evaluation and the metanarrative of alienation

I’m consistently surprised at the business model, capitalism, and the structures of the machine world.  There was a moment last week when I thought to myself:  is the process of performance evaluation rooted in a metanarrative of alienation?

Departing from a process-oriented model of evaluation, my job is now subject to my performance and productivity–part and parcel to the capitalist model.  I am, again, consistently surprised at the process of assimilation and alienation.  These experiences, to which I am subject, give me adequate fodder for cultural analysis regarding the machine world

Perhaps Lyotard would give us some insight?

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.  This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences:  but that progress in turn presupposes it.  To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it.  The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements–narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on [...] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? - Jean-Francois Lyotard^[2]