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Needs more academic lingo

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So I heard something funny on a podcast this weekend and it really struck a chord. The hosts, sweet souls that they are, were talking about people who become professors and how they must do it because they really care. After all, it’s not like they’re trying to get famous.

I laughed, a lot, because seriously, what academic isn’t trying to make a name for themselves? Becoming faculty means writing and publishing, and getting your name out there while trying to break fresh ground on old material. That’s incredibly clear, given the amount of narrative theory ideas we read about this week. 

And the more theories that are created, the more TERMS there are. They’re just everywhere… chrono-logic, fabula, sjuzet, catalyzers. 



I mean, I get it, in the basics, but what kills me is how many  different ideas can be created to explain the how’s and why’s of story and narrative. I’ve tried to find a kind of unified theory of narrative theory, and so far, the names that seem to be referred to the most are Aristotle and Barthe. They seem to be the only real meeting point on the Venn diagram. 

It reminds me of the argument that we have sometimes in steampunk academics (yes, that’s a thing!) and more general discussion. That stupid question of “what is steampunk”. Ask 5 people, you’ll get 12 different answers, and they are all right, and all a bit wrong. I feel as if narrative theory is the same in that it all boils down to interpretation and the way that the thing makes you feel, as well as the place you’re coming from and the experience you’ve had. It’s all really, really subjective. 

Now, that isn’t to say that I didn’t find anything I agreed with. I did. I was incredibly interested in the folklore discussion of it all. Folklore and myth are one of my favorite areas and I love studying the different permutations of a story to try to figure out where it ended up from where it began. A story like the Oedipus myth would strike a nerve in any society, even one as modern as ours. The father being usurped by the son is a commonplace fear in stories, and history. The way that the story changes is going to depend on the sociocultural, political, and economic situations in a particular place, and also the religious situation. Many old myths and gods are still around today, though they've been given Christian names. The names change, the story is forever. 

In Barthes piece, he discusses the Russian formalist approach, which says that narrative is either rambling and can only be referred to by the artist’s talent or genius, or that it shared a common narrative structure with others, no matter how complex. Now, it took me bit to parse this but it reminds me a bit of a book like House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, from the early 2000s. This book is the epitome of a “rambling collection of events” that was hailed as absolute genius and the highest of literary art. And it was quite incredible. It was, and still is unlike anything I’ve ever read. 

If you haven’t noticed, I have to take all of this and put it into pop-culture terms to help me parse what I’m learning. All of this is very brand-new to me. But I think I’m getting the hang of it. 

Now I’m rambling. This is what this week’s readings have done to me. I’ll just leave this visual representation of how my brain feels right now.


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