The Travelling Concepts of Narrative

318 Pages·2013·1.513 MB·English

by  M Hatavara, L-C Hydén, M Hyvärinen (eds.)

The Travelling Concepts of Narrative
Studies in Narrative (SiN)
The subject of SiN is the study of narrative. Volumes published in the series
draw upon a variety of approaches and methodologies in the study of
narrative. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical approaches to narrative
and the analysis of narratives in human interaction.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/sin
Editor
Michael Bamberg
Clark University
Advisory Board
Susan E. Bell Rom Harré Allyssa McCabe
Bowdoin College Linacre College, Oxford University of Massachusetts,
Lowell
Jerome S. Bruner David Herman
New York University Nort Carolina State University Eric E. Peterson
University of Maine
Jennifer Coates Janet Holmes
Roehampton University Victoria University of Catherine Kohler Riessman
Wellington Boston University
Michele L. Crossley
Edge-Hill University College Charlotte Linde Deborah Schiffrin
Institute for Research Learning Georgetown University
Carol Gilligan
New York University Dan P. McAdams Margaret Wetherell
Northwestern University Open University
Volume 18
The Travelling Concepts of Narrative
Edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara and Lars-Christer Hydén
The Travelling Concepts
of Narrative
Edited by
Matti Hyvärinen
Mari Hatavara
University of Tampere
Lars-Christer Hydén
Linkoping University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The travelling concepts of narrative / Edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara,
Lars-Christer Hydén.
p. cm. (Studies in Narrative, issn 1568-2706 ; v. 18)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Discourse analysis--Psychological aspects. 2. Narrative inquiry (Research method)
3. Cohesion (Linguistics) I. Hyvärinen, Matti.
P302.8.T73 2013
401’.41--dc23 2013006711
isbn 978 90 272 2658 7 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 7196 9 (Eb)
© 2013 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Introduction, or another story of narrative 1
Mari Hatavara, Lars-Christer Hydén and Matti Hyvärinen
Exploring the narrative turns
Travelling metaphors, transforming concepts 13
Matti Hyvärinen
Why narrative is here to stay: A return to origins 43
Mark Freeman
To the narrative turn and back:
The political impact of storytelling in feminism 63
Olivia Guaraldo
Travelling with narrative: From text to body 83
Paul John Eakin
Philosophical underpinnings of the narrative turn in theory and fiction 93
Hanna Meretoja
Travelling between fiction and non-fiction
Fact and fiction: Exploring the narrative mind 121
Jens Brockmeier
Broken or unnatural? On the distinction of fiction
in non-conventional first person narration 141
Stefan Iversen
Making sense in autobiography 163
Mari Hatavara
“Unnatural” narratives? The case of second-person narration 179
Jarmila Mildorf
Storytelling on the go: Breaking news as a travelling narrative genre 201
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
vi The Travelling Concepts of Narrative
Travelling from body to story
Towards an embodied theory of narrative and storytelling 227
Lars-Christer Hydén
Fractured narratives: Psychology’s fragmented narrative psychology 245
Brian Schiff
Broken stories: Narrative vs. narration in travelling theories
of cultural trauma 265
Kuisma Korhonen
Concluding reflections
Twists and turns: The circulation of narrative concepts
across disciplines and cultures 287
Andreea Deciu Ritivoi
List of contributors 303
Index 307
Introduction, or another story of narrative
Mari Hatavara, Lars-Christer Hydén and Matti Hyvärinen
As we seek to map out the many travels of the concept of narrative, we are very
aware of the risks involved. To stretch the metaphorical expression of travelling
one might ask, if narrative travels with enough baggage, and whether border con-
trol is tight enough. While the theme of this book is the travelling concept of
narrative, it is by no means meant to function as a travel advertisement. Rather,
while welcoming and encompassing new openings in narrative theory, this volume
aims at collecting a number of questions that are recurrently raised in interdisci-
plinary discussions about research on narratives as well as narrative research. To
use a distinction Paul Atkinson (1997) has used, our intention is not so much to
celebrate the travels as it is to analyse the transformations, displacements and pos-
sible incommensurabilities between the old and new narrative languages.
For this purpose, this volume itself portrays a complex set of narrative travels.
Olivia Guaraldo describes travelling from the political practice of Italian Feminism
to academic theory and practice, while Kuisma Korhonen investigates movement
in the opposite direction, travelling from narrative theory to the narrative practice
of psychotherapy. Paul John Eakin gives an account of his own – geographical,
disciplinary and intellectual – travels with narrative and autobiography across
the various narrative turns. Matti Hyvärinen scrutinizes the travels from litera-
ture to historiography and social sciences, and ponders whether it is as metaphor,
“empty signifier” or concept that narrative travels most swiftly. Hanna Meretoja,
for her part, investigates the travels between literature and theory, as well as trav-
els between different philosophical schools. Mark Freeman takes a journey back
to the origins, with the help of Paul Ricoeur, and suggests travel from narrative
epistemology to a more ontological understanding of narrative. Similarly, Brian
Schiff returns to the origins as he studies narrative psychology, appraises its project
self-critically and suggests a new focus for it.
Jens Brockmeier travels between the presumed countries of fact and fiction
and argues there is no borderline to be found, no valid distinction possible to be
made. However, by commuting between a fictional and non-fictional autobiog-
