Narrative Knowing / Récit et savoir – Paris, France

Transcription

Narrative Matters:
Narrative Knowing / Récit et savoir
23 to 27 June 2014 - University Paris Diderot, France
Narrative Matters : Narrative Knowing / Récit et savoir – Paris, France
Table of Contents
Program Overview ………………………………………………………………………………… page 2
Biographies
 Organizers …………………………………………………………………………. page 3
 Plenaries Speakers …………………………………………………………….. page 4
 Workshop Leaders …………………………………………………………….. page 7
Schedule of Workshops – Monday 23th June ……………………………...….….. page 12
Schedule of Plenaries Session ……………………………………………………………... page 13
Schedule of Papers and Panels
 Tuesday 24th June …………………………………………………………... page 14
 Wednesday 25th June ………………………………………….………..… page 45
 Thursday 26th June ………………………………………………………….. page 99
 Friday 27th June …………………………………………………………..…. page 154
Index ………………………………………………….……………………………………………… page 170
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Program Overview
Monday 23 June
Tuesday 24 June
Université Paris Diderot
5 rue Thomas Mann, 75013 5 rue Thomas Mann, 75013
09:00
09:15
Thursday 26 June
Friday 27 June
5 rue Thomas Mann, 75013
09:30
09:30
Parallel Sessions #3
Coffee Break
11:15
Coffee Break
11:15
Registration
(for workshops only)
Registration
with Welcome Coffee
09:30
09:45
10:00
10:15
10:30
10:45
Wednesday 25 June
10:30
Workshops
11:00
11:15
11:30
11:45
12:00
10:00 - Coffee Break
10:30
12:00
Paralell Sessions #4
Lunch on your own
12:45
12:45
1:30
Lunch on your own
Lunch on your own
2:15
2:15
12:15
12:30
12:45
1:00
1:15
1:30
1:45
2:00
12:30
Lunch on your own
Lunch on your own
2:00
2:15
2:30
2:45
Plenary Session #3
Molly Andrews
3:00
3:15
3:30
3:45
4:00
Workshops
3:15
Plenary Session #1
Jacques Bouveresse
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
4:00
4:00
4:15
4:30
4:45
5:00
Coffee Break
3:45
Plenary Session #4
Philippe Carrard
5:00
5:00
Plenary Session #2
Donald Polkinghorne
Closing panel & Remarks
5:15
5:30
5:45
6:00
6:15
6:15
6:00
Visit Musée d'Orsay
6:30
6:45
7:00
7:15
Welcome Cocktail
Hall A - Grands Moulins
(end at 7:30 pm)
7:30
Gala Dinner Musée d'Orsay
(end at 11:30 pm)
7:30
6th and 7th Floor - UFR LAC, Grands Moulins
Ground Floor - Amphitheater 1A, Grands Moulins
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OVERVIEW
Biographies: Organizers
SYLVIE PATRON
Lecturer & Research Supervisor
Co-chair Narrative Matters 2014
University Paris Diderot
Paris, France
Sylvie Patron is a lecturer and research supervisor (maître de conférences habilitée à diriger des recherches) in
French language and literature at the University of Paris Diderot. A specialist in the history and epistemology of
literary theory, she has published Le Narrateur: Introduction à la théorie narrative (Paris: Armand Colin, 2009)
and a collective volume titled Théorie, analyse, interprétation des récits/Theory, analysis, interpretation of
narratives (Berne: Peter Lang, 2011). She is the author of numerous articles, published in both French and
English, on the narrator and other problems in narrative theory. She has also translated several articles on
linguistics and narrative theory into French and edited S.-Y. Kuroda, Pour une théorie poétique de la narration,
six essays translated by Cassian Braconnier, Tiên Fauconnier and herself (Armand Colin, 2012). An English
version will be published in June 2014 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). Sylvie Patron has co-organized with Brian
Schiff the international conference Narrative Matters 2012: Life and Narrative and is the main organizer of
Narrative Matters 2014.
BRIAN SCHIFF
Associate Professor of Psychology
Co-chair Narrative Matters 2014
The American University of Paris
Paris, France
Brian Schiff is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the American University of
Paris. Brian was the lead organizer of Narrative Matters 2012: Life and Narrative. He has published numerous
articles on life stories and on the theory of narrative psychology. He is preparing the manuscript A New
Narrative for Psychology (under contract with Oxford University Press). He is also special editor of Re-reading
Personal Narrative and Life Course (forthcoming) from New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development
and co-editor of Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience (under review).
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BIOGRAPHIES
Biographies : Plenary Speakers
JACQUES BOUVERESSE
Philosophe & Emeritus Professor of
Philosophy
Collège de France
Paris, France
Is there an epistemology for literary knowing?
Tuesday, June 24th 2014 (3:15 p.m to 4:30 p.m)
Jacques Bouveresse (born in 1940), Emeritus Professor at the College de France, and holder of the chair in
Philosophy of Language and Knowledge, is one of the greatest contemporary French philosophers. He made a
name for himself in the 1970s for his work on Ludwig Wittgenstein (La Parole malheureuse, Paris: Minuit, 1971,
Wittgenstein: la rime et la raison, Paris: Minuit, 1973, Le Mythe de l’intériorité, Paris: Minuit, 1976). An expert
on Viennese thought, whose specificity he demonstrated, he has been a great contributor in spreading analytic
philosophy, both Anglo-saxon and European. Jacques Bouveresse is equally known for his critical works on
philosophical “style” and “milieu” (Le Philosophe chez les autophages, Paris : Minuit, 1984, Rationalité et
cynisme, Paris : Minuit, 1985, Prodiges et vertiges de l’analogie, Paris : Raisons d’agir, 1999). The Bouveressian
mode of doing philosophy is characterized by a continued search for clarity, precision, and justification of what
one can confirm with genuine arguments. Jacques Bouveresse likes literature, particularly the work of Robert
Musil (L’Homme probable, Paris : L’Éclat, 1993, La Voix de l’âme et les chemins de l’esprit, Paris : Le Seuil, 2001).
Yet there are “literary scholars”, or certain “literary scholars”, that he does not like. “Literature and the
problems that it raises always mattered a lot to me. But I hesitated to talk about it because of the dogmatic and
even terrorist climate that still ruled not long ago in literary theory and critique. It makes it particularly difficult
for someone who does not want to stick to the expected discussion” (Lire, May 1, 2008, in regards to La
Connaissance de l’écrivain). Other important works by Bouveresse include, Langage, perception et réalité
(Paris : Jacqueline Chambon, 1995, 2004), Dire et ne rien dire (1997), Peut-on ne pas croire? (Marseille : Agone,
2007), La Connaissance de l’écrivain (2008), and Le Danseur et sa corde (to be published).
DONALD POLKINGHORNE
Consulting Faculty
School of Psychology
The Fielding Graduate University
Santa Barbara (CA), USA
Possibilities for action: narrative understanding
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Donald Polkinghorne is Professor Emeritus in the division of Counseling Psychology at the University of
Southern California. He held the Attallah Chair in Humanistic Psychology and was recipient of the Award for
Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology from the American Psychological
Association. Dr. Polkinghorne’s educational background includes an undergraduate degree in religious studies
from Washington University (St. Louis), and graduate degrees from Yale University, Hartford Seminary
Foundation, and the Union Graduate Institute. His Ph.D. degree is in psychology. His scholarly specialties are
the philosophy of social science, narrative theory, and qualitative research. His published books are An
Existential-Phenomenological Approach to Education, Methodology for the Human Sciences, Narrative Knowing
and the Human Sciences, and Practice and the Human Sciences. His scholarly efforts have attended to the
relationship between contemporary philosophical epistemology writings and the production of knowledge in
psychology and other human sciences. He has emphasized that the cognitive tools used to understand the
physical world have valid, but limited, application in understanding human beings. He has sought to expand the
research repertoire used in psychology to include methods specifically designed to attend to the special human
characteristics, such as qualitative and narrative approaches. His recent work has focused on the relationship
between research-generated knowledge and the practices devoted to the care of people.
MOLLY ANDREWS
Professor of Sociology
School of Law and Social Sciences
University of East London
London, UK
Knowledge, reason and imagination: narrating the self over time
Friday, June 27th 2014 (2 p.m to 3:15 p.m)
Molly Andrews is Professor of Political Psychology and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research. With
an interest in the intersection of individual biography and society, for the past twenty years she has been
listening to, and writing about, the stories which people tell about their lives, specifically focusing on their
perception of the political world and their role within it. Molly's research explores the implicit political
worldviews which individuals impart through the stories they tell about their lives, as well as the wider social
and political context which makes some stories more ‘tell-able’ than others. Molly has conducted research
projects in Britain (life histories with lifetime socialists), the United States (analyzing anti-war activism as an
expression of patriotism), East Germany (accounting for national identity in the context of the demise of one’s
country) and South Africa (examining testimonies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Her work
has been translated in to Chinese, German, Swedish, German, French, Czech and Spanish.
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PHILIPPE CARRARD
Visiting Scholar and Visiting Professor
of Comparative Literature
Dartmouth College
Hannover (NH), USA
History and narrative: an overview
Friday, June 27th 2014 (3:30 p.m to 4:45 p.m)
Philippe Carrard is Professor of French Emeritus at the University of Vermont and currently Visiting Scholar in
the Program of Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, in the USA. He wrote a book on Malraux, but for
the past twenty years his research has born mainly on the poetics of factual discourse, that is, on the rules,
codes, and conventions shaping discourse that deals with real events, not fictional ones. In this area, he has
published Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier (Johns Hopkins UP,
1992), The French Who Fought for Hitler: Memories from the Outcasts (Cambridge UP, 2010), and Le Passé mis
en texte: Poétique de l’historiographie française contemporaine (Armand Colin, 2013). Along the same lines, he
has written several articles on such subjects as the representation of consciousness in biographies,
personifications in the business pages of the New York Times, strategies of titling in scholarly studies, and
beginnings in histories of World War II.
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Biographies: Workshop Leaders
Interviewing for Narrative Research
Monday, June 23th 2014 (9:30 a.m to 5 p.m)
RUTHELLEN JOSSELSON
Psychotherapist
Professor of Clinical Psychology
The Fielding Graduate University
Santa Barbara (CA), USA
Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D. is Professor of clinical psychology at The Fielding Graduate University. She was
formerly a Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a visiting Professor at Harvard University School of
Education and a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. She is a co-founder of the Society for Qualitative
Inquiry in Psychology and co-edited eleven volumes of The Narrative Study of Lives, a series dedicated to
publishing qualitative research. She is the founding editor of the new Journal, Qualitative Psychology, to be
published by the American Psychological Association. She received both the Henry A. Murray Award and the
Theodore R. Sarbin Award from the American Psychological Association as well as a Fulbright Fellowship. Based
on interviews she has conducted over 35 years, she has written two books exploring women’s identity
longitudinally (Finding Herself and Revising Herself), and is currently at work on the next installment. Many of
her other books (The Space Between Us, Best Friends, Playing Pygmalion) are based on interviews and she has
authored many journal articles and book chapters that explore the theory and practice of qualitative inquiry.
Recently, she has authored Interviewing for Qualitative Inquiry: A Relational Approach. She has conducted
workshops on qualitative inquiry in France, Norway, Finland, Israel and England as well as in the US.
AMIA LIEBLICH
Psychologist & Writer
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel
Born in Israel, completed her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where
she is presently a professor emerita. She is now the president of the Academic College for Society and the Arts
in Israel. Since 1976 she has been teaching academic courses on gender and society, the psychology of women
and the development of femininity and masculinity. Her books on various aspects of Israeli society include Tin
Soldiers on Jerusalem Beach (1978), Kibbutz Makom (1981), Transitions to Adulthood during Military Service
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(1989) and Seasons of Captivity (1994). Her work on women and creativity led her to compose two
psychobiographies: Conversations with Devora (1997) about the author Devora Baron and Learning about Lea
(2003), on the poet Lea Goldberg. Her most recent book is Lamrot Hakol about the only bi-national village in
Israel. One of the leading scholars in narrative psychology, Lieblich is the author of Narrative Research:
Reading, Analysis and Interpretation (with R. Tuval and T. Zilber, 1998) and the editor of the annual publication
The Narrative Study of Lives (with R. Josselson and D. McAdams). Her book Seaside Stories will be published this
year by Oxford U. Press.
Narrative Analysis
Monday, June 23th 2014 (9:30 a.m to 12:30 p.m)
ALEXANDRA
GEORGAKOPOULOU
Professor of Discourse Analysis
& Sociolinguistics
King’s College
London, UK
Alexandra Georgakopoulou holds a BA in Greek Philology with Linguistics (University of Athens) and a MA &
PhD in Applied Linguistics (Edinburgh University). She is Professor of Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics,
King's College London, where she is Co-Director (Arts & Humanities) of the Centre for Language, Discourse &
Communication. She has published 11 books and c. 70 articles on: conversational storytelling as social
interaction and socio-cultural practice; language, youth & gender identities in late modernity; small stories
research; small stories circulation on social media. Her current research projects include 'Ego-media: the
impact of new media on forms & practices of self-presentation' (Funded by the ERC, with M. Saunders, C. Brant
& L. Ridsdale).
Narrative Care: Putting theory into practice
WILLIAM RANDALL
Professor of Gerontology
University of Saint Thomas
New Brunswick, Canada
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Bill Randall has been with the Department of Gerontology since 1995. With fellow St. Thomas faculty members
such as Gary Kenyon, Elizabeth McKim, Clive Baldwin, and the late Rosemary Clews, he has been active over
the years in developing a narrative perspective on human development, particularly in later life - what has
come to be called “narrative gerontology”. With Dolores Furlong, of UNB’s Faculty of Nursing, he was principal
co-organizer of the first two interdisciplinary conferences called Narrative Matters, in 2002 and 2004. With the
coordinating team of STU’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative, he also organized Narrative
Matters 2010 and was a member of the organizing committee for Narrative Matters 2012. With Elizabeth
McKim, he is co-editor of the online, open-access, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal called Narrative
Works: Issues, Investigations, Interventions.
Narrative Identity
Monday, June 23th 2014 (2 p.m to 5 p.m)
MICHAEL BAMBERG
Professor of Psychology
Clark University
Worcester (MA), USA
Mr. Bamberg received a Staatsexamen in German, Politics and Education from the Universität Marburg,
Germany in 1975, an M.Phil. in Linguistics from the University of York, England in 1978, and a Ph.D. in
Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He has been at Clark since 1986. Mr.
Bamberg's research is in the area of Discourse and Identity with an emphasis on how Narratives (particularly
"Small Stories") are employed as general sense-making and identity-building strategies. Methodologically, he
approaches the study of identity microanalytically (microgenetically) as an emergent process that is deeply
embedded in local and situated contexts. His research projects are in the area of adolescent and postadolescent identity formation, particularly the emergence of professional identities.
MARK FREEMAN
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
Distinguished Professor of
Ethics and Society
College of the Holy Cross
Worcester (MA), USA
Mark Freeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the College of the Holy Cross, where
he also serves as Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society. He is the author of Rewriting the Self: History,
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Memory, Narrative (Routledge, 1993); Finding the Muse: A Sociopsychological Inquiry into the Conditions of
Artistic Creativity (Cambridge, 1994); Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward (Oxford, 2010); The
Priority of the Other: Thinking and Living Beyond the Self (Oxford, 2014); and numerous articles on issues
ranging from memory and identity to the psychology of art and religion. Winner of the 2010 Theodore R.
Sarbin Award in the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, he is also a Fellow in the American
Psychological Association and serves as editor for the Oxford University Press series “Explorations in Narrative
Psychology.”
Narrative in Non-Fiction
PHILIPPE CARRARD
Visiting Scholar and Visiting
Professor of
Comparative Literature
Dartmouth College
Hannover (NH), USA
See page 10 for his biography (Plenary Speaker).
Narrative Writing
HUBERT HADDAD
Poet and Novelist
Paris, France
Hubert Haddad was born in Tunis in 1947. He published his first collection of poems, Le Charnier déductif, in 1967.
His first novel, Un rêve de glace, was published by Albin Michel in 1974. He has published numerous novels, short
stories, plays and collections of poetry. Most of this work has not yet been translated into English. His earlier work
explored fantasy and magical realism in a fresh, hallucinatory light, while his later writings have focused on
memory and a critical approach to history. His novel L'Univers (published in a revised and updated version’s by
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Zulma in 2009) is the fragmentary autobiography of a man struggling against amnesia, piecing the shards of his life
together in dictionary form. His protean approach to the craft of writing, and his long experience as a teacher of
creative writing workshops, inspired his book Le Nouveau Magasin d'écriture (Zulma, 2006), a kind of interactive
encyclopedia of literature and the art of writing, offering a wealth of new literary games for writers eager to
sharpen their skills. A second book, Le Nouveau Nouveau Magasin d'écriture followed in 2007, exploring the role of
visual art as a stimulus to the imagination, and featuring two hundred images (engravings, drawings, paintings,
caricatures...) chosen for their evocative, inspirational power.
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Schedule of Workshops
All workshops take place at the University Paris Diderot
(UFR LAC - 6th & 7th Floor, Building Grands Moulins)
Monday, June 23th 2014 (9:30 a.m to 5 p.m)
Interviewing for Narrative Research
Workshop organizers: Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich
Workshop in English only
Location: 5 rue Thomas Mann - Room 785, 7th Floor
Narrative Analysis
Workshop organizer: Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Narrative Care: Putting Theory into practice
Workshop organizer: William Randall
Narrative Identity
Workshop organizers: Mark Freeman and Michael Bamberg
Narrative in Non-Fiction
Workshop organizer: Philippe Carrard
Workshop in English and French according to the language of the workshops participants
Narrative Writing
Workshop organizer: Hubert Haddad
Workshop in French with translation into English as needed
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WORKSHOPS
Schedule of Plenaries Sessions
All presentations take place at the University Paris Diderot
(Amphitheater 1A - Groundfloor, Building Grands Moulins)
Is there an epistemology for literary knowing?
Jacques Bouveresse
Philosophe & Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Collège de France (France)
Location: 5 rue Thomas Mann – Amphitheater 1A, Groundfloor
Possibilities for action: Narrative understanding
Donald Polkinghorne
Consulting Faculty - School of Psychology, Fielding Graduate University (USA)
Friday, June 27th 2014 (2 p.m to 3:15 p.m)
Knowledge, reason and imagination: narrating the self over time
Molly Andrews
Professor of Sociology - School of Law and Social Sciences, University of East London (UK)
History and narrative: An overview
Philippe Carrard
Visiting Scholar & Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College (USA)
Closing panel: The sum of stories
Mark Freeman, Ruthellen Josselson, Françoise Lavocat, Amia Lieblich
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PLENARIES
Papers and Panels Program
All presentations take place at the University Paris Diderot
(UFR Lac - 6th & 7th Floor, Building Grands Moulins)
Parallel Session #1
1.1
Tuesday, June 24th 2014 at 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: La figure paradoxale du témoin "in absentia" : Vers quel
type de savoir? (I)
Language of the session: French
Chairs: Nicoletta Dolce (University of Montreal, Canada), Irena Trujic (Université ParisSorbonne, France)
"Depuis le génocide nazi qui a confronté l’humanité à la "part maudite" d’elle-même, [la] notion de
responsabilité s’est radicalisée et fait du témoignage un élément essentiel dans l’établissement d’une
vérité historique que nul n’est plus en droit d’ignorer, ni de contester.1". Partant de ce constat d’Anne
Lavalois, la lecture d’un certain nombre d’œuvres littéraires consacrées aux génocides fait surgir une
question que Derrida posait déjà dans Demeure. 2: le témoin est-il celui qui a participé directement à la
séquence d’évènements évoqués même si, en fin de compte, il n’a pas saisi leur essence? C’est dans ce
contexte que Régine Robin – interprétant assez librement un texte d’Alexis Nouss sur la poésie de Celan
("Irrévocable témoignage. À propos de Paul Celan") – constate que "le témoin n’est pas tant celui qui
voit […] que celui qui ‘accueille une vision. 3". Le poète ou romancier exprimerait ainsi "l’impossibilité de
dire, la cassure de l’histoire, la césure de l’intelligible. 4". Dans une perspective comparatiste, cette
session voudrait interroger aussi bien la figure paradoxale de celui ou celle qui témoigne d’évènements
génocidaires sans les avoir vécus que la légitimité de cette "vision". Il s’agira notamment de se
demander comment cette vision véhicule des bribes de vérité, quel type de savoir elle apporte au
lecteur et quels sont les procédés poétiques et narratologiques mis en œuvre par les écrivains
concernés pour évoquer une telle vision.
Moze de Zahia Rahmani: La cause des harkis
Michèle Bacholle-Bošković (Eastern Connecticut State University, USA)
Presenting Author: Michèle Bacholle-Bošković
Le récit de Zahia Rahmani, Moze (2003), part d'un sujet tabou, le suicide, et dévoile un autre tabou, le
sort des harkis après la guerre d'Algérie. L'auteure n'y pose pas les questions d'usage (raisons du geste?
geste évitable?). Elle refait bien le parcours de son père, offre une réflexion sur son statut de
"soldatmort", mais s'en sert pour faire (re)découvrir au lecteur ce pan occulté (parce que honteux) de la
guerre et surtout de la période après-guerre: le massacre des harkis que la France n'a pas empêché en
Algérie en 1962, le regroupement des survivants avec leurs familles dans des villages français écartés,
dissimulés aux regards des Français qui les ont plus tard, à tort, apparentés aux autres immigrés
algériens et à leurs enfants, les Beurs. Or, les harkis, dont l'identité s'est transmise à leurs
descendants (alors qu'eux ne se sont pas battus pour la France) sont doublement frappés du sceau de la
honte: comme traîtres à l'Algérie révolutionnaire et comme constants rappels à la mémoire de la France
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TUESDAY
de sa défaite et de ses exactions pendant cette guerre de décolonisation. Cette communication
montrera comment le récit trouve sa légitimité dans l'exposition de l'illégitimité des harkis et celle de
leurs enfants dans la société française et explorera la position de Rahmani qui se fait le porte-parole de
son père, silencieux sa vie durant, et son avocate puisqu'elle mène dans Moze un violent réquisitoire
contre l'Etat. Héritière malgré elle de l'identité harkie, dans ce récit de filiation Rahmani témoigne en
lieu du témoin muet, oublié, forcé au silence, afin de rétablir une vérité historique et de réclamer
reconnaissance des faits et réparation de la part de la France.
Témoigner en tiers: Le journaliste Henry Barby face aux massacres des Arméniens durant la Grande
Guerre
Joceline Chabot (University of Moncton, Canada)
Presenting Author: Joceline Chabot
En 1915-1916, les autorités turques mettent en œuvre la déportation et le massacre de près d’un million
d’Arméniens de l’Empire ottoman. Malgré la censure et l’éloignement géographique, cet évènement
retient l’attention de l’opinion internationale et fait l’objet d’une couverture médiatique relativement
importante. Journalistes, consuls, missionnaires, rescapés des massacres, nombreux sont ceux qui
prennent la parole pour dénoncer un crime à proprement parler extraordinaire. Leurs récits sont relayés
par la presse étrangère alors que les maisons d’édition publient mémoires, rapports, journaux, etc.
relatant les évènements qui se sont déroulés aux confins de l’Asie mineure. Parmi la masse de
témoignages qui sature l’espace discursif consacré aux massacres des Arméniens, nous avons choisi de
retenir le récit d’un des rares journalistes français présents sur le front du Caucase, Henry Barby,
correspondant de guerre pour Le Journal. En 1916, Barby accompagne l’armée russe dans son avancée
en territoire ottoman, il est alors le témoin privilégié de la dévastation des vilayets arméniens suite aux
massacres et à la déportation qui ont frappé les populations civiles quelques mois plus tôt. L’année
suivante, en 1917, il publie chez Albin Michel l’ouvrage intitulé : Au pays de l’épouvante. L’Arménie
martyre. Témoignant en tiers, ou pour ainsi dire de l’extérieur, Barby admet la difficulté de rendre
compte du drame qui s’est déroulé et d’en dresser le tableau le plus complet. Néanmoins, son objectif
est clair : il veut faire "le récit des horreurs et des crimes qui ont frappé l’Arménie". (Barby, p. 20) Dans
le cadre de cette communication, nous souhaitons analyser la structure d’accréditation et d’attestation
par laquelle le témoin, Henry Barby, cherche à représenter l’expérience dont il est porteur et à
convaincre les lecteurs de la véracité des évènements incriminés.
Peuple "in absentia": La saga des Béothuks de Bernard Assiniwi, représentation d’un génocide sans
témoin
Irene Chassaing (University of Manitoba, Canada)
Presenting Author: Irène Chassaing
Dans son roman La Saga des Béothuks, publié au Québec en 1996, l’écrivain d’origine amérindienne
Bernard Assiniwi retrace la naissance, l'épanouissement puis la disparition du peuple béothuk. Première
nation de l'île de Terre-Neuve, au Canada, les Béothuks furent progressivement exterminés par les
colons européens entre le seizième et le dix-neuvième siècle. Leur dernière représentante connue,
Shanawdithit, mourut de tuberculose en 1829. De son peuple, il ne reste aujourd'hui que quelques
mots, sortes de reliques linguistiques conservées dans un petit dictionnaire par les grâces d'un
humaniste anglais du siècle des Lumières. Au-delà des aléas de la représentation d'un peuple disparu,
donc nécessairement fantasmé, notre intervention s’interrogera sur la légitimité de l'entreprise menée
par Bernard Assiniwi dans La Saga des Béothuks. Par la littérature, en effet, cet écrivain entend non
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seulement témoigner d’un génocide qu’il n’a pas lui-même vécu, mais aussi se poser comme l’unique
représentant d'un peuple sans voix. En nous appuyant sur la réflexion menée par Giorgio Agamben dans
Homo Sacer III, nous questionnerons le choix problématique des outils permettant de représenter ce
peuple, ainsi que le rôle joué dans cette opération par les institutions de l'auteur, de la langue, et de la
littérature elle-même. Nous découvrirons que la légitimité de l’entreprise d’Assiniwi réside, plutôt que
dans le désir de ressusciter une mémoire disparue, dans celui de fonder autour de l’œuvre littéraire une
communauté nouvelle propre à changer le cours de l’histoire.
Donner une voix aux ombres: Léonora Miano et la traite négrière
Irena Trujic (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France)
Presenting Author: Irena Trujic
Cette communication se centrera sur La saison des ombres de Léonora Miano. Prix Femina à sa parution
en 2013, ce roman raconte comment le malheur frappe la communauté mulongo : suite à un incendie,
une dizaine d’hommes disparait sans laisser de trace. Comme personne ne sait s’ils sont morts ou vifs,
leur ombre plane sur le village et pousse certains habitants à essayer de les retrouver. C’est le jeu des
focalisations qui nous permet d’apprendre ce qu’il leur est réellement arrivé : ils ont été vendus à des
Européens par une tribu voisine qui collabore à la traite et dont l’objectif est clairement de faire
disparaitre le clan. Ils massacreront d’ailleurs les membres de la communauté qui ne peuvent être
vendus. Dans un premier temps, cette communication étudiera donc comment la compréhension des
évènements est directement corrélée à la narration, qui porte les voix des morts – les disparus viennent
en effet "visiter" leur mère au travers de leurs rêves – comme celle des vivants. Dans un second temps,
nous verrons que la narration apparait également – et paradoxalement – comme une thématique
primordiale dans le roman : face à l’innommable, les survivantes de la communauté dont les familles ont
été massacrés ou déportés ressentent le besoin de raconter le destin mulongo, "l’horreur" (p. 216) pour
vaincre l’oubli. Elles-mêmes habituellement oubliées de l’histoire de la traite, elles témoignent
d’éléments qu’elles n’ont pas vécus, dans la mesure où elles n’ont vu ni les massacres, ni connu la traite.
Charge à elles cependant de "tisser une histoire" vraie (p. 226) de cette communauté, de combler les
vides en recueillant d’autres témoignages, afin de recréer un récit fondateur et de léguer aux
générations futures ce qui est "le plus précieux : l’obligation d’inventer pour survivre." (p. 228).
1.2
Panel session: Narratives in the production of knowledge in cultural
context
Language of the session: English
Chair: Louise Bordeaux Silverstein (Yeshiva University, USA)
The papers on this panel present one theoretical presentation and three empirical studies that describe
how narrative produces knowledge in three specific cultural contexts. The first presentation describes
the construction of U. S. fathering identities among gay fathers and Latino immigrant fathers. The
second presentation examines how the life history narratives of 6 Israeli women promote knowledge
about identity construction and relations among women from different cultural groups who reside in
the same geographical area. The third paper discusses epistemological differences between narrative
methodology and grounded theory. The fourth paper describes the use of a modified Life Story
Interview for understanding and studying patients in rural Maine who suffer from chronic pain.
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Men constructing fathering identities
Louise Bordeaux Silverstein (Yeshiva University, USA)
Presenting Author: Louise Bordeaux Silverstein
This presentation presents empirical data from a large-scale qualitative research study of multiple
subgroups of U. S. fathers. The researcher uses a model of data coding and analysis that combines
grounded theory and narrative approaches. First, transcripts of interviews or focus groups are coded for
Repeating Ideas and Themes. Then the emergent Themes are linked to theoretical concepts in the
broader social science literature. The Theoretical Constructs are then used to construct a composite
narrative that tells the stories of the men’s subjective experiences of fathering in their own words. The
narratives form a bridge between theory and subjective experience. The paper presents the clinical
examples of the fathers’ struggles to integrate contrasting aspects of both masculinity and cultural
norms into a coherent fathering identity. The presentation will describe how the knowledge that
emerges can refine existing theory or create new theory, and also be used to improved clinical care for
individual men.
Cultural distance from the internal other: Education and relations with the other as discussed in life
stories
Tal Litvak-Hirsh (Ben Gurion University of the Negev / Eilat campus, Israel), Alon Lazar (Ben Gurion
University of the Negev, Israel)
Presenting Author: Tal Litvak-Hirsh
Life stories enable one to trace the manner in which identity construction takes place, especially
amongst members of multicultural and multiethnic societies. The life-stories of six women belonging to
three different groups, all residents of the Beer Sheba area in Israel, were analyzed by applying and
extending Bar-On's (2005) theory of identity construction which focuses upon the relations with the
"internal other" and the "external other." Specifically, the intersection between education and relations
with others as shaping identity during the women's various life courses were investigated. Results
suggested that education serves as a mapping tool which places the "self" and the "other" as either
close or distant in terms of identity construction. Moreover, findings point to the existence of a "cultural
distance from the internal others" (CDIO) as shaped by educational aspirations and achievements. This
presentation will present the above research as a demonstration of the power of narratives (in this case
life stories) in promoting knowledge about identity construction and relations between women
from different cultural groups who reside in the same geographical area.
Epistemological differences between narrative methodology and grounded theory
Lewis Mehl-Madrona (Coyote Institute, USA)
Presenting Author: Lewis Mehl-Madrona
While narrative inquiry and grounded theory are both qualitative methods, their underlying manner of
conceptualizing knowledge is opposite. Grounded theory aims at categorization and, while a refreshing
improvement upon prior methodologies, continues to be noun-based, more compatible with
conventional modernist scientific thought. Narrative methods can be more verb-based, aiming at
process rather than division into separate things. In narrative inquiry, we ask who are the characters
involved in this process? Consistent with folk psychology, we ask what are their desires and beliefs? In
short, what do they want and how do they think they can best achieve it? What are the obstacles that
oppose them – human and inanimate? What attitudes do they demonstrate in their search for their
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goal? Narrative inquiry reveals plots, which can be seen as strategies for achieving goals, which
represent processes that unfold over time. Grounded theory generates nouns, which are categories into
which we can separate phenomenon. Narrative methods are more similar to indigenous thought forms,
which are circular and relevant to individual tellers and not necessarily generalizable. The strategies
that characters (subjects) use to achieve their desires vary in accordance with the contexts in which they
find themselves and are constricted by their previously acquired stories about how the world works
(beliefs). Plots are harder to conceptualize for we modern people who are more accustomed to thinking
of nouns instead of verbs. We are more trained to see things than processes. Narrative methodologies
offer us the opportunity to explore varying processes in different contexts and for different agents who
have different beliefs and desires (a movie) instead of the more conventional methodologies of finding
ways to divide phenomena into non-overlapping categories (still life photographs). This is an emergent
methodology, more compatible with indigenous thought and knowledge, which will continue to unfold
over time.
A modified life story interview approach to studying and understanding chronic pain
Barbara Mainguy (Coyote Institute, USA)
Presenting Author: Barbara Mainguy
We modified the Northwestern University Life Story Interview for understanding and studying chronic
pain. Our chronic pain patients relate better to movies than to novels. A movie typically has less than
60 scenes strung together to form a whole. Movies, more than novels, have gaps that the mind must
fill. We ask subjects to identify memorable moments of their lives. We seek high points, low points, and
turning points. We seek the moments of heroism and the dark moments of the soul. We identify the
helpers they have had along the way and the obstacles they have overcome. We identify the attitudes
that have kept them going and the desires that they pursue. Plots unfold like water flowing downhill
amidst a topography of beliefs about how the world works. Each belief has its own supporting
stories. The nature of a narrative methodology is to examine the plots characters use to accomplish
their goals given their beliefs about how the world works and the contexts in which they find
themselves. Scenes can be linked in time to form a story. The main character of this story is the identity
narrative. When we apply this technique to pain patients we find strategies for managing life’s
adversities. Patients cling to a story about the world in which their pain is mechanical and unrelated to
the other aspects of their life. It is the misfortunate result of twists, tears, bends, or strains on their
musculoskeletal apparatus. The use of modified Life Story Interview leads to further possibilities about
being a pain patient and expressing pain being part of a larger process of managing unmanageable
conflict and dysphoria. The use of this technique leads us to a different conception of chronic pain as
multifaceted and often relatively independent of whatever physical injury launched it.
1.3
Paper session: Narrative, knowing, identity
Moderator: Jo Louise Ashby
Narrative knowing and mentalh health: Telling as Therapeutic intervention
Rivka Tuval-Mashiach (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Presenting Author: Rivka Tuval-Mashiach
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Narrative psychology researchers argue that owning a life story, and the ability to tell it, are associated
with an experience of resilience and well-being. Researchers discussed the coherence of life stories,
their structure and the ability of the narrator to experience herself as the protagonist of a worthy story.
All these dimensions of narrative reflections on the self were assumed to be indicators of the
construction of a healthy and adaptive identity. In this paper, I exemplify the dynamics of narrative
knowing and interpretations in clinical context through two projects: The Trauma Testimony Center of
NATAL, the Israel Trauma Center for victims of Terror and War, which collects life stories and
testimonies of Israeli war veterans, prisoners of war and survivors of terror; and a therapeutic project
focused on narrative reconstruction (NR) in the Bar-Ilan University Psychology Department's clinic.
Drawing on these projects I discuss the meanings of narrative knowing in a clinical and therapeutic
context. I focus on trauma-related-stories, and explore how clinicians base their interventions on
narrative understanding and interpretations. Even in testimonies, and more so in the context of therapy,
telling a trauma narrative – the very ability to form a story, and to connect it with one's life story – is
understood to further one's well-being, and thus becomes central for the therapeutic intervention.
Encouraging a sufferer to tell her trauma story is understood as enhancing her dialogue with the world,
security and self-esteem. It specifically allows her to own the events, and offer some closure.
Narrative knowing and narrative action in organizations: Stories in decision making
Tammar B. Zilber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Presenting Author: Tammar B. Zilber
In this paper I explore the dynamics of narrative knowing and action in organizations, as worked out in
decision making processes in a Rape Crisis Center in Israel. I demonstrate how in some instances of
Board decision making, the discussion focused not around issues and principles, but rather around
stories and counter stories. Board members tell different version of past events, building on different
meta-narratives, and positioning both the teller and her audience in different roles. Each story defines a
different range of possible decisions. Participants debate which story is the most relevant and
appropriate, and once the discussion coheres around a specific version, a specific decision is ipso facto
reached. While as narrative researchers we are used to participate in creating the stories we study –
usually through extracting life stories from interviews – my study highlights the importance of listening
to, and learning from, stories told in natural daily settings, that is spontaneously in organizational life, in
corridors, meetings and written communications. Studying stories in these natural habitats allows us to
better appreciate their work in social action. Stories told in organizational decision making not only
reflect ways of knowing and understanding within the organization, but also take part in shaping the
organizational reality itself. Using insights from narrative research in order to identify and interpret
organizational stories holds much promise to further our understanding of both organizations and
narratives.
(Still) Exploring big stories: The narrative identity card
Gabriela Spector-Mersel (Hebrew University of Jerusalem / Ben-Gurion University, Israel)
Presenting Author: Gabriela Spector-Mersel
The narrative turn has introduced a dramatic epistemological shift in the understanding of the
relationships between narrative and identity. The earlier "factist" notion, that portrayed the (one, allembracing) life story as a picture of the narrator`s (entire and preexistent) personality, has been
replaced by a constructivist conception, that stresses the contextual and interactional nature of the
narration process (Alasuutari, 1997). Although the stage has been set for the idea of multiple narrative
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identities (Bamberg, De Fina & Schiffrin, 2007), the notion of the story that reflects the self continues to
be implied in current literature. The homogenization of life stories has been further enhanced by the
recent critique of "big-story research" (Bamberg, 2007; Georgakopoulou, 2007), that addresses "big"
stories, principally life stories, as a unified group, differentiated from "small" stories. In order to
promote a pluralistic and contextual understanding of narrative identity, challenging the unifying
conception of life stories, it is necessary to identify and explore different types of life stories. These are
generated in diverse contextual circumstances, thus presenting selective aspects of the self. After
suggesting a conceptualization that aims at such a differentiation, I will focus on the narrative identity
card. This type of narrative is proposed as a particular case of a life story, intended for the world "out
there"; a sort of "representative" self-profile. The possible characteristics of this narrative type, and the
contextual conditions that tend to elicit it, will be discussed and empirically illustrated.
1.4
Panel session: Society, history and biography: Grappling with story
in context
Chairs: Amy Rutstein-Riley, Sarah Gurley-Green (Lesley University, USA)
We make our own biographical stories from the fabric woven by society, family and history. With close
examination of this received fabric, we are more able to understand how we are constructed and how
we wish to fashion ourselves and our futures. As with this personal reflective journey, we must
continually examine that which is handed down to us as a society, and particularly as educators, (to
understand how our legacies affect) future generations. Through three different techniques and
perspectives, the authors have used narrative to change how we live in society, how we view our past
and how we view each other. Amy Rustein-Riley works with college-aged young women and young girls
from the urban environment within which our university is situated. She helps them to interact and
reflect about their individual and shared social narratives. Caroline Heller examines her own personal
narrative and that of her family through a lens of their shared history of the Holocaust. The narrative
choices she made to tell a story of her family and the world before she was born highlights the
paradoxes that are created when we are the narrators of our own meta narratives. Sarah Gurley-Green
and Ann Mechem Ziergiebel work with pre-service teachers to use autobiographical narrative creation
to explore their perceptions and the unexplored biases as they prepare to teach non-English speakers in
the core classroom.
Stories of girlhood and self: Negotiating identity in girls’ groups
Amy Rutstein-Riley (Lesley University, USA)
Presenting Author: Amy Rutstein-Riley
Entering the seventh year of the Girlhood Project, twenty-five diverse, urban youth come to Lesley
University in Cambridge Massachusetts to participate in a seven-week girls’ group to build relationships
with college students that collaboratively examine the experiences and meanings of being a girl in a
culture where numerous social institutions bombard girls with narratives about how they should be, act,
look, and feel about themselves. This program uses principles of feminist pedagogy and feminist group
process offering powerful frameworks for exploration of self against a backdrop of critical reflection,
social critique, and the co-construction of counter narratives of girlhood. This paper will focus on what
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happens between the college students and middle school girls, how personal stories of emerging
identity/ies are revealed and critically examined during girls’ group sessions.
On being a narrator of family history: Choices and paradoxes
Caroline Heller (Lesley University, USA)
Presenting Author: Caroline Heller
Caroline Heller will explore the meaning of the narrative choices she made in writing her family story,
the fulcrum of which is her father’s six years as a prisoner in Buchenwald and Auschwitz during the
Second World War. Every writer of memoir/family history must find the presumption and temerity to
cross the border between present and past, living and dead. When the subject matter is related to the
Holocaust, questions about narration and representation become nearly unanswerable. How, indeed,
does one handle this subject? Terrence DesPres asks in his study of the Holocaust. "One doesn’t," he
writes, "not well, not finally." In her effort to write about her parents’ lives before she was born, Heller
makes the choice to be an omniscient narrator. Other writers might have made different choices and
faced different narrative challenges than those she faced. Heller explores these inherent narrative
challenges.
