Mark Currie

Bio: Mark Currie is an academic researcher from Queen Mary University of London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Narrative & Temporality. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 12 publications receiving 493 citations.

The Invention of Deconstruction

Abstract: Acknowledgements PART I: INVENTION, ADVENT, EVENT 1. After the Event: Looking back on Deconstruction 2. The Discovery of America: the Reception of Derrida in the United States PART II: THE DOMESTICATION OF DERRIDA 3. Domestication Narratives 4. The Question of History in Derrida and de Man PART III: DECONSTRUCTION AND CRITICAL AUTHORITY 5. Derrida and the Authority of Linguistics 6. The Ventriloquism of Paul de Man PART IV: PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND RESPONSIBILITY 7. Metaphor and the Invention of Truth 8. Performativity and Obligation 9. Conclusion: Invention and Responsibility Bibliography Index

The Novel and the Moving Now

Abstract: At the end of this essay I am going to say something about prolepsis and its role in the future of narrative theory. To begin, we might consider the proposition that the novel is a model of time, and more specifically that it is a model of the account of time known in Latin as Nunc Movens, or the "moving now." Understood in its most basic form, the moving now takes as its foundational concept the notion of a present moment that moves along a timeline, steadily and evenly, into the future, turning tomorrow into today. The idea that it is the now that moves as if along a line is a source of some confusion, and it is perhaps equally common to encounter a model that regards the now as a fixed point through which the timeline moves or through which time flows. The favored metaphor in which "time is a river" offers this dichotomy. If time is a river that sweeps me along, I seem to be working with a notion of the moving now in which the riverbanks provide the timeline, and if time is a river that flows past as I stand in or beside it, the now functions as a fixed point of observation through which events flow from the future into the past. Landscapes that themselves contain no movement may then convey the mov ing now less ambiguously so that walking along a path, or making a journey of any kind, will offer a model of time in which the now, understood as a person or group of people, is the mobile element. No matter how valuable such metaphors as rivers, roads, and journeys may have been to the writers of narrative, it is notable that philosophers often turn to models that are more textual and that do not seek to overly literalize the notion of movement in the understanding of time. For Saint Augustine it is the recitation of a psalm that most effectively captures the passage of time, a model that contains a sense of a person working his or her way through something, though without going anywhere, and at the same time a flowing of words through a static now that waits for the future to reach it. For Edmund Hus serl the passage of time is like listening to a melody, where the listener's now is composed of traces of the melody's past as well as protentions into or anticipations of its future. Between the recital and the psalm or between the listener and the melody it seems to matter little which one, the now or the timeline, is moving. What then might we say about the reading of a novel? At first sight the novel seems to offer everything that Augustine's psalm or Husserl's melody can convey about the passage through time. In the reading of a novel there is a moving now that starts at the beginning and works its way through to the end, a present that is sandwiched between a fixed past and an open future. The moving now is an ontologically asymmetrical account of time, in the sense that there are ontological distinctions to be made between the past, the present, and the future: there is a sense in which the past and the present are real, in which they have an existence or a reality that the future does not possess; the past and the present are fixed while the future remains open and susceptible to our actions, intentions, and will. How

Time, Narrative and Culture

Abstract: This chapter is about the experience of teaching narrative in the context of philosophical and social theories of time. Most critical writing about time and narrative is focused on the question of memory, but this chapter argues that expectation, anticipation and surprise are equally fruitful concepts for teaching narrative. It looks at the notion of ‘epochal temporality’, or the claim that different historical epochs have distinct and describable experiences of time, and asks what this might mean for an understanding of narrative time in the contemporary novel. It explores the idea that, in the historical present, there is a preoccupation with the unforeseeable, which differs significantly from predominant conceptions of time in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter also aims to set out a range of useful narratological concepts, particularly related to the notion of narrative tense, which is useful for the description of time structures in so-called ‘epochal temporality’ and for the teaching of time experiments in contemporary fiction. The chapter is closely tied to a third-year undergraduate module in which students work on a range of modern novels.

