What Is Unnatural about Unnatural Narratology?: A Response to Monika Fludernik

Alber, Jan; Iversen, Stefan; Nielsen, Henrik Skov; Richardson, Brian

doi:10.1353/nar.2012.0020

Cited by 32 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Drawing on central figures like Käte Hamburger and Philippe Lejeune, narrative theorist Dorrit Cohn has been hugely influential in establishing within narrative studies a conception of fiction and nonfiction as clearly demarcated and separated narrative domains, arguing that a narrative will necessarily be read as either fiction or nonfiction 12 . Though there have been several attempts in recent years to challenge or reject the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, the separatist approach 13 continues to structure many theories on the blending of genre in contemporary literature. 14 In contrast, Agamben argues for the inherent interrelation of all oppositions and describes a number of conceptual phenomena that are necessarily characterised by precisely undecidability.…”

Section: Agamben's Zones Of Indistinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%

SWINGING OF THE BREATH: UNDECIDABILITY AND ZONES OF INDISTINCTION IN HERTA MÜLLER'S ATEMSCHAUKEL

Hoeeg

2020

German Life and Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this essay I use Giorgio Agamben's concept of ‘zones of indistinction’ in an investigation of how undecidability functions in the generation of meaning in Herta Müller's Atemschaukel. I argue that, by evoking a number of oppositional pairs, Atemschaukel demarcates an area as a zone of indistinction. Within this zone the thinking and experience of the first‐person narrator, and, by extension, of the reader, oscillate between different modes, and tension is produced and sustained. Through this zone some of the most significant meanings of the narrative regarding the nature of representation, historic truth, and the truth of a specific witness are conveyed. While undecidability on the level of genre and the representation of reality is arguably the most obvious form in Atemschaukel, it is not the main focus of my analysis. Rather, my purpose is to shed light on the interrelation of oppositional pairs and their effect of meaning‐production without subsuming the various forms of undecidability under the obvious one of genre, as a categorisation of the work as ‘autofiction’ would probably do. Thus I challenge the generic categorisation of complex works of undecidability such as Atemschaukel and argue that in order to recognise certain meanings of the work, the reader must accept the unresolved nature of its undecidabilities.

show abstract

Section: Agamben's Zones Of Indistinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%

SWINGING OF THE BREATH: UNDECIDABILITY AND ZONES OF INDISTINCTION IN HERTA MÜLLER'S ATEMSCHAUKEL

Hoeeg

2020

German Life and Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As we shall see, this scalar conceptualization will help understanding how innerscapes tend to develop the latent narrativity of inner experience to a minimum degree, in order to foreground and explore the pre-narrative or non-linear experiential qualities of inner worlds. Due to their desaturated worlding and incongruous or minimal storying, innerscapes often feel like "unnatural" or "impossible" storyworlds (Alber et al 2012), with a peculiar type of open narrativity that gives them their dreamlike quality. The similarity between the way dreams and innerscapes world or story the landscape of consciousness as an active ecology is why dream research can be a resourceful field for gathering information about the construction and functioning of dreamlike innerscapes.…”

Section: Landscapes Of Consciousness As Landscapes Of Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affording innerscapes: Dreams, introspective imagery and the narrative exploration of personal geographies

Bernini

2018

Frontiers of Narrative Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The essay presents an interdisciplinary theory of what it will call “innerscapes”: artefactual representations of the mind as a spatially extended world. By bringing examples of innerscapes from literature (Kafka’s short story The Bridge), radio plays (Samuel Beckett’s Embers), and a creative documentary about auditory-verbal hallucinations (a voice-hearer’s short film, Adam + 1), it suggests that these spatial renditions of the mind are constructed by transforming the quasi-perceptual elements of inner experience into affording ecologies. In so doing, they enable an enactive exploration of inner worlds as navigable environments. The resulting storyworlds display features that resemble the logic and ontology of dreams. Cognitive research on dreams and cartographical studies of the personal geographies of dreamscapes will thus inform the understanding of what innerscapes are, do and can do if used, as the essay argues they should be, as enhancing devices for what Jesse Butler has called ‘extended introspection” (2013: 95).

show abstract

“…As regards the ongoing debate between the "separatist" and "unified" theories, most explicitly discussed by Lars-Åke Skalin in this volume (Chapter 7), the interdisciplinary interest should not determine any definite position. The Foreword [ xv ] xv intensive debate between "natural" and "unnatural" narratologies has continued over the past years in different forums (see Alber, Iversen, Nielsen, & Richardson, 2013;Alber, Nielsen, & Richardson, 2012Fludernik, 2012;Herman, 2011;Iversen, 2013). It has been a debate that obviously has been confusing enough from the perspective of social research of narrative, with the separatist advocates of "unnatural" narratology claiming that the study of (experimental) fiction needs theories and methodologies that are different from the study of everyday, naturally occurring stories.…”

Section: Back To the 1980s?mentioning

confidence: 99%