Personal narrative exploration: Creating critical and self-reflective learners and practitioners
Sarah Gurley-Green (Lesley University, USA), Ann Mechem Ziergierbel (Lesley University, USA)
Presenting Author: Sarah Gurley-Green
Sarah Gurley-Green and Ann Mechem Ziergiebel are working with pre-service teachers responding to
the Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) mandate that places all English Language Learners (ELL’s) in core
classes where instruction makes content more comprehensible for students not proficient in English.
Their research identifies one clear gap in teacher preparation – guided narrative inquiry to uncover
assumptions and/or biases that, without examination, can lead to inequity and discrimination in the
classroom. Gurley- Green and Ziergiebel coach pre-service teachers in the examination of their own
stories – a process that unpacks issues of motivation to engage diverse learners using imagination,
narrative, and reflection. They contend that combining motivation, ability, and imagination through
biographical narrative facilitates the necessary social perspective-taking process that creates a multidimensional approach to diversity.
1.5
Paper session: Récits de Grèce ancienne
Moderator: Otto Pfersmann
Le récit et la memoire collective : Le cas du "récit héroïque" dans la Périégèse de Pausanias.
Kerasia Stratiki (Hellenic Open University, Greece)
Presenting Author: Kerasia Stratiki
Pausanias appartient à l’époque de la "Seconde sophistique" du IIème siècle ap. J.-C. A travers la
Périégèse, nous découvrons la façon dont les Grecs ont pu chercher à se définir eux-mêmes en tant que
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tels face aux Romains, par rapport à un passé important, en suivant des traditions et des rituels qui ont
survécu au fil du temps. Lorsque la Grèce des cités devient une province romaine, ce sont les récits
légendaires de ses origines qui vont fournir aux habitants des régions grecques la mémoire de la
diversité de chaque ville et la conviction qu'ils partagent une même identité culturelle. Le mythe (et le
culte) des héros grecs notamment était associé au développement du régionalisme dans la cité et les
héros faisaient partie de l'histoire locale. Le récit de leur mythe fonctionnait comme un témoignage de
cette histoire et les honneurs héroïques étaient une coutume locale, dont la principale préoccupation
était de garder vivant dans la mémoire collective le passé de la communauté. Il devient plus facile
désormais, de comprendre pourquoi parmi les monuments et les traditions que Pausanias décrit dans
son œuvre, les héroïnes et héros occupent une place particulière dans celle-ci : la narration de leur
mythe et de leur culte est inextricablement liée à la mémoire collective de chaque ville grecque et
souvent au passé le plus éloigné de la plupart des cités, créant ainsi entre elles un lien qui implique
l’image grecque que Pausanias veut donner dans sa propre Grèce.
Les vies Schliemann: L'autobiographie comme lieu de savoir
Annick Louis (Université de Reims, France)
Presenting Author: Annick Louis
La légende d’Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), l'archéologue autodidacte qui a excavé les sites des
anciennes villes de Troie et Mycènes, repose sur le récit autobiographique qui accompagne le rapport
des fouilles. Les quatres versions qu'il rédigea à différents moments de sa carrière montre une
instrumentalisation du récit de vie, dont l'objectif semble être de se faire un nom dans le monde savant,
et de diffuser l'image du "self-made man homme de science" auprès du grand public. Notre analyse
s'émancipe du débat autour de la véridicité de l'autobiographie de Schliemann, afin de mettre en
évidence les enjeux narratifs de ce récit, ainsi que les perspectives qu'ils ouvrent à la réflexion à la fois
sur le fonctionnement du récit et sur l'histoire des sciences. Nous tenterons de saisir le fonctionnement
de l'autobiographique entre l'espace public et l'archéologie, une discipline qui reste, à l'époque de
Schliemann, en cours de définition et de professionnalisation.
Tragédie et tragique : Langage ou expérience?
André Duhamel (University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
Presenting Author: André Duhamel
La tragédie ne relève-t-elle que de l'art (un langage) ou structure-t-elle déjà l'expérience (le tragique)?
En philosophie, la question pouvait paraître réglée depuis l’idéalisme allemand, qui avait vu Schelling
transférer la tragédie de la scène vers les contradictions de l’expérience humaine de la liberté (c’est la
thèse de Szondi 1961). Or le débat se poursuit aujourd’hui, par exemple en philosophie anglo-saxonne.
Ainsi A, MacIntyre soutient que "l’unité d’une vie humaine est l’unité d’une quête narrative" (After
Virtue, 1981), alors que B. Williams rétorque que l’idée de cohérence d’une vie est antécédente au récit
(Life as Narrative, 1989). Mais peut-on se contenter d’opposer simplement l’expérience d’une structure
narrative (dans l’art) et la structure narrative de l’expérience (dans l’action)? Les oppositions de ce genre
sont cependant trop simples, et relèvent souvent d’une pensée représentative et dualiste, que les
approches herméneutiques peuvent éviter. Nous voudrions donc tenter de répondre à notre question
en recourant à l’idée de triple mimesis de P. Ricoeur (Temps et récit I, 1983; La vie : un récit en quête de
narrateur, 1986). La relation de la narration et de la vie, de la tragédie et du tragique apparaît alors plus
complexe, à la fois de présupposition et de transformation : la tragédie peut à la fois représenter
l’expérience singulière (qui possède un contenu moral et une structure symbolique) et reconfigurer
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cette même expérience (en particulier grâce à ses ressources éthiques). Nous chercherons pour finir à
vérifier l’impact de cette "poétique de l’action" dans la conception du "tragique de l’action" développée
par Ricoeur lui-même.
1.6
Paper session: Mediating stories
Moderator: Jens Brockmeier
A crisis of innocence: The knowing child and the comic book controversy of the 1950s
Andrew O'Malley (Ryerson University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Andrew O'Malley
In a Chicago Daily News editorial entitled "A National Disgrace" (8 May 1940) acclaimed children’s
author Sterling North sounded the alarm for the guardians of America’s young about a "cultural
slaughter of the innocents" taking place in the pages of the "funnies" magazines millions of children
read every month. The decade and a half that followed saw the anxiety over the effects of "crime" and
"horror" comics on their putatively innocent child readers intensify in both the popular media and the
professional journals of childcare specialists. Mounting pressure on vendors, book burnings organized by
church, school, and youth groups, and the publication of child psychologist Frederic Wertham’s bestselling Seduction of the Innocent (1954) led to a Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency
investigating the effects of comic books on young readers, and eventually to a complete restructuring of
the industry along the moral guidelines set by the Comics Code Authority. One of the stories that most
alarmed the Senate Subcommittee was "The Orphan", published in EC Comics’ Shock SuspenStories,
about a sweet young girl who murders her alcoholic father, then frames her abusive mother and her
lover for the crime. Similarly controversial was “Bloody Mary,” featuring a 10-year old murderess who
avoids detection by virtue of her assumed childhood innocence. These stories and many others depict
what Anne Higonnet would call "knowing" children who possess and can successfully exploit the very
knowledge upon whose absence our culture’s cherished narrative of childhood innocence relies.
Following such critics of childhood innocence as Jacqueline Rose, Higonnet, and Henry Jenkins, I argue
that pre-Code comics were deemed threatening to children precisely because they exposed our
anxieties over young people’s access to “adult” knowledge, narratized through the figure of the
transgressively "knowing" child.
"Narratives-in-the-making": Some thoughts on a multidimensional interpretation of narrative
experience in the interdisciplinary performance the fault lines (2010)
Thom van Duuren, Bram van Leuveren (University of Groningen, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Thom van Duuren, Bram van Leuveren
In this joint paper, we attempt to overcome the heuristic limitations of the narrative-versusperformance dichotomy. Whereas narrative elements are often thought to enable mediated
experiences, offering formal structures to cognize perceptual changes in time, performance elements
are taken to produce a sense of immediacy, geared to foreclose operations of signification. The polarity
that stems from these definitions recalls similar theoretical moves. Consider, for example, Plato’s
division between mimesis and diegesis, Aristotle’s subordination of spectacle to plot or – more recent –
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the discrimination theatre scholar Jean Alter (A Sociosemiotic Theory of Theatre, 1990) makes between
the "performant" and "referential function" of a show. We propose a more organic conception of how
different levels and modes of engagement converge and interact in the audience’s narrative experience.
As we’ll show in more detail, this type of experience does not hinge on hermeneutical forms of
understanding exclusively insofar as it correlates with the mental reconstruction of the course of past
events. It may just as well comprise more experiential responses which have traditionally been
associated with performance features, including emotions, moods, bodily reactions and mental imagery.
By taking our cue from Marie-Laure Ryan (Narrative across Media, 2004) and David Herman (Basic
Elements of Narrative, 2009), we advance a gradient conceptualisation of narrative to account for the
dynamic transaction between recipient’s sense-making activities and the discursive cues that propel
those activities. It provides a point of departure for our discussion of a few salient moments in the
interdisciplinary performance the fault lines (2010) on the basis of which we will illustrate some of our
insights. The performance was jointly created and performed by the choreographers Philipp Gehmacher
and Meg Stuart and the visual artist Vladimir Miller.
Knowing about homelessness: Journalists’ narratives about homelessness news narratives
Barbara Schneider (University of Calgary, Canada)
Presenting Author: Barbara Schneider
In this presentation I examine two aspects of news media narratives of homelessness. Based on content
analysis of newspaper articles about homelessness and on interviews with journalists who write about
homelessness, I examine both the news narratives that appear in the media and the narratives of
journalists who create those media narratives. News reports never present just the "facts" of a matter.
Rather media can be understood as a narrative framing force that contributes to the production of
social reality in general and to public understanding of specific social problems. Bird and Dardenne
(1988) describe news narratives as myth, meaning not that they are false, but that they present an
ongoing narrative that becomes "what everyone knows" about a topic. The overarching news narrative
of homelessness is the need for control and regulation of homeless people, in order to maintain social
order. Likewise journalists do not simply convey the "facts" of a matter. Those who construct individual
news stories must make their stories fit into this ongoing narrative. Journalists write within the
constraints of the practice of journalism and their activities work to reproduce the identity and
profession of journalism. I examine three aspects of journalistic narrative practice: the determination of
newsworthiness, the use of sources, and the code of objectivity, and how those are implicated in the
construction of the overarching narrative of control and regulation. This narrative is, however,
problematic in its implications for citizenship and social inclusion of homeless people. Despite the good
intentions of journalists who believe that their work can "make a difference" for the problem of
homelessness, journalistic narrative practice leads to the construction of news narratives that work
against the against the citizenship and social inclusion of homeless people.
1.7
Paper session: Approaches to narrative
Moderator: Venetia Young
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Emic approach to capturing differing views of mental health in Malaysia
Beverly B. Palmer (California State University / Dominguez Hills, USA)
Presenting Author: Beverly B. Palmer
To capture the concept of a mentally healthy person, 117 Malaysian students in a lower-division
psychology course at a Malaysian public university were asked to "Write five characteristics of
psychological well-being" ("Tulis lima ciri-ciri psikologi kesejahteraan"). Of the 87 females and 30 males,
55 identified themselves as Islamic, 29 as Christian, and 33 as Buddhist. The ethnic identity of Islamic
students is Malay; for Christian students it is indigenous tribal; and for Buddhists it is Chinese. Employing
an emic strategy, content analysis was used to identify Malaysian concepts of mental health. Responses
in Bahasa Malaysia were translated into English and then back translated. Among all respondents, the
most often noted characteristics of mental health were: controlling emotions/mengawal emosi (49%),
being rational/ sedang rasional (34%), being optimistic/sedang optimis(tik) (32%), being open
minded/sedang berfikiran terbuka (30 %), and being able to solve problems/dapat menyelesaikan
masalah (28%). Islamic and Buddhist students mentioned controlling emotions more than did Christian
students (53%/55%/34%). Christian students mentioned being able to solve problems more than did
Islamic and Buddhist students (41%/22%/27%). Although all three groups mentioned open-mindedness
about equally, open-mindedness for Islamic students could mean being open to religious teachings and
viewing those who negate religious opinion as closed-minded (Mastor, Jin, & Cooper, 2000). Narrative
inquiry provided a way to identify differing views of mental health within a multicultural society such as
Malaysia. Awareness of differing views helps health care professionals individualize treatment.
"The listening’ guide": From psychological analysis of girls’ stories to socio-cultural analysis of arab
women leaders’ stories
Tamar Shapira (The Gordon Academic College of Education Haifa, Israel), Khalid Arar (Sakhnin Academic
College / Levinsky Teacher Education College, Israel)
Presenting Author: Tamar Shapira
The "Listening Guide" is "a method of psychological analysis that draws on voice, resonance and
relationships as ports of entry into the human psyche" (Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg & Bertsch, 2004, p.
157). The method was designed in order to discover and understand people’s inner worlds. The method
stems from the clinical methods of Freud and Brunner and was developed in longitudinal feminist
research concerning girls’ psychological development. It involves a series of steps that guide the
researcher through an individual’s many voices and offers a "pathway into relationships more than a
fixed framework of interpretation" (Brown & Gilligan, 1992, p. 22). Researchers who have used the
Listening Guide share basic assumptions concerning the "psychology of relationships" (Gilligan et al.,
2004, p. 157). It has been used to elucidate the human psyche; it joins feminist researchers, cultural
psychologists and psychological anthropologists and is universal in application. However, we do not use
the method in our educational research to decipher the human psyche. We use it, differently, in a social
context, to understand our participants' world through their own eyes. We read each text several times
attempting to identify the different "voices" of the narrator in each story. Our specific purpose is to
reveal how Arab women leaders act in their different life contexts: family, profession and socio-cultural
environment. Using a narrative approach, our research analyzes stories of women leaders in Arab
society in Israel, expressed in their personal, organizational and social spheres through their multiple
voices. Studies of women’s leadership in education show that they employ unique practices and
relationships within their profession and community. The contribution of our research stems from the
use of the Listening Guide for social-cultural readings of women’s narratives and its contribution to the
development of research on Arab women managers in Israel.
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The dependence of genre on narrative context: An Ethiopian Israeli focus group
Leor Cohen (Interdisciplinary Center, Israel)
Presenting Author: Leor Cohen
The notion of genre is reconceptualized in a Narrative Practices approach to mean conventionalized sets
of practices (borrowing from linguistic anthropology). This approach underscores how fuzzy (gradient)
yet effective the notion of genre can be; it provides a keyhole into the elasticity of storytelling
conventions and their dependence on context. The relationships across co-present big, prototypical, and
small stories are explored for their basis in indeterminacy. Here, indeterminacy manifests in three ways:
inclusiveness, a narrative contains several other narratives; focus, the degree of zoom on a specific
event is variable; and in/completeness, a narrative complication and/or resolution is missing or unclear.
Out of these indeterminacies, three inter-narrative relationships are afforded: reliance, one narrative
exegetically depends on another; framing, one narrative guides the interpretation of another; and
amplification, one narrative is mentioned within another narrative to increase tellability. Ultimately, this
study finds that interactional consequences in storytelling are dependent on narrative context – those
narratives and the relationships emergent thereof. Accordingly, genre is a key notion in "knowing how"
as opposed to "knowing that" as regards storytelling.
1.8
Paper session: Gendered stories (I)
Language of the session: Bilingual
Moderator: Didier Samain
La narratologie et la querelle des femmes : La transmission du savoir dans un discours masculin et
féminin
Valentina Denzel (Michigan State University, USA)
Presenting Author: Valentina Denzel
Pour certains, l’écriture féminine est une théorie essentialiste qui postule que le sexe biologique
s’exprime dans un style littéraire spécifique. Il semble toutefois que dans certaines œuvres la différence
du genre peut se manifester selon la voix narrative, le narrataire intradiégétique et extradiégétique, et
la diégèse. Cette distinction du genre se manifeste dans les Mémoires de la vie du Comte D publiées
posthume en 1753 de Charles Saint-Evremond et les Mémoires de Mme la Ctesse D*** avant sa retraite,
servant de réponse aux Mémoires de Mr. St-Évremont (1698) d’Henriette-Julie de Castelnau Murat. Ces
deux romans participent à la Querelle des femmes, une dispute qui, pendant plusieurs siècles, aborda
les questions liées à la relation entre les sexes et le rôle des genres. Murat et Saint-Evremond utilisent le
genre des Mémoires pour relater les événements principaux de la vie de leurs protagonistes. Alors que
le roman de Saint-Evremond est un récit libertin, mettant en garde le lecteur masculin de toute relation
intime avec les femmes, les mémoires écrites par Murat servent de réponse à la diffamation misogyne
entreprise par Saint-Evremond. Dans son ouvrage, Murat fait ouvertement allusion à l’œuvre de SaintEvremond et raconte les mêmes événements d’un point de vue féminin. En ayant recours à la
narratologie féministe ainsi qu’aux théories des mondes possibles, cette communication examine la
représentation d’un récit au masculin et son interaction avec une réponse féministe. Les deux récits,
masculin et féministe, s’inscrivent dans le contexte de la Querelle des femmes. Mais les romans de
Murat et de Saint-Evremond s’engagent aussi dans un jeu littéraire qui se veut comme une mise-enabyme d’un univers à la fois fictionnel et réel. Autrement dit, l’identification d’un narrateur, d’un
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narrataire et d’une diégèse faisant explicitement partie d’une conception sexuée renforce la complexité
de tout récit fictionnel ainsi que d’une transmission d’un savoir sexué.
Women’s body talk and the incitement of the “yet to be spoken”
Catrina Brown (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Catrina Brown
Body talk refers to culturally specific ways women speak or communicate through their bodies. "Eating
disorders", as embodied performances of gender, provide women a way to simultaneously speak and
hide. Women’s "body talk" may also convey the "yet to be spoken" while both reproducing and resisting
dominant social scripts. Through the body, women may speak the unspoken struggles and resistance
they may have yet to fully acknowledge to themselves or others. This paper will explore how
counterviewing narrative questions may help facilitate the "yet to be spoken" with an awareness of the
danger often associated with speech. The practitioner is purposeful and positioned to deconstruct and
challenge dominant pathologizing problem stories and identities. Feminist narrative practitioners
collaborate with clients to create preferred stories and identities with particular attention to the context
of gender. Traditional therapeutic practice approaches to "eating disorders" often totalize women as
"disordered" or victims of culture, and fail to recognize women’s agency and efforts at achieving a
greater sense of power and control over their lives through resourcing their bodies. Externalizing body
talk involves exploring the delicate tensions between compliance, agency, and resistance in the process
of counterviewing and creating helpful counter-stories that move beyond the oppressor/oppressed
model of power. Both dominant and subjugated or disqualified stories need to be explored rather than
focusing on the single, thin descriptions of totalizing stories. It will be argued that counterviewing body
talk can unmask the mechanisms of power at play in women’s participation in dominant practices of
self-management and render visible women’s agency in resourcing their bodies.
Narrative knowing in stories of transgender past
Lottamari Kähkönen (University of Turku, Finland)
Presenting Author: Lottamari Kähkönen
Transgender life stories disturb the predominant epistemological understanding of a human as a
gendered and sexual being. In this paper, I will examine recent narratives based on past transgender
lives. This is part of a larger project, in which I approach narratives from a cross-disciplinary approach as
dynamic interplay between language and experience, temporal context and theorization. My focus is on
narratives representing various genres that have emerged from the end of the 1990s onwards, as the
phenomenon of transgender becomes a subject of growing political, social and cultural interest in
Western societies. My emphasis in on the potential of these narratives in the knowledge production;
how they work as an active and cognitive force that bring new dimensions to our knowledge of gender
variance and broaden human self-comprehension. The past lives become more and open up with the
narratives as they manage to disrupt our expectations and stretch our imagination. The use of various
narrative techniques in the stories follow processes of meaning-making and communicating interaction
that are typical for human ways of interpreting in general. Yet they also manage to challenge and disrupt
some of our shared ways of understanding gender. My paper offers an elaboration how the examined
narratives use diverse narrative strategies (e.g. shifting narrative perspectives, polyphony and
intermediality) in ways that draw critical attention to our ways of understanding and making sense of
gender and sexuality.
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1.9
Paper session: Cinéma et sociologie, films biographiques
Moderator: Pierre-Olivier Toulza
De la contribution d’un récit cinématographique à la connaissance des sciences sociales : Les leçons
anthropologiques de Fitzcarraldo (W. Herzog, 1982)
Nathalie Montoya (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Nathalie Montoya
A partir de l’analyse de l’une des œuvres les plus célèbres et les plus ambivalentes de Werner Herzog,
Fitzcarraldo (1982), nous souhaiterions explorer la possibilité pour un récit cinématographique de
penser le monde social et de contribuer au renouvellement de sa conceptualisation. Nous nous
proposons de poursuivre cette interrogation selon trois voies. La première concerne le rapport de
Fitzcarraldo, dont le récit se déroule dans le Brésil de la fin du 19ème siècle, à la compréhension d’une
"situation coloniale" particulière. Les rapports de domination y sont complexes, contradictoires,
précaires, dressant un tableau qui soustrait le récit, et la compréhension du monde social, à toute
velléité de lecture postcoloniale. La seconde piste d’interrogation relève d’un questionnement
anthropologique : le récit de Fitzcarraldo procède d’un point de vue cosmologique qui interroge la
tranquillité de cadres conceptuels ordinaires et anthropocentrés. Le récit oblige à conjuguer des régimes
de visibilité que les sciences sociales tendent à distinguer : mise en lumière des rapports de domination
coloniaux et de leurs ambivalences, perspective cosmologique et inquiétude écologique, célébration
d’un rapport aux valeurs orientée par la recherche de la beauté et le goût de l’épreuve etc. Le récit de
Fitzcarraldo donnent à voir et à penser le monde social selon une configuration singulière, lui conférant
un statut analogue, dans une démarche de sciences sociales, à celle de l’expérience du monde, lorsque
une enquête de terrain la met en forme. Enfin il nous faudra explorer la dimension proprement
poétique de ce récit, indissociable de la forme métaphorique qui la raconte : une fable-image qui
constitue l’énigme à résoudre pour une sociologie soucieuse de restituer à la connaissance du monde
social la part de vérité commune à l’expérience du monde et à l’épreuve de sa pensée, par le récit et par
les sciences sociales.
Les biopics de compositeurs dans la comédie musicale hollywoodienne classique
Pierre-Olivier Toulza (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Pierre-Olivier Toulza
En raison de la vogue des films biographiques des années 1930 et du succès du film musical consacré au
légendaire producteur de Broadway Florenz Ziegfled (The Great Ziegfeld, 1936), un cycle de biopics
musicaux consacrés à la vie de musiciens, de danseurs, et d'entertainers se développe dès la fin des
années 1930 à Hollywood. Les biographies d'hommes et de femmes célèbres posent pourtant plusieurs
défis narratifs à la comédie musicale hollywoodienne : s'il est évident que le parcours professionnel de
personnages appartenant au monde de la musique facilite l'insertion de numéros chantés et dansés,
souvent empruntés au répertoire des personnalités convoquées, quelle part peut bien être réservée,
dans un genre éminemment spectaculaire, voué à la fantaisie et au divertissement, au récit de vie ?
Comment le matériau biographique peut-il trouver une place conséquente dans le récit musical,
structuré moins par un enchaînement de causes et d'effets, que par un système de symétries,
alternances et confrontations entre des personnages ou des groupes de personnages de sexe opposé,
comme l'a montré Rick Altman ? Récit hétéronormatif par excellence, qui met toujours en parallèle ou
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établit une relation de cause à effet entre le succès des péripéties et la formation réussie d'un couple,
comment le récit musical classique peut-il prendre en charge les vies de créateurs notoirement
homosexuels, comme Jerome Kern (Till the Clouds Roll By, 1946), Lorenz Hart (Words and Music, 1948),
ou encore Cole Porter (Night and Day, 1946) ? Ces différentes questions seront abordées dans une
intervention qui prendra appui sur un corpus de biopics musicaux consacrés à des personnalités du
théâtre musical de Broadway.
Parallel Session #2
2.1
Tuesday, June 24th 2014 at 1:30 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: La figure paradoxale du témoin "in absentia" : Vers quel
type de savoir? (II)
Chairs: Irena Trujic (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France), Nicoletta Dolce (University of
Montreal, Canada)
"Depuis le génocide nazi qui a confronté l’humanité à la "part maudite" d’elle-même, [la] notion de
responsabilité s’est radicalisée et fait du témoignage un élément essentiel dans l’établissement d’une
vérité historique que nul n’est plus en droit d’ignorer, ni de contester". Partant de ce constat d’Anne
Lavalois, la lecture d’un certain nombre d’œuvres littéraires consacrées aux génocides fait surgir une
question que Derrida posait déjà dans Demeure : le témoin est-il celui qui a participé directement à la
séquence d’évènements évoqués même si, en fin de compte, il n’a pas saisi leur essence? C’est dans ce
contexte que Régine Robin – interprétant assez librement un texte d’Alexis Nouss sur la poésie de Celan
("Irrévocable témoignage. À propos de Paul Celan") – constate que "le témoin n’est pas tant celui qui
voit […] que celui qui "accueille une vision". Le poète ou romancier exprimerait ainsi "l’impossibilité de
dire, la cassure de l’histoire, la césure de l’intelligible". Dans une perspective comparatiste, cette session
voudrait interroger aussi bien la figure paradoxale de celui ou celle qui témoigne d’évènements
génocidaires sans les avoir vécus que la légitimité de cette "vision". Il s’agira notamment de se
demander comment cette vision véhicule des bribes de vérité, quel type de savoir elle apporte au
lecteur et quels sont les procédés poétiques et narratologiques mis en œuvre par les écrivains
concernés pour évoquer une telle vision.
Témoigner de l’absence dans la poésie antillaise
Maëva Archimède (Laval University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Maëva Archimède
Bien que la traite négrière ne soit pas dans les faits un évènement génocidaire, elle est souvent
rapprochée de la Shoah malgré leurs différences, certains vont même jusqu’à la qualifier de génocide.
Ces deux évènements ont marqué les consciences, aussi les questions liées à la mémoire et à sa
transmission sont des éléments récurrents des littératures juives et antillaises. Nous souhaiterions pour
comprendre toute la portée de ce questionnement, analyser la notion de témoignage in absentia à
partir du champ antillais, où l’écrivain n’a d’autre choix que de recourir à cette stratégie pour dire son
passé longtemps repoussé "aux confins d’une non-histoire imposée" comme le disait Édouard Glissant.
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Ce dernier, constatant que le passé antillais est "un combat sans témoin", considérait que l’écrivain
devait porter le témoignage manquant, et composer ce passé nécessaire à la mémoire collective en
ayant "une vision prophétique du passé". Cette idée a majoritairement été débattue dans le cadre des
études sur la fiction romanesque. Nous voudrions la reprendre au regard de la poésie du Guyanais Léon
Gontran Damas, du Guadeloupéen Sonny Rupaire et du Martiniquais Joseph Polius, dans le but
d’interroger le rapport qu’entretient le sujet poétique avec l’histoire de la Traite, d’appréhender autant
son rôle (au sens où il fait acte d’histoire), que sa condition (au sens où il subit le passé). Le poète et le
poème sont les témoins et témoignage de cette histoire présente de manière lancinante chez le peuple
antillais si l’on se réfère aux travaux de Glissant sur la vision prophétique. Mais ce discours testimonial
ne véhicule pas tant un savoir historique qu’un désiré historique, témoignage d’un malaise social : aussi
montrerons-nous à partir d’une analyse stylistique, comment les sentiments formulés, naissant d’une
connaissance ou méconnaissance du passé, affectent le discours poétique.
La dette envers la parole inaccomplie des déshumanisés : Jacques Brault, poète et témoin de l’Histoire
Nathalie Watteyne (University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
Presenting Author: Nathalie Watteyne
Quelle est la légitimité du témoin absent en littérature après les génocides et à quel travail de mémoire
et de deuil nous invite-il en évoquant la béance du non-sens et son mal moral face à notre dignité
perdue? Tout au long de son œuvre, Jacques Brault répond à l’affirmation d’Adorno selon laquelle
"Écrire un poème après Auschwitz est barbare, et cela ronge également la connaissance qui s’explique
pourquoi il est devenu impossible aujourd’hui d’écrire des poèmes", une idée que nuancera plus tard le
philosophe allemand au nom du droit à l’expression de la "sempiternelle souffrance". Dans ses poèmes,
l’écrivain québécois revient sur les victimes de la barbarie nazie et d’autres génocides, marquant ainsi
un engagement envers notre condition historique. Dans l’essai Chemins perdus, chemins trouvés, il met
en place une poétique où le négatif trouve place dans le travail de composition. Dans notre
communication, nous voudrons croiser les idées de Paul Ricœur, qui militent en faveur "d’une politique
de la juste mémoire", et la vision de Brault, qui prend en compte la parole empêchée des déshumanisés
dans l’écriture, assignant à la mémoire poétique une "fonction véritative", par-delà le souvenir et
l’imagination.
Plus haut que les flammes… Puisque le poème se fait témoin des incendies du monde
Nicoletta Dolce (University of Montréal, Canada)
Presenting Author: Nicoletta Dolce
Le recueil Plus haut que les flammes de Louise Dupré, récipiendaire du Grand Prix du Gouverneur
Général en 2011 pour cette œuvre, nous propose, d’entrée de jeu, un univers infernal. "Ton poème a
surgit/de l’enfer" (p. 13) constate, dans le premier vers, le je lyrique féminin qui, tout en se prêtant au
jeu du tutoiement de lui-même, ne glisse jamais dans le dédoublement ou la dissociation. Après être
revenue de la visite du camp de concentration et d’extermination d’Auschwitz, une femme "aux yeux
brûlés vifs" (p. 13) se tient debout face à la folie carnassière du monde, un enfant à ses côtés. Son corps
de douleur, dont les pas contiennent tout le sang du monde, ne se ploie pas au désespoir, car elle
semble vouloir préserver l’innocence de cet enfant, image fragile d’une survie existentielle. Son poème,
alors, se fait témoin des incendies du monde, afin de voir haut et loin dans l’avenir. Si le savoir est un
ensemble de connaissances apprises, entre autres, par l’expérience, comment l’expérience
concentrationnaire nous est-elle transmise dans ce recueil? Quel témoignage peut offrir une femme qui
n’a pas vécu directement l’horreur d’Auschwitz et dont le "souvenir est un carré/blanc sur fond blanc"
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(p. 62) ? Quelle sorte de savoir cette femme partage-t-elle avec nous et qu’est-ce que rend ce partage si
universel et atemporel ?
2.2
Panel session: Narrative and performativity
Chair: Lynette Frey (Victoria University, Australia)
The polysemous text contains a variety of narratives that are contingently produced and reproduced
according to the methodology of a given reading. This panel explores the way in which literal and
symbolic narrative devices perform and contest different forms of knowledge in a selection of "outsider"
texts. We examine writing by Anita Brookner, Patrick White, Lionel Fogarty, Aimé Césaire and Gail Jones
to investigate how narrative authority in constructions of self, gender, sexuality, race and temporality is
stabilised and destabilised through intertextual strategies, recombinations of oral and written practices,
aesthetics of sensuality and traction and retraction. Peta Mayer demonstrates ways in which narrative
can be used as a hermeneutic device by using the figure of syllepsis and a narrative of declension to
construct and stage the performance of the narrative personae of the degenerate in Anita Brookner’s
Falling Slowly (1998). Natalie Day explores Part II of Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story (1963), illuminating
the major expressive qualities of his narrative: boundary dissolution, embodiment and sensuality. Scott
McCulloch constructs an imaginary alliance between Négritude and Indigenous-Australian poetry in an
attempt to mirror the methodologies of these movements and to continue the challenging of narrative
possibilities. Lynette Frey looks to the ethical implications of narrative attempts to capture the
unspeakable and obscure subject in Gail Jones’ Dreams of Speaking (2006). We challenge the regulatory
production of epistemological authority in narratives which naturalise their representational practices
and suggest the power to create knowledge can be regenerated and contextualised through reading
strategies which seek transparency and mobility along the signifying chain.
The emotional narrative of Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story (1963)
Natalie Day (University of Western Sydney, Australia)
Presenting Author: Natalie Day
Patrick White experiences incidents from his life as a "synthesis of living sensuality" (1998 p27). As a
result, his fictional narratives are performed through expressions of sensation and embodiment. Patrick
White’s The Aunt’s Story illustrates emotional intelligence. The novel’s protagonist, Theodora, is a
character whose thoughts are made tangible. Patrick White employs a chronology of expression, from
Theodora’s disengagement with society to the intensified engagement with her mind. The Aunt’s Story
expresses embodiment by merging her thoughts with the landscape and atmosphere, and animating the
objects of that space – ultimately, her narrative presents a movement between the literal and the
figurative. The most prominent example of boundary dissolution is in the second part of The Aunt’s
Story, which takes place entirely in Theodora’s imagination. In this paper I intend to look at this section
of the novel in detail, illuminating episodes that utilise modes of embodiment: "Only in the jardin
exotique, because silence had been intensified, and extraneous objects had been reduced, thoughts
would fall more loudly, and the soul, left with little to hide behind, must forsake its queer opaque
manner of life and come out into the open" (White, 1963 p159). Interpretation of this kind of emotional
knowledge, this sensual language, reveals a heightened state of consciousness. Because of her damaging
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past relationships she has developed a scrupulous sense of self. Through Theodora the reader
experiences the sincere psychological repercussions of isolation and solitariness. By exploring one
woman's emotional experience on this familiar scale, we begin to elucidate the murkiness of madness.
The feelings of Theodora, expressed in White’s narrative, legitimise the obscurity of her existence.
Experiments in exile: A comparison of the négritude movement and indigenous-Australian poetry
Scott McCulloch (Independent researcher, Australia)
Presenting Author: Scott McCulloch
"Words? As we handle quarters of the world, as we marry delirious continents, as we break down
steaming doors, words, oh yes, words! but words of fresh blood, words which are tidal waves and
erysipelas and malarias and lavas and bush-fires, blazes of flesh, and blazes of cities" (Césaire 1939, p.
99). In Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1939), Aimé Césaire produced an emancipatory prosepoem that splits and mangles language and written-word forms to evoke the experiences of living in the
shadows of slavery-induced exile. Combining an aural musicality from oral literary forms, as well as a
corporeal embodiment of the self interpellated into the work, Césaire expanded the realms of narrative
and authorial possibility. Working in a similarly subversive style, Indigenous-Australian poet, Lionel
Fogarty, tears open the English language in a hope to reify the bewildering experiences of language
colonisation to his audience:
To write I have to use
a medium
that is not mine.
If I don't succeed, bear with me.
I see words beyond any acceptable meaning
And this is how I express my dreaming
(Fogarty 1982).
In this paper, I intend to entangle the poetry of the Négritude movement with Aboriginal poetry to
create solidarity and a celebratory performance of exile. The paper will pay primary focus to the
performativity of Césaire and Fogarty’s work, while also exploring Francophone writers such as Léopold
Senghor, Léon-Gontran Damas; and Indigenous-Australian writers such as Ali Cobby Eckermann,
Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Alexis Wright and Paddy Roe. Rarely conceived of in the same breath, I intend to
analyse how these two movements of contemporary poetry can be aligned through explorations of
decolonisation and permutations on language. Through their highly personal and vivid styles, these
writers create obscure knowledges that construct their own epistemological authorship and power.
Writing orphic: The unspeakable subject in the work of Gail Jones
Lynette Frey (Victoria University, Australia)
Presenting Author: Lynette Frey
In her essay "Without Stars (a small essay on grief)" (1998), Gail Jones accounts her experience of grief
following the suicide of her closest friend: "in the nocturne that prevails I read both myself and my
friend as somehow falling away, back into decreating darkness, down and down, as though "going
under"…Mourning, for me, becomes Eurydice. Even as I attempt to write Orphic” (1998, p.143). Jones
describes the dual subject position which the writing of loss entails: a position of submersion (of ‘going
under’) and of surfacing again, alone and yet haunted. In Jones’ third novel, Dreams of Speaking (2006),
her protagonist, Alice, cannot bring herself to speak about her deceased friend Mr Sakamoto, "to
recover this man too soon by formations of words" (2006, p.17). Alice acknowledges the difficulty of
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narrating those ineffable and unrepresentable aspects of experience, and yet her desire to give an
account of her friend also bespeaks a hunger for narrative and a compulsion to conjure the subject
through language. This paper will describe the twin processes of interpellation and interpolation at
work in various fictional and fictocritical texts by Jones. Jones’ texts narrate a calling-into-being that
simultaneously disrupts and corrupts the stability and coherence of her subject. The body behind the
words, however opaque, is constantly being foregrounded in a way that exceeds and obscures the
language that is used to describe it. In doing so, the limits of narrative in performing and understanding
the self are exposed. I ask what sort of ethics, if any, might be generated from Jones’ critical hesitation
to speak? And what other modes of narrative might provide a means of writing and reading the
unspeakable?
2.3
Panel session: Narrative medicine in primary care geriatrics
Chairs: Lewis Eugene Mehl-Madrona, Barbara J. Mainguy (Coyote Institute, USA)
The panel will explore narrative medicine in primary care geriatrics. We explore the power of the
physician to influence outcome with his or her stories alone and how some of these stories can have a
nocebo effect (negative) which will last for years and even into the next generation. The stories that we
tell our patients matter for the prepare patients for what to expect and expectations play a powerful
role in medical outcomes. We provide examples from our clinical practice: a woman with vascular
dementia who can co-write poetry and be joyful, a recently bereaved patient who chose to sit in silence
for 10 minutes with his GP and felt the benefit, a patient supported by text messages whilst going
through some dark hours. These presentations challenge the medical narrative that tells people they
always have to be diabetic or to have coronary heart disease, their cancers can’t improve by themselves,
their back injuries will leave permanent damage, they will never get over traumatic life events. We
acknowledge that we physicians don’t understand how the body works well enough to explain
coherently how stress affects the body! Specifically, Dr. Mehl-Madrona addresses how narrative
approaches can increase a sense of meaning and pride in one’s life at the end of life and how this has
positive medical outcomes. Ms. Mainguy reports on a collaborative project with Drs. Young and MehlMadrona in which training clinic staff in narrative competence resulted in reduced frequency of visits for
patients who came often to a general practice in England. Then Dr. Young describes the use of poetry as
a narrative technique with dementia patients. We close with Mr. Clerq’s more philosophical comments
on the field in general.
Making meaning at the end of life
Lewis Eugene Mehl-Madrona, Barbara J. Mainguy (Coyote Institute, USA)
Presenting Author: Lewis Eugene Mehl-Madrona, Barbara J. Mainguy
The task of the geriatric physician is unique. The job is reflexive, a looking backwards to make meaning
and purpose. As we approach the end of life, we feel compelled to ask what it all meant. We want to
have made a difference. We want our lives to matter. Patients frequently experience depression in
response to negative evaluations with regard to these questions. We present an approach to finding
meaning and purpose for people who have lost sight of this. Using a modification of the Life Story
Interview of Dan McAdams of Northwestern University, we assist clients to structure a story of their
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lives as a heroic journey. Our patients relate better to movies than to novels, so we structure their lives
in that way as a series of scenes. We seek the high points, the low points, and the turning points. We
seek to understand the villains they have encountered, the obstacles they have overcome, and the
attitude with which they have pursued the journey. We explore their favorite heroes and villains and
create embellished narratives of epic proportions. Art figures into this process as patients create
collages of images to support their experiences. The process can be done in the context of a longer
primary care appointment of 20-40 minutes spread over multiple visits with longer intervals. Patients
are encouraged to play with the ideas in the time between meetings and family members are brought
into the process. Younger relatives can expand the activities into electronic media. We present
examples in which isolation is overcome and depression is resolved through the transformation of
story. The change occurs in how the events are evaluated and in how they are told to the audience
which is usually the doctor and the family.
