This week's readings were a struggle, to say the least. The problem I ran into in trying to understand the different arguments being put forth about what narrative is and how to identify it is the same problem I run into in many theory-intensive readings; namely, I don't see the point. Don't get me wrong, when I go into these readings, I have a strong (if not terribly clear) sense that narrative is one of the most important ways human beings communicate with each other and understand the world. Therefore, to understand ourselves, our history, and each other, we need to understand how narrative works. In fact, in order to question, challenge, subsume, and replace old, harmful worldviews that have justified atrocities with new ones which might bring us together, we have to understand narrative so well that we can consciously use it.
However, as is the case in many humanities disciplines, it can seem to the beginner like many of the theorists simply enjoy chasing their proverbial tails, forming ever more complex and self-referential theories, arguing with each other into the night safe within the ivory tower, isolating themselves and their world from those of us here on the ground. I could (and probably am) wrong about this. I can only speak for myself when I say that as I try to parse the arguments put forth by these theorists, if I can't understand the applicability of these theories to real world problems, I lose the thread.
What became abundantly clear as I read this week's readings is that the study of narrative has changed quite a bit between now and the time of Plato... and that everyone is obsessed with Oedipus. I think that the clear boundaries presented by Aristotle and Plato, and the neat (yet infinitely expanding) motifs of the structuralists are comforting in a way because they give us something to latch onto to say "There! That's narrative! That's what they all have in common!," but as many have since pointed out, nothing is that simple.
I particularly enjoyed Barbara Hernstein Smith's deconstruction of the structuralist and folklorist tendency to try to isolate a pure model of a particular story from which all discourses and "versions" stem, pointing out that one could follow this nebulous kind of categorization until almost all stories are considered variants of the same original. She must be a good writer and a quick-witted woman to make me love her even as she destabilizes the only concepts I've so far gotten a good grasp of! I think in the end, I still agree with Barthes that narrative is universal and emanent, though as several theorists have argued, narrative resists categorization nearly as much as it conforms to it.
Yet regardless of the ease of delineation, categorization, description, etc. regarding narrative, the question, for me, remains: why are we doing this? Is the goal to understand why we tell the stories we tell? Is it to understand why we tell stories at all? Is it to better appreciate the art of narration? Of literature? Is it to peel back the layers of belief and preconception ingrained in us by society? Or is it simply a fun intellectual exercise for the privileged few at the top of academia, unconcerned with application? I feel that the answer to all of these questions is yes. Perhaps ironically for a narrative class, what I want at this moment is to be shown what narrative theory can do for the world.
However, as is the case in many humanities disciplines, it can seem to the beginner like many of the theorists simply enjoy chasing their proverbial tails, forming ever more complex and self-referential theories, arguing with each other into the night safe within the ivory tower, isolating themselves and their world from those of us here on the ground. I could (and probably am) wrong about this. I can only speak for myself when I say that as I try to parse the arguments put forth by these theorists, if I can't understand the applicability of these theories to real world problems, I lose the thread.
What became abundantly clear as I read this week's readings is that the study of narrative has changed quite a bit between now and the time of Plato... and that everyone is obsessed with Oedipus. I think that the clear boundaries presented by Aristotle and Plato, and the neat (yet infinitely expanding) motifs of the structuralists are comforting in a way because they give us something to latch onto to say "There! That's narrative! That's what they all have in common!," but as many have since pointed out, nothing is that simple.
I particularly enjoyed Barbara Hernstein Smith's deconstruction of the structuralist and folklorist tendency to try to isolate a pure model of a particular story from which all discourses and "versions" stem, pointing out that one could follow this nebulous kind of categorization until almost all stories are considered variants of the same original. She must be a good writer and a quick-witted woman to make me love her even as she destabilizes the only concepts I've so far gotten a good grasp of! I think in the end, I still agree with Barthes that narrative is universal and emanent, though as several theorists have argued, narrative resists categorization nearly as much as it conforms to it.
Yet regardless of the ease of delineation, categorization, description, etc. regarding narrative, the question, for me, remains: why are we doing this? Is the goal to understand why we tell the stories we tell? Is it to understand why we tell stories at all? Is it to better appreciate the art of narration? Of literature? Is it to peel back the layers of belief and preconception ingrained in us by society? Or is it simply a fun intellectual exercise for the privileged few at the top of academia, unconcerned with application? I feel that the answer to all of these questions is yes. Perhaps ironically for a narrative class, what I want at this moment is to be shown what narrative theory can do for the world.
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