The Manufacture of Identities

Abstract: Is our identity inside us, like the kernel of a nut? Most of the perspectives presented in this book are implicitly dedicated to the proposition that personal identity is not inside us. There are two types of argument. The first is that identity is relational, meaning that it is not to be found inside a person but that it inheres in the relations between a person and others. According to this argument, the explanation of a person’s identity must designate the difference between that person and others: it must refer not to the inner life of the person but to the system of differences through which individuality is constructed. In other words, personal identity is not really contained in the body at all; it is structured by, or constituted by, difference. The second type of argument is that identity is not within us because it exists only as narrative. By this I mean two things: that the only way to explain who we are is to tell our own story, to select key events which characterise us and organise them according to the formal principles of narrative — to externalise ourselves as if talking of someone else, and for the purposes of self-representation; but also that we learn how to self-narrate from the outside, from other stories, and particularly through the process of identification with other characters. This gives narration at large the potential to teach us how to conceive of ourselves, what to make of our inner life and how to organise it.

Narrative, Politics and History

Abstract: We must conceive of power without the king. So Foucault tells us throughout his work, as if to dissociate historicism from the idea of a single sovereign force and from the model of linear succession from which kingly power derives. We must conceive of power instead as a multiplicity of forces in permanent battle, and the movement of history in terms of discontinuity and rupture, not linear succession. How embarrassing then that Foucault should be the new king, and how contradictory the battle cries: formalism is dead, long live the New Historicism. There were two paradoxes inherent in these battle cries. The first was that the New Historicism was committed to the dissolution of kingship while enjoying its privileges, its supremacy and its institutional power. The second was that the New Historicism was new, constructing the analytical methods of the recent past as old hat, implying a kind of technological progress or teleological evolution that the new historiographies flatly denied.

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.

The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative

Abstract: What is narrative? How does it work and how does it shape our lives? H. Porter Abbott emphasizes that narrative is found not just in literature, film, and theatre, but everywhere in the ordinary course of people's lives. This widely used introduction, now revised and expanded in its third edition, is informed throughout by recent developments in the field and includes one new chapter. The glossary and bibliography have been expanded, and new sections explore unnatural narrative, retrograde narrative, reader-resistant narratives, intermedial narrative, narrativity, and multiple interpretation. With its lucid exposition of concepts, and suggestions for further reading, this book is not only an excellent introduction for courses focused on narrative but also an invaluable resource for students and scholars across a wide range of fields, including literature and drama, film and media, society and politics, journalism, autobiography, history, and still others throughout the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Narrative, organizations and research

Abstract: Given the rapid expansion of narrative approaches in management and organization theory in recent years, this paper investigates the contribution of this literature to the understanding of organizations and processes of organizing. The paper tells the story of the development of narrative approaches in organizational theory. Narrative's contribution to substantive areas of organization theory is evaluated. These developments are then reviewed in relation to an ongoing tension between story and science. We conclude by contemplating some of the criticisms, and the future, of narrative research.

A Narrative Approach to Collective Identities

Abstract: From a narrative perspective, organizations' identities are discursive (linguistic) constructs constituted by the multiple identity-relevant narratives that their participants author about them, and which feature, for example, in documents, conversations and electronic media. By defining collective identities as the totality of such narratives I draw attention to their complex, and often fragmented and heterogeneous nature. My approach contrasts with much of the theorizing in this field which has tended to homogenize collective identities by emphasizing what is common or shared, failed to capture the interplay between different communities within organizations, and produced bland, undifferentiated empirical research. In particular, the theoretical framework that I outline focuses attention on the importance of reflexivity, voice, plurivocity, temporality, and fictionality to an understanding of collective identities as locales for competing hegemonic claims. In combination, these notions form a unique conceptual model for theorizing and researching collective identities. This said, a narrative approach also has its limitations, and is proposed as an additional, not exclusive, interpretive lens.