Reduction in frequency of health care utilization in association with narrative training
Barbara J. Mainguy, Venetia Young, Lewis Mehl-Madrona (Coyote Institute, USA)
Presenting Author: Barbara J. Mainguy, Venetia Young, Lewis Mehl-Madrona
What happens when all staff in a general practice are trained in a narrative understanding of patients’
lives? This question was raised in a general practice in Penrith, Cumbria, England. All staff were trained
in appreciating the storied aspect of patients’ lives and their illnesses, including receptionists, nurses,
health visitors, and physicians. The staff, including reception and medical assistants, was encouraged to
facilitate patients recounting of their stories. We asked if this approach would reduce the number of
visits that frequent users of primary care made to the general practice. We speculated that perhaps
people come often to the general practice because they have not found narrative closure. They do not
feel that their story has been told. We recorded the number of visits by patients before and after the
training. Data included chronic diseases for which registries exist, age, gender, and use of psychotropic
medications. Narrative training of staff was shown to statistically significantly reduce the number of
visits per year by patients who had previously been high utilizers. Costs of care were reduced. Another
opportunity emerged to evaluate the effects of narrative training. The practice in which the training had
been done merged with a practice that had not received the training. Review of their records revealed
no drop in frequency of visits during the same time that visits dropped in the practice that had received
the training. The data showed an interaction of the effect with age, with more pronounced drops in
frequency of visits occurring in geriatric populations. We conclude that all members of a practice,
including non-medical staff, can function as members of a narrative team, asking circular questions,
being attentive to context, encouraging conversations, and being curious. Each interaction of the
patient influences the evolving story, moving it toward greater clarity and coherence.
Brief poetic encounters with dementia in geriatric practice
Venetia Young (Coyote Institute, USA)
Presenting Author: Venetia Young
Many people decry the idea of the brief Primary Care medical consultation: 10-20 minutes is too short
for anything meaningful, they say. Yet poets love the haiku as a brief and intense poetic form capturing
the essence of a theme. Twitter can change the world in 140 letters. A text message can destroy or uplift
a soul in several words. Simply being in the presence of someone who has a deepened sense of
knowing and being, someone who can tap into metaphor, someone who can tap into age appropriate
literature and film, is healing in itself. General practice (primary care) provides the unique opportunity
for multiple brief encounters, which can span decades. The primary care consultation is the haiku of
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poetry or the brief story of fiction writers. How long does a story need to be to change a life? How many
words are required? Who needs to hear it? Each patient encounter is a short vignette in a chapter that is
part of the longer life cycle, a part of the story of the patient. This is a qualitative about the use of poetry
in the primary care setting to encounter patients with dementia. In one representative story, we
explore poems written with a patient in early dementia who forgot she wrote them, though all the
words were hers. The doctor simply ordered them. The patient reads them each morning and is
immensely proud of them and has learned to remember that she wrote them. Even in dementia we see
that the word association and alliteration is stroking, that the patients’ memories of feelings is intact
and that her desire to feel differently is very strong. In those moments of writing she was no longer a
forgetful and repetitive patient as she came alive and happy.
2.4
Panel session: Experiences of illness and trauma and the power of
narrative
Chair: Teresa Casal (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Portugal)
As Richard Kearney claims, in line with Paul Ricoeur, the "transition from nature to narrative, from time
suffered to time enacted and enunciated" (Kearney 2002, 3) is part of what makes our condition human,
shareable and memorable. Narrative knowledge is thus part of how we face existential perplexities and
seek to come to terms with life-changing experiences. As cogently argued by Trisha Greenhalgh and
Brian Hurwitz (1998) and Rita Charon (2008), among others, narrative and interpretation play a crucial
role in clinical judgment, which relies upon a science-based hermeneutic procedure for ‘diagnosis,
prognosis, and treatment of illness’ (Kathryn Montgomery 2006, 38). Understanding the role of
narrative knowledge in clinical practice and developing the skills to interpret the verbal and non-verbal
signs whereby we communicate our experience will therefore assist healthcare practitioners in
providing better care. With that aim in mind, this panel of researchers from the Narrative & Medicine
Project of ULICES – University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies looks into fictional and non-fictional
narratives of illness and trauma to examine how disruptive experiences are articulated and made
shareable through narrative, and how narrative knowledge may contribute to counteract the discourses
of normalcy and help the writers and/or tellers recover from self-alienation and post-traumatic memory.
Indeed, we argue that memoir-writing and storytelling are active ways of fostering the processes of
healing that involve self-analysis, self-recreation, mourning and often forgiving, as well as an ongoing
dialogue between oneself and others.
Fragmented texts and diseased bodies in Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Judite de
Carvalho's Tanta gente, Mariana
Diana V. Almeida (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Diana V. Almeida
Both Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1890) and Maria Judite de Carvalho's "Tanta
gente, Mariana" [So Many People, Mariana] (1959) recount the progressive mental and physical decay
of the female protagonists, whose bodies are textualized and reveal the ideological tensions that tinge
the medical discourse of normalcy. The first text was written while the author was under a rest cure,
forbidden to ever again touch pen or pencil by Dr. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia, who treated several
prominent members of the U.S. female intelligentsia in the late 19th century, and whose clinical
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approach changed after having read this short story. The second text’s autobiographical resonances are
more oblique but the novella seems to depict Carvalho’s lifelong depression, probably rooted in a
traumatic childhood, when she was raised by two old, strict aunts, till her mother’s early death and her
father’s disappearance, which may have caused her inability to later develop a sense of emotional
security. My essay provides a comparative analysis of these texts’ structural and thematic similarities,
namely their fragmentary character in the form of journal entries that the protagonists jot down,
without much regard for coherence or cohesion. The progressively disturbed consciousness of the firstperson narrators contrasts with the authority of the medical establishment, represented by male
doctors who either infantilize their patients or refuse to decipher the cryptic messages of the medical
exams, only meant for "initiate", as Mariana states. Both stories can thus be read as feminist cautionary
tales that present the struggle of the female writer to enter the androcentric discursive realm, only to be
silenced by madness or by impeding death. My emphasis will rest on this self-reflexive component, on
the poor pragmatic communicative skills that these doctor figures evince and on other premises for
interpreting the suffering bodies that the narratives hint at.
Illness and creative work in Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield
Alda Correia (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New U. of Lisbon, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Alda Correia
The personal and professional affinities between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield have been
regularly studied. One of the most pertaining is to understand the way their creativity responded to
illness and suffering. In The Flight of the mind – Virginia Woolf’s Art and Manic depressive Illness (1992),
Thomas Caramagno reexamines Woolf’s madness and her fiction in the light of recent discoveries about
the biological basis of manic-depressive illness, contending that her novels dramatize her struggle to
read her inconstant perceptual relations with objects correctly and to establish a bipolar sense of
identity. By imagining and mastering psychic fragmentation in fiction, she restored form and value to
her self. The same effect can be achieved when readers respond to a text according to research into
inter hemispheric processing. In a different way but still relating to bipolar perception Katherine
Mansfield writes about hundreds of selves, divided selves, about her "two kick offs in the writing game",
"real joy" and a “sense of everything doomed to disaster”, of being so "caged" that she will have to
"sing". Both use writing to try to achieve peace, steadiness and unity that mental disease and physical
suffering caused them. Our proposal is to compare the literary processes through which both writers
transformed illness into their art, illustrating it with works as The Waves, "The Canary" and "The Fly".
Illness, postmemory and the narratives of trauma: Deirdre Madden’s and Mary Morriss’s maladies of
the body and soul
Zuzanna Sanches (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Zuzanna Sanches
Since the 1960s many women writers in Ireland have been making a conscious decision to break away
from the tradition of writing about the nation rather than using women’s collective memory, often
imprinted on bodies and minds and creating a less paternalistic and male centred discourse in favour of
a more introspective writing. Following Paul Ricoeur’s manifesto that memory is about forgiving and not
forgetting (Memory, History, Forgetting) one can see the complexity of the temporality of illness that
does not only leave visible marks but lingers on in the "postmemory" of trauma and produces emotional
effect leading to depression, anxiety and even suicide with effects on the most immediate generations.
Many narratives of illness prove that healing is a long-term process and that the memory of it is
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inextinguishable, and in fact should not be unless a thorough process of mourning and forgiving is
carried out. Overcoming an illness does not mean forgetting that it ever existed, "laying under it from
the very first". (Madden Remembering Light and Stone, 165) Trauma can manifest itself in manifold
ways, through depression, different personality disorders and secondary illness: these are all either
symptoms or defence mechanisms against suffering. This paper analyses some of the most recent
writing by Irish contemporary women writers born in the 1960s whose writing has been a catalyst and a
mirror reflections of the changes on the literary scene in Ireland. It will focus on the narratives of illness
in Mary Morrissy’s The Mother of Pearl and The Pretender, as well as Deirdre Madden’s Remembering
Light and Stone. An analysis of the three novels will look into the pervasive character of illness if treated
as a series of symptoms rather than a reality that encompasses the mind and the spirit of the patient as
well as his or her family and community.
From fiction to memoir: Writing illness
Teresa Casal (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Teresa Casal
What happens when fiction writers turn to memoir to write about their experience of illness? How
much fiction, fact or metaphor do they need to write their memoir? What sort of questions do they
share with their readers? To what extent are their illness memoirs indicative of how we seek to
articulate, communicate, and make sense of life-changing experiences? To what extent can such illness
memoirs be useful in the training of healthcare professionals? These are the questions pursued in this
paper. They will be addressed via the study of illness memoirs written by two fiction writers who
resorted to non-fiction to bear witness to their personal experience of illness, namely Hilary Mantel, in
Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir (2003), and José Cardoso Pires in De Profundis: Valsa Lenta [De
Profundis: Slow Waltz] (1997). Mantel seeks to articulate her experience of childlessness and account
for her ten-year ordeal of severe pain that was repeatedly dismissed as psychosomatic and subjected to
psychiatric treatment. Cardoso Pires attempts to salvage the memory of the time when he lost his
memory, hence his identity, as a result of a stroke. Both experiences are as familiar as they are alien to
their narrators, and both authors resort to metaphor and other literary devices to convey their sense of
self-alienation, while openly sharing their meta-narrative doubts with their readers. They alert their
readers to the delusions of authorship, of always being ‘the one with the last word,’ as Mantel puts it,
and caution against the seductions of fiction even when, and precisely because, they resort to fictional
devices in their effort to give voice to their estranged bodies. These professional writers’ commitment
to, and qualms about, narrative thus highlight the challenges faced by lay narrators attempting to
articulate their own experience of illness.
2.5
Paper session: Rôle du récit dans l’histoire des théories linguistiques
Moderator: Sylvie Patron
Comprendre, expliquer, raconter: Nature et fonctions des récits dans l'histoire des idées linguistiques
Christian Puech (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France)
Presenting Author: Christian Puech
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On a souvent dit que l'histoire des sciences modernes commençait avec B. de Fontenelle (1740) et ses
"Eloges des Académiciens avec l'histoire de l'Académie Royale des sciences en 1699". Si c'est le cas, ce
commencement inaugure certainement une attitude particulièrement ambivalente vis à vis de la
restitution de l'histoire des savoirs. D'un côté en effet l'histoire des sciences (se) "raconte". De ce point
de vue, l'éloge des Académiciens renouvelle et prolonge l'histoire de l'exemplarité des "hommes
illustres" dans un registre (épidictique) qui relève de la plus haute antiquité. Mais d'un autre côté, ce
plaisir "qui renferme beaucoup d'instruction" ne porte pas en lui-même sa propre fin puisqu'il s'agit
surtout de " ...voir la route que l'esprit humain a tenue et, pour parler géométriquement, cette espèce
de progression, dont les intervalles sont d'abord grands, et vont ensuite naturellement en se serrant
toujours plus" (t.1 P. 148). Cette "progression géométrique" restituée relève-t-elle encore des catégories
narratives? Sa limite (sa fin?) serait celle d'un savoir absolu de la co-présence de tous les moments qui
l'ont constitué. Dans l'histoire des savoirs sur le langage et les langues, on est loin de cette histoire
cumulative: faite d'oublis partiels de de réminiscences imprévisibles, prise dans une temporalité jamais
donnée d'avance et peu linéaire, marquée par des Ecoles aux cloisons étanches qui produisent des récits
homogénéisant les différences...les savoirs linguistiques se racontent plutôt dans une partition tranché
entre le "périmé" (qui peut être oublié) et le "sanctionné" dont la valeur se passe de tout récit. A partir
de quelques exemples empruntés à des traditions et des époques différentes de l'histoire des idées
linguistiques, on voudrait montrer l'intérêt ou la nécessité d'une histoire des grands récits, des
différentes modalités et fonctions qui leur ont été assignées.
Quels récits pour l’histoire de la linguistique ?
Valérie Raby (Université Paris IV - Sorbonne, France)
Presenting Author: Valérie Raby
Les réflexions menées ces quarante dernières années par les théoriciens de l’histoire sur le rôle du récit
dans l’écriture de l’histoire peuvent-elles être appliquées à l’histoire des sciences humaines, et plus
précisément à l’histoire de la linguistique ? Existe-t-il, dans l’historiographie actuelle des sciences du
langage, quelque chose d’analogue à la réhabilitation du récit dans la pensée de l’historiographie
générale ? Si l’on considère les travaux constituant l’histoire de la linguistique en discipline depuis ces
trente dernières années, on est tenté de considérer que le discours proprement narratif – au sens étroit
du terme – n’en est qu’une forme marginale, tolérée dans certains genres discursifs seulement (la
biographie de linguiste, l’histoire des institutions ou des « écoles »). Plus encore, la catégorie du récit ne
semble pas pertinente pour l’épistémologie historique. Pourtant, il est aisé de constater que les
premiers écrits consacrés à l’histoire de la linguistique, rédigés à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, sont bien
structurés comme des récits : ils associent logique narrative et logique argumentative dans la forme
discursive stabilisée du "tableau des progrès de l’esprit humain". Ces premières historiographies sont
conçues pour doter le mouvement intellectuel de la Grammaire générale d’un récit-cadre assurant à la
discipline un programme scientifique à l’historicité explicite : son horizon de projection est déterminé
par une certaine structure de son horizon de rétrospection, qui permet d’assigner à la désormais célèbre
Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal le statut de texte fondateur. On se propose, à partir de
l’analyse de ces premières historiographies et du rôle qu’elles donnent à la GGR dans leurs diverses
mises en intrigues, d’interroger la relation entre ces histoires-récits et les formes de l’inscription de
l’œuvre des Messieurs dans quelques-uns des textes les plus marquants de l’histoire de la linguistique
au XXe siècle.
Hypotheses fingo : Récits, scenarii, et résistance au phénoménisme dans les sciences du langage
Didier Samain (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Didier Samain
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Les théories scientifiques modernes se définissent volontiers comme des scénarios, une manière de
souligner la sous-détermination des modèles par les données empiriques, mais aussi d’éviter de les
opposer frontalement aux récits. Ce pragmatisme, corrélé à une conception extensive de la notion de
scénario, qui ne désigne alors qu’une mise en corrélation plausible de données expérimentales, semble
bien postérieur à la rupture philosophique initiée par les phénoménismes de Darwin ou de Mach. En
linguistique, la grammaire historique et comparée, constituée en programme de recherche cohérent, se
devait d’être tout à la fois empiriste et phénoméniste, et l’article de la Société de Linguistique de Paris
interdisant les communications sur l’origine du langage, c’est-à-dire un certain type de récit scientifique,
est resté célèbre. Mais ce geste inaugural n’a pas effacé toute dimension diégétique. Le surplus
diégétique a d’abord joué un rôle structurel analogue aux scenarii scientifiques contemporains, en
fournissant un dispositif nécessaire à la mise en corrélation des données empiriques. Mais bizarrement
la critique de cet artifice descriptif, y compris de l’invention de "l’indo-européen", au profit de
descriptions moins ontologiques du rapport entre les langues, n’en pas fait disparaître le principe
même, qui s’est donc maintenu au-delà de ce qui pouvait apparaître comme sa péremption
épistémologique. Il reste sollicité comme tel en diachronie des langues (par exemple dans l’école
française ou chez Jespersen), pour modéliser l’ontogenèse (ainsi chez les linguistes influencés par
Herbart), ou encore, cas plus étonnant encore, lorsque bien plus tard un philosophe comme Quine
continue par ce biais à lester ontologiquement de simples expériences de pensée. Sauf à n’y voir qu’un
phénomène d’inertie épistémologique, cette récurrence pose un problème à l’historien des sciences
qu’on tentera d’éclairer.
2.6
Paper session: Narrative, violence and the law
Moderator: Tamar Shapira
Vigilante justice: Guatemalan narratives of taking the law into your own hands
Susan Berk-Seligson (Vanderbilt University, USA), Mitchell Seligson (Vanderbilt University, USA)
Presenting Author: Susan Berk-Seligson, Michell Seligson
Interviews conducted in Guatemela between 2011 and 2013 with 139 community members (specifically,
community development leaders, police officers, schoolteachers, and clergy), together with 28 focus
groups held in that country has yielded a large number of narratives. Many of these narratives deal with
violence (e.g., gang violence, domestic violence), and some have to do with a phenomenon that is found
not only in Guatemala, but in Mexico and through much of the Andean regions of South America,
specifically, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. That phenomenon is alternatively referred to as ‘vigilante
justice,’ ‘lynching,’ ‘taking the law into your own hands,’ and ‘extralegal justice.’ In its most extreme
form, communities collectively will apprehend a person suspected of having committed a crime, and
then proceed to either beat him or her to death or burn them alive, torching them with gasoline. Many
of the narratives related by these speakers are ‘generic stories,’ referring to the repeated, on-going
actions of communities that cannot rely on the services of state law-enforcement. They are mostly
‘detached narratives’ rather than personal narratives, since they usually are about the experiences of
other people. They form part of the study of ‘narrative-in-context’ (Georgakopoulou’s 2006). In telling
their story, these narrators are “simultaneously oriented to the immediate interaction and to wider
social debates” (Billig 1987, in Taylor 2007). At the same time, they are doing positioning, aligning
themselves either with the communities carrying out the justice or with the State. Simultaneously, they
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either reveal detailed knowledge of these highly violent acts, or purposefully relate these events in an
obscure, vague manner. The analysis examines the linguistic mechanisms used to achieve obfuscation
versus illumination of knowledge of community violence.
The offensive shift to the normative trap of legal narratives
Otto Pfersmann (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
Presenting Author: Otto Pfersmann
Legal acts, especially but not exclusively judicial opinions, often bear factual recollections considered
relevant for the correct issuing of the act itself: a parliamentary bill is preceded by motivations; a judicial
decision (be it in civil or common law systems) comprehends a presentation of the facts of the case,
which is the matter of the judgement. However, the art of presenting the facts in a certain light is also a
traditional device used by lawyers in order to entice decision-makers (judges, executive officials,
members of parliament etc.) to view things in a favourable manner. A certain amount of „normative
bias“may be unavoidable, but not insurmountable through diligent reading. In recent times, though,
legal scholarship as well as judicial opinion-writing seems to consider the normative drive of factual
narratives not as something to be analytically neutralised, but on the contrary as an element of legal
development to be promoted and used not only in order to obtain certain results, but also in order to
perform them. This development raises several interesting questions: 1) it draws on the on-going
discussion as to whether factual and normative statements may be clearly distinguished as a matter of
philosophical semantics; 2) why and how did the offensive shift to the normative bias appear and why
does it encounter se few critical reaction; 3) isn´t the shift paradoxical in the sense that if legal actors
commonly indulge in a normative bias, legal readers will be particularly attentive not to be induced in
error, such that it may rather loose it´s purported scope; 4) how can legal decision-making be
“impartial” if it is guided by the aim of narrative swindling? The normative trap in legal narratives might
be a very bad thing for legal developments and a highly interesting evolution in the para-fictional use of
narratives.
Fugitive democracy narratives
Mark Gerald Kingwell (University of Toronto, Canada)
Presenting Author: Mark Gerald Kingwell
What is the role of narrative in democratic theory? Many political philosophers, concerned with the
mechanisms of justification alone, would deny there is such a role, or at least deny claims that narrative
is a central aspect of democratic culture AND justification. In this paper, I combine general claims about
the 'narrative hypothesis' in personal identity with the ongoing critical projec that Sheldon Wolin first
labelled 'fugitive democracy'. My aim is to sketch the basic conditions of a genre I want to call the
'fugitive democracy narrative' -- stories of flight into resistance, journeys of emancipation, tales of
endless contestation.
2.7
Paper session: Gendered stories (II)
Moderator: Leor Cohen
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Being queer: Narratives about body, gender and community
Claire Carter, Krista Baliko (University of Regina, Canada)
Presenting Author: Claire Carter, Krista Baliko
Within queer community in Canada there are ongoing struggles with respect to the recognition of
diverse embodiments of gender; from femme invisibility, trans acceptance, preference for androgyny
and marginalization of two-spirit community. This paper is based on interviews with thirty diversely
identified queer women and individuals from Toronto, Vancouver and Regina. Using narrative analysis,
this paper examines meanings ascribed to being queer and thus how queer comes into being or is
foreclosed in various contexts. Socio-cultural anxiety about women’s body size and feminine
appearance, alongside narrow representation of queer individuals in popular culture serve to discipline
and limit boundaries of (acceptable) embodiment. Individual narratives reveal complex and
contradictory negotiations of gender and the body that generate knowledge about the changing
relationship between bodies, identity and community.
Two women chronicle the white plague: A “Herstory” of America’s magic mountain
Jean Schiller Mason (Ryerson University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Jean Schiller Mason
In Writing a Woman’s Life, Carolyn Heilbrun decries the scarcity of women’s “accounts of lesser lives…
thwarted lives, lives cut short, lives miraculous in their unapplauded achievement.” This paper examines
a pair of chronologically, geographically and rhetorically related memoirs written by two female
tuberculosis patients who sought treatment at North America’s “magic mountain” in the era before
effective drug therapy (1890-1950). While one woman chose the accepted allopathic sanatoria route,
the other followed an alternative naturopathic regime, each guided by her male mentor—a physician
and a woodsman respectively. Both patients followed their respective treatments for several decades
and both later published autobiographies that may be interpreted simply as tales of personal agency
and triumph over adversity when viewed within a biomedical model of disease that valorizes medical
personnel and science. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s “rhetoric of motives,” a “dramatistic” reading that
considers the two women’s stories as parallel narratives reveals a more complex interpretation wherein
the two male mentors emerge as co-agents whose own agendas both advance and constrain the
agencies of the two women and, moreover, reflect the social, economic and political tensions of the
community. This (re)interpretation is framed within a bio-cultural model of disease that regards patients
and their contextualizing worlds as central to the illness/wellness experience. Ultimately, this more
critically nuanced reading offers insight into the challenge of writing and reading herstory within history.
(Paper includes archival images.)
Counterviewing injurious speech in narrative research on trauma
Catrina Brown (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Catrina Brown
Women’s stories of trauma often reveal uncertainty, minimization, and self-blame. This paper explores
community-based research findings on women’s narratives illustrating powerful, yet uncertain, stories
of chronic, multiple, and severe trauma. This paper argues that 1) research needs to recognize that
posttraumatic responses often involve uncertainty and ambivalence about telling stories of trauma; 2)
uncertainty is not just a product of trauma but also reflects the influence of the dominant discourse on
women and trauma that creates fragmented memory of the events and supports blaming women for
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the violence and minimizing the serious of the violence; 3) uncertainty reveals the dangers of speaking
and often a struggle with speaking and hiding simultaneously; and 4) research questions can be
designed to counterview dominant discourse which will bring forward the prevalence and nature of the
violence. This paper will argue that emancipatory research can develop purposeful counterviewing
interview questions which explore the dominant discourse that pathologizes women, as well as
potential preferred stories of research participants. By disrupting the dominant discourse,
counterviewing questions can also illuminate the prevalence and nature of violence against women in
patriarchal society and emphasize men’s responsibility for this violence. Counterviewing is particularly
important when researchers acknowledge the constraints women face in telling their stories in the
context of dominant discourse and audiences that support this discourse. As I explore women’s stories
of violence, I am conscious of the dangers in speaking and the “absent but implicit” or those disqualified
parts of stories that lie beyond the dominant stories of self. Drawing on Michael White’s work , this
research attempts to bring the epistemological principles and practices of narrative therapy to the
broader field of narrative approaches and methodologies.
2.8
Paper session: Récits de voyage (I): factuels et fictionnels
Moderator: Claudia Roda
Quand le récit invente le savoir : La poétique édifiante du voyage infernal
Juliette Bourdier (Whitman College, USA)
Presenting Author: Juliette Bourdier
Le Moyen-Âge tend à utiliser des images surnaturelles ou fantastiques pour combler les vides d’un
savoir qui explore ses limites. Suivant cette démarche, et à partir du Ve siècle, le témoignage chrétien
d'incursions humaines dans l'autre monde se répand en Europe, et finit par former une abondante
littérature dont le but est de promouvoir un enseignement sur le salut de l'âme. C'est la collection de
ces nombreux textes, dont la formule suit des règles narratives très précises, qui va définir la géographie
de l'enfer et son organisation structurelle telle que nous les connaissons encore aujourd'hui. Ayant pour
fonction de transformer le faire par l'édification et la catharsis, elle utilise un savoir naturellement
inaccessible qui requiert un filtre pour être compris de celui qui le reçoit. Avec la période de
vernacularisation qui débute à la fin du XIe siècle, les auteurs laïques se familiarisent avec cet espace
qu'ils traduisent, et l’enfer devient un motif littéraire. Après avoir défini les caractéristiques du genre
infernal et son rôle dans la construction d'un savoir chrétien de l'au-delà, je me pencherai sur les
bouleversements que les adaptateurs vernaculaires françois ont apportés aux récits latins, en
démontrant qu'ils les ont libérés du carcan clérical, et ont ainsi permis la naissance, au XIIIe siècle, d'une
poétique laïque du voyage dans l'au-delà composée non plus à partir de traductions de textes latins
monacaux mais de créations performatives. Je montrerai qu'alors, ces nouveaux voyages ne peuvent
pas porter le même savoir que leurs homologues cisterciens au risque de le désacraliser. Afin
d'annoncer cette altérité au public, les auteurs modifient le format du récit, ils narrent leur propre
aventure, qui s'apparente à un pèlerinage vécu dans un songe, utilisent l'allégorie ou adoptent la
psychomachie. Ils affirment, ainsi, implicitement que le format d'un récit est intimement lié au savoir
qu'il transporte.
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Récits fictionnels de voyage : Explorer des mondes inconnus par la pensée scientifique
Eric Triquet, Jean-Loup Héraud, Philippe Lautesse, Philippe Jaussaud, Séverine Dérolez, Jean-Paul Ayinabuni, Fabrice Ferlin, Mohamed Soudani, Olfa Soudani, Adrien Vila Valls (Université Claude Bernard Lyon
1 - ENS de Lyon, France)
Presenting Author: Eric Triquet, Jean-Loup Héraud, Philippe Lautesse, Séverine Dérolez
Les récits fictionnels de voyage nous plongent dans l’imaginaire de mondes inconnus, contrefactuels en
ceci qu’ils obéissent à des lois ou des règles contraires à celle du monde empirique. Ces mondes obligent
les personnages, donc le lecteur, à changer de cadre de référence et d’instrumentation pour
appréhender les nouveaux phénomènes en jeu. C’est le cas pour ces nouveaux objets problématiques
que sont le « quanton » en mécanique quantique et de nouvelles espèces vivantes en histoire naturelle.
Notre projet distinguera deux catégories du récit fictionnel de voyage. Le voyage de l’explorateur en
référence aux grandes expéditions naturalistes du XVIII et XIX : à titre d’exemple, le récit imaginaire
d’Archibald Ruthmore à la recherche du monde des derniers Géants (Les derniers géants, F. Place,
2008). Le voyage métaphorique des « expériences de pensées », à l’image du « chat de Schrödinger »
(1935) qui met en scène et interroge la structure paradoxale de l’objet quantique : à titre d’exemple, le
roman biographique de P. Forest intitulé Le chat de Schrödinger (2013), ou la nouvelle de science-fiction
Diagrammes du vide (1990) de S. Baxter. Dans les deux cas, le récit de fiction permet d’explorer notre
monde par rapport à « une déformation cohérente du réel » (Malraux) : celle du monde des Géants et
celle du monde quantique dérivé du chat de Schrödinger. De tels détours par les récits de fiction
littéraires permettent d’initier, dans les champs disciplinaires considérés: un questionnement
épistémologique (entendu comme cadre de problématisation) pour la construction des connaissances.
Des stratégies et activités didactiques. L'originalité de notre contribution consiste donc à croiser une
approche fondée sur l'histoire des sciences (biographie de scientifique, obstacle à la genèse des savoirs)
et une approche didactique (conception de situations d'enseignement).
Discours scientifique et récit de voyage : Les observations des passages de Vénus en 1761 et 1769 et
les modalités de la communication des données astronomiques acquises lors d'expéditions extraeuropéennes
Camille Blachère (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Camille Blachère
Phénomène majeur pour la connaissance du système solaire, le passage de Vénus devant le Soleil
observé en 1761 et en 1769 a donné naissance à une littérature abondante qui a fasciné le monde
savant du XVIIIe siècle. Les résultats de ces diverses observations ont été véhiculés par le discours
scientifique traditionnel (correspondances institutionnelles et publications savantes), mais également
par un genre littéraire répondant à des codes précis, le récit de voyage (citons pour exemple Le voyage à
Rodrigues d'Alexandre Guy Pingré ou bien An account of the voyages (...) for making discoveries in the
Southern Hemisphere (…) de James Cook). Si la situation extra-européenne des expéditions explique en
grande partie l'importance du récit dans la communication des résultats, ce n'est pas pour autant la
seule interprétation possible. En effet, la comparaison entre récit de voyage autobiographique et
publications identifiables comme « scientifiques », pour une seule expédition et un seul astronome,
offre de nouvelles perspectives pour la compréhension des enjeux de la transmission des savoirs
astronomiques. L'adaptation de la forme écrite au public visé définit ainsi deux espaces de
communication aux règles distinctes, un espace savant, institutionnalisé, guidé par le souci d'efficacité
et un espace lettré, plus ouvert, transmettant diverses informations quasi-encyclopédiques, dans
lesquelles la part de l'astronomie est assez restreinte. L'étude de ce corpus me permettra donc d'étudier
parallèlement ces deux espaces de communication, ainsi que les deux modes d'énonciation qui en
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découlent, afin de questionner les enjeux de l'écriture sur la scène savante. En quoi les choix d'écriture
participent-ils à la production et la validation des savoirs acquis par l'observation lors d'expéditions ? De
quelle manière les savants définissent-ils à travers ces genres littéraires une figure de l'astronomeobservateur, homme de sciences, aventurier, homme du monde et homme de lettres ?
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WEDNESDAY
Parallel Session #3
3.1
Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 09:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: Narrative hermeneutics (I)
Chair: Hanna Meretoja (University of Tampere, Finland)
The contributions to this panel (and those to the panel Narrative Hermeneutics II) share an interest in
the ties between narrative and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a philosophical tradition that deals with
the ways humans understand their being in the world, especially by interpretive practices. But
hermeneutics is also an orientation that goes beyond the disciplinary limits of philosophy, pervading
many intellectual projects in the humanities, the social sciences, and parts of the medical and health
sciences. Narrative is one of these projects, and much of its study is influenced by, if not even explicitly
based on, the hermeneutic orientation. Exploring the interconnection of hermeneutics and narrative,
the panels are particularly concerned with two aspects. One is a certain understanding of narrative –
one that emphasizes narrative’s interpretive, dialogical, temporal, and historical dimensions, that is, its
hermeneutic nature. Narrative, on this view, implies in actu a number of hermeneutic moves and
qualities. The second aspect is a certain notion of hermeneutics – one that emphasizes its meaning as a
practice (and as the study of this practice) of human world- and self-understanding, and views narrative
as playing a crucial role in this understanding. Bringing together experts from literary, rhetorical,
narratological, psychological, psychoanalytical, and philosophical fields of hermeneutic inquiry, the two
panels set themselves the goal to begin a dialogue, a conversation, that sheds new light on the project
of a narrative hermeneutics and thus on some of the issues at the heart of Narrative and Knowing/Récit
et Savoir.
Whose story is it anyway? Ricoeur, life writing, hermeneutics
Colin Davis (Royal Holloway / University of London, UK)
Presenting Author: Colin Davis
A few years ago, the wartime record of the great hermeneutic thinker Paul Ricoeur was questioned. It
was suggested that he had downplayed the duration and extent of his support for Marshal Pétain and
the Vichy Régime in the early years of the Second World War, before and during his five years as a
prisoner of war. Ricoeur’s rebuttal was robust, detailed and utterly convincing. Yet his account of the
period in his intellectual autobiography, Réflexion faite (1995), can be seen as evasive, as if there were
after all something to hide. In a sense this is no more than a storm in a teacup. I do not believe for a
moment that Ricoeur was guilty of anything worse than what in retrospect we can view as a short-lived
error to which millions of others subscribed. Yet at the same time, his own hermeneutics, with its
emphasis on the text rather than the author, permits a reading of his life story which is at odds with his
attempt to maintain control of it. Ricoeur’s theoretical account of hermeneutic engagement rejects the
foreclosure of interpretation by reference to historical and biographical ‘facts’; yet for understandable
reasons he does not want his text, and the story of his life, to be ‘misunderstood’ in a manner which
would impugn his intellectual, political and moral reputation. This is a fascinating case of a hermeneutic
thinker who defends the openness of interpretation whilst nevertheless endeavouring to close down the
meaning of his own life story. In more general terms, what is at stake here is the tension between the
freedom and constraint of interpretation, when it is personally and ethically vital not to misinterpret
texts which nevertheless cannot pre-empt their reception.
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Beyond 'live or tell': Narrative hermeneutics, experience and dialogue
Hanna Meretoja (University of Tampere, Finland)
Presenting Author: Hanna Meretoja
This paper explores one of the overarching claims of narrative hermeneutics: that narrative is a mode of
interpreting experience and that living and telling, experience and its narrative interpretation, are
constantly entangled in ways that makes it problematic to posit a hierarchy between them. Arguments
"against narrativity" and cognitively-oriented narratologists frequently seem to take for granted such a
hierarchy, based on the assumption that there are pure, unmediated experiences that become distorted
when narrativised. For narrative hermeneutics, the fundamental temporality of experience entails that
the horizons of the past and future always already impregnate the present, seen as part of a continuous
interpretative process. I suggest that the hermeneutic continuum reaches from the basic interpretative
structure of experience to more complex forms of interpretation, a crucial form of which is narrative
understanding, productively conceptualizable as a form of reinterpretation. I elaborate the idea of
narrative as reinterpretation through a model of 'triple hermeneutics' which draws on Ricoeur's thinking
and emphasises the dialogical nature of narrative understanding. We reinterpret our experiences in a
dialogical relation to culturally mediated stories, and this is also frequently a dialogical process of
sharing experiences with others. I suggest that the hermeneutic conception of narrative as a mode of
reinterpreting experiences allows us not only to think beyond the dichotomous question of whether
narratives are found or imposed but also to acknowledge the intersubjective dimension that is
fundamental to narrative sense-making. Through examples, I endeavour to show how contemporary
interdisciplinary narrative studies, including post-classical narratology, would profit from engaging with
the hermeneutic conception of narrative as a dialogical process of reinterpreting experiences.
What difference does difference make?
Heidi Bostic (Baylor University, USA)
Presenting Author: Heidi Bostic
This paper takes a hermeneutic approach to the intersubjective relation by engaging with the work of
Luce Irigaray. It asks: what difference does sexuate difference make in our narratives of identity? Must
we always tell about a woman as a woman and a man as a man? Moreover, who can tell your story? Is it
you? The other? Or is it the culture that tells your story? If your identity is socially constructed, whose
identity is it? Pertinent here are the dialogical aspect of narrative (Hanna Meretoja), the question of
empathy (Norbert Meuter), and the fuzzy boundary between fact and fiction (Jens Brockmeier, Paul
Ricoeur). Given the power of narrative schemas (Martin Klepper) in our lives, we must acknowledge the
influence of culture on identity and the importance of sexuate identity. Irigaray’s work shows that taking
gender identity into account is not merely a response (or reaction) to patriarchy, but actually can lead us
to a deeper understanding of our identity and even to a new stage in human becoming. Irigaray appeals
to the idea that human being is not one, but two, in elaborating what she calls relational identity.
Recognizing that human beings disclose their world through talk (Martin Heidegger), the paper suggests
that our interest in narrative should be driven by an ethical aim: we want to make the world better, and
in order to do so, we need to foster better human relationships through stories. That, in part, is the
difference that difference can make.
Narrating as an interpretive action
Brian Schiff (The American University of Paris, France)
Presenting Author: Brian Schiff
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In this paper, I argue that narrating is essentially a hermeneutic action, which functions to interpret and
make present interpretations for self and others. Telling something, especially social instances of telling,
make an interpretative move in the world to establish that “this” is “so.” Presenting interpretations is at
the heart of all narrative activity, from the everyday to the literary, small and big stories. In such a way,
narrating can be thought of as the process for disclosing and fixing particular interpretations. But, this
interpretative move is always tentative and clumsy. The move is tentative because attempts to fix
meaning are more or less authoritative and convincing and interpretations are ultimately tested, or
contestable, in social interaction. The move is clumsy because what we mean to say, or what we think
that we mean to say, is always imprecise, open to multiple determinations and misunderstandings.
Using data from interviews with newlywed couples, I describe the moves that partners make to
determine interpretations of the past and how these interpretative moves are renegotiated and
realigned in the context of the conversation.
3.2
Panel session: Narrative and complexity
Chair: Federico Pianzola (University of Florence, Italy)
We would like to propose two panels exploring the relations between narrative (narrative cognition,
specific narratives in different media, narrative theory) and complexity (complex systems, emergence,
complexity science and complexity in interpretation). These panels concern the nature and limits of
narrative knowing, and take complexity as both a challenge to narrative and a conceptual context for
narrative theory. This panel addresses the relationship between narrative and complexity science
focusing on the basis of narrative theory and challenging its objectivist epistemology. Concepts and
models drawn from complex systems theories are used to reconsider some of the cornerstones of
narrative theory in the light of important changes in scientific inquiry. Namely, participants in this panel
will explore the possibilities and limits of conceiving narrative as sequence (Pier), of narrative
understanding (Walsh) and of definitions of narrative (Pianzola).
Narrative sequence and non-equilibrium thermodynamics
John Pier (Université de Tours and CRAL - CNRS, France)
Presenting Author: John Pier
Narrative sequence is typically conceived of in terms of a linear causal logic by which, according to
Branigan, narrative is “a way of organizing spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events
with a beginning, middle, and end.” Reviewing some of the standard models, which follow a characterbased logic of cause and effect, this paper maintains that non-equilibrium thermodynamics provides a
viable alternative to the tendency of narrative theorists to work within a paradigm of Newtonian
thermodynamics: series of states and events expressed as static motifs and dynamic motifs, culminating
in transformation of the initial state. According to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, however, the state
of a given system is never uniform throughout: from such a non-equilibrium there results an irregular
dissipative thermodynamic flux (e.g., turbulence), described by Prigogine as “symmetry breaking
instabilities” out of which there emerges “spontaneous self-organization.” What this means for
narrative sequence is that, rather than a cause-and-effect chain of the characters’ actions, the concept
adopts a nonlinear logic of emerging collective actions of interactive components operating multi-
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directionally and across levels. Unlike models proposing an isomorphic relation between micro-level and
macro-level, sequence conceived as a dynamical system consists of a micro-level as a succession of
events and intentional acts which is incommensurable with macro-level transformation, the latter
consisting not of the sum total of causes and effects but of formal resemblances and differences
between the initial and final situations. Sequence – or more precisely intersequence, the functional
relations between the content plane and the expression plane – is not a holistic concept but, operating
according to varying degrees of non-equilibrium, the dynamic and changeable states of emergent and
unstable configurations, a pattern in which the parts do not add up to the whole.
Narrative in the face of complexity as a “limit-of-sense” phenomenon
Richard Walsh (University of York, UK)
Presenting Author: Richard Walsh
This paper is concerned with the limits of narrative understanding, and how they are thrown into relief
by the challenge of emergent behaviour in complex systems. Such behaviour is a feature of much more
of life than we tend to appreciate, but to recognize emergence is intrinsically to encounter the limits of
narrative explanation. If we are not to be led astray by our cognitive dependence upon narrative, we
need talk about emergent behaviour in a way that reaches beyond the limits of narrative sense; in
discussions of emergence, sometimes even in definitions of emergence, this has tended to involve a
vocabulary of surprise and wonder. I will examine the sources and implications of this vocabulary, and
draw out its relation to the specific affordances of narrative sense-making in general, and the functions
of narrative perspective and inference in particular. The discussion takes off from attempts to define
emergence in complexity science, but goes on to elaborate the argument by appeal to analogous
cultural contexts including Christian iconography and belief, Hitchcock on the suspense thriller, and Don
DeLillo’s White Noise; it engages with narratological discussions of omniscience and inference, as well as
a larger philosophical perspective upon the nature of knowledge.
