Barry, at a first glance (and although I'm not fluent in English), I would say it's some kind of English or Hegelianglish, isn't it? "Sublate" is probably meant to be "aufheben" (Hegel; noun: "Aufhebung"). "Aufhebung has in the German language a double sense: that of preserving, maintaining, and that of leaving off, bringing to an end" (Hegel, qtd. Applied Grammatology 46; http://mason.gmu.edu/~bhawk/bystory/hegel.html) So, you were asked to overcome and preserve "micro-narratival accounts of a global phenomenon" - in other words: to apply Hegelian dialectics to these accounts. In these accounts tiny little ("micro") stories are told, in the way stories are told ("narratival"), about a global phenomenon. You now just have to analyse (and thereby preserve) these small narrations, consider inconsistencies and contradictions and integrate all of them into a new and comprehensive explanation of the global phenomenon. I hope all these tiny narrations and the stories themselves survive such a dialectical treatment and wish you good luck! Christopher