others, there is a highly popular, and often taken as classical, statement by Jean-Franзois Lyotard, who defi nes “postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives” (Lyotard, 1984, xxiv), noticeably limiting the aesthetic range of postmodernist discourse, thus discarding religion, genuine seriousness and the tragic element. <...> For example, dwelling on the tragic element in a classic Postmodern “poem” Moscow – Petushki by Venedikt Erofeev, M.N. Lipovetsky notices: theoretical concepts turn out to be palpably more severe and radical <...>