How do we look at narrative? Processing data, information and knowledge
Federico Pianzola (ICI – Berlin, Germany)
Presenting Author: Federico Pianzola
How can we know what narrative is? In this talk I will propose a reflection upon the epistemology of
narrative theory, arguing that the epistemological shift from modern science to complexity science is an
example to be followed in narrative studies. I think that an epistemology of complexity can offer a
powerful framework for inquiries upon various aspects of narrative (cognitive and emotional effects,
causal links, construction of storyworlds, etc.) while granting the necessary commensurability (Kuhn)
between different theories and models. Commenting on Hutto's Narrative Practice Hypothesis as an
example of narrative theory informed by an epistemology of complexity (radical enactivism) I will
outline some basic differences between theories based on an objectivist paradigm and theories based
on a constructivist paradigm of complexity. As a case study I will use data visualization, a form of
information/knowledge generation that apparently is strongly anchored to an objectivist paradigm
(since it builds structures out of hard data) and far from using narrativity as a dominant organizational
principle. Referring to the DIKW Pyramid as a model that shows the relationship between four
parameters of cognitive processes (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) I will try to show how an
epistemology of complexity could be adopted to account for the integration of narrative
organization/cognition with data visualization and understanding.
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3.3
Panel session: La possibilité d'une sociologie narrative
Chair: Numa Murard (Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7, France)
Nous proposons une sociologie narrative, profane, attentive aux subalternes et aux rapports de forces et
de sens, aux pratiques, etc. Nous proposons le récit, les nouvelles, la recherche de nouvelles formes
d'expression contre la "décadence disciplinaire" (L. Gordon) et les querelles de la philologie (C.Geertz)
pour renouveler les réponses aux questions politiques et sociales. Nous proposons que la sociologie
s'adresse au public que constituent ses propres enquêtés, reconnaisse leurs productions, de plus en plus
nombreuses, et fasse que les enquêtés se reconnaissent et soient reconnus dans et par ces récits, le
critère de "scientificité" faisant place à la restitution des expériences sociales, sans gommer les ruptures
de sens, les pertes de mémoire, bref les effets de la domination culturelle. C’est remettre sur le chantier
la controverse "Expliquer ou comprendre". Pour la liquider, nous dit-on, il ne resterait plus qu’à
démontrer que c’est la même chose. Mais par où commencer ? Expliquer supposerait d’avoir déjà
compris. Et comprendre, qu’il n’y aurait plus rien à expliquer ? Concrètement c’est par le langage, par
l’écriture, dans le récit, que s’expriment les choix opérés par le sociologue. A qui s’adresse-t-il ? De qui
et de quoi s’autorise-t-il ? En se distinguant de la littérature, pour faire science, le récit du social s’est
coupé du sensible, des formes profanes de la compréhension intersubjective et finalement de la culture
commune. Le mouvement inverse de retour à la narration, à la description, au récit, serait inutile et
même nuisible s’il ne s’accompagnait d’une réflexion et d’une prise de position sur la littérature, s’il
consistait à céder au romantisme, au narcissisme. A distance de cet écueil, nous proposons des extraits
de récits sociologiques et les éléments de l'herméneutique qui permet d'inscrire ces récits dans la
mosaïque scientifique qu’H. Becker appelait de ses vœux.
Le projet d'une anthropologie narrative
Numa Murard (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Numa Murard
La proposition d'une anthropologie narrative a été formulée aux Etats-Unis dès les années 1980 (à
travers la revue Anthropology and humanism). A la même époque Clifford Geertz, voyait le mélange des
genres comme caractéristique principale d'un changement, d'une "poussée démocratique" qui affectait
les sciences sociales et conduisait à leur refiguration , les sociologues empruntant à l'humanisme, à la
littérature, aux arts, ce dont témoigne le succès des trois métaphores de la société, le théâtre, le jeu, et
le texte.Trente ans après, une anthropologue comme Eugenia Tsao écrit encore sur les mérites
épistémologiques de l'ethnographie littéraire et plaide pour le mode narratif. Mais elle doit admettre
que la possibilité d'une anthropologie narrative est illusoire, car elle se heurte au "conservatisme de la
forme" (Lila Abu-Lughod) que l'on trouve même à son apogée chez les penseurs radicaux, d'autant plus
conservateurs dans la forme qu'ils sont révolutionnaires dans le contenu. Le message est clair : les
professionnels des sciences sociales sont tout à fait capables d'expliquer les injustices, mais leurs
explications sont codées d'une telle manière que leur accès est restreint aux autres professionnels. En
d'autres termes, "le discours académique est un élément clef de l'appareil de domination culturelle". Si
l'on rapproche maintenant l'hypothèse de Geertz et le constat désabusé des tenants de la narration, la
contradiction est évidente mais cette évidence est trompeuse : il est très possible que les sciences
sociales se développent sous des formes exotériques, dans de multiples domaines de la vie sociale, dans
les formes de gouvernementalité aussi bien que dans les mouvements sociaux et culturels, tandis
qu'elles se maintiennent, sous une forme ésotérique, dans les institutions universitaires et de recherche.
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La vocation de chercheur devient alors extrêmement problématique et la "poussée démocratique" une
pure illusion.
La mosaïque des récits de la connaissance
Annick Madec (Université de Bretagne occidentale, France)
Presenting Author: Annick Madec
H. Becker a formulé l'idée que les sciences sociales pouvaient être constituées comme une mosaïque
scientifique des récits savants. Je propose d'élargir cette proposition à l'idée d'une connaissance du
social constituée comme une mosaïque des récits profanes et savants. Il est bien sûr nécessaire de se
tenir à l'écart des naïvetés de la sociologie spontanée et de l'illusion d'une capacité égale de tous les
locuteurs ou scripteurs à raconter une histoire qui parle et qui intéresse. Mais il faut noter que le même
H. Becker, lecteur de Jane Austen, reconnaissait au roman la valeur d'une analyse sociale. Si la sociologie
a retenu les œuvres d'auteurs légitimes, légitimés par l'école, elle accorde cependant peu d'intérêt,
voire pas du tout, aux textes d'auteurs qui ne peuvent vivre de leur écriture et se contentent d'exprimer
à leur manière la difficulté à vivre la condition humaine au quotidien. Alors que les littéraires font le
constat de la sociologisation du roman, notamment dans la littérature sur le travail, la sociologie ignore
ou méprise ceux qui cherchent avant tout "l'apaisement de leurs faims intellectuelles" (M. Bloch). Une
sociologie démocratique ou même populaire (H. Zinn) accepterait de prendre en compte ceux qui
apaisent leurs faims intellectuelles en puisant à de multiples sources dont la sociologie académique est
devenue la moindre. C'est ainsi le plombier de Desesperate housewives qui redore le blason des classes
populaires, des travailleurs manuels, en participant à la campagne de publicité d'un célèbre couturier.
Quand la sociologie se lit comme un roman et un roman comme de la sociologie, la psychologisation et
l'individualisme perdent du terrain. S'exerce alors une réelle « poussée démocratique » et augmente le
pouvoir d'agir de tous ceux et toutes celles qui se voient représentés.
L'épreuve du récit
Jean-François Laé (Université Paris 8, France)
Presenting Author: Jean-François Laé
La narration est un exercice par lequel le sujet se met, par la pensée, dans une certaine situation,
souligne M. Foucault, où il s'éprouve lui-même, dans une fonction méditative. C’est par le récit que la
pensée s’éprouve et agit. Un gardien d’immeuble s’éprouve à travers sa main courante pleine de
notations pour pincer des jeunes en déroute. Une inspectrice du travail s’éprouve dans son impossibilité
à vérifier les conditions d’embauche et les registres des employeurs. Une apprentie caissière s’éprouve à
répéter les bons gestes qui lui semblent si dérisoires. Au tribunal, un homme en cure de désintoxication
à l’hôpital s’éprouve comme futur abstinent en répondant au juge. A la porte d’une prison, une femme
s’éprouve lorsqu’elle sent la limite de son aide s’approcher. Un jeune border line s’éprouve en allumant
des dettes dans son quartier et rend fou son tuteur. J’ai rassemblé quelques-uns de ces minuscules
récits qui m’ont été donnés et m’ont hanté plus que de raison. Puis je les ai notés dans un journal
comme si j’avais été à l’intérieur. Ces lieux, ces objets, ces transactions, ces gestes, je les raconte tels
que je les ai perçus et pensés. Dans ces moments, en marchant quelques pas de plus, là où
généralement l’on se détourne, une autre réalité m’est apparue, ou plutôt, une présence envahissante.
Je propose de lire un récit d’enquête transformé en une nouvelle et de m'en servir pour réfléchir à une
nouvelle forme d'expression non seulement pour "ramasser du sens", le plus précis possible, mais aussi
pour parler à des gens qui sont "en dehors de sciences sociales" sans pour autant gommer le sens
premier de mes observations.
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3.4
Panel session: Narrating order, creating explanations
Chair: Mary S. Morgan (London School of Economics, UK)
Narratives appear an essential part of the research activities of many sciences, yet the modes in which
narratives construct knowledge, and the kinds of narrative knowing that are involved, cannot easily be
characterised under one heading. This panel convenes examples and discussions from four different
sciences: chemistry, evolutionary biology, medicine and social anthropology. In two of these fields, we
find that order is primarily located in the process of development, change and contingency. In the
explicitly historical science of evolutionary biology, narrative is valued for its essential characteristic of
embedding contingency in such a way as to frame explanations. In understanding complex chemical
reactions, simulation techniques have become the accepted form of representing the hidden processes
that lie between a known start and finish. These visual documentaries prompt generative narratives that
interpret the developmental process and capture their unexpected variability. In both these fields, the
order of events matter, even though that order by no means fully determines the narratives that are
told. In contrast, in medicine and social anthropology, narratives are necessary to create the order,
where order is not found in a sequence, but in locating and placing the myriad parts of a puzzle that
make up a whole. In medicine, the clinical case report may have a time plot as a vehicle, but narrative
solves the critical problem of getting a variety of evidence to fall into place, so matching an individual to
a disease, and explicating that fit. The narratives of social anthropology also create an order - a picture
of society. But here the ordering principle is weak, for the boundaries of society are less well defined
than those of the individual and the narratives must rather create order by knitting together a host of
different mini-narratives, each capturing part of social experience.
What are narratives good for?
John Beatty (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Presenting Author: John Beatty
Stephen Gould argued that there are important areas of science – he called them “historical sciences” –
that do not fit the conventional, lawlike mold (e.g., Gould 1989). These include evolutionary biology,
ecology, paleontology and more. This should not be cause for concern, he argued, since there are other
means of representing and explaining the world. Most notably, narratives. This line of defense did not
generate much respect for the historical sciences. Part of the reason, I think, was the vague worry that
narratives are too easy to come by, the criteria for what counts as a narrative having dwindled to the
point where most anything goes. There have also been concerns about the cheap availability of
narratives within the narratology literature, where the proposed solution has not been to make the
criteria more exclusive, but rather to pose and pursue a parallel question of worth. That is, rather than
(just) ask “What is a narrative?” we should also consider, “What is a narrative good for?” Narratives
may be easy to come by. But perhaps not everything is “worth narrating” (e.g., Prince 1988). In my
presentation I will follow the lead of narratologists and literary theorists in pursuing this issue. And I will
focus on one particular proposal concerning the elements of a story that make it worthy of a narrative.
These correspond well, I argue, with features of the natural world attended to by the historical sciences,
and stressed by Gould. In both cases, what matters is contingency. Narratives are especially good for
representing contingency and accounting for contingent outcomes.
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Narratives and simulations
Norton Wise (UCLA, USA)
Presenting Author: Norton Wise
This year the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three researchers for their development in the
1970s of computer programs for simulating complex chemical reactions that involve large molecules like
proteins and take place in milliseconds. Since then, simulations have become the primary means for
representing, discovering, and understanding the detailed processes taking place in such reactions,
which are not amenable to either theoretical deduction or direct experimental investigation.
Furthermore, the most compelling sense of understanding comes from visual images that follow the
simulation in time, most dramatically as films depicting the process of bond formation. Such a film is
something like a documentary that aims to depict a historical development. As such it requires an
accompanying narration of what is happening. It typically includes a beginning “scenario” that identifies
the actors (molecules), their significance, relevant properties, and environment. Then the
developmental narrative is generated in parallel with the simulation. In many cases the final product of
the reaction is already known and interest focuses on the stages of the reaction process, its variability,
and particularly on unknown and unexpected features that the simulation throws up. They too require
an interpretive story. When all works well, the narrated simulation provides an explanation of the
reaction process as, effectively, a historical development, a development that could not have been
understood without the generative narrative.
Does form trump content in clinical case reports?
Brian Hurwitz (King's College London / Green Templeton College Oxford, UK)
Presenting Author: Brian Hurwitz
Clinical case reports are remarkably terse accounts of problems and predicaments in a person’s life
recounted from distinctive medical or pyschiatrc viewpoints. Integral to their purpose is the
development of treatments or solutions achieved by accessing and representing – in part constructing –
a virtual model of the phenomena under scrutiny. “A case is an attempt to make signs and things
match” Smith argues, which aims (not always successfully) to align an individual’s situation with a
disease category (Smith 1995), expressed as tracings, images or the results of tissue analysis that match
what’s wrong with a ‘natural kind’ or fragment of ‘unjointed Nature’ such as a species of pathogen or a
biological anomaly. Although model making is a striking feature of clinical notes, the language of case
reports differs from that of medical records in being more highly narrativised and related to writing
practices such as the composing of memoirs, short stories, memorials, eccentric biography and
detective fiction – narrative forms that frequently thematise fathomability in human affairs. Composed
of tellings with a time course, a plot, a point, and a point of view (Charon 2006), case reports deploy a
diversity of linguistic registers - conversational, ethnographic, novelistic, anecdotal, naturalistic,
scientific, impersonal, literary and biographical – in depictions unfolding in distinct stages at a controlled
tempo. This paper will examine how C 20th case reports ‘shuffle teeming human life into some kind of
order’ (Douglas-Fairhurst 2010). How do they conceptualise patienthood? What voice is the patient
accorded? How do they marshall and control the attentiveness of their audiences? A variety of case
reports spanning 1912 to 2009 will be considered.
Making credible narratives of society
Mary S. Morgan (London School of Economics, UK)
Presenting Author: Mary S. Morgan
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The narratives of urban ethnographies have no obvious start and conclusion, no driving force or timedynamic, and no gripping storyline, yet at the same time such narratives offer not just the vehicle for
knowledge but its content too. Such accounts are often made up from smaller reports, each one a ministory crafted in accordance with the disciplinary conventions of social anthropology. But rather than
floating in a open field (as the unconnected vignettes of mediaeval life found in early tapestries do),
these mini-stories function as pieces of a puzzle. Each one is self-sufficient, and of value in itself, but
offers only one perspective on society or chunk of social life. Only by combining these separate
perspectival accounts, does the reader obtain a rounded account of that particular urban society as a
whole. Although commentators on ethnographic narrative have analysed their rhetorical power (van
Maanen1988), the epistemic power of such narratives depends not only on their relative “thickness” but
on criteria they appear to share with the narratives of case law. These are criteria of consistency,
coherence and credibility (see MacCormick, 2005), and of the possibility to meld particulars together
with more general claims (see Twining 2002). The criteria of narrative knowing shared across these
fields points to a form of knowing that knits evidence and explanations and demonstrates a sufficient
roundedness to show (rather than tell) how a society goes on.
3.5
Paper session: Illness stories (I)
Moderator: Gerben Westerhof
Fiction and the illness narrative: Wrestling meaning in, and through, Hugh Cook’s Heron River
Elaine Marcia Lux (Nyack College, USA)
Presenting Author: Elaine Marcia Lux
“Fiction and the illness narrative: wrestling meaning in, and through, Hugh Cook’s Heron River” focuses
on Hugh Cook’s beautifully rendered novel Heron River and the wrestling for meaning within it, by
characters, author, and readers. It concentrates primarily on two of Heron River’s characters: Madeline
and her son Adam. Madeline, middle aged, now suffers from MS. She deals with her own debilitating
illness; the dementia of her aged father, who lives in a nursing home; and the challenges, faced by her
twenty-six-year-old son Adam, who lives in a group home because of retardation he incurred when he
fell into and became stuck in a well when he was about six years old. The paper examines the way the
stories of Madeline and Adam individually and together shift from chaos narrative to quest narrative,
illness narrative genres identified by Arthur Frank in The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics.
Frank’s work deals primarily with autobiographical, real life narratives, with the intent of helping to
create a real-world opportunity for people to tell their illness stories. This paper applies key elements of
Frank’s theoretical rubric to a specific work of fiction, Heron River, as it explores the “call [of illness] for
stories” in fictional formats, too, with the intent of showing that fiction can make an important
contribution to the genre of illness narrative. In its exploration of the wrestling for meaning by
characters, author, and readers of Heron River, the paper examines, as well, how an illness narrative on
a theme of intense multiple sufferings can provide emotional enjoyment and ethical value to the novel’s
writer and readers, drawing upon Keith Oatley’s ideas about the association of the enjoyment of fiction
with play and with the emotional rewards of friendship and Hugh Cook’s explanation of his impetus for
writing.
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“Me veía gorda”: Epistemic stance in Spanish narratives of eating disorders
Carolina Figueras (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Presenting Author: Carolina Figueras
Eating disorder narratives emerge as complex storied accounts of highly contested illnesses, due to a
complex etiology not well understood by the general public, and the narrator´s own difficulties in
making sense of the disorder. As a result, eating disorders narratives often include reflective knowledge
of epistemic states in illness and in recovery. In the present paper, I focus the attention on the use of
perception verbs as mechanisms of evidentiality to assess the source of information and to construct
knowledge in Spanish narratives of eating disorders. A systematic analysis of the syntactic structures
with "ver" (‘to see’) is related to the different sources of information (direct perception, imagination,
inference) indexed by this perception verb. Each structure is then analyzed in terms of the different
cognitive perspective that is being conveyed. Beyond referring to the perceptual source, the evidential
constructions are used by narrators to estimate the relationship between the speaker and the source.
Epistemic stance thus becomes part of the evidential meaning in discourse. The analysis of eating
disorder narratives reveals that the sources of evidence are differently assessed during the course of the
illness and when the narrator is in recovery. Perceptual evidence, considered a reliable source during
the disorder, is questionned and discredited in recovery. Besides, epistemic stance appears in the eating
disorder narratives as an intersubjective practice between the narrator and the audience. Specifically,
epistemic stance is linked to the nuanced process of aligning and disaligning with the potential audience
in sharing the experience of the disorder. The flexible evidential meaning expressed by "ver" affords the
narrator the means to articulate social meanings related to notions of control and responsibility in
explaining the illness, intersubjetively negotiating thus the illness experience with the reader.
Constructing insights into processes of posttraumatic growth through narrative exploration of turning
points in women’s chronic illness experiences
Heather Adams (Ball State University, USA)
Presenting Author: Heather Adams
Working with in-depth interviews, this study applies Labov’s framework (1972) to the stories of two
women with chronic illnesses, using the turning point of the narratives as a focus point to explore how
the crisis of chronic illness onset can simultaneously function as a location of trauma and potential
future growth. The resulting reorganization of the women’s self-stories yields a narrative analysis
(Polkinghorne, 1995) that presents their distinct and individual experiences of illness-related failures in
one or more high order life schemas (e.g., personal life philosophies) and resulting reorganization into a
more adaptive schema. Analysis of narrative (Polkinghorne, 1995; 2007) of these assembled stories with
one another yields empirical support for theorized components of the current model of posttraumatic
growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004), addressing gaps in the current literature (e.g., content of the
cognitive processes), new insights and question for further inquiry.
3.6
Paper session: Digital narratives (I)
Moderator: Claudia Roda
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Privacy and unintended consequences of online narrative
Claudia Roda, Fatima Orozco (The American University of Paris, France)
Presenting Author: Claudia Roda, Fatima Orozco
When using social networking applications users seek to find associations and build narratives that meet
social standards so to reach acceptance. Part of one’s identity is portrayed through these networking
interfaces and constructed via an, often public, narrative. Social networking sites are not just used to
connect users but also to show and tell. Applications such as MySpace and Facebook have facilitated
identity construction and reconstruction through the sharing of large amounts of personal information,
unlimited image uploads and profile design. Blogs and journals are being replaced by modern
applications such as Twitter, Intagram and Vine, and textual narratives are integrated or replaced by
images and multimedia representations. The collection of several images and statuses are equivalent to
an autobiographical book. This intuitively creates a story of lifestyle and habits, summarizing the
individuality of a person whether it is distorted or not. We present a study of the construction of an
online autobiography, which unfolds both intended and unintended autobiographical elements. The
user selectively shares contents aimed at creating a chosen narrative. However, this intended
information can be exploited and consequently tell what is meant to be untold. This public unveiling of
unintended content challenges in a new way the extent to which a person has control over his/her own
narrative. Through different sources such as IP address extractions, application misuse, interference of a
second party or misinterpretation, an organized narrative becomes an overflowing story revealing more
than what the user intended. This in turns jeopardizes the validity of the initial narrative impacting social
relations and identity formation. Furthermore, while users of social networking applications obviously
have a different sense of privacy if compared to older generations, we explore their level of awareness
with respect to the diffusion of unintended content.
Apprendre par le récit fortement interactif : Potentialités et premiers constats
Nicolas Szilas (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Presenting Author: Nicolas Szilas
Le récit fictionnel a la particularité de transmettre un savoir de manière indirecte. En façade il s'appuie
sur une collection d'actions de personnages. Mais en arrière-cour, il transmet un ensemble de points de
vue et valeurs. Ainsi, il participe à la construction d'un savoir en évitant d'être «didactique», ce dernier
qualificatif étant souvent péjoratif dans la critique. En pédagogie et en didactique, cette fois entendue
dans le sens de la discipline, l'acquisition du savoir est également indirecte : ce n'est pas en exposant
des faits qu'ils sont acquis mais par l'action. Ainsi, en mathématiques, Brousseau insiste sur la nécessité
de construire des environnements d'apprentissage adidactiques, dans le sens où l'enseignant doit se
garder de donner la solution. Le savoir s'acquiert dans l'interaction avec l'environnement. Ces deux
formes d'acquisition adidactique du savoir peuvent se combiner dans le récit interactif, en ce qui
concerne l'apprentissage de comportements sociaux. Il s'agit ici d'explorer de nouvelles formes
narratives, aux frontières du jeu vidéo, de la simulation et du récit, donnant au «spectacteur» la
possibilité d'incarner un personnage, d'interagir socialement avec les «personnages non joueurs», dans
une visée d'apprentissage. Si ces formes s'appuient déjà sur les ressorts connus du récit traditionnel,
elles ouvrent aussi de nouvelles dimensions d'apprentissage, qui vont être analysées dans cette
contribution : confrontation de l'apprenant avec des choix, donc des récits multiples ; observation de
l'effet positif ou négatif de ces choix ; impact vécu dans l'action (non déterminisme de certains choix,
sentiment de difficulté), réflexion sur ses propres choix. Ces aspects seront illustrés au travers d'un récit
interactif pédagogique, «Nothing For Dinner», qui intègre des technologies avancées d'intelligence
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artificielle pour donner au joueur une liberté d'action qui lui manque dans les fictions interactives
habituelles.
The narrative of reading in the e-environment and the question of bit-generation identity
Erzsébet Dani (University of Debrecen, Hungary)
Presenting Author: Erzsébet Dani
In the broadest sense of narrative theory, reading has a narrative of its own. Today, it is the problemridden story/fate of reading in information society with its digital technology. Knowledge-based
societies shower knowledge to be attained and mastered upon the new generations. Cyber media aids
the process by developing new techniques of data-recording/storage/transmission at a greater speed
than ever before. The real consumers of are the generations Y and Z. But our receiving sense organs
have not multiplied, nor did the receiving human brain. Thus the medium of formerly unimaginable
capabilities amounts to even more than what McLuhan described as “the medium is the message”: it
now determines not only the content and target of the message but also the generation that receives it.
It does so especially through hyper attention facilitated by the information bandwidth, speed, vividness,
and variety that the new media provide, pushing into the background reading, which is carried via
information monocurrent and demands thinking and reflection. Belles-lettres reading is a big loser as
deep reading would be needed for those narratives to fulfill their indispensible role in identity
formation. My paper proposes a method to counteract hyper attention in higher-education. It aims to
serve the purpose that young people with Somebody-ID should graduate from our universities in much
higher numbers than the Anybody- and Nobody-ID masses we are producing today. It could be a
corrective measure by restraining, perhaps overcoming the shallowness of narrative reception
characteristic of the hyper-attention generation. Literary narratives could chart a healthier course for
what the narrative of reading has become in the digital age. As could be sensed above, some of my
theoretical tools will come from literary critic N. Katherine Hayles, neuroscientist Susan A. Greenfield,
and narratologist Peter J. Rabinowitz.
3.7
Paper session: Faits et fiction
Moderator: Christophe Ronveaux
Fonction épistémique et référence paradoxale: Le cas des récits contrefactuels
Françoise Lavocat (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France)
Presenting Author: Françoise Lavocat
Je me propose d’examiner d’un point de vue narratologique un ouvrage historique contrefactuel récent
1940 Et si la France avait continué la guerre (Jacques Sapir, Franck Stora, Loïc Mahé, 2010) et de le
comparer à plusieurs ouvrages contrefactuels fictionnels sur la seconde guerre mondiale, tels que The
Man in the High Castle, de Philip K. Dick, 1962, Fatherland, de Robert Harris (1992), ou encore The Plot
Against America de Philip Roth (2004). Il s’agira de se demander quels types savoirs factuels sont
investis dans ces récits, quels sont leurs marqueurs, et comment ils sont articulés aux données
contrefactuelles. Les contrefactuels historiques et fictionnels diffèrent-ils fondamentalement dans leur
rapport au savoir et si oui, cela se traduit-il dans des usages du récit différents ? Comment peut-on
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définir un savoir contrefactuel ? Tout en souscrivant à l’analyse de Lubomir Dolezel (2010), qui montre
que les contrefactuels ne brouillent en rien la frontière entre fait et fiction, mais au contraire la
présupposent, je tenterai de définir différents types de savoir en relation avec le mode de référence
paradoxal des contrefactuels historiques et fictionnels. Il sera peut-être aussi fait mention du cas
particulier des contrefactuels religieux, afin de proposer une typologie des contrefactuels par rapport à
leur mode de référence, en faisant l’hypothèse que celui-ci conditionne plusieurs façons d’articuler récit,
savoir et hypothèse. Cette communication pourrait s’inscrire dans une réflexion concernant "la
connaissance narrative", "Le récit et la fiction" ou encore "les bénéfices épistémiques de la lecture du
récit littéraire".
Le genre de l’histoire de famille en tant que historiographie nationale : L’exemple de la littérature
contemporaine de la Suisse
Ralph Mueller (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
Presenting Author: Ralph Mueller
L’histoire fictive d’une famille constitue une sorte de relation métonymique entre les différentes
générations de la famille et l’histoire d’une nation (en l’occurrence celle de la Suisse). Cette relation
métonymique permet à la narration d’une histoire de famille fictive de servir comme véhicule pour
communiquer une vision subjective du passé. Dans la littérature allemande, en particulier, nous
trouvons plusieurs exemples de romans qui mettent en scène la lutte entre la génération des
‘coupables’ et les générations suivantes afin d’offrir une interprétation contestée du passé (il s’agit avec
préférence de l’histoire de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, p.ex. U. Hahn : "Unscharfe Bilder", 2003 ; A.
Geiger : "Es geht uns gut", 2005). Jusqu’à nos jours, la plupart des études sur ce sujet se sont
concentrées sur la littérature de l’Allemagne et de l’Autriche avec des familles d’une nationalité assez
homogène (cg. Eichenberg 2009 ; Ostheimer 2009). Notre analyse, en revanche, porte sur des romans
des familles suisses, où le mythe d’une nationalité suisse homogène était (et est) confronté avec quatre
langues nationales. Il s’impose donc la question comment les narrations peuvent-elles représenter des
passés complexes. En particulier, nous aimerons aborder les questions suivantes : De quelle manière
gère la narration la difficulté de comprendre les actes et leurs motivations dans le passé (p.ex. le modèle
d’un narrateur omniscient chez Lewinsky : "Melnitz", 2007, ou bien le modèle d’une investigation du
passé par un membre de la famille chez Walter : "Zeit des Fasans"). Dans quelle mesure s’étend
l’influence de la migration sur les représentations des familles dans les narrations fictives (p.ex. dans les
romans d’une génération des auteurs migrant(e)s comme Melinda Nadj Abonji et Aglaja Veteranyi).
Le réalisme socialiste comme impossible non-fiction
Serge Rolet (Université de Lille 3, France)
Presenting Author: Serge Rolet
1. La mise en place, au début des années trente, du réalisme socialiste en URSS comme seule « méthode
artistique » correcte fait du récit le modèle de toute la littérature, considérée à la fois comme forme de
connaissance et comme moyen d’action. Plus largement, le discours soviétique est orienté sur
l’héroïsme, il est gagné par l’histoire. La vérité scientifique elle-même (la doctrine marxiste-léniniste)
tend à se scénariser. Le réalisme socialiste revendique l’héritage de Tolstoï, notamment de Guerre et
paix : le récit littéraire est irremplaçable. Pour connaître le peuple russe, comprendre son accès à
l’autoconscience (en 1812), il fallait écrire un roman. 2. Mais le récit doit compter avec la vieille
réticence russe à l’égard de la fiction (Tolstoï, encore). « La réalité historiquement concrète » a beau
devoir être « représentée dans son développement révolutionnaire », le récit évite l’événement au sens
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de Lotman. Alors que l’événement est ce qui ne pouvait se produire, et a néanmoins eu lieu, le réalisme
socialiste ne peut narrer que ce que l’idéologie, érigée en savoir, considère comme correct. La critique
réclame certes des héros, mais en réalité elle pousse la littérature vers le « texte sans sujet » (au sens de
Lotman, c’est-à-dire sans histoire), descriptif, ennuyeux, comme au temps des populistes. 3. L’idéal,
pourtant, était de faire l’histoire (prodigieuse) « des usines et des fabriques ». La seule manière d’y
parvenir était de représenter le présent difficile du point de vue de l’avenir radieux, ce qui revenait à
faire passer une fiction, celle de la « construction du socialisme » pour « la réalité », et ce qui existe (les
pénuries, la violence sociale) pour ce qui n’existe pas. Ici, pour reprendre les termes de l’appel, « les
frontières entre fiction et non-fiction» ne sont pas «déplacées» : c’est plutôt l’opposition des deux
termes qui devient totalement réversible.
3.8
Paper session: Autobiographical narratives (I)
Moderator: Martha McKenna
Narrative knowing and the Study of literacy: Using life history to theorize literacy-in-persons
Amy Johnson Lachuk (Hunter College, USA)
Presenting Author: Amy Johnson Lachuk
This paper engages with Brockmeier’s (2002) argument about the culturally saturated nature of
individual memory and narrative in order to demonstrate how individuals’ life histories and narratives
about literacy have enabled me to extend theoretical understandings of the sociocultural nature of
literacy. From a sociocultural perspective literacy is understood as a cultural practice that is used for
different purposes depending on one’s social and cultural locations. In researching literacy from a
sociocultural vantage point, I have used life history and narrative methodologies in order to understand
how persons’ uses of text, print, and language across their life spans are enacted in relationship to their
contexts and communities. In my inquiry into persons' literacy histories I have come to recognize how
literacy practice is “situated in historically contingent, socially enacted, culturally constructed ‘worlds’”
(Holland, et al., 1998, p. 7). I use the term “literacy-in-persons”* to theorize how literacy practice is a
process of engaging with and remembering the past of a social community in order to respond to the
present and the future. In Brockmeier’s terms, when using literacy, persons carry the memories of their
culture with them in their present and future practice. I specifically discuss "literacy-in-persons" as a
theoretical apparatus, and demonstrate how engaging with narrative and literacy as cultural and
historical artifacts have enabled me to understand instances of literacy life storytelling as part of
overarching cultural and historical discourses (Brockmeier, 2002) about literacy.
Expanding understanding of the educational and workforce experiences of women of color in science:
What is the utility of integrating narratives of diverse experience with systems level historical
analysis?
Cynthia Winston, Alexis Boyd, Michael Winston, Kimberley Freeman (Howard University, USA)
Presenting Author: Cynthia Winston, Alexis Boyd
Historical and biographical studies of women of color in science do not generally make reference to the
history of White women in science in the United States. This neglect tends to underestimate the effect
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of gender per se on access to science education and careers in science. These biographical accounts
focus principally on individuals with no attempt to identify systems of exclusion or patterns of success in
overcoming exclusion. While the narratives about individual careers have real importance as
documentation, those accounts by themselves cannot disclose the ways in which the social system and
the educational matrix functioned to produce the result that few women of any race and ethnicity
became scientists in one period of history. This paper demonstrates the theoretical and practical utility
of the integration of narratives of the experiences of both white and women of color in science with
systems level historical analysis of institutionalized gender prejudice in all women gaining access to
science education and scientific careers. More than ever before in human history, rapid increases in
innovation and discovery are critical to solving the world’s most pressing economic, climate, health, and
human problems. Although women in the United States are earning more doctoral degrees in science
and engineering fields than ever before, less then 24% of the science and engineering workforce
includes women (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2011).
Journey to identity: Autobiographical memory and the narrative identity development of young
israelies women
Einav Segev (Sapir Academic College, Israel)
Presenting Author: Einav Segev
Autobiographical memory is a higher-order cognitive ability that entails the recollection of personally
experienced events (episodic memory) and personal facts (semantic memory) (Levine et al, 2002,
Fuentes and Desrocher, 2011). The episodic memory provides the means to interpret behavior in social
context; exchange experiences, and essentially, remain oriented in shard social world (Nelson and
Fivush, 2004).Autobiographical memory plays an important role in the construction of personal identity
(Wilson and Ross, 2003).The research's purpose was to examine how the autobiographical memories,
from backpacking trip period, are processed into the identity of young Israeli women.
A narrative phenomenological methodological approach was chosen. Data collection included a
narrative life story interview with each participant, their personal trip dairy and semi-structured
interview (which served as a bridge between the life story interview and the dairy).
The unfolding of the story and the investigation of the development of the autobiographical memory
are presented though five central themes: the body, drugs, faith and danger, being alone, and
interpersonal relationships. Each of these themes was reconstructed differently within the women's
memories as narrated in their interviews years after the actual experiences. Whether they were
continued, changed, or silenced.Different strategies of autobiographical memory were employed to
achieve both identity coherence and continuity.In addition, the research findings implicate social
silencing of parts of the women narrative in the backpacking trip autobiographical memories. Master
narratives (Nelson, 2001) in regards to backpacking trips were also found in the research.
The meaning of the changing context and time in which the narratives are generated, will be discussed.
Parallel Session #4
4.1
Panel session: Narrative hermeneutics (II)
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Chair: Jens Brockmeier (University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris,
France)
The contributions to this panel (and those to the panel Narrative Hermeneutics I) share an interest in
the ties between narrative and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a philosophical tradition that deals with
the ways humans understand their being in the world, especially by interpretive practices. But
hermeneutics is also an orientation that goes beyond the disciplinary limits of philosophy, pervading
many intellectual projects in the humanities, the social sciences, and parts of the medical and health
sciences. Narrative is one of these projects, and much of its study is influenced by, if not even explicitly
based on, the hermeneutic orientation. Exploring the interconnection of hermeneutics and narrative,
the panels are particularly concerned with two aspects. One is a certain understanding of narrative –
one that emphasizes narrative’s interpretive, dialogical, temporal, and historical dimensions, that is, its
hermeneutic nature. Narrative, on this view, implies in actu a number of hermeneutic moves and
qualities. The second aspect is a certain notion of hermeneutics – one that emphasizes its meaning as a
practice (and as the study of this practice) of human world- and self-understanding, and views narrative
as playing a crucial role in this understanding. Bringing together experts from literary, rhetorical,
narratological, psychological, psychoanalytical, and philosophical fields of hermeneutic inquiry, the two
panels set themselves the goal to begin a dialogue, a conversation, that sheds new light on the project
of a narrative hermeneutics and thus on some of the issues at the heart of Narrative and Knowing/Récit
et Savoir.
Reading stories, reading minds: Narrative knowledge and political judgment
Andreea Deciu Ritivoi (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Presenting Author: Andreea Deciu Ritivoi
The role played by narratives in facilitating knowledge of another’s mental state has long been
recognized by narrative theorists, but has only more recently receiving empirical confirmation in the
experimental work of cognitive psychology. If following a story allows us to view the world from the
perspective of its protagonists, can narratives inspire moral evaluations and emotional responses that
would shape the life of a polity? For example, can the story of a hurricane victim inspire compassion
leading to donations? Or, can the narrative of a deported immigrant quell xenophobic sentiment and
inspire immigration reform? While such connections are hard to establish convincingly for particular
examples, the bigger conceptual question they raise needs to be addressed: how can narrative
knowledge, as a form of practical knowledge deeply infused by pathos and ethos (appeals to emotions
and to moral values) be used in political judgment? In this paper, I address this question by offering a
conception of narrative knowledge that is informed by the philosophy of Adam Smith and its modern
revival in the work of Luc Boltanski.
Narrative knowing and contemporary hermeneutic psychoanalysis
Roger Frie (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Roger Frie
My presentation will examine the contemporary hermeneutic perspective in psychoanalysis that begins
with the work of the Swiss psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger, and finds its current expression in North
American intersubjective psychoanalysis. In contrast to Freud’s “hermeneutics of suspicion,” Binswanger
suggests that the possibilities for understanding and knowing are disclosed in mutuality and dialogue
between the psychoanalyst and patient. The process of analytic interaction allows for the development
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of different ways of being in the world, which are grounded in an evolving narrative that is co-created in
the analytic setting. For Binswanger the aim is to understand the patient’s experiential world of meaning
and understanding, which he refers to as “world-designs” and which intersubjective psychoanalysts
refer to as “world-horizons.” Experiential worlds and their horizons are not the products of isolated
individual minds but evolve in a nexus of living systems and are context dependent and relational. The
goal for the hermeneutic psychoanalyst is to understand how the patient’s horizon of understanding
shapes experience and knowledge of the world. Instead of developing an archeological view of the
unconscious, hermeneutic psychoanalysts focus on the embeddedness of psychological life. The
unconscious is not seen as an entity in its own right but refers to the fact that there is always something
that exists beyond our horizon of understanding. Any attempt to simplify or reduce the complexity of
psychological life to a single narrative or set of narratives overlooks the fact that experience, like
narrative itself, is always multiple determined and incomplete. Because our world-horizons are
inherently limited there is always something that escapes our knowledge and remains unconscious.
From a hermeneutic perspective the aim is not to make the unconscious conscious in a traditional
Freudian sense, but to expand our horizon of understanding and thus increase possibilities for being and
knowing.
Why Narrative Matters: Philosophy, method, theory
Mark Freeman (College of the Holy Cross, USA)
Presenting Author: Mark Freeman
While the growth of narrative inquiry over the course of recent decades is to be celebrated, there have
emerged concerns about it overextending its reach, about the possibility that the narrative turn may be
little more than an intellectual fad, and, most troubling, about the idea that this turn may be
misconceived and hence inadequate to human experience. My primary aim is to respond to these
concerns and the larger issues they raise by offering a defense of narrative as a mode of interpretive
understanding. In doing so, I will draw significantly on the work of Paul Ricoeur, whose groundbreaking
scholarship on narrative provided fertile ground for research in the social sciences and beyond. Of
special importance in this context was Ricoeur’s exploration of the interrelationship of time and
narrative, which underscored the necessity of narrative understanding in comprehending certain
fundamental features of the human realm. Following Ricoeur in broad outline, this necessity is
threefold: philosophical, methodological, and theoretical. In speaking of the philosophical necessity of
narrative, I shall address the idea of “alterity,” focusing on the temporal alienation of the experiencing
subject and the consequent recourse to narrative hermeneutics. In speaking of the methodological
necessity of narrative, I shall address the idea of “fidelity,” advancing the argument that there remains
no more fitting and appropriate vehicle for studying human lives than through narrative. In speaking of
the theoretical necessity of narrative, finally, I shall address the idea of “ex-centricity,” exploring that
dimension of otherness which serves to orient and frame the stories we tell about our lives. Highlighting
this threefold necessity of narrative as a mode of understanding will serve to underscore the pivotal role
of narrative hermeneutics in exploring the human realm.
