indeed may not be quite possible But I have no doubt it is worth a try It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses It has been traditional to treat thought, so to speak, as an instrument of reason Good thought is right reason, and its efficacy is measured against the laws of logic or induction Indeed, in its most recent computational form, it is a view of thought that has sped some of its enthusiasts to the belief that all thought is reducible to machine computability But logical thought is not the only or even the most ubiquitous mode of thought For the last several years, I have been looking at another kind of thought (see, eg, Bruner, 1986), one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form of thought that goes into the construction not of logical or inductive arguments but of stories or narratives What I want to do now is to extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis of the stories we tell about our lives: our "autobiographies" Philosophically speaking, the approach I shall take to narrative is a constructivist one a view that takes as its central premise that "world making" is the principal function of mind, whether in the sciences or in the arts But the moment one applies a constructivist view of narrative to the self-narrative, to the autobiography, one is faced with dilemmas Take, for example, the constructivist view that "stories" do not "happen" in the real world but, rather, are constructed in people's heads Or as Henry James once put it, stories happen to people who know how to tell them Does that mean that our autobiographies are constructed, that they had better be viewed not as a record of what

Life as Narrative

In this revised second edition, Deirdre McCloskey demonstrates how economic discourse employs metaphor, authority, symmetry and other rhetorical means of persuasion. ""The Rhetoric of Economics"" shows economists to be human persuaders and poets of the marketplace, even in their most technical and mathematical moods. It is further enhanced by three new chapters and two new bibliographies.

The Rhetoric of Economics

The study of race and ethnic conflict historically has been hampered by inadequate and simplistic theories. I contend that the central problem of the various approaches to the study of racial phenomena is their lack of a structural theory of racism. I review traditional approaches and alternative approaches to the study of racism, and discuss their limitations. Following the leads suggested by some of the alternative frameworks, I advance a structural theory of racism based on the notion of racialized social systems. "The habit of considering racism as a mental quirk, as a psychological flaw, must be abandoned." -Frantz Fanon (1967:77) he area of race and ethnic studies lacks a _ sound theoretical apparatus. To complicate matters, many analysts of racial matters have abandoned the serious theorization and reconceptualization of their central topic: racism. Too many social analysts researching racism assume that the phenomenon is selfevident, and therefore either do not provide a definition or provide an elementary definition (Schuman, Steeh, and Bobo 1985; Sniderman and Piazza 1993). Nevertheless, whether implicitly or explicitly, most analysts regard racism as a purely ideological phenomenon.

Rethinking racism: toward a structural interpretation *

The Logic of Violence in Civil War: List of Tables and Figures

This essay proposes a theory of human communication based on a conception of persons as homo narrans. It compares and contrasts this view with the traditional rational perspective on symbolic interaction. The viability of the narrative paradigm and its attendant notions of reason and rationality are demonstrated through an extended analysis of key aspects of the current nuclear war controversy and a brief application to The Epic of Gilgamesh. The narrative paradigm synthesizes two strands in rhetorical theory: the argumentative, persuasive theme and the literary, aesthetic theme.

Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument

Une tragédie française : été 44 : scènes de guerre civile . Suivi de, Souvenirs d'un maire

Germaine Tillion : une ethnologue dans le siècle

El cruzamiento entre culturas

Le Discours de la magie

ized by an immense transformation: the transition from a world structured by religion to a world organized exclusively in terms of human beings and worldly values. This process of emancipation and humanization, which has been going on for several centuries, has taken two main forms. First came the project of replacing the divine absolute with a collective human absolute, what revolutionaries in France called ‘the Nation.’ Initial enthusiasm for this project began to wane, however, from the moment the Revolution engendered the Terror. The struggle for liberty had ended in the suppression of liberty: was this not proof that the project itself had been ill-conceived from the beginning? Those who did not wish to turn back the clock but were still dissatis1⁄2ed with the present then sought a second way, that of an absolute accessible to the autonomous individual. The search for this second way itself took several forms; the most influential of these identi1⁄2ed the individual absolute with beauty and favored what Friedrich Schiller would call the aesthetic education of man. This doctrine was Romanticism, adopted 1⁄2rst in Germany and then throughout Europe; it glori1⁄2ed the poet in place of the prophet and the work of art in place of prayer. “Beauty in its absolute essence is God,” declared a spokesman for the movement. The fact that Romanticism reserved such a role for art and poetry, exemplary incarnations of the beautiful, did not mean that it neglected other human activities: for Schiller and his successors, aesthetic education and political vision went hand in hand. One of the best examples we have of the desire to improve the human condition by action in both spheres is that of the German composer Richard Wagner. Influenced by the revolutionary ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, Wagner took part in political agitation in Dresden in 1848–1849. Forced into exile by the ensuing repression, he sought refuge in Switzerland, where he produced Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov

Papers

Une tragédie française : été 44 : scènes de guerre civile . Suivi de, Souvenirs d'un maire

Germaine Tillion : une ethnologue dans le siècle

El cruzamiento entre culturas

Le Discours de la magie

Avant-gardes & totalitarianism