raphy by the same author, Mari Hatavara in her chapter finds a different and still
2 Mari Hatavara, Lars-Christer Hydén and Matti Hyvärinen
relevant borderline between these modes. On the “unnatural” side of travelling,
Jarmila Mildorf visits literary and every-day narration in order to demonstrate
that ordinary talk can exhibit some of the elements characterized as “unnatural”
and distinctly fictional. Stefan Iversen embarks on “unnatural” travels as well with
experimental texts, and explores the ways they differ from experiments and frag-
mentation in non-fictional texts. Lars-Christer Hydén, in his turn, travels between
body and storytelling, showing the huge and often forgotten importance of stories’
bodily groundedness. Alexandra Georgakopoulou’s stories and story-tellers are
literally on the go, for example when stories in social media are processed and
relocated during the course of a school day.
We hope that the reader of this book will not settle for a readerly experience as
a spectator sport, but will continue the narrative travels on or off the beaten paths.
Even though the world is rife with narrative studies, many crucial questions still
lack an answer or have even remained hidden from view. Especially the disciplin-
ary and material scope of narrative needs more exploration, further definition and
new openings.
Interdisciplinary narrative studies
Narrative theory has a different origin and development in the areas of literary
narratology, narrative theory in the humanities and in the social scientific studies
of narratives. The various academic disciplines have conceptual traditions of their
own that need to be taken seriously when doing interdisciplinary studies. When
importing theoretical and methodological tools from one field to another, pitfalls
abound. Mieke Bal’s (2002) solution to this dilemma of ever increasing interdis-
ciplinary work was indeed to suggest a focus on the key concepts, conceptual dif-
ferences and conceptual debates – as we intend to do in this volume.
In consequence, a number of questions recur in the interdisciplinary discus-
sions about narratives, some of them clearly theoretical, like: What qualifies as
narrative? Which are some of the most relevant narrative genres, and how should
we evaluate the theoretical relevance of genre differences? Can narratives be
moved from one context to another, from one culture to another, or from political
practice to academic discussion? How does narrative theory move from theory to
practice? Other questions concern the impact of theorizing, especially on a more
practical level, for example, whether storytelling and narrativizing is needed to
grasp reality, to make sense of experience – or, even, to experience anything first
hand. Do we have access to experience as such? To push the dilemma further: Is
there such a phenomenon as “experience as such,” prior to any kind of narrative
Introduction 3
and interpretative processing? And is storytelling the best way to grasp experience,
if it always happens after the fact?
This book studies storytelling as a practise, narration as a process and nar-
ratives as artefacts – what is more, Eakin suggests that the neural dimension of
narrative needs to be considered on a par with the social, the literary, and the phil-
osophical dimensions. In some contexts, as when dealing with cultural trauma, the
idea of narrative practise may be more useful than the idea of narrative form, as
Korhonen suggests. These distinctions are crucial for maintaining both the flex-
ibility and relevance of narratives. This becomes evident in Schiff’s contribution
with its focus on the potential of narrative becoming just another psychological
variable with no methodological claims of its own.
When storytelling is understood as a vital tool for meaning-making and the
understanding of reality, it needs to be regarded as a global and even existential
phenomenon. Obviously, a certain kind of hindsight is often considered inevitably
present in storytelling. Freeman, in his chapter, elaborates the double role of hind-
sight further. Storytelling can be used to give meaning to difficult experiences like
sickness; it can help to make sickness a part of one’s life story, and thus help one
to accept it. Theorists that object to (over-)emphasizing the ability of storytelling
and narratives to create meaning urge us to see the other side of the empowering
potential of narratives: As Guaraldo makes manifest in her chapter on the Italian
feminist movement, existing narrative structures and discourses may be oppres-
sive, whereas a new set of vocabulary and a different set of story patterns are chal-
lenging to create.
The emancipative power of storytelling is often linked with the discussion
of giving voice to those oppressed in a society. Storytelling is regarded as vital
for minorities in political discussion. But does narrative as such, always, hold
an emancipatory potential? Also, as a metaphor, “giving a voice” may be too
patronizing and self-indulgent a formula for the work of narrative scholars. The
novelist J. M. Coetzee, in Elizabeth Costello, offers a more modest metaphor for
the work of an author as a “dictation secretary” whose assignment is to “hear
voices” (Coetzee, 2003/2004, p. 204). Sensitivity to various voices and an attempt
at registering and elaborating them might be a more appropriate assignment for
narrative research as well.
The interplay between narrative as structure and action calls for further
investigation. Anthony Giddens’s (1979) near classical concept of structuration
(the creation of social structures through action) might be a useful metaphor for
understanding the double role of narrative and storytelling as self-expression and
convention-building. Storytelling may also mean using a cover-story – repeating
the same, highly ideological story of oneself that prevents one from really working