It suffices to say that one understands differently when one understands at all
Jens Brockmeier (University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris, France)
Presenting Author: Jens Brockmeier
My title borrows a line from Gadamer because it emphasizes a quality of understanding that is at the
heart of narrative hermeneutics. With this remark, Gadamer repudiates the idea that understanding is a
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reproductive procedure, rather than a productive and interpretive one. At the same time, he rejects the
assumption that understanding necessarily means “better understanding,” better than someone else –
our dialogue partner, for example – and that understanding leads to or employs some kind of superior
knowledge that the other person does not have. We might even say that when two people understand
each other, this does not mean that one person “understands” the other. I want to explore these
thoughts from the perspective of a narrative hermeneutics for which understanding is predicated on
dialogue, conversation, storytelling, story-interpreting, and other intersubjective practices. I believe that
this perspective is essential for a notion of intersubjective understanding that could be described as
non-substantialist and non-substantializing or, differently put, as non-objectivist and non-objectivizing.
Understanding, on this view, is not aimed at a precise goal, a telos or endpoint at which something is
”understood”; nor does it focus on the comprehension of a given knowledge or truth, a fact or insight
which completes and brings to a halt the process of understanding. Furthermore, the process of
understanding does not leave its own subject – traditionally speaking, the individual subject of
understanding – unchanged; rather, understanding presupposes and enhances a readiness of the
subject to open, challenge, and transform oneself, even to the point of crisis. I examine these thoughts,
though philosophical and psychological in nature, in the narrative forms in which we encounter them
both in everyday life and literature.
4.2
Panel session: Narrative and complexity (II)
Language of the session:
Chair: Richard Walsh (University of York, UK)
This panel, the second of two proposals on Narrative and Complexity, discusses the relationship
between narrative complexity and knowing. The papers demonstrate how self-reflexivity, uncertainty
and distributed sense-making productively enhance narrative understanding. Drawing on complex
narratives circulating in various media (film, TV, internet), the panel seeks to identify the distinction of
narrative as compared with other forms of knowing.
A mistake that worked: On the narrative dynamics of knowledge and ignorance
Marina Grishakova (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Presenting Author: Marina Grishakova
In his essay “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory,” Hayden White observes:
“That what cannot be explained is in principle capable of being understood.” While trying to distinguish
between narrative explanation and narrative understanding, this paper explores a complex dynamics
and interplay between knowing and not-knowing as mediated by the narrative desire to know and
manifested in the narrative categories of curiosity, suspense and surprise. Fictional narratives have been
compared with thought experiments: similarly to thought experiments, they are imaginative
constructions, describing hypothetical objects and events and their consequences. However, unlike
thought experiments, narratives explore the consequences by introducing and elaborating on
supervening details, displaying new circumstances and alternative paths. Narrative proclivity (Ochs,
Capps) reveals an irreducible split between the emergent complexity of meaning and the
communicative content. The stories that capitalize on failure to know and erroneous understandings
that lead to surprising insights and discoveries serve as test studies.
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Film form and systemic knowing
Maria Poulaki (University of Surrey, UK)
Presenting Author: Maria Poulaki
This paper will approach narrative knowing by focusing on the particular instance of film form, and the
way it is constituted as a complex system through narrative and stylistic devices. Even though the
systemic attributes of narrative film form have been highlighted by cognitive film theory (Bordwell and
Thompson), the process of narrative knowing in film has not been sufficiently theorized as systemic in its
own right. In the paradigm of complex systems theory, knowledge is not the attribute of an omniscient
distant observer but it is constituted as a distributed and bottom-up result of the interactions of
multiple agents. Following this paradigm, I will elaborate on how films are systems and lend themselves
be acknowledged as such by communicating with viewers in complex systemic ways, through
repetitions, recurrences and resonances of their narrative and stylistic units. In mind-game films in
particular (Elsaesser), which deliberately and self-reflexively challenge the grounds of viewers’ rational
understanding through a continuous interplay of visibility and invisibility, awareness and unawareness,
narrative knowing reveals itself as an emergent and affective process than an intellectual task. Examples
from recent mind-game films (such as Lars von Trier’s Antichrist and Melancholia) will be used to
illustrate this process.
Collaborative sense-making complexities of Lost and Breaking Bad
Siim Sorokin (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Presenting Author: Siim Sorokin
Recent trends in narratology show increasing interest in narrative complexity, referencing “mind-game,”
“riddle” films and serialized televisual narratives requiring “drillable engagement.” As complex systems,
these narratives enhance socially distributed intelligence through interactive problem-solving. Viewers
construct coherent meanings given discrepancies in plot and character. My paper argues that narrative
complexity carries over into, or rather, is re-framed within, sense-making synergy observable on the
Internet. The paper focuses on the user-generated content in weekly commentary sections of U.S. TV
criticism blogs covering serial narratives like Lost and Breaking Bad. Confronted with half-answers and
ultimately unsolved gaps (Lost) or unsatisfactory yet determined conclusions and character motivations
(Breaking Bad), commenters maintain coherences by narrativizing their guesses and inferences. They
blend prior contextual data and real-life knowledge with incoming narrative inputs (motifs).
Consequently, new meanings emerge, external to and resisting, yet contextually conditioned by,
narrative proper, because motifs induce backtracking to prior contextual data. Individual meanings
merge into constitutive and collaborative constructions or beacons. These beacons, so called to
emphasize their guiding principle, are “resource pools” allowing for meaning variations, jointly fixed
onto particular cohesive aim. During the lengthy period of the serial experience, user-generated
meaning constructions may get modified, complemented or entirely overwritten (the operative layer).
Hence, beacon, too, is fluid, persistently re-evaluating the incremental alterations and re-organizing
itself accordingly (the systemic layer).
4.3
Panel session: Narrative health psychology
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Chair: Michael Murray (Keele University, UK)
Narrative health psychology emerged at the crossroads between narrative psychology and narrative
health sciences. Narrative health psychology has grown into a burgeoning field of diverse and
sometimes contrasting approaches in theory, research and applications. Narrative approaches
nowadays span the total field of health psychology, ranging from (mental) health promotion and coping
with chronic or terminal illness to intervention research, health care delivery, and health technology
assessment. The goal of this symposium is to demonstrate state of the art approaches in narrative
health psychology. One of the important promises of narrative health psychology is that it takes the
patient perspective seriously by giving a contextualized voice to their experiences. In this symposium we
take an inclusive stance by bringing more nomothetic and more ideographic methods together.
Narrative futuring as narrative knowing
Anneke Sools (Twente University, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Anneke Sools
This paper explores psychological processes involved in narrative futuring as one particular mode of
narrative knowing. We define narrative futuring as imagining the future through stories by connecting
anticipated or expected events into a meaningful whole. We studied narrative futuring and the
relationship with health and well-being using a mixed-method design. We collected letters from the
future (a health promotion instrument) and answers to a well-being questionnaire (MHC-short form) via
an online tool at www.utwente.nl/lifestorylab. We analysed a total of 492 letters qualitatively by coding
each sentence using 23 function codes and 5 time codes. Then, we identified 2 main letter types, based
on the proportion and sequence of functions and related times per letter: 1) retrospective letters
containing evaluations of the past, with no or limited plans, goals and hope expressed; 2) prospective,
hopeful letters with no or limited retrospective parts focusing either on future plans and goals or on
vividly describing a future situation. Participants who wrote hopeful, prospective letters scored higher
on well-being than those who wrote retrospective letters. Based on these findings, we propose to make
a distinction between two different processes of narrative futuring each with distinct temporal
organization and with accompanying health-related functions. The first process is to creatively draw
upon past knowledge and experience to achieve acceptance and integration in light of a desired end.
The second process is to engage a narrative scheme which displays purpose, direction and hope, and
which has an overall motivating function. We conclude by critically reviewing if and how narrative
futuring differs from narrative imagination in general, and how narrative futuring differs from
paradigmatic forms of futuring.
The development of narratives about pain of chronic pain patients
Gerben Westerhof (Twente University, Netherlands), Karlein Schreurs (Twente University, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Gerben Westerhof
Narrative health psychology has often focused on the salutogenic effects of telling stories about illness
episodes. In particular, the search for meaning in transcending the problems created by illness is seen as
a process that contributes to well-being. However, most studies focused on narratives that are
retrospective reconstructions of illness episodes. They do not provide insight in how people develop
stories across time. In this presentation we study the process of how chronic pain patients gradually
develop their illness stories. Chronic pain patients were interviewed weekly about their therapy
progress during an eight week multidisciplinary group treatment based on acceptance and commitment
therapy at the Roessingh Revalidation Centre (Enschede, the Netherlands). Each week patients were
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asked to describe three situations that showed how they did or did not progress in their therapy. In each
narrative scene, patients describe the means and obstacles that they encountered in dealing with the
trouble of translating what they learned in therapy to their everyday life. The stories illustrate the
diversity of struggles and pathways that patients go through in developing stories from those that are
dominated by problems to those that transcend these problems and reclaim meaning in life.
Surfing narratives and PTSD
Brett Smith (Loughborough University, UK)
Presenting Author: Brett Smith
Narrative Analysis (DNA). Findings revealed that surfing facilitates a sense of “respite” from PTSD.
Implications of surfing experienced as respite were identified in terms of veterans’ health and wellbeing. Using narrative theory, this research is the first to demonstrate an empirical link between the
conceptual notion of the “Blue Gym” and potential improvements in well-being. This research also
extends previous knowledge in the area of physical activity, combat veterans and PTSD by highlighting
how nature-based physical activity can influence the well-being of combat veterans. The research has
implications for the treatment and narrative care of combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD.
Surfing narratives and PTSD
Ad Kaptein (Leiden University, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Ad Kaptein
The field of medical humanities stands at the crossroads of literature and medicine. In this presentation
different genres of narratives about illness are distinguished and the uses of research outcomes to
improve health care are discussed. I will focus in particular on the narratives about care of patients with
chronic diseases in which issues of self-management and shared decision making come to the fore.
Some prototypical examples will be discussed in detail. I argue that the literary description of illness
experiences can inform medical doctors about the patient perspective. Findings from this line of
research are being implemented in the medical curriculum.
4.4
Panel session: Témoigner des traumatismes historiques : Questions
littéraires, questions de transmission, enjeux et rapport au savoir
Chair: Christophe Ronveaux (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Le panel se propose d'analyser une forme particulière de transmission narrative de l'histoire, le texte de
témoignage. Une réflexion littéraire se propose tout d'abord de soulever les enjeux et spécificités de ces
textes dont on peut se demander s'ils constituent un genre littéraire, et dont il s'agit de cerner le
rapport au savoir, à la vérité qu'ils engagent. Le questionnement s'appuie alors sur l'étude d'un corpus
précis, celui de l'ouvrage de J.N. Cru, Témoins, qui permet d'examiner comment le savoir que transmet
le témoignage s'inscrit dans une tension entre deux projets, le projet éthique et le projet esthétique, et
comment l'exigence de vérité du témoin le conduit à s'écarter des canons du récit historique
traditionnel. La question de la transmission par l'école des textes de témoignage se pose alors. L'étude
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des supports scolaires permet de mettre en évidence une double difficulté de l'école : la première
consiste à solliciter des modalités d'analyse permettant de saisir les spécificités du genre - la littérature
de témoignage se trouve abordée par les outils narratologiques traditionnel du récit de fiction - ; la
seconde réside dans l'inscription de l'enseignement de l'expérience traumatique dans le curriculum
scolaire.
Enseigner le témoignage : Comment lire le texte de témoignage à l'école ?
Christophe Ronveaux (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Presenting Author: Christophe Ronveaux
L’émergence d’un genre comme symptôme d’un conflit dans le champ littéraire concerne également
l’école par la manière dont elle prend éventuellement acte de ce conflit ou au contraire en neutralise les
effets subversifs. La littérature de témoignage se définit en effet par des traits qui mettent en cause
triplement la littérature comme objet scolaire. Les œuvres des témoins permettent d’historiciser le
canon et la hiérarchie esthétiques qui continuent de structurer l’enseignement de la littérature. Elles
permettent également de reconsidérer la modalité transmissive des œuvres marquée par l’hégémonie
des récits de fiction et les outils narratologiques qui contribuent à leur interprétation. Elles sont
l’occasion enfin d’une réflexion sur la délicate question des relations entre l’esthétique et la
responsabilité des auteurs. Les supports scolaires (manuels, planifications, anthologies, épreuves aux
concours) nous semblent des sources de premier choix pour comprendre les difficultés d’inscrire la
mémoire dans un curriculum scolaire et plus généralement pour décrire ses conditions de transmission.
Notre hypothèse prend en compte le caractère « composite » (Crinon et alii, 2012) des supports et la
suprématie du récit qui rendent difficile et ambigüe la lecture de la littérature de témoignage. Nous
abordons le mécanisme de la transmission de l’expérience traumatique et la question de la mémoire par
une analyse de la matérialité des supports scolaires contemporains et des tâches de lecture de ce corpus
en émergence qu’est la littérature de témoignage.
Le témoignage : Récit d'histoire, récit de savoir, analyse de Témoins, J. N. Cru
Bruno Védrines (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Presenting Author: Bruno Védrines
Dans cette réflexion, nous pouvons nous aider d’une contribution capitale pour la constitution de
l’œuvre de témoignage en tant que genre, celle de Jean Norton Cru (1879-1949) et de son livre Témoins
(1929). Dans ce livre, Cru procède à une recension des témoignages et les classes en fonction de leur
valeur documentaire, de leur authenticité. De manière très sommaire, il est possible d’en retenir
quelques idées-forces. En se mettant au service des témoins, Cru montre comment les plus scrupuleux
sur le plan éthique, inscrivent dans leurs œuvres une critique parfois explicite, parfois suggérée de la
littérature canonique. Il pose de manière radicale le lien entre éthique et esthétique. En tant que
survivant, il est très sensible à ce qu’il considère comme une dette à l’égard des victimes. Il montre
également comment le témoin à la recherche d’une légitimité littéraire peut se placer dans une
tradition générique reconnue – ce qui se fait au détriment de la qualité documentaire du témoignage.
C’est le cas de Barbusse et Dorgelès, de leur recherche du pittoresque, qu’il soit morbide, argotique etc.
Mais le témoin peut aussi se démarquer des genres traditionnels, par souci d’authenticité ; il
transforme alors les discours périmés par le traumatisme de la guerre, il est alors hors du canon
reconnu par l’histoire littéraire. L’esthétique de l’œuvre de témoignage est donc intéressante par la
subversion et la rupture nette qu’elle marque avec les genres narratifs hérités du XIXe siècle, genres
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s’accompagnant de pratiques sociales, comme la valorisation de la virilité et de l’héroïsme guerriers, qui
prétendent exprimer la vérité sur la guerre.
Les formes du récit historique et leur rapport à la fiction, au savoir et à la mémoire : Les enjeux du
témoignage
Magali Brunel (Université de Grenoble Joseph Fourrier, France)
Presenting Author: Magali Brunel
Nos sociétés contemporaines valorisent la transmission de l’expérience par sa mise en récit mais les
différentes formes du récit historique engagent différents rapports à la réalité et à la
mémoire, différentes exigences narratives et différents pactes auctoriaux. Le récit de l'expérience vécue
(Lejeune 1975) présente lui aussi des spécificités et des exigences : lorsque le projet de transmission du
passé et celui du dire à la première personne se croisent, se pose alors un « pacte de lecture »
complexe, qui reconnait à l’auteur le droit de se raconter et d’émouvoir, et parfois d'inscrire un
itinéraire personnel dans un contexte collectif. Tout en assumant un refus explicite de la fiction, ces
genres s'inscrivent pourtant dans un rapport plus ou moins lâche avec l'exigence de véracité historienne
en même temps qu'ils se focalisent sur le sujet, premier filtre de l'évènement narré qu'il restitue de
l'intérieur. Le genre du témoignage présente alors des spécificités qui engagent son inscription
complexe dans les genres et les formes narratives, mais également dans l'histoire de la littérature : en
effet, il ne s'inscrit pas dans les catégories génériques traditionnelles (Kate Hamburger, Logique des
genres littéraires, 1977). Il restitue également une histoire contemporaine douloureuse voire
traumatisante, ce qui engage un rapport tout à fait particulier au savoir transmis, et à la mémoire
collective (Rastier, Lacoste).
4.5
Paper session: Narrating collective memory (I)
Moderator: Maria I. Medved
At the intersection of collected memories and collective memory: The stories and story of the US WAF
band (1951-1961)
Jeananne Nichols (University of Illinois, USA)
Presenting Author: Jeananne Nichols
How do forms of knowledge inform and produce narratives? To explore this question, I examine an
ongoing historical project to gather the oral histories of the members of the US WAF Band. The United
States Air Force “Women In the Air Force” (WAF) Band was an all-female military band of the 1950’s
whose mission, over its ten-year existence, was to recruit women to military service and to entertain
troops at Air Force bases throughout the United States. The women who served in the WAF Band, now
in their seventies and eighties, meet annually for a reunion and present performances that perpetuate
the band’s legacy. At the same time, their oral histories of military service belie a far more nuanced, if
not painful, report of what it meant to challenge the norms for women of that era. Crane (1996) states
that “history is an ambiguous term because it refers generally to both ‘what happened’ as it was
experienced in a former time and what has been thought and said about ‘what happened’ ever since.”
As the research process unfolds, individual stories both affirm and challenge the prevailing narrative.
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Moreover, as I am also a woman and a member of the professional band community, my positioning to
the story is not wholly objective and dispassionate. Not only am I constructing a representation of the
participants’ past, I am constructing my own past. In this paper I examine two interrelated aspects of
writing an historical narrative from collected memories. First, I excavate the hidden position of the
historian as hermeneut, the interpreter of experience, for multiple audiences including the participants
and the researcher as well. Second, I consider the necessity of resisting historical monophony and
producing texts that privilege the polyphony of stakeholder voices, including my own, that constitute
the story of the WAF Band.
Finding Sarah Kofman: Verifying Holocaust testimony and the perils of meaning
Catherine Dhavernas, James Carson (Queen's University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Catherine Dhavernas, James Carson
What does it mean to verify a survivor’s testimony? Do the details of one life matter in the midst of so
many millions who perished? Sarah Kofman, a French philosopher and art historian, lost her father to
the Holocaust and spent two years of the German occupation of Paris hiding in a neighbour’s house
disguised as the woman’s daughter. Late in her academic career, she authored an autobiography
entitled Rue Ordener, rue Labat that told the story of her family’s loss and of her survival. She narrated
significant events in her story, and much of what she wrote informed the citation that named the
woman who hid her, Claire Chemitre, as one of the “Righteous among the Nations.” In the practice of
history, one distrusts all sources, and so the investigators set out to verify Kofman’s autobiography by
using various archival and newspaper sources to establish the veracity of Kofman’s recollections and
Chemitre’s citation. As the research progressed, the investigators began to be troubled by interrogating
such a record and wondered about the moral implications of such criticism. In the end, they discovered
inaccuracies in Chemitre’s Yad Vashem citation and also were able to expose the world of Occupied
Paris that Kofman only cursorily recorded. Bus aside from such detailed knowledge, the investigators
wonder and would like to pose the question—Does a survivor’s testimony have to be true to be
accurate?
Networks of power in narratives of collective memory
Rónán Luke MacDubhghaill (CEAQ Sorbonne, Paris V/ CNR, UEL, France)
Presenting Author: Rónán Luke MacDubhghaill
Taking theoretical inspiration from the work of Michel Foucault on discourse, power, truth and
knowledge, this paper will examine narratives of collective memory. In so doing, it will comparatively
analyze cases from field research currently being carried out in Northern Ireland, in order to highlight 'la
differentialité', to cite Bertaux's methodology for narrative research. This approach favours looking
differences that structure people's relationships to these narratives of the past that form part of our
stock of cultural objects to which we attach our identities. ‘La differentialité’ here means the subtle
contours of difference in terms of perception which occur within groups, which can be of great
importance in how we understand and appropriate these narratives into our lives, and hence how they
influence action, often in very profound and even radical ways. Using theoretical insights from
continental philosophy and sociological theory, then, this paper aims to underline the importance of
these subtle differences, considering collective memory as a form of social truth. This will be done by
presenting original empirical field research, looking at testimonies of violence and radicalisation in
Northern Ireland, and unpacking them with reference to these theories, and the wider narratives of
collective memory to which they make reference.
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4.6
Paper session: Narrative therapy
Moderator: Christin Kober
Narrative and storytelling resources in art therapy
Ruth Harpaz (Academic Galilee College / Ministry of education, Israel)
Presenting Author: Ruth Harpaz
As professor Amia Lieblich has said, "People are story tellers by nature" (Lieblich et al., 1988).
Storytelling technique is well-founded in narrative theory, phenomenology, psychoanalytic theory,
trauma studies and aesthetics. Both my own research and my Art Therapy practice have been enriched
by the use of narrative and storytelling as therapy interventions. Storytelling ability emanates from
narrative knowledge. Notably, it is reframed as the patient's ability to use cognitive, symbolic and
affective mental processes. During Art Therapy sessions, the patient creates narratives and visual
representations to understand the meaning and significance of his/her mental state. "Narrative
Representations" in Art Therapy are analyzed by visual mode representations (drawings, sculptures,
etc.). Denzin & Lincoln (2000) say: "The visual narrative tells many different stories at the same time as it
mixes and combines multiple images". Visual narrative, however, is not complete without narrative
support through dialogue and language. Both verbal and visual representations are assessed by the SixPiece Story Making technique. The patient constructs the 6PSM through narrative representations and
the therapist constructs the 6PSM through narrative analyzing. In addition, Arthur Frank (Frank, 1995)
refers to another important reason to use storytelling interventions in Art Therapy sessions. Through
telling their stories, patients create empathic bonds between the wounded story teller and the wounded
healer. Finally, because stories can heal (Frank, 1995), storytelling in Art Therapy reveals the
connections between deeper layers of the soul through patients' body action while they are making
signs in their art work.
La place du récit dans la définition de l’ostéopathie
Jean Marie Gueullette (Université Catholique de Lyon, France)
Presenting Author: Jean Marie Gueullette
Le chercheur qui entre en relation avec le milieu ostéopathique est rapidement surpris par la place que
tient le récit dans la présentation que cette profession fait d’elle-même. Ouvrages, sites institutionnels
ou présentations personnelles de l’ostéopathie comportent toujours de manière plus ou moins
développée, le récit des origines, l’évocation des figures tutélaires que sont les américains A.T. Still,
W.G. Sutherland et l’anglais J. Littlejohn. De même, un ostéopathe se présente volontiers en racontant
quels furent ses maîtres. Le projet de cette communication est d’analyser la place de cette dimension
narrative, aux côtés du recours à d’autres fondements comme l’anatomie, dans l’auto-définition d’une
profession émergente. Si la présence du ou des fondateurs, au moins sous forme de portraits, semble
indispensable pour garantir l’authenticité ostéopathique du discours tenu, ou de la formation proposée,
le rapport qui est entretenu avec ces personnages historiques est pour le moins paradoxal. Les désigner
comme la source de la véritable ostéopathie semble nécessaire, mais cela est fait le plus souvent dans
un cadre narratif qui est assez éloigné de la méthode historique. On rencontre en effet très
fréquemment des appels à les lire "entre les lignes", à laisser ce qui constitue le "discours de leur
époque", tout en restant pourtant fidèle à ce qui constituerait "l’essentiel de leur enseignement". Il est
rare aujourd’hui que dans le champ thérapeutique, une profession fasse ainsi appel à la narration de ses
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origines pour se définir. La médecine contemporaine n’a que très peu de mémoire de ce qu’elle était, et
fait peu appel à son passé pour fonder son autorité. En revanche, c’est un processus essentiel dans
l’ostéopathie, alors que le développement de cette discipline n’a pas encore produit de concepts
suffisamment reconnus par tous pour fonder autrement une identité commune de la profession.
La narration comme acte de langage dans le discours scientifique princeps : Le cas de la maladie
d’Alzheimer
Yannick Chantran (Université Paris Diderot / Hôpital St- Antoine, France)
Presenting Author: Yannick Chantran
Il n’y a de savoir que formulé en un discours. Les savoirs énoncés dans le discours scientifique portent
sur des objets particuliers, e.g. “l’électron”, “Panthera tigris” ou “la cellule endothéliale”. Cependant,
même défini thématiquement, le discours scientifique regroupe en réalité une pluralité de discours,
hétérogènes quant à leur forme et leur contexte d’énonciation. On peut en particulier distinguer un
discours scientifique princeps cherchant à constituer de nouveaux savoirs (articles originaux,
communications orales ou par affiche), et un discours secondaire visant à restituer ces savoirs déjà
acquis (revues de la littérature, discours pédagogique). Cette littérature secondaire utilise fréquemment
la narration comme mode de restitution des savoirs : ces derniers sont mis en récit, réinvestis dans la
perspective diachronique d’une histoire des idées ou des découvertes. Au contraire, le discours
scientifique princeps semble privilégier d’autres modalités pour l’institution de savoirs inédits :
définition et dénomination, inférence, observation et description, classification, etc.
L’objectif de ce travail est d’interroger la place de la narration dans le discours scientifique princeps.
Nous proposerons d’abord d’appréhender les différentes « modalités d’institution des savoirs », dont la
narration, dans le cadre conceptuel de la speech act theory d’Austin, i.e. comme autant d’actes de
discours possédant une valeur illocutoire conventionnelle. Nous utiliserons ensuite ces outils
conceptuels pour examiner un corpus d’articles originaux portant sur la “maladie d’Alzheimer”. L’acte
narratif est-il effectivement utilisé dans le discours princeps pour constituer de savoirs inédits ? Quels
types d’objets de savoir sont alors concernés ? Quelle(s) relation(s) l’acte narratif entretient-il avec
d’autres actes (par exemple avec l’observation et la description, ou bien avec l’inférence par induction),
au sein d'une unité de discours, mais aussi au niveau intertextuel ?
4.7
Paper session: Autobiographical narratives (II)
Moderator: Amy Johnson Lachuk
Heroes of the academy? : Narratives of heroic leadership
Adisorn Juntrasook (Mahidol University, Thailand)
Presenting Author: Adisorn Juntrasook
The heroic narrative is a powerful cultural narrative. It manifests in social media and cultural artefacts,
one can read it in academic texts, self-help books, fairytales, contemporary fictions, or even celebrity
biographies. This narrative has been tied to the ideas of transformation, progress and courage—which
are all connected to popular images of heroic leaders across contemporary contexts. Ironically, the very
same images of heroic leaders are often criticised in the leadership literature as detrimental to
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organizations, including the academy. These criticisms expose the taken-for-granted association
between heroic models of leadership and the discourses of individualism, autonomy and masculinity;
such discourses are potentially inequitable to structurally oppressed groups within the space of higher
education (including women, people of different ethnicities, and others). In this paper, I endeavour to
scrutinise the heroic narrative that fuels the ‘cult’ of heroism, the narrative that has shaped in part
what, and how, we come to think about leadership. In so doing, I draw on my research exploring how
academics in New Zealand experience and understand themselves as leaders in their everyday working
contexts. I employ narrative analysis to look at the different ways in which the academics in my study
took up the heroic narrative to construct their leadership accounts. Along this line, I also examine what
identities, however temporary, might be produced within a ‘heroic’ narrative construction, and what it
might mean for them and their working contexts. I conclude this paper by proposing possible ways to rethink the heroic narrative of leadership that might help us re-imagine what leadership may look like in
the academy.
Auto-biography as an epistemological bridge between education and narratology
Franco Passalacqua (Università degli Studi Milano, Italy)
Presenting Author: Franco Passalacqua
It can be stated that narrative studies expanded the scope of inquiry of its predecessor to become
multiple, interdisciplinary, transgeneric, transmedial. More recently, it appears that narratology and
narrative studies have entered a phase of consolidation, but with a constant tendency toward
diversification (ENN 2013 Conference): theoretical and practical cogency of stories have encouraged
narrative studies to expand their purview beyond the narratological corpus and take the “narrative
turn,” embracing fields as diverse as psychology, sociology, history, the law, corporate management,
digital technology, and more. While significant steps towards a theoretical comparison between these
fields have been already promoted, narrative practice in education still remains influenced more by
pedagogy and psychology and less by narratology. From the other hand, narratology has not adequately
been challenged by recent achievements in education practice on narrative. The paper provides an
epistemological reflections on the definition of narrative (from narratological and educational
perspective) and on its consequences in educational debate. Arguing in favour of constructivist/mimetic
dichotomy and providing an epistemological comparison between narratological theories and
methodologies and auto-biography practices in education, my aim is to delineate a common theoretical
ground which coherently embraces educational studies on narrative (centred on the process of
understanding, self-acceptance, recognition, learning and change) and contemporary narratology theory
and tools of analysis. The work is conducted by analysing the ontological status of the narrative object in
both narratological and educational field and by considering its epistemic dimension from a
constructivist approach: narrativity is not codified in discourse, but rather constructed in the audiencediscourse relationship, through cognitive strategies and dispositions involved in the process.
Americans in Paris: Two women and two worlds
Martha McKenna (Lesley University, USA)
Presenting Author: Martha McKenna
Paris has long been a haven for American artists, particularly women artists, who have found their voice
and developed their craft in a society supportive of their talents. Two such artists, a century apart,
succeeded in developing revolutionary subject matter, style and technique in their printmaking and
painting in the creative atmosphere of Paris. In this session we will explore Mary Cassatt’s series The
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Ten, scenes of a day in the life of a 19th Century Parisian woman, and Faith Ringgold’s The French
Collection, fictional stories placing women and African American in Paris of the 1920’s to celebrate their
significant contributions to society. Focusing on the use of narratives, both the narrative described
within the work and that of the artist’s life, we will explore Mary Cassatt’s unique subject matter of the
everyday life of women in The Ten and the emergence of her revolutionary style and technique in
printmaking in the context of Paris in the 1890’s. In exploring Cassatt’s narrative, sectioning out from
her life episodes for further examination, we will have the opportunity to learn about her experiences
with artists in Paris and their role in her development as a leading artist among the Impressionists. We
will also examine the meaning and significance of The Ten for its contribution to the history of art and
the role of Cassatt in opening doors for women artists in the 20th Century.
Parallel Session #5
5.1
Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: Critical narrative health psychology
Chair: Anneke Sools (University of Twente, Netherlands)
Critical health psychology developed in the 1990s as a challenge to mainstream positivist, apolitical and
cognitive approaches within health psychology. It was not a single approach but expressed a widespread
dissatisfaction with the complacency of mainstream psychological approaches and a desire to connect
health psychology with the various initiatives in critical social theory and methodology as well as
broader social, cultural, political critique. As such, critical health psychology has many affinities with
narrative psychology with its desire to develop alternative and more dynamic approaches to
understanding human meaning making and action. A critical approach to narrative health psychology
seeks to move away from the characterisation of narrative accounts of health and illness as the
expression of individual experience and to consider them as ways of engaging with larger societal
narratives. It considers the assumptions underlying particular narratives and to what extent people can
develop counter narratives and narratives of resistance. This symposium begins to explore the critical
dimensions of narrative health psychology through exploration of several studies.
Community workers’ narratives of change
Michael Murray (Keele University, UK)
Presenting Author: Michael Murray
Community development is widely promoted as a means to enhance individual and community capacity
and wellbeing. Descriptions of this process largely ignore the role of the community worker. This
paper considers the everyday lives of community workers through detailed analysis of life story
interviews with a sample of twelve community workers. Their accounts were analysed in terms of
narrative structure and content. Three main narrative structures were identified – the activist, the
consumer advocate and the managerial. Each of these was underpinned by values concerned with
promoting social justice and community involvement. Four main content themes were identified:
values, passion, empowerment, and evidence. Further, in their everyday practices the community
workers made use of small stories to engage with the residents of the community and to promote
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sympathy with a bigger story of change. These findings are discussed with reference to the conflictual
role of the community worker as an agent of change and as an agent of the state.
The important role of counter-stories in critical health psychology
Michelle N. Lafrance, Suzanne McKenzie-Mohr (University of St. Thomas, Canada)
Presenting Author: Michelle N. Lafrance
Drawing on our work in Women voicing resistance: Discursive and narrative explorations (2014), the
focus of this paper is on the utility of ‘counter-stories’ for narrative health psychology. Whereas master
narratives have been elaborated as central to people’s experiences of distress and illness (e.g., master
narratives of femininity and depression among women), we focus on moments in which these are
resisted with the aim of opening up new and more useful ways of storying the self. Following a brief
history of the scholarship in the area of narrative resistance, we will describe counter-stories in terms of
their performative functions. While elaborating their potential for emancipatory aims, we will also
explore the complications and challenges that accompany the study of counter-stories. The
presentation will conclude with an exploration of various methodological strategies for the hearing and
telling of counter-stories as well as their implications for clinical practice.
Narrative research and the uncertainties of chronic illness
Corinne Squire (University of East London, UK)
Presenting Author: Corinne Squire
Narrative health research has a strong and productive history. It has helped shift academic and policy
focus from disease to illness, and has acted as an important channel for the concerns of patient
advocates, medical activists, and medical professionals. This paper explores the advantages offered by
narrative research in a specific area: that of chronic illness. Contemporary narrative research’s
procedural and analytic emphases on extended stretches of talk; on stories told across interviews; on
‘contradictory’ or ‘incoherent’ stories; on co-constructed, dialogical stories; on paralinguistic elements;
and on participants’ own understandings and framings, all contribute to this advantage. The paper
draws on 2011 interviews about HIV support with 47 people living with HIV in the UK. HIV is a ‘chronic
illness’ in many current policy accounts. It is well-treated in high-income countries, permitting normal
life expectancy. The paper describes the high frequency in interview materials of very different stories,
about fluctuating, ‘up-and-down’ health; recalcitrant symptoms; side-effects; medical uncertainties; and
mental health issues –stories told even when good medical and psychosocial support were available.
The paper suggests that narrative research may help develop more complex understandings of HIV and
other chronic illnesses. It also examines the indicative possibilities of narrative research in the HIV field
for exploring and analyzing difficulties such as emotional ambivalence and social stigma – possibilities
which may, again, be transferable to research on other conditions.
Narratives of engagement and resistance in coercive treatment interventions
Christine Horrocks, Jo Ashby (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Presenting Author: Christine Horrocks, Jo Ashby
The word coercion is almost didactically opposed to our understandings of treatment. Participation in
treatment assumes voluntary participation without coercion; with protagonists already entered into
narrative scripts which prescribe roles and types of engagement. Yet, in the UK those found to have
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committed offences linked to substance misuse (drugs and alcohol) can be sentenced to receive
treatment in the community; often in the form of engagement with a programme targeted at harm
reduction and improved health outcomes. Such interventions rely heavily upon the ‘transtheoretical
model’ of self-change with its notion of ‘readiness’; which seems at odds with the coercive nature of
such programmes. Drawing on primary research with ‘patient/offenders’ we explore stories of coercive
treatment both in relation to engagement and resistance. Data was collected by observing the
interaction within treatment sessions. Also one to one narrative interviews were undertaken, based
upon the work of Riemann and Schutze (1991), with young men participating on two coercive treatment
programmes. Adopting a ‘dialogical’ perspective the analysis illustrates the potential within coercive
treatment for the creation of ‘counterstories’; here a more moral self can be enacted. Furthermore,
building on dialogical and relational conceptualisations of human action consideration is given to
counterstories as co-constructed thus being an outcome of both self and other. Hence the treatment
worker is heavily implicated in the outcomes of ‘treatment’. We will also use positioning theory to
explore control and compliance within these complex, relational and interactive encounters. Here the
storing of change is seen to be reliant on both resisting damaging narratives and having space to costory change in ways that make sense within specific cultural locations.
5.2
Paper session: Narrative and human services
Moderator: Andrea Ritivoi
Inference to the best explanation? Narrative in the service of flawed logic
Clive Baldwin (University of St Thomas, Canada)
Presenting Author: Clive Baldwin
In this paper I explore the relationship between evidence-based and narrative reasoning in a series of
expert paediatric reports of a case of alleged child abuse. While the debate concerning this relationship
has been fomenting in the area of Law since the work of Bennett and Feldman and Pennington and
Hastie on the story model of legal reasoning, less interest has been shown in other areas. Drawing on
the work of Bex, who attempted to develop a hybrid theory of evidence-based and narrative reasoning, I
argue that in the reports under scrutiny as the abductive reasoning of the author deteriorates (in terms
of consilience, coherence, simplicity and ad hoc theorising) the possibility emerges for a stronger
narrative to be told, with greater clarity of central action, more robust emplotment, credible narrative
causality and narrative cohesion and consistency. Rhetorical criticism is essential in revealing the
overlooked, obscured or muddled especially when the stakes are high and by exploring the differing
criteria for persuasiveness of each of these forms of reasoning, and the dynamic between these forms,
we are in a better position to evaluate their claims to what we know. In so doing the paper contributes
to our understanding of narrative as a way of knowing in medicine, social work and child protection.
Evaluating care: How to create accountability approaches that connect propositional and narrative
knowledge
Gerdienke Ubels (ActiZ, Netherlands), Merel Visse (University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Gerdienke Ubels, Merel Visse
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In eldercare the dominant accountability structures of the last decades have stimulated
conceptualizations of care in mainly quantitative terms, feeding on measured outcomes and
performance indicators. More and more however, professionals not only point out that these
conceptualizations do not add up to a meaningful representation of their practices of care, and that
these conceptualizations do not match the complexities of daily health care practices, but they are not
contented with the results that stem from the established accountability procedures as well. Somehow,
many people address a gap between propositional knowledge (evidence and outcome based) and their
personal and particular experiences with complex, daily eldercare practices. These people seek ways to
approach and include qualitative, lived and narrated conceptualizations of care in accountability
approaches. Narrative ways of perceiving care practices and the knowledge exchange within these
practices may provide possibilities to bridge the gap. Honoring the focus of Narrative Care, ActiZ (see
below) has funded a two year program (2012-2014) which serves a qualitative turn in eldercare. This
goes two ways: 1. How can we facilitate a continuous and narrative oriented quality awareness in care
organizations? 2. How can propositional knowledge (outcome measures) and qualitative (narrative)
knowledge be connected to serve meaningful evaluative relationships? The paper will focus on the last
question. It will mainly present our experiences with and findings of an experimental project, involving a
coming together of national stakeholder representatives mutually exploring this last question. In the
process, these investigations point to an emerging development in identity perception of/and the
societal status of care organizations as such. We will therefore also explore what can be said about the
role they fulfill in the early 21st century redesigning of the (Western European) welfare state.
Narrative as a tool in medical education: The use of the McGill illness narrative interview.
Clarisse Rinaldi Salles de Santiago, Erotildes Maria Leal, Octavio Domont de Serpa Jr, (Institute of
Psychiatry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Presenting Author: Clarisse Rinaldi Salles de Santiago
This study presents an experience of using a narrative eliciting tool- MINI-McGill Illness Narrative
Interview (Groleau, Young and Kirmayer, 2006) - in training medical students and evaluated possible
effects that the use of the narrative eliciting tool would bring in the training process of students.
We employed a qualitative methodology in field research. Data was collected in focus groups and
interviews with 13 students participating in a university extension program on mental health, crack
alcohol and drugs, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/Campus Macaé. The narrative analysis
was done using the methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). As results we found
that the students, despite of being in different periods of medical school (there were students from 2nd
to 6th periods), were capable of establishing more attentive, interested and reflective relationships with
patients, mediated by listening the patients (verbal and non-verbal) narratives and not just by the sight
(of a pathological lesion, a laboratory exam, etc), an intersubjective relationship, in which subjects medical student and patient - are inserted in a linguistic community and are capable of exchanging
values and ideas about illness and disease. (Serpa Júnior et al., 2007) : We conclude that the use of the
narrative tool MINI in medical training can help the development of narrative skills, leading to the
establishment of a medical-patient relationship less disease centred and more patient centred.
5.3
Panel session: From simple story to lived complexity
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Chair: Carmen Schuhmann (University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands)
In this panel we explore the relation between what we call 'lived complexity' and narrative. From a
narrative perspective, persons make sense of and shape their lives by 'storying' their experience and
performing these stories. However, none of these stories can grasp the richness and complexity of lived
experience – so, inevitably, in the stories, some of this complexity is lost. At the same time, persons also
exist within social narratives and are themselves shaped by the stories of others and of the collective. In
an increasingly complex world, it is not only the complexity of experience that comes into play when
persons tell stories about themselves, but also the complexity of the many different and often
contradictory stories, at various levels of socially shared understanding, that circulate on cultural,
political, social and personal issues in which they are involved. The term 'lived complexity' refers to both
types of complexity and to the way in which they are interrelated. The question that this panel explores
is what frameworks help us to see lived complexity in a simple story. The four contributors to this panel
depart from one shared case – a newspaper article that tells the 'simple story' of bank employees who
join in a choir as part of a British TV-competition – but each addresses the case from a different
methodological or theoretical perspective. We ask which story is told in the article and which stories are
not and how telling this particular story affects the lived experience of both the persons who are
mentioned and not mentioned? How are the social realities in which those lives take place shaped by
this narrative, and how does it shape our knowledge and understanding of the world?
