Narratology

About: Narratology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2833 publications have been published within this topic receiving 50998 citations. The topic is also known as: narrative theory.

The Role of Desired Future Selves in the Creation of New Experience: The Case of Greek Unemployed Young Adults

Abstract: RECONSTRUCTING PAST AND FUTURE TO CREATE NEW EXPERIENCE The reconstruction of past and future is a central topic of research in both psychological and historical science. Psychological research on time perspective indicates that while imagining the future and remembering the past are common processes people engage in, some people are more disposed to orient toward the future than others (Boniwell and Zimbardo; Vowinckel et al). Imagining the future is similar to remembering the past in the sense that both processes involve an interpretation from the point of view of the present. Life review, that is, a structured form of reminiscence, is based on the principle that the meaning of past actions and events as well as the self can be rewritten. This notion of "rewriting the self" (Freeman) is based on an analogy between life and story. In the narrative approach we adopt here, the self is defined as an evolving story (McAdams), which is multivoiced (Hermans and Kempen), and validated in social interaction (Gergen). In telling, writing, and sharing stories about themselves and their life world people constitute who they are and are not; what they desire, seek, and imagine; going beyond the present; and integrating cultural memory and historical consciousness (Brockmeier 79). More particularly, life review draws on strategies to revise the self in such a way that more acceptance and integration of negative life events and more authorship of the life story is achieved (Westerhof and Bohlmeijer). Narrative futuring, for example, a guided process of writing from the future to the present (i.e., letters from the future) can be viewed as the future-oriented counterpart of life review (Sools et al., "Mapping Letters from the Future"). An important function of incidentally occurring future imagination in everyday life, but even more so of its structured extension narrative futuring, is to guide present thought and action (Sools and Mooren). Narrative futuring offers a way to reconstruct the self in light of desired ends in a process that involves the articulation of values and goals, and the means to achieve them. Hence, looking forward and looking back both depart from the present, but serve different functions. While the construction of the past and the future share "present-centeredness," according to theoretical historian Koselleck "these are not symmetrical complementary concepts [...] Experience and expectation, rather, are of different orders" (260). While the past makes up a "space of experience," the future should be more accurately conceptualized as a "horizon of expectation," which "directs itself to the not-yet, to the nonexperienced, to that which is to be revealed" (259). The assumption that the future cannot be experienced in the same way as the past has been dominating narrative theory and argumentation about the construction of past and future. The argument includes, "There is a crucial formal difference between images and stories recollected and those projected. Those recollected are capable of high definition, a large measure of completeness. An image of the future is vague and sketchy, a story incomplete and thin" (Crites 164-65). Narrative futuring, however, presents an alternative in which the future can become, at least partially, an experience (Sools et al., "Mapping Letters from the Future", Tromp, and Mooren). This future-made present is achieved by constructing a future self as if realized, with a vivid portrayal of the future self "as an experiencing subject" (Crites 167). By bringing future and present into a single imaginative and experiential plane, the potential of the "penetration of the horizon of expectation" necessary for the creation of new experience (Koselleck 260) comes closer into view. After all, a future that is fully founded upon past experience will result in the recurrence of that experience in the present. The unexpected, filled with an element of surprise, may create new experience. …

History in Discursive Limbo: Ritual and Conspiracy Narratives on the History Channel

Abstract: This study provides a narrative analysis of documentaries on the History Channel that treat historical episodes as possible conspiracies. The analysis approaches these programs in terms of ritual, collective memory, and narrative theory. Conspiracy programs present unresolved historical episodes in which conflicting interpretations vie for dominance. It is argued that the content and structure of these programs, as well as the way they promote narrative ambiguity, provide a window into the construction of historical reality. In doing so, the programs act as a ritual cessation of the assumptions that govern predominant modes of thinking about history. Linear, conclusive narratives give way to timeless, figural open-endedness. As part of a larger genre of conspiracy texts, these programs may be emblematic of a perceived fiat of powerful groups to transgress the moral and logical bounds that structure everyday reality.

Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke

Abstract: Even a brief comparison with its canonical counterparts demonstrates that the Gospel of Luke is preoccupied with the power of spoken words; still, words alone do not make a language. Just as music without silence collapses into cacophony, so speech without silence signifies nothing: silences are the invisible, inaudible cement that hold the entire edifice together. Though scholars across diverse disciplines have analyzed silence in terms of its contexts, sources, and functions, these insights have barely begun to make inroads in biblical studies. Utilizing conceptual tools from narratology and reader-response criticism, this study is an initial exploration of largely uncharted territory - the various ways that narrative intersections of speech and silences function together rhetorically in Luke's Gospel. Considering speech and silence to be mutually constituted in intricate and inextricable ways, Dinkler demonstrates that attention to both characters' silences and the narrator's silences helps to illuminate plot, characterization, theme, and readerly experience in Luke's Gospel. Focusing on both speech and silence reveals that the Lukan narrator seeks to shape readers into ideal witnesses who use speech and silence in particular ways; Luke can be read as an early Christian proclamation - not only of the gospel message - but also of the proper ways to use speech and silence in light of that message. Thus, we find that speech and silence are significant matters of concern within the Lukan story and that speech and silence are significant tools used in its telling.

How to Read Technology Critically

Abstract: Narrative theory takes the ‘story’ or ‘narrative’ to be the basic unit of meaning for understanding and explaining human action. Philosophers such as Arthur Danto (1968), Alasdair MacIntyre (1982) and Paul Ricoeur (1984, 1986, 1988) claim that narratives capture the temporal, historical and contextual character of human experience better than shorter linguistic units of meaning, like the ‘utterance’ or the ‘sentence’. A narrative creates the most comprehensive interpretation possible by synthesizing diverse plot elements into a meaningful story. Both non-fictional and fictional stories relate episodes of human experience, the former as they actually happened, the latter as if they happened. Yet traditional narrative theories are prejudiced in favour of persons over things.1 They treat people as if only they deserve to have their stories told; non-humans, natural events and things are props or circumstances to be dealt with but never themselves the subject of their own stories. Mere things get explanations; persons get stories. As a result, the ‘narrative turn’ has had far less of an effect on the philosophy of technology as elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences. Philosophical frameworks prejudiced against things are not particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the philosophical dimensions of technologies.