Amit Marcus

Bio: Amit Marcus is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Dialogical self & Existentialism. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 5 publications receiving 37 citations.

Dialogue and Authoritativeness in "We" Fictional Narratives: A Bakhtinian Approach

Abstract: The essay addresses /-/- in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the novel /-/- the link between authority, ideology, and formal features of discourse in "we" fictional narratives. It presents three main types of relationships between the individual "I" narratives and the "we" group to which he or she belongs as well as between the "we" group and "other" (often hostile) groups. These types differ in the group's stability and cohesion, the possibilities of transition from this group to another community, and the importance of the role attributed to the individual (or to a particular individual) and to other groups in constructing, sustaining, and (re)shaping the identity of the "we." These patterns of relationship suggest that not only can "we" fictional narratives be dialogical but also that they often challenge the norms and values uncritically accepted by the group and subvert the authority of their communal-voice narrator(s). Especially notable in this context are "we" fictional narratives in which the main conflict is instigated by an outsider, who is neither a full member of the group nor a member of a rival group and whose "disorienting discourse" undermines the hegemonic discourse. These types of disagreement, which demonstrate the centrifugal forces of the story, are evidence of the fragility of the group and of its tendency to disintegrate, unless these forces are balanced by the centralizing, centrifugal ones. First-person-plural narration is as much a force of disintegration, discord, and instability as of unison, concord, and stability

Recycling of Doubles in Narrative Fiction of the Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract: Doppelganger narratives of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries relate in different and sometimes incompatible ways to their Romantic precursors. They often parody these precursor narratives, criticize their popular interpretations, or tinker with their conventions. Some of them follow the Romantic tradition in highlighting the harsh rivalry between "original" and double and its catastrophic results, whereas in others the double acts as a catalyst for self-reflection and self-transformation. Doppelganger narratives of the last decades tend to focus on the intersection of the psychological with the scientific or the aesthetic domains, while the significance of the supernatural principle is reduced, eliminated, or replaced by implausible coincidences and analogical relations typical of (post)modern fiction. In order to demonstrate these ideas, the article begins with an analysis of E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Devil's Elixir (1815-1816) and continues with an exploration of five types of later Doppelganger narratives.

Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day: The Discourse of Self-Deception

Abstract: The issue of self-deception has attracted the attention of Anglo-American analytic philosophers, who have attempted to define it1 or discuss it in relation to the structure of the subject2 and the definition of rationality3; some have enlisted literary materials.4 In this essay, I intend to examine the possible contribution of literature to the analysis and comprehension of self-deception, particularly as a means to shape and reevaluate presuppositions about this phenomenon. This attempt leans on Martha Nussbaum, who, following Aristotle, has argued that "a presentation of the mystery, conflict, and riskiness of the lived deliberative situation," as portrayed in fictional works, is indispensable for practical reasoning (1983: 44). Nussbaum's point is reinforced by Tzachi Zamir's claims that "many of the truths relevant for philosophical reasoning are, for the most part, contingent" (1999: 105) and that literature permits a "unique experience of conceptual information" (9). Herbert Fingarette, a philosopher whose discussion of self-deception combines the insights of analytic philosophy with those of existential philosophy (especially Sartre) and psychoanalysis, offers a view of selfdeception that is suitable for a literary analysis of this phenomenon. According to Fingarette (1969), self-deception occurs when the subject has a fundamental reason to avoid spelling out - both to him/herself and to others - some of his or her engagements in the world and forms

Sameness and Selfhood in Agota Kristof's The Notebook

Abstract: The term "narrative identity" or, in its more conservative version, "narrative unity,"1 suggests that the structure of a narrative or a story is homologous to that of human identity. The connections between narrative and identity, emphasized by scholars such as Alasdair Maclntyre (1984) and Paul Ricoeur (1992), are based on elements that constitute both phenomena, such as temporality, events, characters, and perhaps even authorship.2 Yet these connections are also based on a more specific affinity, which Ricoeur has called "discordant concordance,"3 a unity created by the combination of heterogeneous elements. Both narrative and self-identity are formed and developed as a result of a constant vacillation between sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse). Sameness implies stasis, namely permanence in time, whereas selfhood implies dynamics and variability in the course of time. Ipse-identity (or selfhood), Ricoeur contends, "involves a dialectic complementary to that of selfhood and sameness, namely the dialectic of self and the other than self (1992: 3). Some degree of sameness is indispensable to any kind of identity, whether narrative or other, such as the identity of an object. On the

Kazuo Ishiguro and Memory by Yugin Teo (review)

Abstract: Memory is one of the most discussed topics in both fictional narratives and the literary and critical theory of the last decades. The reasons for the fascination of many contemporary writers with memory are almost as variable as the work of memory itself: the intricate relations between memory and history (as well as historical writing); memory as a crucial element for the development, the retention, and the effacement of self-identity; and memory as a fundamental factor in the stream of consciousness. Perhaps more emphatically than any other cognitive process, memory is evidence of the construction (rather than the reflection) of reality by the human mind. Yugin Teo’s book Kazuo Ishiguro and Memory chimes in with this cultural and literary interest in memory. Teo’s approach to Ishiguro’s fictional narratives is basically thematic. Accordingly, his argument is structured on three major (but not necessarily sequential) phases in memory work: forgetting, remembering, and, eventually, a release of the unfortunate consequences of memory. He emphasizes the interrelations between Ishiguro’s insights concerning memory in his fictional writings and the philosophical ideas of Paul Ricoeur, especially in Memory, History, Forgetting (2004) and The Course of Recognition (2005). Teo’s interdisciplinary approach also extends to film: he compares the (limitations of) representation of trauma and loss in Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour (1959) with Ishiguro’s novel A Pale View of Hills (1982). A major topic of the first part of the book is narrative unreliability, which is linked to the question of the very (un)trustworthiness of memory. Teo claims that the unreliable narrators of some of Ishiguro’s fictional narratives struggle to reconcile past memories with present circumstances and discover that the complicated process of remembering and retelling events leads to a less accurate and less objective version of the past. The distortion of memory results in part from self-deception (see also Marcus 2006). Following Kathleen Wall (1994), Teo claims that no narrator — or any human being — is entirely reliable, coherent, and rational. Self-reflexive readers will recognize not only the narrator’s flawed memory but also the limitations of their own memory, which is impaired by biases, mistakes, and delusions. They will, in turn, realize that they are neither superior to the unreliable narrator nor less susceptible to memory flaws. Such a recognition bridges the cognitive and moral gap between reader and text and causes the reader to empathize with the emotions and experiences of the narrator. However, Teo does not seem to differentiate the reader’s inaccurate memory of the story told by Ishiguro’s narrator — an inaccuracy that is the product of a perplexed and perplexing rhetoric designed by the implied author — from the biased memory any reader (or person) has of events and experiences from his or her own life.

Time and Narrative

Abstract: In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.

Xi. the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner

Abstract: Robert Colwan, a clergyman's son, is so confident of his salvation as one of the Lord's elect that he comes to look on himself as a man apart, unhindered by considerations of mere earthly law. Through Robert's own unforgettable account, we follow the strange and sinful life into which he is led by a devilish doppelganger - a life that will finally lead him to murder. Steeped in the folkloric superstitions and theological traditions of eighteenth-century Scotland, this macabre and haunting novel is a devastating portrayal of the stages by which the human spirit can descend into darkness.