The dialogical self and its imaginaries
Hans Alma (University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Hans Alma
One of the aspects of 'lived complexity' in our time is that people not only live in a society characterized
by pluralism, but that this pluralism is to be found within themselves as well. My paper will depart from
the idea that the self is 'multivoiced': the self consists of multiple 'I-positions' that enter into dialogue
(or conflict) with one another. As a result, there is no single position from which people tell their stories:
different I-positions offer different perspectives on the same happenings. From this point of view, the
story of the bank employees can never be simple. By looking at the story from the perspective of the
dialogical self-theory, the different layers of voices that are present or strikingly absent, can be explored.
This perspective will be related to reflection on the role of the imagination in how people come to
understand themselves and their situation. I use the term 'imaginary' for this imaginative understanding
of self and world, and I'll argue, with the help of our shared case, that imaginaries are spaces of
contestation, in which some (I-)positions find voice and others won't. In my paper, a psychological
analysis will go hand in hand with an analysis from the point of view of cultural theory. It will be
discussed what the truth claims of imaginaries can be, and how they are related to knowledge. The
discussion of these more theoretical issues will be related throughout to the story of Gareth’s Gang, as a
common point of reference both for the panelists and for the audience.
The (non)violence of stories told and untold
Saskia van Goelst Meijer (University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Saskia van Goelst Meijer
In this paper I will explore the relation between narrative, story and lived complexity from the
perspective of nonviolence. I use the term nonviolence here not only to point to the absence of
violence, but as a coherent set of ideas and practices that provide a framework for understanding
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(social) reality and creating social change. I explore how the framework of nonviolence can help us to
see the lived complexity in a simple story of a group of bankers that form a choir to boost their morale
and improve their social image. The article on Gareth’s Gang seems to address, and create public
awareness for, the lived complexity of the bankers participating in the choir. Yet, it excludes and
effectively silences the perspective of those affected by the global financial crisis, and of the voices of
those who have an alternative vision for the world. Drawing on the work of Gandhi, Havel, Jackson and
Butler on the relation between story, narrative and nonviolence I will argue that such an exclusion
amounts to dehumanization and violence. I will also argue that from the perspective of nonviolence,
which rests on a relational understanding of reality, this dehumanization not only concerns those who
are excluded from the story, but also the bankers themselves. In this paper I ask how the story could
have been told differently, in a way that would do more justice to, and create more actual space for, the
lived complexity of all involved.
Narrative, affect and truth claims
Steve Shann (University of Canberra, Australia)
Presenting Author: Steve Shann
The conference theme on narrative and epistemology asks us to address this question: Is narrative best
thought about as an object of knowledge, a means of knowledge, or an obstacle to knowledge? My
paper seeks to temporarily shift the focus from the relationship between narrative and knowledge. It
will begin by instead exploring the relationship between narrative and affect/action. Prompted by some
of the writing of Deleuze and Guattari, and drawing on the work of narrative scholars such as Clough,
Barone, Somerville, Bochner, Greene and Richardson, I argue that the story of Gareth’s Gang is a story
that is more concerned to create an affect than to enlighten. It can, then, be seen as an obstacle to
knowledge rather than a means to knowledge. I will further suggest that this story shares this ambition
with many stories that come out of the narrative tradition. Can no narrative, then, be trusted? Are there
no truth claims that a narrative can make? By what criteria can a story be judged if it is to be considered
scholarly? I present, in my paper, a second story, to be put side-by-side with the story of Gareth’s Gang,
in an attempt to claim that there are, in fact, criteria by which we can say that some stories are a means
to knowledge, and can therefore make legitimate claim to be contributions to scholarship.
Narrative identity-repair in therapeutic contexts
Carmen Schuhmann (University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Carmen Schuhmann
In this contribution to the panel, I will explore the relation between narrative and lived complexity in
therapeutic contexts, combining the perspective of narrative therapy with theory on narrative repair of
damaged identities by Lindemann Nelson. Narrative therapists support their clients in deconstructing
problem-saturated, thin narratives in which they are storied or story themselves and in constructing
thick, more complex self-defining narratives. The newspaper story that we use as a shared case in our
panel seems to suggest that the process of singing together in a TV competition has at least some
therapeutic potential for the choir members: it is “good for morale” and involves literally giving voice to
silenced experience. The original, problem-saturated, thin story of the bank employees in the choir is
dominated by a master narrative that denies their trustworthiness as moral agents and in that sense
damages their identity. Narrative repair would require the creation of stories of moral self-definition.
This raises questions concerning the potential of thick stories – and therapy - for narrative repair of
damaged identities and the moral dimension of (narrative) therapy in general: are the relatively complex
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thick stories that we strive for in narrative therapy also more 'morally complex' than thin master
narratives? How does the focus on giving voice to silenced experience of a client relate to experiences of
others that may be silenced in the story a client tells us? How does 'good for morale' relate to 'morally
good'? As I will argue from our shared case, these questions are of importance for therapists in a
globalizing world in which persons are inevitably caught up in each other's stories in complex ways.
5.4
Panel session: Closing the gap: Narrating the prose of severe psychic
suffering
Chair: Michael O'Loughlin (Adelphi University, USA)
In seeking to characterize “the prose of suffering” (cf. Jackson, 2005), complex considerations surface in
regard to our own understanding of suffering; our motives for doing such work; and our capacity to
understand the social production of suffering, a production abetted in part by the regimes society puts
in place ostensibly to mitigate suffering. How is it possible, then, “to do justice to the way others
experience the world and whatever is at stake for them”? (Jackson, 2005, p. 153). Is it possible in
seeking to “get the story” to avoid the appropriation of experience, the imposition of world-views, and
the pursuit of self-interest that are occupational hazards in narrative research? Could any good come of
turning private suffering into public experience? In engaging in narrative research into chronic
psychiatric difficulty we worried about betrayal and exposure. We worried about our own voyeurism
and about provoking voyeuristic responses in future readers. We witnessed patients struggle to
articulate pain and hope while speaking through a haze produced by psychotropic medications, and
sometimes through the confusion of the battle between delusional and rational thought. We lived in the
presence of evident dread – the fear of breakdown. Were our attempts to bear witness well intentioned
or were we being foolhardy or exploitative? Could good come of turning private suffering into public
experience? We use Arthur Frank’s (1995) notion of “wounded storyteller” to understand the manner in
which psychiatric collapse leads to rupture of life narrative. Our project is one of seeking to understand
that rupture and its implications for people’s capacity to generate meaningful ongoing life narratives. In
our presentations we will outline the narrative and theoretical underpinnings of our work with survivors
of chronic psychiatric suffering, and we will offer illustrative excerpts from interviews to exemplify the
dilemmas and possibilities of this work.
Closing the distance: Creating a collaborative interpretive community for understanding psychic
suffering
Michael O'Loughlin (Adelphi University, USA)
Presenting Author: Michael O'Loughlin
We set out, following Biehl (2005), to engage in a phenomenologically near inquiry. Corin (1998)
borrows the term “contemplative immersion” to describe the research interviewer’s stance and
suggests that an ethical interview ought to promote restorative dynamics in participants. We kept the
door to negotiation open by affirming our commitment to respect for psychiatric survivors and our
interest in participating in a genuinely collaborative inquiry. We made a commitment that any person
who participated in fieldwork at the facility would spend 3-6 months volunteering at the facility in order
to build rapport with staff and members. Influenced by Kleinman, we de-emphasized the initial heavily
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clinical focus of the inquiry and instead characterized the work as a series of three-one hour life
conversations. While our broad interest remained in understanding the internal psychic life of
psychiatric survivors, the social situatedness of suffering, and the influence of the pharmacologicalmedical model, we now placed a greater emphasis on the narrative quality of the participant’s telling,
and particularly our roles as interviewers in the co-construction of the emerging narrative. We are
currently setting up an interpretive community at the facility where members and staff nominated by
that community will become part of our interpretive team, and will join with us in viewing interviews
and developing language to characterize the prose of psychiatric suffering and the narrative structures
of chronic psychic impairment, as revealed in the interviews. I will present background to the work,
describe our recruitment of the first 10 participants, describe the structuring and content of the threehour interview protocol, what steps we are taking to create a collaborative interpretive community with
site staff and psychiatric residents, and the complexity of rendering portraits of persons who are not
only economically marginal but who live with the marginalization that accompanies psychiatric
suffering.
Narrative breakdown: Disentangling multiplicity within one woman’s account of psychic impasse
Montana Queler (Adelphi University, USA)
Presenting Author: Montana Queler
Personal narrative is perhaps a misnomer since what is personal is always to some degree fashioned by
the external. The extent to which we play an active role in crafting our own narratives depends upon
myriad variables, and in recent years questions regarding who has the right to narrate for whom and
when has become hotly contested territory in certain corners of the mental health field.
This presentation will focus on the narrative of one woman who over the course of three interviews
speaks of her experiences with psychosis and depression, as well as how her life has been fundamentally
altered by these impasses. An African American woman in her fifties, Teresa (pseudonym) touches on
some of the triumphs and disappointments she experiences growing up and as she matures into
adulthood. Through her fantasies, we learn of parts of her identity that have been preserved as ideals
for her life narrative, while also observing how these function to protect the self, which has been
wounded through repeated disappointment. Bollas (2013) reflects on how, in the breakdown of the self,
the “hidden ideal self…lives on in the unrealistic dreams of success…as if the person is trying to hold on
to aspects of the self that existed before the breakdown.” We see this in Teresa’s rendering of her
future, in which her visions of success are entwined with yearnings for love and recognition. These
imaginings exist side-by-side with narratives of interpersonal suffering and loss. Drawing from Bollas’s
conceptualization as well as the writings of Frank (1995) and Lewis (2011), I will highlight the multiple
voices captured in Teresa’s story and interpret what these voices have to tell us about the way psychosis
is experienced.
Narrating the experience of psychosis to create meaning
Secil Arac-Orhun (Adelphi University, USA)
Presenting Author: Secil Arac-Orhun
Psychosis may be understood as a loss of meaning and an integrative narrative. Individuals going
through psychosis need to negotiate with and adapt to the new life situation, mourn the loss
of previously held identities, and develop new narratives - narratives which are shaped by and are
reflective of the dynamic development of the individual. Bollas talks about the “idiom”- an individual’s
unique potential. He makes the distinction between fate and destiny, stating that the course of destiny
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can be changed, and the individual can actualize his or her idiom’s potential, while fate feels like an
“oracle” without a sense of internal direction and an idiom. For some, psychosis may be seen as a loss of
internal direction, loss of destiny; yet, survivors also talk about the transformational aspect of their
experience. Sass (2007) argues that the experience of schizophrenia is not solely negative, instead; it can
transform, alter and grow the individual into a different identity, which has the elements of what the
person used to be, as well as the new identity, insights and experience produced by the psychosis. This
paper focuses on conversations with a psychiatric survivor, and talks about her experience of hearing
voices, her diagnosis, and her relationship with her family and her hopes for the future. Her story echoes
multiple internalized figures from her past, her mother’s, her family’s and society’s perceptions of her,
as well as her inner critique. As she reflects on her psychiatric suffering through the conversations, we
become witness to multiple facets of her story, and her reflecting back at her suffering and her
transformation as she searches for meaning in her story. I will explore her first person narrative through
the conceptualizations of Sass (2007) and through Estroff’s (2004) writings on chronicity and on the
subjective experience of psychosis.
5.5
Paper session: Illness narratives (II)
Moderator: Marina Grishakova
Exploring the complexities of women’s chronic illness-related changes through narrative analysis and
analysis of narrative
Brett Crehan, Heather Adams (Ball State University, USA)
Presenting Author: Heather Adams
According to the literature, when women discover they have a chronic illness they are traditionally
classified as having one of three outcomes: succumbing to their illness, having resiliency to their illness,
or overcoming obstacles and thriving while living with their illness (Carver, 1998). Working from indepth interviews with four women living with chronic illnesses, this study adds to the growing literature
challenging this approach (Baker, et. al., 2008; Harvey, Barnett & Overstreet, 2004; Tedeschi & Calhoun,
2006) as an oversimplification of people’s traumatic experiences in general and chronic illnesses in
particular. Through narrative analysis we expand beyond Baker et. al.’s (2008) quantitative assessment
to explore details of how illness-related gains and losses are interwoven within an individual’s life, not
only across their lifespan, but even within a single point in time. Focusing on the areas of familial
relationships, professional satisfaction and personal satisfaction, we organize participant’s accounts
chronologically, producing a narrative analysis of their unique approaches to specific illness-related
changes (Polkinghorne, 1995). Analysis of these co-constructed narratives (Polkinghorne, 1995; 2007)
reveal previously unexplored complexities, including contrasting trajectories in different domains (e.g., a
deterioration of family relationships but an increase in professional satisfaction), along with interwoven
gains and losses within a single domain (e.g., the support of co-workers but not one’s supervisor).
Synthesis with current research provides new insights for future research, along with important
cautions.
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Death of the memoirist: Schizophrenia, semiotics and the illusion of illness narratives
Michael Flexer (University of Leeds, UK)
Presenting Author: Michael Flexer
'Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all
identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.' (Roland Barthes, The Death of the
Author). Stories are increasingly a symptom of illness. Describing such stories as ‘a recognizable genre of
popular culture,’ sociologist Arthur Frank (Arthur Franck, The Wonded Storyteller, 1995) argues that
storytelling is a therapeutically useful response to a life interrupted by illness. In his formulation,
‘[d]isease interrupts a life’ and leaves the individual a ‘narrative wreck.’this wrecked self is then
reconstructed through the telling of the illness story, a story in which ‘the self is being formed in what is
told.’ Although it would be an oversimplification of Frank’s theory to dismiss it as writing oneself well,
that certainly forms a part of the process: ‘[s]tories have to repair the damage that illness has done to
the ill person’s sense of where she is in life, and where she may be going.’Building on Angela Woods’
recent ‘provocations’ in Medical Humanities and her call to ‘denaturalise narrative,’ this paper
interrogates the popular concept of the illness narrative – with its inherent assumptions about its
narratising subject and its bold therapeutic claims. In particular, this paper questions the validity of the
illness narrative in light of Barthes’ semiotic observations about texts, narratives and the narrative
subject, and then demonstrates how narratives constructed by people with psychosis offer profound
insights into the problems and limitations of illness narrative theories, as well as pointing the way to
develop better theories – and practices – of expressing, reading and making ‘sense’ of the experience of
mental and physical ill health.
Narratives of dying with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neurone disease (ALS/MND): The death
of a child
Sinead O'Toole, Mary Kemple (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Presenting Author: Sinead O'Toole
MND/ALS, Charcot’s and Lou Gherig’s disease are terms for a range of rapidly progressive and ultimately
fatal conditions affecting the motor neurons. Although rare, is the most common fatal
neurodegenerative disease of midlife and is very rare before the age of 20 years. There are diverse and
conflicting discourses on dying with MND/ALS. To date constructions of dying with MND/ALS from the
perspective of relatives has received little attention. The objective of this study was to document the
constructions provided by individuals who had witnessed the death of a relative with MND/ALS.
Narrative inquiry provided a means to develop situation specific understandings and to explore
individual constructions of dying with MND/ALS as meaningful, nuanced and socially embedded events.
These narratives, characterised by plurality and diversity, usually related accounts of dying quickly,
peacefully and without pain, they were interwoven with experiences of suffering that occurred during
the long trajectories of dying related by these research participants. This suffering was theorised as
being both physical and iatrogenic in origin and was related to the intermeshed components of the
physical manifestations of MND, and to the systems of health care upon which the dying person and his
or her family were dependent. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of the study by using
one narrative to illustrate the construction of dying with MND/ALS made by the mother of a boy with
MND/ALS. The constructions of dying in this study called direct attention to the suffering of the
individuals with MND/ALS, illuminated the suffering of the narrators while also elucidating the effects on
the researcher of listening to these stories.
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5.6
Paper session: Autobiographical narratives (III)
Moderator: Kate Averis
Narrer le récit ancestral chez Gabrielle Roy : L’incidence de glissements génériques sur les savoirs du
soi
Cecilia W. Francis (University of St. Thomas, Canada)
Presenting Author: Cecilia W. Francis
Nombre d’exégètes de l’œuvre littéraire de Gabrielle Roy considèrent que la démarche de l’écrivaine
s’avère empreinte d’une esthétique de réécriture (Everett et Ricard 2003), si bien qu’un examen de sa
prose autobiographique révèlerait des reprises d’un architexte fondateur. Un bouclage narratif consacré
au récit ancestral en constitue un cas d’espèce : il s’agit d’une réécriture de la saga des origines,
départagée entre des essais, publiés en aval de Bonheur d’occasion (Fémina 1945), et l’expression
autobiographique qui culmine dans la publication posthume de La détresse et l’enchantement (1984).
Partant d’une analyse de la construction des savoirs du soi, nous examinerons ce glissement générique,
circonscrivant comment le parcours épistémique élaboré passe d’une modalisation objective,
caractéristique du dispositif essayiste à un point de vue subjectif. Modélisé par l’énonciation
autobiographique, le récit ancestral offre une perception renouvelée non seulement de l’histoire des
origines, mais aussi des procès cognitifs de l’auto-découverte qui s’y relient. Notre traitement de
l’incidence du glissement générique sur la construction des savoirs du soi sera appuyé par des
enseignements de Paul Ricœur. Dans Temps et récit III (1985), l’herméneute établit la narration comme
forme médiatrice engageant le temps objectif, externe au sujet pensant, et le temps mental,
phénoménologique d’un vécu subjectif. La narration se conçoit ainsi en tant que « tiers temps » raconté,
dont nous montrerons la pertinence en vertu de la reconfiguration narrative chez Roy. A l’égard de la
reprise du récit ancestral, il sera question d’explorer, à la lumière de théorisations basées sur
l'autobiographie (Starobinski, Lejeune, Lecarme), la notion ricœurienne d’« identité narrative », en
autant que celle-ci enrichit l'étude des processus cognitifs, perceptifs et imaginaires impliqués dans le
travail de métamorphose narrative du réel que présuppose la démarche autobiographique.
Les récits autobiographiques de Boris Pasternak : Entre "subjectif" et "objectif"
Ioulia Podoroga (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Presenting Author: Ioulia Podoroga
Dans mon exposé, je voudrais confronter deux récits autobiographiques de Boris Pasternak, écrivain et
poète russe et soviétique, rédigés respectivement en 1930 (Sauf-conduit), et en 1957 (Hommes et
positions), afin d’explorer quelles transformations subit sa conception du « savoir » et de la « vérité »
autobiographique entre ces deux versions. En l’espace de 27 ans, il n’a pas seulement changé de style
poétique, devenu, selon lui, plus limpide, mais surtout de visée théorique. Si, en 1957, il éprouve de
nouveau le besoin de revenir sur la même période de sa vie – les trente premières années du XXe siècle
– ce n’est pas parce qu’il veut relater différemment les mêmes événements, mais parce qu’il avoue avoir
manqué quelque chose d’absolument essentiel : la « vérité » même de sa recherche en tant qu’écrivain.
Tandis que dans la version de 1930, la narration était davantage orientée vers le sujet et sa
connaissance intime de soi-même dans son devenir-poète, la version de 1957 tire un bilan sur une vie
entièrement réalisée, qui s’était avérée une vie poétique à part entière, ce qui lui permet désormais de
se rapporter aux événements tels qu’ils ont eu lieu, dans toute leur objectivité, dépouillés de la
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présence trop pesante du « moi » autobiographique. Il s’agit donc pour moi d’examiner comment
change sa stratégie d’écriture dans ce dernier récit, et quels nouveaux moyens expressifs il emploie afin
d’accéder à la connaissance « pure » de sa propre vie.
Autobiographical narrative to sociological knowledge: Richard Hoggart’s a local habitation: 19181940
Ariane Mak (EHESS, France)
Presenting Author: Ariane Mak
“Although there are textually marginal places, such as appendices and prefaces, for social scientists to
ponder their lived experience, making that experience the centrepiece of an article seems Improper,
bordering on Gauche and Burdensome”, Laurel Richardson wrote. Hence, for a sociologist to devote an
entire book to his autobiography might well seem a very strange idea, indeed. In Richard Hoggart’s case,
it is even a triptych and A Local Habitation: 1918-1940 is only the first part of it. To this childhood story,
which could be said merely to rehash the autobiographical topos, Hoggart combined a sociological
knowledge objective that, though it never overshadows a life-story, is no less central. Therefore, this is a
remarkable undertaking, and for two reasons: it flies in the face of the conventional distrust of
autobiography in social sciences while turning autobiographical narrative into the foundation for
sociological work. This partly explains why Hoggart’s work, though widely commended, and notably
acknowledged as a true sociological success, nonetheless remains at the margin of both sociological and
autobiographic landscapes. The paper will consider the hybrid genre of Hoggart’s text as an articulation
between literature and sociology – while it goes beyond such dualism – resulting in what Jean-Claude
Passeron proposed to call “Hoggart’s sociological novel” (“Romanesque sociologique”). Hoggart’s
narratives and descriptions are for instance very close to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s “thick
description”. The paper will also study the role of narratives in constructing forms of scientific
knowledge. First, by examining the Schutzian typifications discovered in this in-group narrative. Second,
by underlining the contribution of the narrative to an analysis of the language and lingo of the working
classes from Northern England, a central issue in hoggartian sociology.
5.7
Paper session: Narratives from (and about) the Eighteenth century
Moderator: Erika Fulop
Du récit pratique à la fiction romanesque : Le cas des manuels à l'usage des marchands.
Jochen Hoock (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Jochen Hoock
En 1725 Daniel Defoe propose avec son Complete English Tradesman une introduction aux affaires
destinée à la jeunesse. La présentation en lettres familières (familiar letters) veut restituer l’expérience
première. Defoe suit avec ce procédé un modèle que de nombreux traités comptables avaient pratiqué
en recourant à des comptes simulés et des journaux fictifs ayant leur modèles dans les récits de cas
pratiques offerts par les innombrables manuels d’arithmétique pratique et manuels de conversation
publiés depuis la fin du 15e siècle. En France Jacques Savary avait en 1675 donné avec son Parfait
Négociant l’exemple d’un récit pratique recourant à la fiction en menant un jeune, « sortant de ses père
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et mère », à travers le monde pour lui faire voir les réalités de son futur métier. Tout au long du 18e
siècle d’autres textes pratiques recourent à des procédés analogues dans le but explicite de restituer
l’expérience par le récit et la fiction. Dans ce contexte le cas de Defoe est particulièrement intéressant
car il se situe au passage du roman picaresque au roman de formation. Notre contribution cherche à
retracer les étapes de ce passage du récit pratique à la fiction romanesque qui trouve sa première
expression accomplie dans Moll Flanders, puis dans de nombreux autres textes comme ceux de l’abbé
Prévost. Le motif traverse de fait toute la littérature romanesque du 18e siècle, investissant aussi la
scène théâtrale avec le Marchand de Londres de Lillo qui deviendra sous la plume de LaHarpe et de
Diderot un cas d’école de l’esthétique bourgeoise. Le procédé de la transposition esthétique inventé par
Defoe montrera toute son efficacité largement au-delà à l’exemple du Wilhem Meister de Goethe ou
des Buddenbrooks de Thomas Mann.
Rewriting the revolution: The inner life of historical fiction
Susan S. Lanser (Brandeis University, USA)
Presenting Author: Susan S. Lanser
In "The Distinction of Fiction," Dorrit Cohn famously identifies the “inner life” of persons, and not the
referentiality of events, as marking the boundary between fiction and history. It is in “its unique
potential for presenting characters,” says Cohn, that fiction “sever[s] its connections with the real world
outside the text.” But what happens when the “imaginary beings" are actors on a historical stage? What
ethical, epistemological, narratological and historiographic problems are raised by novels that hew
faithfully to the events of history and endow the major actors in those events with a complex
interiority? What powers do such texts carry to invent explanatory fictions that account for historical
outcomes? Might it be fair to argue that the more accurate the historical representation, the greater the
novel's potential to use its characters' "inner lives" in ways that displace history itself? My paper will
explore these epistemological, narratological, and ethical questions by looking at a set of novels that
represent the central events of the French Revolution by creating fictional renditions of Revolutionary
actors, with a particular focus on the period from the Fête de la Fédération (July 1790) to Thermidor
(July 1794). Hayden White has mapped the ways in which emplotments of the Revolutionary story yield
ideologically differing accounts; my proposed paper (part of a much larger project) maps ways in which
the Revolution is reimagined through differing modes for representing and situating characters. I will
focus on novels such as Hilary Mantel’s "A Place of Greater Safety" and Marge Piercy’s "City of Darkness,
City of Light" that makes historical figures such as Robespierre and Desmoulins central rather than
ancillary characters and in so doing, I argue, provide new readings of the course of the Revolution. In the
end, I argue, narrative methods for representing the "inner life" can turn “distinction of fiction” into
revisionist history.
Utopies et hétérotopies dans les fictions persanes : Narration déléguée et acquisition des savoirs
Frédéric Calas (Université Blaise Pascal, France)
Presenting Author: Frédéric Calas
L'objet de cette recherche est de voir quel est le rôle joué par la fiction et la mise en narration par
délégation de voix dans les fictions persanes du XVIII° siècle (essentiellement à partir des Lettres
persanes de Montesquieu et des Lettres péruviennes de Mme de Graffigny). Les îlots narratifs singuliers
que constituent les utopies, les contes insérés, les lettres incluses ou le lieu autre et fermé du sérail,
véritable hétérotopie, entrent dans une dialectique complexe visant à poser la question de l'accès au
savoir et à la qualification du "vrai" savoir pour se préserver des "faux savoirs". Pour conduire l'étude,
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on s'appuiera sur le concept de point de vue, développé par A. Rabatel, et sur une étude lexicométrique
du champ sémantique du savoir dans les textes (grâce à la base informatisée FRANTEXT, www.atilf.fr).
Le traitement de la polyphonie énonciative sera l'objet central de l'étude et servira d'indicateur pour
mesurer les tensions instaurées entre les différents espaces narratifs que sont les utopies, la narration
matricielle et les hétérotopies.
5.8
Paper session: Restorying violence (I)
Moderator: Suzanne England
The making of a SWAT-team member: Narratives of social networks' responses to intimate partner
violence
Margareta Hydén (Linköping University, Sweden)
Presenting Author: Margareta Hydén
Intimate partner violence has been the focus of research for some considerable time. Hitherto, inquiries
about the causes and effects of violence have dominated the field. This paper takes a different approach
as its starting point, namely that intimate partner violence is a social action embedded in responses
from various actors, such as children experiencing the violence and neighbors, relatives or friends
hearing about it. Responses cover a wide terrain of practices, such as confrontational or merely passive
action, or spoken or written tellings. The data for this paper origin from an interview study of abused
women and their social networks. The overall goal is to use social network responses as a lens for
understanding the complex structural and meaning making processes involved in intimate partner
violence. A social network encompassing 38 persons is explored. Eight network members gave their
accounts of the transactions that took place in response to the violence. The transactions were mapped.
Every transaction was laden with meaning. For the further analysis of meaning, relevant narratives were
identified and analyzed. The mapping revealed two clusters of a great density, one with the family's
three children as the centre, one with the woman as the centre. The oldest son (18 years) was the
connecting link between these two clusters. The narrative analysis indicated that the oldest son was
identified as the one who should stop the violence. Some narratives were backing up and some opposed
this positioning. In an extensive narrative the son expresses his efforts to avoid his position in the
network and discloses his plans to leave home and become a professional SWAT-team member. It is
argued that violence has the power to (trans)form not only those direct involved, but their entire social
environment. The concept "response network" is introduced and defined as a structure based on
transactions and a constellation of meanings and interpreted practices.
Museum volunteers and heroic narratives of World War II at the Imperial War Museum (Duxford, UK)
Noreen Orr (University of Exeter Medical School, UK)
Presenting Author: Noreen Orr
Heroic narratives of the World War II are firmly situated within the master narrative of Britishness. The
literature on national identity and Britishness has demonstrated how the Second World War, depicted
as a symbol of national greatness, is narrated as a heroic and masculine story of national destiny.
Arguably, central to the British national narrative of war is the aeroplane and the airman (Edgerton,
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2013; Paris, 2000), and in particular, the fighters - ‘the few’ - who fought the Battle of Britain in the
summer of 1940. The Imperial War Museum at Duxford situated on a First and Second World War
airfield and hosting the Battle of Britain exhibition, is one of the public spaces where this national
narrative is presented. In this presentation the notion of museums as ‘theatres of narrative
construction’ (Coffee, 2011) is utilised in relation to museum volunteers at the Imperial War Museum at
Duxford. The presentation will demonstrate how the volunteers (none of whom were WWII veterans
but many were ex-services personnel) were able to skilfully interweave their personal narratives with
the museum’s official narrative, often using the museum’s artefacts to evoke stories and memories of
childhood and working life. It will also show how volunteers used the narratives of visitors and war
veterans to enhance and complement the museum’s official narrative and, in turn, incorporate these
stories into their own personal narratives to pass on to others, that is, museum visitors. Following Rowe
et al (2002), this presentation will argue that within the museum setting, different narratives meet and
are in dialogue with each other. For the museum volunteers, the linking of personal and national
narratives was an act of identity construction, enabling them to feel part of, and connected to, Britain’s
past.
Violation of Human Right under the Chilean dictatorship (1973-2013): The testimonial device as a
political technology of the self
Oriana Bernasconi (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)
Presenting Author: Oriana Bernasconi
The testimonio is the key social device used in the past forty years to collect, organize and take action in
relation to experiences of human rights violation under Latin-American dictatorships. In Chile, since
1973, testimonies have been given to NGOs to denounce disappearance, torture and other coercive
actions (70s- 80s); to National and International Courts seeking justice; to Truth Commissions pursuing
reparation (80s-) and to Memory Archives for public education (2000s-). Social sciences have examined
testimonies as means for addressing the memory construction, subjective and collective forms of
dealing with violence, healing processes, etc. My approach follows a different route. At the crossroad of
memory studies, narrative research and subjectivity studies, I choose to take testimonies as my object of
study. Rather than focusing on the stories’ content, I approach the testimonial device as a technology of
memory. To this end I work with those who took testimonies of human right violation since 1973 in
Chile (NGO’s volunteers, social workers, lawyers, psychologists) and with the technologies they
produce/use: judicial appeals forms, questionnaires, interview guides, socio-economic files, etc. with the
aim of delineating a line of narrative inquiry into the technologies of memory themselves. In particular, I
explore the rationale behind the design of these technologies, how they were applied, customized and
redefined over time; the institutionalization, technification and specialization of testimony production;
and the effects of these devices in the confrontation of State violence and in forms of self-figuration.
Parallel Session #6
6.1
Panel session: Storying our lives through thick and thin: Narrative
complexity in older adults’ self-accounts as an indicator of personal
resilience
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Chair: William Lowell Randall (University of St. Thomas, Canada)
Of increasing interest to gerontologists is resilience: the capacity for coping with the challenges of later
life in a manner that enables a person to keep growing old and not merely get old. An overlooked aspect
of resilience, though, and one which each paper in this panel will consider, is what may be called the
“rhetoric of resilience”; more specifically, the narrative complexity (re plot, character, theme, point of
view, etc.) of what we actually say about our lives, or how we “story” our lives (Kenyon, Bohlmeijer, &
Randall, 2011). To the extent such complexity is indicative of resilience, the corollary is that
interventions involving one form or other of “narrative care” - e.g., reminiscence, life review, storytelling
(and storylistening) - can assist us in composing thicker, stronger stories of our lives, thus enhancing our
resilience by, e.g., lowering symptoms of depression and increasing our sense of mastery and meaning
(see Bohlmeiher & Westerhof, 2011). All three papers in this panel are rooted in a common research
project in which members of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative (representing
gerontology, social work, literature, psychology, and nursing) have conducted narrative analyses of
open-ended life-story interviews done with 45 individuals (65 and over) living in or near Fredericton,
New Brunswick, Canada. Out of 100+ individuals who completed the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale
(2003), that is, three groups of 15 each were selected to be interviewed from those whose scores on the
scale were highest, lowest, and in the middle, respectively. In addition to comparing individual selfaccounts within each group, such variables as education, gender, age, and interviewer-interviewee
interaction have been taken into account in exploring the links between narrative complexity and
personal resilience in later life.
How listeners shape what tellers tell: Implications for narrative care with older adults
William Lowell Randall, Clive Baldwin (University of St. Thomas)
Presenting Author: William Lowell Randall, Clive Baldwin
The focus of this presentation is the role played by teller-listener interactions on the thickness vs
thinness of interviewees’ stories (Randall, Prior, & Skarborn, 2006). All but one of the interviews
conducted for this project, for example, were carried out by the same research assistant: a female
student. This paper will explore how this fact may have contributed to participants recounting
comparatively thin - yet positive - stories about their lives, as if intentionally protecting their listener,
employing a more “transmissive” type of reminiscence (Wong, 1995), and steering away from “the
whole story” of their life, assuming such a story is possible to recount. Thus, though the manifest stories
(Kotre, 1984) told by participants who scored high on the CDRS were notably lower in narrative
complexity (i.e., thin detail and description, simplistic self-characterizations, limited levels of meaning
alluded to, or dearth of themes implied), their latent stories - as hinted by their allusions to other
sources of meaning and identity (family, community, religion, etc.) - were arguably more expansive and
extensive. Among the implications such analyses suggest - considering, that is, the nature of “narrative
care” - is that the thicker the listening supplied, then the thicker the telling done. [186 words]
Performing resilience: An interrogation of a finely crafted tale
Elizabeth A. McKim (University of St. Thomas)
Presenting Author: Elizabeth A. McKim
This paper focuses on a particular participant in the narrative-and-resilience project named “Helen”
who, at nearly 80, achieved a mid to high score on the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. In a follow-up
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interview, when she was asked, “Can you tell me about your life?” she immediately responded, “I plan
to write a book about my life.” Throughout the interview, she emphasized her happy childhood, strong
community involvement, and survival in the face of multiple losses. The text of the interview reveals
very little reflection or narrative complexity, but coheres loosely around an often-repeated theme that
emphasizes her sense of superior resilience: “I always had a positive attitude.” Multi-methodological
analysis of the performative aspects of both the interview text and its context, the master narratives
that frame it, and the positioning that happens as the interview unfolds reveals evidence of identitybuilding in progress–Helen seemingly sets out to create a resilient self as she performs it.
Storying illness: The relationship between resilience in later life and the narrative construction of
health
Dolores Furlong (University of New Brunswick, Canada)
Presenting Author: Dolores Furlong
The majority of participants interviewed for this project reported having had, or currently experiencing,
one or more medical issues of an acute or chronic nature (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, etc.)
on top of other challenges and losses suffered in their lives. Particular analyses were conducted to
identify patterns in the rhetorical strategies with which participants “storied” their health concerns in
relation to their lives as a whole, and how such patterns varied for those who scored highest, lowest,
and in the middle on the CDRS. Against the background of research on resilience, health, and aging
(e.g., Kern & Friedman, 2011; Sawyer & Allman, 2011), as well the field of “narrative medicine” (Charon,
2006; Frank, 1995; Kleinman, 1988), this paper will also consider how the narrative construction of
health-illness varies by, e.g., gender, age, and level of education.
6.2
Paper session: Narrating collective memory (II)
Moderator: Hanna Meretoja
Texts, landscapes and imagining the sacred constructing narratives of Jerusalem
Nimrod Luz (The Western Galilee College, Israel)
Presenting Author: Nimrod Luz
No place has inspired human passion for as long and as deeply as Jerusalem. Surely, no place has won
more attention in the formation of monotheistic understanding in the ancient Middle East and in the
religious thoughts of the three Abrahamic religions. In this paper I look at the ways Jerusalem is being
formed, produced and constructed as a religious-national sacred landscape in the narratives of
prominent Palestinians public figures. The development of the sacred landscape of the city begs us to
explore the ways different texts and philosophies indeed narratives have shaped this environment and
had such a dramatic imprint on human history. However, the scope of the current paper is more limited.
I am particularly interested in exploring the interplay between ancient texts and contemporary
interpretations of the built environment as a way to construct a narrative that sustain and support the
national struggle. In order to do so I analyze over 30 open ended interviews with local leaders (public
figures, religious scholars, intellectuals) and conflate them with texts and landscapes of the city in order
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to learn how they narrate the city, its past and present, and particularly its sacred role in the current
national struggle.
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath: A case study of narrative knowing, mediated knowing and the
construction of cultural memory
Suzanne England (New York University, USA)
Presenting Author: Suzanne England
This multi-media presentation is part of a larger inquiry into the socio-political construction of the
collective and cultural memories stemming from the events of August 29th 2005 when Hurricane
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the U.S. Every New Orleanian who lived in the city at the time the
hurricane struck has a story to tell. Both those who experienced the catastrophic events that followed
the failure of the levees first hand and those who did not, have memories of that time that have been
transmitted and shaped by various media. Vast stores of these memories are being preserved in digital
form, including films, archives, memoirs, oral histories, literary accounts, and photographs. Drawing
upon the concept of mnemohistory and using narrative methods of inquiry I am exploring a variety of
accounts with a particular interest in the theme of political consciousness and how this theme and its
expressions scaffold collective memory. In this presentation I will focus on the story of Abdulrahman
Zeitoun, a Syrian-American owner of a painting and contracting firm who chose to ride out the storm in
New Orleans, and soon after was arrested as a suspected terrorist. I explore his story as it is first
narrated through an oral history interview in which he recounts what he experienced in his own words,
a subsequent literary nonfiction account of his experience, Zeitoun, by the author Dave Eggers, media
interviews, and if it is available by the time of the conference, an animated film based on Eggers’ book.
Having one man’s experience narrated over time via different media offers an opportunity to examine
via metaphor, imagery and figurative language, the unfolding of what Polkinghorne terms “narrative
comprehension … a retrospective, interpretive composition that displays past events in the light of
current understanding and evaluation of their significance” (2005, 8).
“Goes back forever”: Libertarian narratives of history
Rhiannon Goad (University of Texas, USA)
Presenting Author: Rhiannon Goad
The year 1948 marked the first time the term “libertarianism” was used to refer to a political philosophy
primarily concerned with advocating for individual rights through the minimization of state interference
with the free market. However, American libertarian organizations do not trace their ideological
histories back to 1948. Instead, narratives of the ideological origins of libertarianism typically reach back
much earlier. For instance, libertarian historian Ronald Hamowy has described libertarianism as a
"political phenomenon as old as modernity, if not older," and libertarian journalist Brian Doherty has
said the history of libertarianism "goes back forever.” Drawing on Molly Andrews’ work on the function
of history in political narratives, this paper examines two complementary narrative processes: (1) how
American historical narratives both prescribe and describe libertarians’ personal and political
subjectivities, and, in turn, (2) how libertarians’ personal epistemological narratives justify libertarianism
as natural. I argue that the historical narrative of libertarianism is characterized by claims to an
apolitical, ahistorical past in which libertarian rhetoric naturalizes discourses of free market capitalism
and “authentic” Americanism. To support this position, I examine the role of historical narratives in
libertarian ideology throughout the twentieth century. Then, I further examine the intersection of
personal and historical narratives through in-depth interviews with four self-identified libertarians.
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6.3
Paper session: L’expérience de soi dans la fiction et la non-fiction
Moderator: Philippe Lautesse
Du récit de sa propre souffrance à "la vérité sur les personnes et les choses" : Une analyse des
Pérégrinations d'une paria (Flora Tristan)
Martine Leibovici (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Martine Leibovici
Je m'intéresse à des textes autobiographiques écrits par des individus décalés, ou en porte-à-faux
(outsiders, étrangers, parias, transfuges). Leur écriture procède généralement d’une expérience
d’isolement vécue à la fois dans leur propre groupe et dans la société où ils affrontent des situations
d’infériorisation ou de domination. Comme toute écriture autobiographique elle suppose un retour sur
soi pour donner un sens à son existence, mais dans ce chemin le récit cherche aussi à comprendre le
type de relations dans lesquelles l’individu a été plongé. Par exemple, dans une société fonctionnant à la
ségrégation, le Noir est, comme l'écrivait Richard Wright, "à la fois en dedans et en dehors", il aura "un
don de double vue", l'instituant comme un "centre de connaissance". C'est cette posture qui se déploie
dans Black boy, son célèbre texte autobiographique. La connaissance qui s'y déploie ne relève
cependant pas d'une objectivation de type sociologique, mais plutôt d'un type de compréhension que
Paul Ricoeur nomme un "Verstehen narratif". Loin d'évacuer les affects, la compréhension s'appuie au
contraire sur eux, ils constituent des guides d'interprétation des situations reconstituées par le texte, le
processus d'écriture étant lui-même le vecteur de la compréhension. C'est à partir de tels présupposés
que je propose une analyse du livre de Flora Tristan, Les pérégrinations d'une paria. "Aucune
considération, écrit-elle, ne pourra m'empêcher de dire la vérité sur les personnes et les choses. Je vais
raconter deux années de ma vie : j'aurai le courage de dire tout ce que j'ai souffert. Je nommerai les
individus appartenant à diverses classes de la société, avec lesquels les circonstances m'ont mise en
rapport : tous existent encore; je les ferai connaître par leurs actions et leurs paroles".
Douter, mener une histoire, élaborer un récit
Florence de Chalonge (Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille 3, France)
Presenting Author: Florence de Chalonge
Il s’agira de s’intéresser à la catégorie du doute au sein des stratégies narratives dans le roman à la
première personne, et particulièrement dans le roman de voix français de la seconde moitié du XXe
siècle (Beckett, Blanchot, Des Forêts, Duras, Pinget, Sarraute…). La problématique qui est envisagée
n’est donc pas directement celle de la « fiabilité » du narrateur ; c’est dire qu’elle ne sera pas
développée à partir des relations entre narrateur et personnage ou en prenant en compte la perspective
du lecteur. Il s’agit plutôt, en se plaçant du côté du narrateur, d’examiner les formes que prennent les
postures du doute (cette défaillance d’une sûreté du savoir portant davantage sur la conduite du récit
comme expérience à vivre que sur les événements mêmes à relater). Les aveux d’impuissance, la
suspension du jugement, les conduites hésitantes, les moyens de la rectification ou de la contradiction,
les impasses raisonnantes… toutes les attitudes du narrateur sceptique, partie prenante de la conduite
d’une histoire qui peine à progresser, seront examinées pour décider en quoi le doute est fécond, voire
fondateur de ce qu’on a pu appeler un « récit de la méconnaissance ».
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Peut-on parler d’un savoir de l’identification romanesque ?
Dominique Rabaté (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Dominique Rabaté
Dans la lignée des réflexions que j’ai proposées dans Le Roman et le sens de la vie (Corti, 2010) et en
prolongeant des travaux publiés dans différents articles sur la question de l’identification romanesque,
je voudrais me demander ce que produit – en terme d’expérience peut-être plus que de savoir – le
processus de l’identification du lecteur à certaines fictions, à certains récits. Car c’est sans doute la mise
en forme même du récit qui permet de s’imaginer la possibilité d’avoir « une vie à soi », d’en être le
personnage (réel autant qu’imaginaire). Cette projection – qui n’est pas pure identification, mais aussi
expérience d’une dés-identification fondamentale - donne au roman (ou au récit filmique ou télévisuel)
sa puissance proprement romanesque, mais c’est le plus souvent ce trait qui lui est reproché, comme si
par là le lecteur s’éloignait nécessairement d’un savoir qui supposerait distance et impersonnalité. Il
s’agit sans doute moins là d’un savoir au sens strict que d’un point de vue ou d’une perspective (éthique
et esthétique au sens que définit Wittgenstein dans Leçons et conversations) sur le tout d’une existence,
totalité imaginaire ou tangentielle à laquelle le récit par ses formes de complétude narrative nous
permettrait cependant de toucher.
6.4
Panel session: Quel savoir - comment savoir? Fiction, réalité et vérité dans
le roman contemporain français
Chair: Erika Fülöp (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Ce panel propose d’examiner la possibilité, le statut, et l’usage du savoir et du réel dans le récit littéraire
à l’époque contemporaine. Les quatre communications offriront un échantillon représentatif de la
gamme des approches face au problème de la représentation dans le roman français d’après 1980 et
exploreront les enjeux majeurs associés au questionnement du pouvoir du récit à parler du monde.
Anne-Yvonne Julien s’intéressera au rôle de l’érudition de l’écrivain et à l’intérêt d’un savoir historique
qui survit à l’« ère du soupçon » dans l’écriture de Marguerite Yourcenar. L’analyse d’Un homme obscur
(1982) montrera que l’usage du savoir ne signifie pas une confiance aveugle en celui-ci mais se combine
justement avec une interrogation sur le statut du savoir. En inversant le sens du questionnement,
Véronique Desnain examinera la contribution de la fiction à l’histoire et à sa connaissance. A travers le
cas du polar, elle réfléchira sur la capacité de la fiction à révéler une vérité autre que celle consacrée par
le pouvoir. Le problème épistémologique se conjugue ici avec la question éthique de la responsabilité de
l’écrivain. Geneviève Guétemme présentera ensuite l’Éros Mélancolique de Jacques Roubaud et Anne
Garréta, un roman qui part à la découverte des limites de la narrativité en entraînant le lecteur dans un
jeu entre réalité et fiction, visuel et textuel, communication et silence/blanc. L’ensemble constitue une
interrogation sur le savoir technique et la création artistique, et la relation entre les deux. Erika Fülöp
proposera, pour conclure, une réflexion théorique sur l’intérêt épistémologique du roman
contemporain. Partant de la thèse de Jean Bessière selon laquelle le roman s’intéresse aujourd’hui plus
que jamais à la possibilité d’offrir au lecteur un moyen de découvrir le monde, l’intervention avancera
que cet intérêt reste inséparable d’un questionnement ontologique, manifeste dans les stratégies
narratives déployées dans le récit.
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Le savoir philosophique à l’épreuve de la fiction: Un homme obscur de Marguerite Yourcenar (1982)
Anne-Yvonne Julien (Université de Poitiers, France)
Presenting Author: Anne-Yvonne Julien
L’œuvre de Yourcenar occupe au XXe siècle un territoire à part, qui semble dans l’après SecondeGuerre, comme en retrait des recherches contemporaines. Œuvre déroutante car osant se déclarer
érudite, exhibant les explorations historiques qui la soutiennent. Mais « innutrition » sans gratuité,
postulant qu’il y a profit à annexer au texte de fiction des savoirs spécifiques et les codes qui leur sont
corrélés. Et si la littérature est, pour l’écrivaine, affaire éthique et esthétique, elle n’entend pas pour
autant renoncer à l’énergie fictionnelle et prétendre à la stabilité du savoir mis en jeu.
Nous nous intéresserons ici à Un homme obscur où est captée, une fois encore, une voix dans le temps
de l’Histoire. Récit d’une superbe limpidité, audacieux, car accordé aux problématiques des années 80
liées à la Nouvelle Histoire. Ce n’est plus une figure d’intellectuel qui est à l’avant-scène, comme dans
Mémoires d’Hadrien ou L’Œuvre au Noir, le lecteur a accès à la méditation « quasi sans contours » d’un
ouvrier imprimeur de l’Amsterdam du XVIIe, dont le discours narrativisé est fait de bribes de notations
presque « blanches », comme si se mimait le processus d'une intellection en progrès. Itinéraire pourtant
orienté sur le plan philosophique. Y affleurent les indices d'une grille spinoziste de lecture du monde :
l'interlocuteur d’occasion de Nathanaël, Belmonte, pose pour le maître de l’Ethique. Il n'est pas sans
virtuosité d'avoir fait du jeune autodidacte, atteint de pleurésie, une figure de la Joie spinoziste, apte à
concevoir les trois degrés de la connaissance dont l’essai du philosophe explicite la progressivité.
L’aeternitas est peut-être au bout du chemin. En tout cas, l’interrogation sur le statut même du savoir
est au centre de cet étonnant dispositif narratif et intertextuel.
Le polar entre fiction et histoire
Véronique Desnain (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Presenting Author: Véronique Desnain
Le polar, dans sa forme post-soixante-huitarde, se positionne fréquemment comme un genre politique
et montre donc un intérêt marqué pour les événements contemporains, que l’on retrouve mis en scène
dans des récits fictionnels. Dans de nombreux cas, ces événements ne font cependant pas partie de la
trame principale du roman et ne servent donc qu’à produire un ‘effet de réel’ qui légitime l’orientation
idéologique du texte. Certains auteurs, pourtant, nous livrent des récits qui se situent à la frontière
entre fiction et histoire, prétendant révéler, à travers leur fiction, une vérité historique sciemment
dissimulée par les discours officiels. Cette aptitude à illustrer à travers la fiction une réalité qui existerait
au-delà du strictement vérifiable est décrite par Laurent Flieder comme "cette extraordinaire propriété
du roman à rejoindre, par l’invention, la vérité des faits." (Le Roman français contemporain, p. 76-7). Ce
positionnement est clairement problématique d’un point de vue épistémologique puisqu’il implique
qu’il existe une vérité au-delà des faits, mais surtout que celle-ci ne peut être mise en lumière que par la
fiction. Pourtant, il est indéniable que ces romans peuvent avoir un impact sur notre façon
d’appréhender des évènements historiques connus : Meurtres pour mémoire, de Daeninckx est sans
aucun doute l’élément déterminant qui a poussé des historiens tels que Jean-Luc Einaudi à réévaluer les
évènements d’Octobre 1961. Au travers des œuvres de deux auteurs qui revendiquent clairement
l’aptitude de leur fiction à dévoiler une histoire "plus vraie que vraie" (Didier Daeninckx et Dominique
Manotti), cette communication analysera à la fois les techniques narratives exploitées pour arriver à
cette fin, et les problématiques – épistémologiques, éthiques et idéologiques – soulevées par cette
approche.
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Ce roman qui n’est pas un roman
Geneviève Guétemme (ESPE Centre Val de Loire / Université d’Orléans, France)
Presenting Author: Geneviève Guétemme
Jacques Roubaud est poète, mathématicien, essayiste, mais l’ouvrage qu’il publie en 2009 s’appelle
"roman" – et c’est un roman qu’il n’a peut-être pas écrit. En effet, il le co-signe avec Anne F. Garreta et
suggère dans l’introduction que ce texte, trouvé sur internet, a été écrit par un(e) certain(e) AD Clifford
dont on ne saura jamais rien. Quant à l’histoire, à la fois histoire d’amour, roman policier et hommage à
l’univers oulipien de La Vie mode d'emploi, c’est celle d’un jeune chimiste écossais qui, au lieu d’écrire
sa thèse, consacre un été à un projet photographique qu’il finit par abandonner. Ses photographies,
prises en suivant un système de permutation précis, sont soit laissées blanches parce que liées à un
passé douloureux, soit habitées par des formes impossible à identifier. Les pages du livre, enfin,
présentent aussi des vides avec des pans de récit complètement effacés. Nous ne saurons jamais qui a
écrit cette fiction et si c’est un essai sur la photographie ou une autobiographie. Seul restent un fantôme
de livre, un fantôme de projet, un fantôme de récit. Je propose ici d’observer le jeu de décompositionrecomposition qui visualise peut-être la façon dont la narration contemporaine appréhende maintenant
le temps, l’espace, le monde, l'histoire, mais aussi le savoir. Je m’attarderai notamment sur les différents
savoirs littéraires, photographiques ou personnels que Jacques Roubaud s’applique à faire disparaître et
sur la façon dont il raconte ces disparitions. Tout cela afin de présenter une narration de ce qui met le
roman à la limite du roman, à la fois du côté du positif et du négatif, du multiple et du rien, du savoir et
du non-savoir : un roman capable de saisir tout autant le monde que ce qui résiste à son saisissement.
Être et savoir du récit: ontologie et épistémologie dans le roman contemporain
Erika Fülöp (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Presenting Author: Erika Fülöp
Dans une récente étude sur le roman contemporain, Jean Bessière définit celui-ci comme une
"anthropoïesis de la transindividualité" et remplissant une "fonction de médiation", qui le rendraient
plus pertinent pour le lecteur, dans une perspective de connaissance du monde, qu’aucun roman du 19e
ou du 20e siècle. Cette nouvelle tendance se distinguerait du postmoderne en ce qu’elle abandonne un
questionnement qui suit l’axe mimésis–antimimésis et cherche à rétablir la communication entre le récit
et le réel pour offrir au lecteur un moyen d’exploration du monde dans sa multiplicité. Bessière souligne
donc la fonction épistémologique et pragmatique du roman contemporain, tout en déclarant le
dépassement du "dominant ontologique" postmoderne. La question se pose néanmoins de savoir si la
visée épistémologique, telle que l’expose le roman aujourd’hui, peut vraiment se passer d’une
problématisation ontologique. Le renouveau d’intérêt pour le réel s’accompagne-t-il vraiment de la
tombée en désuétude de la question ontologique et du problème de la représentation? Si la recherche
de pertinence et la fonction de médiation peuvent effectivement être considérées comme une réponse
au nihilisme et au formalisme postmodernes, le roman contemporain n’en montre pas moins
l’inséparabilité des questions épistémologiques du problème ontologique de la distinction entre réel et
fiction. Ceci est évident du fait que les stratégies métanarratives, la métalepse, et les jeux de points de
vue et de voix narratifs questionnant cette distinction restent omniprésents dans les récits
contemporains. Tirant ses exemples d’auteurs aussi variés que Chevillard, Echenoz, Houellebecq et
Nothomb, cette intervention se propose donc d’examiner cette interdépendance de l’ontologique et de
l’épistémologique telle que la présente le roman aujourd’hui, en particulier en France, où l’héritage du
Nouveau Roman continue à rendre incontournable la question de la possibilité d’un réalisme
quelconque et d’une meilleure connaissance du monde à travers la littérature.
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6.5
Paper session: History, between science and narrative
Moderator: Jochen Hoock
L'Histoire entre science et récit : Le cas du Rapport sur Auschwitz de Levi-De Benedetti
Guido Furci (Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle, Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, France)
Presenting Author: Guido Furci
Parmi les textes traitant de l’organisation hygiénico-sanitaire des camps de concentration nazis, le
Rapport sur Auschwitz conçu par Primo Levi et le médecin Leonardo De Benedetti peu après leur
libération par l’Armée Rouge en janvier 1945 occupe une place prépondérante. Il en existe deux
versions : la première – stricte expertise à l’intention du gouvernement soviétique – date du séjour dans
le camp de rassemblement de Katowice réservé aux ex-prisonniers italiens ; la seconde – produite
quelques mois plus tard pour un lectorat national – se mêle à la précédente et en constitue une sorte
d’édition augmentée. Pour situer autrement, nous pourrions dire, comme certains l’ont fait, que la
rédaction du noyau central du Rapport, presque identique dans les deux versions, a été réalisée pendant
les événements relatés entre les chapitres IV et VIII du récit à valeur autobiographique de Levi La Trêve.
S’il n’en est pas fait mention dans ce livre, c’est probablement parce que, s’agissant d’une activité
quelque peu administrative, y faire allusion aurait, d’une part, remis en cause la cohérence du récit au
point d’entraîner une métalepse difficile à justifier et, d’autre part, risqué de fragiliser un déroulement
narratif au demeurant solide. Plus encore, un choix de ce type aurait dévoilé l’élaboration d’un
témoignage dont on avait pris soin de dissimuler les éléments statistiques pour qu’il puisse enfin être
reçu comme tel. C’est sur ce point que nous nous attarderons dans notre exposé, dans le but d’aborder
la problématicité d’un document qui n’a de cesse de s’interroger (et de nous interroger) sur son propre
fonctionnement, donc sur les stratégies à adopter lorsque l’instance énonciatrice s’applique à
reformuler des données factuelles – ou, en l’occurrence, à les inscrire dans une « trame » –, afin de
toucher un public aussi vaste et hétérogène que possible.
Le travail de la narration face au mythe de l'empire : Le cas portugais 40 ans après la Révolution des
Oeillets
Chiara Magnante (University of Bologna, Italy)
Presenting Author: Chiara Magnante
Mes recherches et ma communication portent sur une comparaison entre la connaissance mythique et
la connaissance narrative dans le domaine de l’histoire et de la mémoire portugaise de l’empire colonial.
La réflexion développée au Portugal à propos de la mémoire publique de son empire peut sans aucun
doute être intéressante dans une perspective européenne pour mieux évaluer, par exemple, la
puissance de la tension entre centre et périphérie. L’empire, vu de façon presque mythique a été en
effet le moyen à travers lequel le Portugal a pu se concevoir comme le centre de « son monde à lui »,
alors que sa chute (déclenchée, il y a 40 ans cette année, par la Révolution des Œillets de 1974) et
l’entrée dans la communauté européenne ont signifié le changement de l’autoreprésentation publique
portugaise par son déplacement aux marges des nouveaux centres du pouvoir. C’est justement en tant
que mythe que l’idée de l’empire a pu rester tellement présente dans la mémoire portugaise, comme E.
Lourenço a remarqué déjà dès la fin des années 70. Or, la façon la plus efficace de réfuter ce mythe n’est
pas seulement celle de lui opposer l’histoire événementielle : il s’agit plutôt, comme Barthes et Girardet
nous ont indiqué, de comprendre le fonctionnement de son discours. C’est en cela qu’une connaissance
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narrative peut nous aider. Je veux montrer, à travers des narrations portugaises contemporaines, que le
moyen le plus efficace de « démonter » le discours du mythe c’est un certain discours narratif, par
lequel réactiver les images fixées et cristallisées par le mythe : à travers la puissance de la réflexion
formelle des auteurs, surtout sur les métaphores et sur la redéfinition du statut de leurs point de vue, le
travail de la mémoire peut réussir à s’opposer aux rassurants fétiches du mythe.
Anonymous narrators and humanitarian narratives
Nima Naghibi (Ryerson University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Nima Naghibi
Humanitarian narratives require us to consider the pressures of ethical response placed on readers of
autobiographical accounts of imprisonment, torture, and human suffering. While human rights and
humanitarian acts “share many attributes and emerged from the same intellectual origins in liberal
political philosophy of the eighteenth century,” the relationship between the two is somewhat
ambiguous, even fraught (Ashby and Brown 4-5). Drawing on Joseph Slaughter’s thoughts on individual
victims’ narratives, this paper explores what happens to the humanitarian life narrative when it is
anonymous. Death to the Dictator: A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran's 2009 Election and Pays a
Devastating Price (2010) is an example of a life narrative that invites an humanitarian response; it is an
anonymous autobiographical account of the ruthless crackdown of the 2009 post-Presidential election
protests on the streets of Tehran, Iran. This narrative offers a brutalizing account of the consequences of
political engagement in Iran: the narrative details the torture and rape of Iranian youth in prison after
the mass arrests of young protestors in the summer of 2009. However, the author’s name, Afsaneh
Moqadam, is a pseudonym; thus, perhaps not coincidentally, unlike other life narratives published in
English by diasporic Iranians, this particular life narrative has not circulated as widely as some other
popular prison narratives such as Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran, for instance. This raises the
question of the impact of the anonymous life narrative: in order for it generate a humanitarian
response, does life narrative need to be associated with a (named) person?
6.6
Paper session: Storying social practices (I)
Moderator: Margareta Hyden
Biting off more than you can say: The intersection of food narratives and socioeconomic context
Katie Lynn Howe, David Michael Goodman, Brian William Becker (Lesley University, USA)
Presenting Author: Katie Lynn Howe, David Michael Goodman
How does what we mean to say come to mean something else? How do previous meanings shape what
is newly said and then meant? When a “new” signifier emerges in social discourse, what is the unique
trajectory by which its meaning is given, formed, and informed? In this paper, the authors attempt to
consider and explore these questions by exploring contemporary trends in how food is narrativized in
popular culture. The burgeoning presence of food experts, media interest in food matters (i.e.
documentaries, health cook books) and new commercial labeling practices have been gaining
momentum and contribute to the galvanizing of popular interest in food. Signifiers such as “Organic,”
“Super food,” and “Natural” (to name only a few) have entered popular discourse and the trajectory of
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their meanings are illustrative of the ways that words come to mean something else as they perform in
a particular economic and political landscape. More specifically, particularly in the United States, the
influence of capitalism profoundly shapes the re-formation of the meanings of these terms (Cushman,
1995). In the first section, the authors explore how popular food narratives intersect and live in tension
with particular sociopolitical and economic narratives (e.g., consumerism). Language hands down its
sentence to those who know how to hear it (Lacan, 1955). As such, we explore the pre-existent rules
and narratives that allow a “new” language/signifier to be heard in a given context. Next, the authors
examine the gap that exists between the time a new food language and idea enters public discourse and
when it’s meaning surfaces and is subsumed into the already streaming economic grammar and syntax
of a larger cultural narrative. Using Lacan’s concepts of the real, imaginary and symbolic, along with
Zizek’s creative political reworkings of these ideas, we elucidate the processes and intersections that
reside within this gap.
Narrative, narrativity and football
Göran Rossholm (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Presenting Author: Göran Rossholm
This paper will reflect upon a basic theme in narratology today: the relation between the term and
concept of narrative and the concept of narrativity, i.e. features whose presence make something to
appear as “more narrative” (irrespectively of whether we consider it be a narrative or not). This does
however not imply that adding a certain amount of narrativity to a non-narrative makes us willing to
classify the result as a narrative. My examples will be televised representation games (chess and
football) which – I will argue – contain a high degree of narrativity but which still do not count as
narratives. This lack of convergence between the concepts, narrative and narrativity, have to do with
the fact that we classify something as a narrative against two different backgrounds, corresponding to
different narratological traditions: on the one hand natural narratology based on studies of spontaneous
everyday information-conveying information and on the other hand structuralist narratology (storynarratology exemplified by Propp and Greimas) and directness-narratology (in turn different traditions
such as shifting deixis-theory, psychological approaches such as Gerrig’s, Marie-Laure Ryan’s concept of
immersion and more recent embodiment-approaches). I will argue, firstly, that the natural narratology
presents a (questionable) presents a narrative prototype but no convincing narrative universal or good
candidates of narrativity. Against this theoretical background I will argue, appealing to my game
examples, that in a wider scientific context, embracing psychological and sociological studies, the
concept of narrativity, not so much concepts of narrative, is the more basic one.
Mobilization of knowledge and narrative improvisation in "storygames"
Olivier Caira (EHESS, France)
Presenting Author: Olivier Caira
"Storygames" are communication devices specifically designed to spark collective improvisation in
natural language, using different parts of a fictional diegesis: characters, objects, actions, places,
relationships, issues... Often overshadowed by video games or confused with tabletop role-playing
games, these recently developed games remain overlooked by most scholars, although they provide
ideal observation conditions and new research avenues for narratologists and interactivity theorists.
Since the publication of Once Upon a Time (1994), dozens of games have enriched the diversity of
available narrative traditions in this field: fairy tales, horror B-movies (Polar Base), historical drama
(Montségur 1244) or the Coen brothers’ universe (Fiasco). As a product, a storygame does not display
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any narrative, but provides rules and tools (dice, cards, blank forms) that can generate a continuously
renewed narrative production. This is why the issue of how knowledge is mobilized during storygame
sessions is crucial to the ethnographic study of the links between narration and interactivity. Collective
encyclopedias – in Umberto Eco’s sense – allow the sharing and the development of a plot, on the basis
of sparse diegetic information, in “rotating narrator” devices where interpretative cooperation failures
often lead to in-game conflict.
6.7
Paper session: Borges, Restrepo, Ponce
Moderator: Annick Louis
De la citation apocryphe à la théorie cachée : Le jardin aux sentiers qui bifurquent de Jorge Luis Borges
Carolina Ferrer (University of Montreal, Canada)
Presenting Author: Carolina Ferrer
Auteur encyclopédique par excellence, dans son œuvre, Borges cite des auteurs à profusion. Cependant,
plusieurs critiques se sont penchés sur le fait que, parmi ces références, il introduit des citations
apocryphes. Selon Vesterman (2004), sa nouvelle «Le jardin aux sentiers qui bifurquent», prétendument
basée sur le livre de Liddell Hart, ne fait que renvoyer à une page blanche du livre cité. Par ailleurs, cette
nouvelle a été analysée en utilisant de nombreuses approches et plusieurs chercheurs y ont repéré des
liens avec les sciences. Ainsi, selon Floyd Merrell (1991) cette nouvelle aurait servi d’inspiration à Hugh
Everett III dans sa formulation de la mécanique quantique, donnant naissance à la «many worlds
interpretation». En même temps, Thomas Weissert (1991) affirme que, dans cette nouvelle, Borges
aurait devancé la science d’une trentaine d’années dans la formulation de la théorie du chaos. Dans
cette communication, je présenterai une série d’indices afin d’établir que, dans «Le jardin des sentiers
qui bifurquent», Borges se serait inspiré des travaux du mathématicien Henri Poincaré, sans jamais
dévoiler directement sa source. Dans ce but, je me baserai, initialement, sur certains documents où
Borges déclare avoir lu des textes de Poincaré. Je m’attarderai, ensuite, sur l’histoire de la théorie du
chaos d’Aubin et Dahan (2002) où nous constatons l’importance de Poincaré en tant que fondateur de
cette théorie. Finalement, je présenterai l’histoire du prix que le roi Oskar II de Suède et de Norvège
octroya en 1890 à Poincaré. Les très singuliers évènements qui entourèrent ce prix me laissent croire
que le texte primé, où Poincaré définit pour la première fois le concept de "bifurcation", a dû
certainement attirer l’attention de Borges.
Breaking the cycle of violence: The case of Laura Restrepo’s narratives
Kate Averis (University of London, Institute in Paris, France)
Presenting Author: Kate Averis
Through her narrative fictions, Laura Restrepo, one of Colombia’s foremost writers today, presents a
profound reflection of the role of narrative in shaping a collective account of social reality. In a country
which has suffered long-term armed conflict, the representation and recounting of violence plays a
fundamental role in the way that the contemporary crisis is understood, experienced, and perpetuated.
The endemic violence resulting from Colombia’s internal armed conflict has become a fixture in political,
social and cultural discourses in recent times, banalized, even mythologised, by the nature and extent of
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its representation in the media, in film and in literature. This paper examines the ways in which
Restrepo’s narratives depart from the current trend in Colombian literature for explicit representations
of violence which risk either banalizing and normalising violence, or sensationalising and mythologising
it. This trend, in turn, compounds media representations which provide a reiterative, unquestioning
discourse of violence, thus contributing to a collective account of violence as intrinsic both to Colombian
national identity, and to Colombian literature. Revealing the workings of the narrativization of violence
and its effect of producing, perpetuating, or disrupting violence, this paper identifies the literary
strategies through which Restrepo’s narratives provide a site of resistance to these dominant literary
paradigms of violence. Providing insight into the role narratives of violence play in the cultural
construction of violence, and its actual manifestation in Colombian society, Restrepo texts thus
demonstrate why narrative matters. Restrepo not only offers the means of challenging the myths
surrounding the origins and nature of Colombia’s now endemic violence, she posits literary narratives as
a channel for breaking the cycle of violence, and working towards the understanding and resolution of
conflict.
Producing knowledge by relating form and meaning: Intermedial relations in the narratives of Gabriel
García Ponce and Marie Ndiaye
Liviu Lutas (Linnaeus University, Sweden)
Presenting Author: Liviu Lutas
This paper will investigate how narrative can produce knowledge when studied from the point of view of
the relations between different media. More exactly, I will apply theories of intermediality and iconicity
to a close reading of two narratives: the first part of the novel "Three Strong Women" from 2009 by the
French author Marie Ndiaye and "El café", a short story from 1963 by the Mexican author Gabriel García
Ponce. I will analyze the way in which these narratives can be said to imitate paintings. This kind of
imitation, baptized as “intermedial imitation” by German theorist Werner Wolf, takes place when “the
signifiers of the work and/or its structure are affected by the non-dominant medium, since they appear
to imitate its quality or structure” (Wolf, 2002:25). According to semiotician Winfried Nöth, such
relations could be classified as a typical case of iconicity, in which the form of one medium imitates the
form of another medium, or “form miming form” (Nöth, 2001:18). Swedish intermediality theorist Lars
Elleström is of the opinion that iconicity should even include all cases of meaning or form miming
meaning and form, something which is debated in iconicity studies. However, Elleström’s hypothesis
seems valid in both narratives I will study. It must be mentioned that the intermedial imitations in my
examples concern stories miming painting in general. This could be studied as a case of model ekphrasis,
according to Tamar Yacobi’s classification. A closer look at García Ponce’s short story shows that it might
imitate a specific painting, as in the case of Yacobis one-to-one ekphrases: more exactly Edward
Hopper’s Nighthawks. I will argue that even if Hopper’s painting isn’t mentioned explicitly, an
acceptance of its palimpsestic presence contributes to a more interesting reading thanks to the meaning
it adds to the story.
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THURSDAY
Parallel Session #7
7.1
Thursday, June 26th 2014 at 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: Narratives across media as ways of knowing (I)
Chairs: Heather Elliott (NOVELLA, TCRU, Institute of Education, UK), Corinne Squire (NOVELLA,
CNR, University of East London, UK)
Interest is growing both in forms of narrative that go beyond written and spoken verbal signs, and in
how such varying narrative media expand the range and types of knowledge expressed in narratives and
made available through narrative analysis. These two connected panels, arising from the chairs’ work on
a joint project between the UK Narratives of Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches, (NOVELLA) and
Multimodal Methodologies for researching Digital Data and Environments (MODE) research
programmes, explore these interests. Papers in the panels address still image (collage and paint)
narratives; gestural narratives; moving-image (film) narratives; and new-media narratives (blogs,
message forums, computer games, texting).They investigate the suggestions that narrative ways of
knowing are more extensive than a concentration on speech and writing would suggest, and that
attention needs to be paid to the variable media of narrative. Papers in the first panel, concentrating on
visual narratives, propose that addressing visual modalities can provide new, cross-modal ways of
understanding self-narratives, that expand the usual temporal framings of narratives. They suggest that
narrative approaches are important within visual social research analysis generally. At the same time,
they point out that visual narratives must be understood as heterogeneous and changeable. The second
panel, concentrating on digital narratives, argues that these narratives’ multiple elements point up the
diverse modalities within narratives generally. In addition, they operate as good examples of the
development of new narrative forms. Both panels argue that narrative ways of knowing across media
can be identified and analysed using common processes to a considerable extent, but that forms of
narrative knowledge, and the limits of those knowledges are to a strong degree shaped by and
dependent on their modalities.
Potentiating narrative knowledges through visual and cross-media research: Telling stories in the
picture - narrative multiplicity and more …
Cigdem Esin (CNR, University of East London, UK)
Presenting Author: Cigdem Esin
This paper draws on the research which Corinne Squire and I conducted with a group of young people in
East London, an area which is known for its culturally, ethnically, economically and socially diverse
population. In summer and autumn 2012, we ran art based workshops with students at the Keen
Students' School, which is a community organisation that works to support students of the
neighbourhood, many with immigrant backgrounds. One of the research questions was what visual
material could offer for an in-depth exploration of the interrelations between personal and cultural
resources from which self-narratives were constructed. The participants of workshops were asked to
make images about any part of their lives. They were also interviewed about the stories told in the
images, and their participation in the workshops. The visual narratives of the participants were created
with reference to visual and popular resources which indicated the travelling positions of storytellers
across cultures. The spoken narratives in the interviews mostly focused on the process of making
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images, with reference to interpersonal exchanges between participants. This paper will focus on the
possibilities that a cross-modal approach can create for knowing more about the multiple constituents
of self-narratives
Imaging the subject
Renata Kokanovic (Monash University, Australia)
Presenting Author: Renata Kokanovic
Image based research uses visual data such as paintings, drawings and photographs among other media
as objects of inquiry and a mode of investigation. Visual analysis considers images as central to the
representation and production of meaning and identity - a ‘process of seeing guided by theory’. It has
emerged as an important interdisciplinary field across sociology, visual studies, anthropology and
cultural studies. Encountering the visual through its production, observation and documentation
produces contexts which may serve as the representative narratives of society, knowledge and
experience. Looking at how stories are expressed visually and reading images as narratives is an
important aspect of interpreting visual representations. My aim in this paper is to prompt discussion on
how images construct narratives about mental illness by analysing a work of art expressing such
experience. I am also looking at how a narrative emerges in a visual text, and the ways of seeing as well
as ways of interpreting expressions of the process of seeing. I will examine the complex relationships
between visual images and socio-cultural contexts in experiences of mental illness by combining a
narrative analysis of both visual images and interview data. Specifically, I analyse a set of images
created by an Australian artist to express the lived experience of mental illness, as well as data collected
through a narrative interview with the artist in which she reflects on the lived experience of mental
illness. Artistic practice is analysed as a non-verbal and verbal mode of expressing illness experiences.
Masculinity, ambiguity and the new intimacy in narrative cinema
Candida Yates (University of East London, UK)
Presenting Author: Candida Yates
The notion that Western masculinities are in crisis and undergoing some kind of cultural shift is a
familiar one in film and psychosocial studies. The binary oppositions that once sustained the certainities
of gender and sexual difference have been tested, and the old cinematic narratives of masculinity and
what it means to be a man are no longer convincing. This has a number of implications for
representations of masculinity in Western popular culture and cinema, where the prevalence of images
of male suffering and emotional crisis are arguably part of a broader ‘cultural undoing’ of masculinity. In
cinema, these shifts have implications for psychosocial and cultural processes of spectatorship and
reception, as they challenge the mastery of the male gaze and undercut the certainties of masculinity in
new ways. This development is also linked to new ‘cross-over’ genres associated with independent
cinema and artistic production, which bring new narrative elements to bear on the shaping of emotional
masculinities in Western cinema today. Using selected examples from films such as Shame (Steve
Mcqueen, 2011) and Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013), this paper develops the argument by
discussing representations of masculinity and what I call the ‘new intimacy’ in contemporary narrative
cinema. By examining a shift from cinematic images of masculine jealousy and possession where a
desire for jealous certainty often dominate, to those, which can be characterised as ‘flirtatious’, in style
and content, the paper also reflects on what this might for new cultural formations of masculinity today.
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Spatiality and non-verbal performance in narratives of amputation
Emily Heavey (Kings' College London, UK)
Presenting Author: Emily Heavey
Space (as opposed to time) has been increasingly analysed as an emplotment device in narratives
(Baynham & de Fina, 2005), and specifically one which signals progression or change (de Fina,
2009). Simultaneously, there is an emerging focus on the use of gesture and non-verbal performance in
narratives; such practices do not simply illustrate the spoken narrative, but enrich and transform it
(Hindmarsh and Heath, 2003; Haviland, 2004). This paper will bring these two important areas of
narrative research together, and apply them to stories of amputation. Specifically, I will argue that (1)
narrative is a primary way in which people make sense of and (re)construct the experience of
amputation, and the body that exists after amputation, and (2) the use of spatial imagery and nonverbal performances work together as vital components of these ‘narrative body constructions’. Using
video interview data from my research with amputees, I will demonstrate how storytellers use gesture
and spatial imagery to construct past, present, and imagined versions of their bodies in relation to the
present, storytelling body. The storytelling body acts as a deictic centre, around which and in relation to
which imagined spaces and performative gestures are constructed and located. In turn, these spaces
and gestures work to present and make sense of the storytellers’ different embodiments – from preamputation to post-amputation, including the body in the moment of storytelling. This paper seeks to
expand research on body narratives, and on space and gesture in narrative, by considering how the
body itself can be seen as constructed in narrative, and specifically as constructed through the use of
narrative spatiality and gesture.
7.2
Panel session: Knowledge and narration: Forewords in anthropology
Chair: Stefano Montes (University of Palermo, Italy)
Forewords usually establish a connection with the text that they introduce or comment and they are
naively meant to be marginal texts. Actually, more theoretically, forewords open the way to the
philosophical investigation of the meanings of “introduction”. What does it mean to introduce
something? In which way are forewords “fabricated” and to what extent are their qualities specific to
single disciplines? If concepts receive their semantic configurations by being emplaced in specific genres,
then “forewords” can be considered as genres that must be analysed from an internal point of view (a
text in itself) and/or from an external point of view (a text referring to another text). In literary
narratology, Gérard Genette devoted a study to liminary texts or ‘thresholds’ (Genette G., Seuils, Seuil,
Paris, 1987). Genette includes in his thresholds the following forms of liminary texts: quotations, titles,
headings, forewords, dedications, footnotes, critical commentaries, parodies, translations, and so on. In
our perspective, a focus on the formal and typological character of liminary texts is still central, but we
would like to restrict our conference to “forewords” and to extend the research to the analysis of the
content of these texts (and possibly of relative cultures) by applying a semiotic and linguistic approach.
More particularly, we intend to concentrate on foreword of anthropological texts. And this above all for
one reason. In anthropology “forewords” have long been a textual refuge for information that seemed
inappropriate to the formal text: emotions, personals notations, field difficulties, textual strategies,
theoretical choices, etc.
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A note or a guide? Michael Taussig’s forword to My Cocaine Museum and the narrative value of
knowledge in anthropology
Stefano Montes (University of Palermo, Italy)
Presenting Author: Stefano Montes
In my presentation, I will concentrate on a single text of a postmodernist anthropologist to show his
narrative importance as introductory text and, eventually, to make some more general remarks
concerning prefatory texts in anthropology. The Author’s note: a user’s guide is a forword written by
Michael Taussig for his volume My cocaine museum that breaks the canonical way to present a book
that is, in itself, an experiment. In his work, Taussig presents his readers the symbolic significance of gold
and cocaine and their association with slavery and capitalism by telling several stories connected one
other by an imagined cocaine museum. His forword plays an important role in constructing his
“ethnographic story” because it is written by breaking the linearity of events and combining, in a few
pages and in an estranged presentation, several narrative strategies: a general overview of the book, a
situated conversation with an informant, a detailed description of a poporo (device to store minerals),
some long quotes, a photograph of two women, and so on. Through an analysis of Taussig’s forword I
will show the connections existing between some central questions in anthropology (What does an
anthropologist do? What is the role played by informants in the construction of anthropological
knowledge? How can ethnography be written to be more effective?) And the specific value of narrative
in liminary texts.
Narrative strategies and theoretical connections: The introduction to Clifford’s the predicament of
culture: twentieth century ethnography, Literature, and Art
Gaetano Sabato (University of Palermo, Italy)
Presenting Author: Gaetano Sabato
In my paper I propose an analysis of James Clifford’s prologue to The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth
Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. This paratext centres on fundamental topics characterising
more generally Clifford’s reflection, such as the meanings of symbolic practices, the sense of memory
and history, the dynamics of ethnographic representation. But what is more important is that his
prologue allows us to follow the way a post-modernist anthropologist builds his theoretical objects and
at the same time their parallel narrative styles. Anthropological theory and narrative strategies are
actually mixed together by the author giving way to a different kind of text breaking canonical rules.
Beyond its normal purpose to introduce the book, the prologue by Clifford is already in itself a manner
to reflect “narratively” on some important theoretical problems eventually taken into account in the
book. Consequently, the prologue is a very interesting mixture of different literary genres and a
combination of scientific and literary writing to focus on by jointly applying semiotics and anthropology.
By studying Clifford’s paratext, I intend, then, to investigate more specifically the narrative modalities
through which he creates both literary effects and theoretical connections.
Language and narrative strategies in Griaule’s introduction to Dieu d'eau
Mariangela Albano (University of Palermo, Italy)
Presenting Author: Mariangela Albano
My paper is an analysis of Marcel Griaule’s prologue to Dieu d'eau, his famous and classic ethnography
of the Dogon. His paratext is an important and concentrated case to investigate the process through
which an author conceives his work. By a cognitive linguistic approach, my study tries to examine, more
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particularly, some mechanisms through which Griaule provides a specific narration to his work.
Interestingly, in his prologue it is possible to analyze some relationships concerning linguistic principles,
some textual narratives and several concepts generally used in the book. His prologue is thus essential
to read an ethnography in a double way: as a text containing some concepts associate with the Dogon
and as a “narrative thinking” of these concepts. As a consequence, the central question in my paper is:
how and how much do narrative choices produce a scientific text aspiring to be a representation of a
different culture? Griaule’s discourse is obviously connected with cultural issues but what is also
relevant here, from the narrative point of view, is Griaule’s way to represent himself in the text and the
features associated with a certain idea of Africa. My purpose is indeed to focus on these joint narratives
and cultural relationships.
Le tissu de la narration dans le Préambule de Michel Leiris à L’Afrique fantôme
Licia Taverna (Institut de langues, Italy)
Presenting Author: Licia Taverna
De quelle manière considérer la narration ? Quelle valeur lui donner et comment la définir ? Plutôt que
de définir d’une manière préalable le concept de narration, dans ma contribution je vais m’appliquer au
Préambule à L’Afrique Fantôme de Michel Leiris afin de voir comment l’auteur construit ce genre de
texte en opérant sur cinq axes précis : la synthèse de l’histoire racontée dans L’Afrique fantôme,
l’évaluation de cette histoire, la constitution implicite du préambule en tant que genre, le niveau des
"faits subjectifs" et celui des "choses extérieures". Je vais montrer l’originalité du préambule de Leiris et
sa spécifique constitution narrative par la fine combinaison de ces axes et de leur tissu d’ensemble. Par
cela même, je vais m’arrêter sur l’important rôle joué par la préface et les styles d’écriture d’un auteur
tel que Michel Leiris.
7.3
Panel session: Identity and relational experience: The construction of
(self) knowledge through narrative
Chair: Hanoch Flum (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
Self-knowledge is originated in a social context, and the relational space shared with others is the
ground for its construction and development. Identity is the embodiment of self-knowledge, reflecting
the interplay between the self and the social, the self and others. Often the meaning and implications of
these couple of statements are simply overlooked (certainly in psychology). This panel consists of
researchers who focus in their studies on the narrative construction of identity. These studies shed light
on various facets of knowledge construction, and ways identity is construed, as an outcome and part of
the interactive processes of the ‘self’ in the social world. Narratives reveal relational processes and
unveil core action as being experienced and interpreted by the individual. While all three studies to be
presented in this panel share a narrative mode of inquiry and a conceptual emphasis on identity
construction, they also highlight the relational foundation of these processes. Therefore, beyond a basic
life story approach in all these investigations, additional narrative tools are employed: Relational-spacemaps (Josselson, 1992; are employed in the first two studies), early memories, and documents’ analysis
as well as interpretation of narratives in organizational transition ceremonies (in the third study). Each
one of the studies looks into a different research question in a different context. The first study is one of
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migration. Young immigrants narrate their experiences of cultural transition and identity reconstruction.
In the second presentation adults who are in the sixth decade of their life tell their life story with an
emphasis on their school experiences (in childhood and adolescence). Organizational identity is the
focus of the third study to be presented. The panel’s chair, Hanoch Flum, will give a brief conceptual
introduction. Ruthellen Josselson will serve as a discussant.
Young immigrants' identity construction through relational experiences
Tamara Buzukashvili (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
Presenting Author: Tamara Buzukashvili
People reflect and construct their lived experiences and identity through narrative. Individuals' identity
development and knowledge constructions about who they are occur in their relational and cultural
context. However, when the individual moves from one culture to another as in migration, the transition
challenges the familiar relational and cultural lens and may leave the individual in confusion. In the
current study we examine how narratives of relational experiences, as they are told by young
immigrants, contribute to our understanding of identity construction processes after migration and
cultural transition. Twenty five young people (age: 24- 34) who migrated to Israel from culturally
different countries (Ethiopia, Asian and European parts of the former Soviet Union) during childhood
and early adolescence, participated in this study. Guided by a Dynamic-Narrative Approach (Flum,
1998), immigrants’ life story interviews included early memories and Relational Space Maps (Josselson,
1992). Interpretation was conducted based on the hermeneutic approach and hermeneutic circle.
Relational qualities were found as a meaningful source in the process of knowledge construction about
the self and the reconstruction of identity. Variety of relational qualities (such as holding, eye to eye
validation, mutuality, and identification and idealization) rooted in the original culture assist individual
immigrants in their struggle with the reconstruction of their identity and are instrumental in coping with
the tension between continuity and change. In addition, through narratives of relational experiences
told in light of migration, a few modes of construction and reconstruction are identified. These modes
are also closely related to young immigrants' identity reconstruction and adaptation process in the new
culture.
The developmental significance of school memories as relational experiences
Esthy Arwas (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
Presenting Author: Esthy Arwas
Autobiographical memory processes are at the basis of the construction of personal narrative. Selfdefining memory (SDM) (Singer & Slovey, 1993) is a memory characterized by vividness, strong emotion
and self-relevancy. In the current narrative study with adults aged 50-60 the focus is on
autobiographical stories related to their school experience. The autobiographical narrative reveals how
SDMs become ‘nuclear episodes’ (McAdams, 1985) in the construction of identity. SDMs are told as
relational memories dealing with the relational dynamics between the teller and important people in his
or her life. Most significantly, they evolve around the match or mismatch between an emotionalrelational need and the other’s response. A good fit ‘preserves’ a positive memory of responsiveness
and gratification, while a mismatch elicits a memory loaded with negative emotions. It will be
demonstrated how a holistic analysis of the narrative helps the interpretation of SDMs and especially
how the narrative selection supports the dynamic-relational interpretation of these memories. In
addition, the examination of the memories from the Eriksonian psychosocial model of identity
development perspective, underscores the developmental importance attributed by Erikson to the
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interplay between the individual and his or her social environment and the importance of working
through developmental tasks. A special case in point is the importance of discrepancy or fit between
chronological age and developmental age. Specifically, in the educational context, findings show the
construction of schooling as a relational experience and reflect the emphasis on the connection
participants make in their memories between their developmental needs and the characteristics of the
goodness of fit of the relational experience in the context of their experience of the learning process and
achievements.
Organizational identity: Narrative, practice and relationships
Nitza Roskin (Ben-Gurion University / Mandel Leadership Center in the Negev, Israel)
Presenting Author: Nitza Roskin
Organizations have narratives that allow them to define who they are, what they are doing, and who
their "other" is. Sometimes stories are so powerful that they illustrate, orient, and explain organizational
behavior even if the behavior negates the organization's values. "Organizational identity", the mutual
understanding of "who we are" as an organization, is shaped by the organizational narratives that
players compose as part of their efforts to understand or to charge with significance the collective
entities the players belong to. These narratives are carried within the domain of organizational practice
and the relationships of the organization with its field. This study analyzed the dynamics of identity
construction and development during 2003-2008 in a national educational organization in Israel. The
study revealed the existence of a shared understanding of "who we are" as an organization. It also
identified the "identity work": the ongoing construction of identity as reflected by the organization's
narratives, organizational practices, and the relationships between the organization and the educational
and political fields wherein it exists and acts. These fields include customers, suppliers, partners and
temporary workers. The findings show how organizational narratives formulate identity by being
dissonance mitigators between contradicting social and educational logics, and economic logic in an
organization’s actions. This mitigation is possible due to the special relationships the organization
weaves with its partners in the fields the organization belongs to and acts within.
7.4
Panel session: Between fiction and autofiction: Narrative representations
of selfhood in contemporary French and Francophone women writers
Chair: Marzia Caporale (University of Scranton, USA)
Within contemporary epistemologies of post-modernist, post-feminist, and post-colonial writing, critical
inquiry into what constitutes the subject as agent within a culture occupies a particularly predominant
position. In this sense, literary narratives of the self-offer an especially fertile ground of investigation
with regards to questions of identity, knowledge, and the formation of subjectivity. This panel proposes
to analyze women writers of the French and Francophone world whose literary works occupy the liminal
narrative space between fiction, autobiography, and autofiction. While the common hypotext can be
found in real-life occurrences or autobiographical experiences, these authors do not produce literary
self-portraits. Rather, their writing articulates narratives that explore the dialogic relationship between
the self and the authoritative forms of discourse in which their selfhood is inscribed. Among the
questions that the panel seeks to address are: what does it mean to narrate the self through the literary
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text? How is such a narrative articulated (formally, linguistically, and structurally)? Which is the role
played by gender/culture/society in the development of literary representations of the self? To this end,
the panel will discuss the works of three French/Francophone female writers (Virginie Despentes, Lydia
Flem, and Véronique Tadjo) whose oeuvre draws together multiple disciplines and art forms (from
literature to psychoanalysis to painting to cinema) in order to enunciate the interplay of power between
the narrating subject and dominant master narratives - patriarchy, colonialism, history or any governing
system of knowledge.
Narrating the past to write the present: Veronique Tadjo’s La Reine Pokou: Concerto pour un sacrifice
Marzia Caporale (University of Scranton, USA)
Presenting Author: Marzia Caporale
Franco-Ivorian author Veronique Tadjo is a polymorphous artist who relies on multiple forms of
expression (painting, poetry, children’s literature, essays, and novel) as means to explore the many
facets of African culture and society. In particular, Tadjo’s novelistic narrative, most often situated at the
crossroads between fiction and autobiography, focuses on the question of identity, be it individual or
collective. After publishing a tribute to those killed in the Rwandan genocide titled L´ombre d´Imana:
voyages jusqu'au bout du Rwanda (2000), Tadjo has continued to pay homage to memory of the past
while calling attention to the urgent questions (e.g. war, social paralysis, political injustice) that affect
the continent today. In her 2006 short novel La Reine Pokou: concerto pour un sacrifice, the author
writes, and then in part re-writes, the founding myth of the history of the Ivorian people, transposing
the narrative from orature to writing, in order to define post-colonial subjectivity and the African self.
According to the legend, Pokou was in charge of bringing the Baoulé people from Ghana to the Ivory
Coast. When the group arrived near a river which would not allow them to pass, Pokou was asked to
perform the ultimate sacrifice: allow her son to be offered to the gods in order to save her people. In
her textual rendition of the myth, Tadjo enters into a dialogic exchange not only with the history and
traditions of her land but also with her own past. Through what critic Irène Assiba d’Almeida defines as
une “prise d’écriture,” Tadjo interweaves the conventional linear narrative of the myth with textual
fragmentation and unanswered open-ended questions that deconstruct history and its premises of
human sacrifice. Using the legendary past and the author’s own reading of the myth as a starting point,
the novel raises awareness of ongoing ethical and political issues still painfully relevant in a country (her
own) still searching for its identity.
Nested narratives of mourning: Lydia Flem’s trilogy: Comment j’ai vidé la maison de mes parents
(2004), Lettres d’amour en héritage (2006), and Comment je me suis séparée de ma fille et de mon
quasi-fils (2009)
Lynn Penrod (University of Alberta, Canada)
Presenting Author: Lynn Penrod
Contemporary French writing has experienced an ever-increasing blurring of genre boundaries between
fiction, autobiography, auto fiction, and nonfiction to the extent that the very concept of narrative has
become the focus of a re-exploration of what we mean when we “narrate”, whether it be an imagined
event constructed within a fictional universe or a re-imagined event from a narrator’s own life
experience. The work of Belgian-born psychoanalyst and author Lydia Flem provides a very interesting
case study of this blurred form of narrative in three short books published in Paris over the course of
five years from 2004 through 2009. These three texts: Comment j’ai vidé la maison de mes parents,
Lettres d’amour en héritage, and Comment je me suis séparée de ma fille et de mon quasi-fils are both a
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descriptive and analytical “nested” narrative of the various forms of mourning: the story of an only
child who as an adult has the task of emptying out the home of her parents; the story of the child’s love
story told in letters from the time before her birth; and the only child’s experience of an “empty nest” as
a parent herself. Given Flem’s professional training in psychoanalysis (she has authored a well-received
book on Freud as well as one on Casanova), the narrative of her self-analysis of the narratives she
encounters within the letters exchanged by her parents gives us an even better understanding of the
complexity of contemporary narrative and the layered meanings of mourning and memory contained
within.
The knowing writer, the knowing body: The narration of Virginie Despentes
Marion Phillips (University of California-Berkeley, USA)
Presenting Author: Marion Phillips
Virginie Despentes affirms that she draws upon her own experiences repeatedly in her works, but not to
form an "autoportrait." She uses her specific knowledge to better create and depict her characters and
their surroundings. In the post-90s literary world, infused with sexual confessions à la Catherine Millet
and sexualized autofictions à la Christine Angot, writing simply “fiction” about cultures and worlds that
one knows well seems almost quaint. But as readers of Despentes know, her writing is anything but. This
paper looks closely at Despentes’s Apocalypse bébé, published in 2010, and King Kong théorie,
published in 2006. The former is the most recent of several fictional novels written by Despentes since
her eruption onto the literary scene with Baise-Moi in 1993. The latter is her only nonfiction literary
work to date. Apocalypse bébé is a post-modern policier in which the importance of knowledge - who
knows what, and when - is embodied by Despentes’s kaleidoscopic narrative technique, which layers
characters’ experiences. Information is shared or dissimulated by private eyes, state and religious
authorities, and bourgeois chefs de famille. The search for knowledge and the confirmation of its
veracity in tracking down a teenage runaway is mirrored by the protagonist’s slow and at times clumsy
discovery of sexual knowledge and lesbian relationships. As a pendant to my discussion of knowledges
of authoritative discourse, the language of the enquête, and the ascertaining of sexual knowledge in
Apocalypse bébé, I would like to discuss the non-fiction King Kong théorie. In this work Despentes
relates her personal experiences while expounding on and shattering received notions about rape,
prostitution and pornography. I will explore how in both works of fiction and nonfiction Despentes
simultaneously creates and destroys forms of knowing.
7.5
Paper session: Possible stories
Moderator: Martin Joel Gliserman
Rethinking Bruner’s “canonicity and beach”
Matti Hyvärinen (University of Tampere, Finland)
Presenting Author: Matti Hyvärinen
Jerome Bruner’s thoughts about folk psychology and narrative have been fundamental to understanding
the pragmatics of everyday storytelling as well as the cognitive role(s) of narrative. This paper aims at
being homage and a critical re-appraisal of some of the key ideas suggested by Bruner. “Note that it is
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only when constituent beliefs in a folk psychology are violated that narratives are constructed...” (1990,
39). I endorse this claim to a point, yet addressing two possible dilemmas. Firstly, Bruner creates a
tension between canonical, script-like folk psychology as a form of knowledge and proper narrative as a
recuperative tool in managing deviations from these canonical expectations. The pragmatics of folk
psychology seems thus diverge substantially from that of narrative. Yet, somewhat confusingly, Bruner
argues that the “organizing principle” of folk psychology is “narrative rather than conceptual” (1990,
35). This dilemma can be partly solved simply by substituting “sequential” for “narrative” in the
characterization of the organizing principle. Secondly, a more serious problem concerns the validity of
the claim about narrative’s functions. It is easy to realize its relevance as regards as “good” and
“prototypical” (Herman 2009) narratives. However, it meets difficulties with such deviant but relevant
forms of narration as “habitual” and “hypothetical narrative” (Riessman 1990); “prospective narrative”
(Georgakopoulou 2007) or “portrait narrative” (Phelan 2007). Several narratives attempt at describing
scripts and cultural-cum-personal expectations, or endeavor to create new scripts for the future. David
Herman’s prototypical model succeeds better in nurturing these diverging pragmatic roles of diverging
narrative modes because narrative modes further away from the prototypical nexus may arguably have
different relationships between canonicity and breach.
Storyworld possible selves: Narratology and social psychology at the crossroads
M. Angeles Martínez (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Presenting Author: M. Angeles Martínez
It is widely acknowledged that narrative engagement requires readers to project themselves into
storyworlds, but, as this ontological crossing cannot involve the whole of the reader, but just a
selectively activated part of his or her consciousness, this study turns to social psychology and to the
notions of self-schemas and possible selves (Markus, 1977; Markus and Nurius, 1986; Dunkel and
Kerpelman, 2006) to develop the concept of storyworld possible selves, or blends emerging from
conceptual matches across selectively activated parts of the reader’s self-concept and features in the
focalizer’s construct. As abstract entities, storyworld possible selves (SPSs) (Martínez 2014), may throw
light on a number of phenomena connected to narrative processing, from empathic and emotional
response to narrative metalepsis. SPSs may also help explain controversial features of narrative
discourse reference like the doubly-deictic you (Herman, 2002). Self-schemas and possible selves have
been successfully applied in areas like medical therapy, political discourse, education, business,
advertising, and intercultural communication, but have not before been applied to the study of
narratives. However, their potential for the analysis of narrative immersion should not be
underestimated, as they may enlighten not only the bearing of the self-concept on the idiosyncratic
nature of the narrative experience, but also the power of narratives to transform the self. This
presentation also explores some applications of storyworld possible selves to the study of actual
narratives, with a focus on the linguistic triggers likely to prompt the projection of readers' self-schemas
and possible selves into the fictional world.
Re-Imagining self with others: The transformative power of “as if” performances in everyday life
Arlene C. Vadum (Assumption College, USA)
Presenting Author: Arlene C. Vadum
This project is based on the understanding that people’s social realities, including their conceptions of
self, are constantly evolving, shaped by the many behavioral choices they make in their daily lives and by
the ever-changing responses of others to them. It follows that if people can be taught to imagine and try
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on alternative ways of being with others -- ones that alter others’ responses to them, their conceptions
of self as well as their relationships will be transformed by the experience. This project does just that.
With my one-on-one guidance, students in a course on interpersonal communication, create a character
description of a person who exemplifies a social skill they hope to strengthen in themselves (e.g.,
improved listening, ease in meeting new people). The narratives that they write (modeled after George
Kelly’s fixed-role descriptions) describe the character’s approach to relating with others in ideal terms,
focusing on the character’s positive impacts on others and the philosophy of life and understanding of
social situations that enables and inspires the character’s easy style of relating to others. Once
complete, the students embark on the adventure of “becoming” their characters on an “as-if” basis in
their daily lives for a week, during which time they record their experiences. In written reflections on
their experiences in character, the students report discovering previously unacknowledged aspects of
themselves, an increased sense of personal agency, and greater self-liking and perceived self-efficacy in
interpersonal situations. They gain new understandings of how their usual behavior patterns influence
others’ responses to them as well as how they relate to others. Through imagining and enacting their
characters, students acquire a playful, adventurous, and effective strategy for personal change.
Narrative enrichment leads to life enrichment.
7.6
Paper session: Postmodern histories and geographies
Moderator: Aniela dela Cruz
Historical knowledge in Fiction
Manja Kürschner (Kiel University, Germany)
Presenting Author: Manja Kürschner
Postmodernist historiographic metafiction argues that the boundary between the ontological worlds of
fiction and fact should be abolished. My research investigates in which ways this claim is refuted by
British novels written after 2000. I will concentrate on Adam Thorpe’s Hodd (2009) to elucidate how the
novel communicates historical knowledge. On the one hand, the text shows that we still do not know if
there really was a historical agent called Robin Hood. On the other hand, the text transmits a great
range of historical knowledge about life in the Middle Ages and in the First World War. History is shown
to be more than a collection of heterogeneous fictitious stories, but an intersubjectively valid version of
what might have happened. Hodd negotiates strategies that fictionalize history and re-establishes a
boundary between fictional and non-fictional narratives about the historical past without denying the
relevance of either fictional storytelling or the discipline of history. Due to the observation that it is
pretty easy to tell fictitious and fictionalized historical information apart, I conclude that the novel still
opts for a distinction between fiction and fact. Despite the metafictional and metahistoriographic
commentaries which draw attention to the problems of writing about the past, Thorpe’s text claims to
give valid historical information. Thus, Hodd expresses the urge (in historiography and literary studies)
to embrace constructivist or deconstructivist findings without losing the ability to say something valid
about the past. Finally, this urge is exemplified by a structural analogy to the point of view chosen in the
fictional narrative since the witness of the past and the historiographers capturing past impressions are
only partly unreliable narrators of history who can nevertheless render reliable historical facts.
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Fictional identity in palimpsest narrative
Carmen Musat (University of Bucharest, Romania)
Presenting Author: Carmen Musat
There is a category of fiction which exists only as a response to/rewriting/retelling of a previous
narrative, deeply and overtly linked to what Michael Riffaterre named the “intertextual unconscious”. In
contemporary fiction, palimpsest narrative means con-fusion of texts and meanings, of worlds and
“persons”, putting forth the problem of representation and identity – identity of the narrator and
identities of those characters whose names are imported from other texts (or contexts). How is fictional
identity configured in such situations? How do different stories merge or co-exist in a new fictional
world? A character referred to as Menelaos might be the Homeric figure and John Barth’s character (in
Menelaid) at the same time (and this is only one example). To answer these questions my paper will
engage with issues such as palimpsest narrative, cross-identity, narrative representation, as well as
semantic referent and speaker’s referent (in Kripke’s terminology), taking as its point of departure
Michael Riffaterre’s influential observation that “because of the intertextual cross-reference, each such
reading is in fact a rereading, a revised interpretation of a preceding stretch of text, the starting point
being wherever the reader first becomes aware of a connection or an alternative between two or more
textual segments”.
Spatial readings of fiction, postmemory and challenging the ways of knowing
Joshua Parker (University of Salzburg, Austria)
Presenting Author: Joshua Parker
Berlin’s “symbolic geography” (S.S. Friedman), as fictionalized by contemporary Jewish-American
authors, offers a space where conflicts between traditional narratives and personal experience often run
deep. This paper examines how these fictions hesitate between relying on pre-established narratives of
the city and inventing new narrative models. To what extent does a city’s traditional mythos impede
narrative “knowing” of its contemporary spaces? And how might one create new narrative outcomes
without ignoring traditional narrative frameworks associated with a city? Narratives, Slavoj Žižek
reasons, are developed to resolve opposition between incompatible “terms” by separating them in time.
The result of “repressed antagonism” between two or more “terms,” narrative is, as Lacan saw it, “a
kind of package deal in which one gains meaning at the price of accepting temporal order, coherence
and unification.” Imagining these antagonistic, coexistent “terms” as “places,” telling a story by their
arrangement in space might help us get a clearer view of “social contradictions” “resolved” through
narrative which, as Frederic Jameson writes, “however reconstructed, remain an absent cause.” If these
“social contradictions” cannot be “conceptualized” by a text’s “plot,” they can perhaps be uncovered
through its treatment of space, precisely where, Lefebvre writes, societal “contradictions” emerge to
play themselves out. This paper suggests examining a narrative in terms of topographic antagonism is a
useful means of interpreting repressions inherent to narrative, and that fictional organizations of space
are a first step toward new understandings or “knowings” of highly symbolic settings, and of possible
alternative narrative outcomes. In considering collective cultural memory, postmemory and authorship,
Berlin is the nexus of an ongoing process involving both collective memory and personal experience: not
of altering historical narratives traditionally associated with the city by temporal or causal rewritings,
but of nuancing these narrative frameworks through new treatments and understandings of space.
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7.7
Paper session: The power of narrative
Moderator: Paulo R. Jesus
Expérience, récits et pratiques info-communicationnelles: Contributions aux soins de santé mentale
Mariana Bteshe (Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Cientifica e Tecnológica em Saúde, Brazil),
Regina Marteleto (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Carlos Estellita-Lins (Instituto de
Comunicação e Informação Cientifica e Tecnológica em Saúde, Brazil)
Presenting Author: Marina Bteshe
Au Brésil, les réseaux de soins de santé mentale comprennent non seulement les services offerts par
l'État ou par la science, mais aussi toutes les sources de soins socialement construites. Les études sur les
pratiques info-communicationnelles en santé montrent que l'accès à l'expérience de la souffrance à
travers des données des significations socialement conférés est un instrument utile pour la construction
d'une connaissance partagée. Cela met en évidence les récits sur l'expérience de suicide et ses
différentes manifestations: idée, plan, tentative de suicide et suicide. Nous avons effectué une étude de
terrain afin de comprendre cette expérience, en considérant le dialogue et les différentes formes de
communication produits dans les réseaux sociaux informels de personnes qui ont essayé le suicide, ainsi
comme personnes de la famille de ceux qui l'ont accompli, ses effets et le chemin parcouru dans la
recherche de soins. L'étude a été développé en deux phases: la recherche documentaire dans les
principales bases de données nationales et internationales; étude empirique, qui a utilisé comme outil
méthodologique une interview semi-structurée, qui avait pour objective susciter récits de souffrance:
McGill Illness Narrative Interview. Nous avons interviewé onze personnes. Les résultats montrent que le
récit peut être une opportunité pour ses personnes, qui ont vécu ou qui sont en train de vivre un
traumatisme, d'écrire leurs histoires et réorienter le sens de leurs expériences. Etant donné que souvent
l'expérience de souffrance est réduite au silence, perdue ou cachée dans la mémoire, les études sur les
pratiques info-communicationnels, axée sur les récits, pourraient jouer um rôle stratégique dans
l'amélioration des soins, en particulier dans des situations de violence physique, psychologique ou
symbolique. Repérer ces expériences à travers les récits peut contribuer à éclaircir la connaissance, le
savoir et l'information, masqué par les préjugés sociaux et moraux.
Mises en récit et formes de raisonnements en classe de mathématiques et de biologie
Catherine Bruguiere (Université Lyon 1 - ENS de Lyon, France), Gilles Aldon (ENS de lyon, Institut français
de l'éducation, France), Fabienne Paulin (Université Lyon 1 - ENS de Lyon, France), Karine BecuRobinault (Université Lyon 1 - ENS de Lyon, France), Frédéric Charles (Université Lyon 1 - ENS de Lyon,
France), Virginie Deloustal-Jorrand (Université Lyon 1 - ENS de Lyon, France), Catherine Loisy (ENS de
lyon, Institut français de l'éducation, France), Marieanne Moulin (Université Lyon 1 - ENS de Lyon,
France)
Presenting Author: Catherine Bruguiere, Fabienne Paulin
Cette communication contribue à la réflexion sur les puissances épistémiques du récit. Elle se donne
comme objectif d’illustrer en quoi les mises en récits peuvent produire des savoirs. Elle s’intéresse
notamment à l’apprentissage de la construction de raisonnements scientifiques. Comment des mises en
récit par des élèves permettent-elles, dans certaines conditions didactiques, l’apprentissage de
différentes formes de raisonnements scientifiques ? Le raisonnement scientifique ne se construit pas
uniquement par un travail au sein du registre logique mais aussi par un travail sur les objets de savoir et
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sur le langage, dans l’interaction avec les pairs. Nous construisons une méthodologie et un cadre
théorique didactique qui empruntent des hypothèses issues de la sémiotique de Peirce. Sur le plan des
apprentissages, nous nous situons dans une épistémologie socioconstructiviste vygotskienne.
Nous cherchons à caractériser les relations entre les propriétés du récit et les raisonnements
scientifiques ainsi que leurs contributions mutuelles. Ces analyses seront conduites sur la base de récits
construits par des élèves du primaire et du secondaire français, placés en situation de résolution de
problèmes en mathématiques et en biologie relevant de différentes épistémologies. Pour les
mathématiques, nous nous appuierons sur des productions d’élèves qui rendent compte de leurs
recherches de solutions à des problèmes complexes. Pour la biologie, les productions d’élèves sont
réalisées dans le cadre de l’explication d’un phénomène inscrit dans la problématique de l’évolution.
L’articulation entre logique du récit, logique de sens commun et logique déductive ou inductive conduit
les élèves à s’engager dans des formes de raisonnement qui peuvent être contradictoires et
potentiellement problématisantes.
Fictions of "la tournante": Fallacies, facts, and effects
Dylan Sebastian Evans (University of Nottingham, UK)
Presenting Author: Dylan Sebastian Evans
This paper touches upon the highly contentious topic of ‘la tournante’. From the expression ‘faire
tourner’, meaning something like ‘to hand, or to pass (something) around; to share’, the word has taken
on an additional, specialized, and more sinister sense: that of gang-rape. Before December 2000, when
Fabrice Genestal’s La Squale was released, talk of ‘la tournante’ was, in the words of the French
sociologist Laurent Mucchielli, ‘médiatiquement quasi inexistant’. It was Genestal’s film — ‘[un] film
témoignage, entre fiction et documentaire’ — that sparked an explosion of discourse, an unprecedented
outpouring of moral indignation. Published in 2005, Mucchielli’s sociological enquiry calls into question
the film’s ‘evidential’ or ‘probative’ value (Erkenntniswert): ‘La squale va bénéficier en effet d’une très
large couverture de presse, les journalistes considérant cette fiction comme un témoignage direct sur
une réalité cachée, une véritable révélation’. And yet, the absolutist terms upon which this assessment
stands imply that the primary use of language is to convey meaning, and that words bear an originary
relation to things. By conceiving of language in this way — as nomenclature first and foremost, this
philosophy precludes analysis of the means by which Genestal’s film and other fictional representations
of ‘la tournante’ acquire, as Mucchielli’s remarks intimate, all of the descriptive force which he fathers
upon scientifically verified facts. It is this distinction — between science (as the discourse of facts) and
literature/cinema (as the discourse of effects) — that I seek to problematize in this paper. But what is, or
how are we to understand, and this is the question at issue in this paper, the value as truth of Édith
Wolf’s En réunion (2003), Élisa Brune’s La Tournante (2001), and Genestal’s La Squale?
7.8
Paper session: Pragmatique, rhétorique, théories de la narrativité
Moderator: Francis Langevin
Un récit pour quoi faire? Une proposition pragmatiste
Marion Renauld (Université de Lorraine, France)
Presenting Author : Marion Renauld
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Que les récits d’événements ou de faits soient destinés à nous apprendre quelque chose n’a rien de
certain, et qu’ils puissent même remplir cette fonction reste controversé. Nous répondrons d’abord au
soupçon de l’illusion épistémique qui pèse sur la forme du récit, en particulier à travers la critique
musilienne de la « loi de la narration classique », telle qu’elle transparaît dans, et par, le roman
L’homme sans qualités. Cet « éternel tour de passe-passe de l’art narratif, à quoi même les nourrices
recourent pour calmer les enfants », se distingue ici notamment de la « poésie », ainsi que du mode
argumentatif, et pourrait s’avérer insuffisant, eu égard au choix de certains auteurs d’user, en sus,
d’autres moyens d’expression pour honorer la visée gnoséologique du roman : digression, liste,
énonciation ironique, métaphore ou encore tendance essayiste, sont autant de méthodes susceptibles
de remettre en question la portée cognitive du récit en tant que tel. C’est pourquoi nous défendrons
plutôt une approche pragmatiste des potentialités narratives, en s’inspirant des pistes ouvertes par
Goodman dans « Des histoires dans tous les sens ». Partant d’une objection anti-essentialiste contre une
définition temporelle du récit, Goodman montre comment les histoires peuvent devenir des études, ou
des symphonies, selon qu’on sélectionne leurs « caractères topiques » ou leurs « qualités expressives ».
Ainsi, non seulement la narration semble importer peu, perdant ce qui devrait faire sa spécificité, mais
elle se voit soumise « à certaines catégories tout particulièrement appropriées au contexte et aux buts
dont il s’agit – ou qui devraient lui être adaptée ». Entre autres, les trois possibilités offertes au
romancier méditatif selon Kundera – raconter, décrire ou penser une histoire – permettront de clarifier
certaines des intentions qui peuvent présider aux divers emplois de la narration romanesque.
L’intelligence du récit : Enquête archéologique dans la rhétorique des dispositifs narratifs
Christine Noille (Université Stendhal Grenoble 3, France)
Presenting Author: Christine Noille
Narro/e : « raconter; exposer une information ; vient de gnarus », Gnarus : « qui sait, qui connaît, qui est
informé ». La narration a partie liée avec le partage d’un savoir : le narrateur, c’est celui qui, dans le
même geste, informe et met en forme. Ou comme le disait Mme de Sévigné : « Voilà un beau sujet de
roman ou de tragédie, mais surtout un beau sujet de raisonner et de parler éternellement ». Où l’on voit
que le savoir du récit en rhétorique est à prendre en tous sens : le récit factuel articule une expérience
dans une syntaxe narrative (tragédie ou roman…) ; l’intelligence des faits est ici subordonnée à leur mise
en récit ; et un discours commentateur articule le récit dans une syntaxe argumentative (judiciaire,
politique, morale…) : l’intelligence des faits est ici subordonnée à leur mise en raisonnement. Dans
l’ancienne rhétorique, les récits factuels fonctionnent ainsi comme des dispositifs de connaissance sur le
factuel, en ce qu’ils transforment une expérience du monde en un tissu syntagmatique selon une double
logique : une logique d’amplification syntagmatique (ou inventio : recension des « parties » ou
arguments susceptibles de développer le fait) ; une logique de coordination syntagmatique (ou
dispositio : mise en réseau et en tension des séquences détaillées vers un but). Et ce but du récit n’est
pas seulement sa téléologie narrative ; il est d’abord discursif, qu’il s’agisse d’une discursivité interne
(explication du fait) ou externe (éclaircissement par le récit du propos contextuel). Autrement dit,
l’ancienne rhétorique a à nous apprendre deux choses sur les dispositifs narratifs : leur conjointure avec
l’invention argumentative d’une part ; leur rapport à la tension discursive d’autre part. C’est à ce titre
que la rhétorique des dispositifs narratifs a engagé et tenu une réflexion décisive sur l’intelligence du
récit : l’enquête archéologique que nous nous proposons de faire en retracera les principales
articulations.
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La narrativité : Vers un inventaire des théories
John Pier (EHESS, France)
Presenting Author: John Pier
Les travaux consacrés à la narrativité présentent une grande diversité de positions sur la question. Mais
à la lecture de ces travaux et des commentaires qui y sont consacrés, deux approches majeures
semblent se dessiner. La première, qui représente la majorité des positions, distingue entre théories
extensionnelles, ou immanentistes, de la narrativité et théories intensionnelles, ou scalaires. En réalité,
la plupart des théories comportent à la fois une dimension extensionnelle (référence) et une dimension
intensionnelle (sens), quoiqu’elles délimitent ces deux dimensions et les relations entre elles selon des
critères qui sont parfois radicalement différents. Parmi les principaux représentants de cette approche
sont Prince, Herman et Ryan. La deuxième approche, qui oppose la question « Qu’est-ce qu’un récit ? »
à celle de « Quand y’a-t-il récit ? », n’a pas d’adhérents déclarés mais, dans le sillage de Goodman et de
Genette, permet d’identifier des liens implicites entre différentes théories et d’identifier les conditions
constitutives de la narrativité. Sur la base de ces deux tendances de la recherche, cette intervention se
propose d’ébaucher un inventaire des théories de la narrativité. Face à la prolifération des travaux dans
ce domaine, il est devenu urgent, pour une meilleure connaissance des enjeux de la narrativité en
théorie narrative, d’établir un cadre de référence qui permet d’organiser les présupposés, les acquis et
les objectifs des recherches qui y sont consacrées. « [L]’étude plus approfondie de la narrativité,
déclarait Prince déjà en 1999, constitue peut-être la tâche la plus déterminante de la narratologie
aujourd’hui ».
Parallel Session #8
8.1
Panel session: Narratives across media as ways of knowing (II)
Chairs: Heather Elliott (NOVELLA, TCRU, Institute of Education, UK), Corinne Squire (NOVELLA,
CNR, University of East London, UK)
Digital media: Extending knowledges through and of multi-modal narratives: Narratives of
“parenting” knowledge in online parenting forums
Joe Winter (NOVELLA, Institute of Education, UK)
Presenting Author: Joe Winter
As online social networks and mobile technologies continue to proliferate and embed themselves in the
everyday practices of families, parenting websites are an increasingly popular resource. Taking a
broader view of narrative sense-making than that enabled by a sole focus on speech and writing, my
Ph.D project draws on multimodal approaches to discourse analysis. This provides a useful perspective
for the narrative analysis of online data, as modes other than speech and writing are increasingly
prominent on the web, especially in the context of mobile technologies. In this paper I will interrogate
how far narratives of everyday parenting identities and practices generated with parent-users of two
popular websites, Mumsnet and Netmums reflect canonical narratives of parenting knowledge. I will
consider how lived experiences and knowledges of parenting are shaped by particular situated contexts
and modalities of communication by comparing participants’ narratives on forums, and in individual
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email and face-to-face interviews. My Ph.D has a mixed-method design constituting narrative analysis,
multimodal discourse analysis, telephone interviews, online ethnography, email interviews, and face-toface interviews.
Recipes for mothering
Heather Elliott (NOVELLA, TCRU, Institute of Education, UK), Corinne Squire (NOVELLA, CNR, University
of East London, UK)
Presenting Author: Heather Elliott, Corinne Squire
In relation to concerns that engagement with digital worlds undermine capacities to understand
‘traditional narrative forms’ (Rose, E; 2012), this paper considers what is ‘new’ about digital narratives
and how they relate to other narrative forms. We present narrative analysis of blogs about feeding
families written by mothers in the context of constrained resources - economic, emotional and timerelated. We draw out how the identities set out in About Me pages of blogs relate to contemporary
cultural narratives of the maternal and how these identity positions are reinforced and contradicted in
subsequent postings, underlining how multiplicities, inconsistencies and ruptures are part of, rather
than outside, narrative. We consider how these blogs relate to the canon of narratives documenting
the traditional motherwork of memorialising and archiving family life (Rose, G; 2010), feeding families
and building communities of like-minded mothers sharing advice and information. We conclude by
considering how, as well as narrating motherwork, blogs themselves might represent post-industrial
forms of 'women's work' and casual ‘piece work’ more generally. Online renderings of the everyday into
expertise are clearly effortful and this work builds saleable skills as well as extending social resources
and bringing in some economic brands. Thus in situations where economic capital is depleted, older
forms of social and symbolic capital are not paying off and established forms of cultural capital are not
marketable, the blogs develop new forms of all of these.
Contagion, “pande-media” and narrative knowledge
Mark Davis (Monash University, Australia)
Presenting Author: Mark Davis
In Steven Soderberg’s 2011 film Contagion, Kate Winslet’s character – a public health expert at the
centre of efforts to combat the spreading virus – becomes aware that she has been infected and is
therefore placed in the position of knowing of the pandemic in a technical sense and knowing of her
own plight in a visceral sense. TV and press news stories on pandemics draw on contagion narrative to
disseminate information on the rise and fall of pathogenic outbreaks such as influenza and SARS. These
news stories are also patterned like pandemics; emerging, peaking and ebbing away. Google’s Flu
Trends asserts the pattern of contagion, monitoring as it does peaks in online searches for information
and therefore need for knowledge and perhaps anxiety regarding influenza. Health communication texts
can also be shown to share knowledge of pandemics in ways that textually and graphically exercise
contagion narrative, with informational effects and affective connotations. In an inventive turning of
contagion narrative, the online game Pandemic asks players to be viruses whose objective it is to
gleefully infect as many humans as possible. In this paper I reflect on how pande-media exercise
contagion narrative, not just through the information they convey, but through their affective qualities,
the form they take and their turning of narrative knowledge. I will therefore draw attention to the ways
in which narrative knowledge is sustained in the shapes, rhythms and affects of pande-media and its
consumption.
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8.2
Panel session: The storytelling brain
Chair: Maria I. Medved (University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris,
France)
The title of this panel is a nod to the fact that all narrative is based on biological capacities, which is of
course true for all our linguistic abilities. What are the specific neurobiological preconditions of
narrative? Many social and biological scientists (including cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists)
view narrative as a cognitive (or neuropsychological) competency housed exclusively within the
individual brain. In fact, an entire research tradition is built on this assumption. In contrast, the
contributors to this panel argue that the brain is not the sole site of our cognitive and linguistic
functions, whether they are remembering, reflecting, speaking – and of course, narrating. But where
then do we localize the “storytelling brain”? This is the central issue of all the talks.
Approaching this issue from different perspectives, the presenters offer narratological, psychological,
and clinical arguments in favor of the assumption of a shared intersubjective and embodied space as the
primary site for narrative. Storytelling, in whatever form and format, needs more than one brain. This
view has found support in various areas of research, but it still is an emerging conception. Here, it will be
explored by two speakers tackling issues of embodiment, memory, and intersubjectivity in healthy and
sick individuals, while the other two speakers will discuss findings from research involving people with
dementia and neurotrauma.
Beyond the storytelling brain: Re-embodying and re-invigorating narrative
Brett Smith (Loughborough University, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Brett Smith
Drawing inspiration from discursive psychology, and recent work that critically talks about narrative
(e.g., Brockmeier, 2012; Schiff, 2013), this presentation offers a case for a (re)turn to some intentions of
narrative inquiry and how we might empirically deal with stories. The modest aim is to offer a set of
observations that mesh together to provide an account that promotes an embodied social psychology of
narrative. First, cognitive approaches that locate narrative as a thing inside the brain/mind is briefly
problematised. Next, a case is offered that brackets off the experimental study of the storytelling brain
and calls for a (re)turn to the body and what humans as real bodies do with stories in naturalistic
contexts. As part of this (re)turn, social relations, the senses, affect, action, culture, interviewing, and
actual storytelling in real time in natural interaction across various contexts is considered. The
presentation concludes by suggesting that narrative researchers start off with the study of embodied
meaning makers rather than the storytelling brain. It also offers a gentle reminder of the dangers of
scholarly amnesia in the growing climate of academic neo-liberalism.
Whose memories?
Jens Brockmeier (University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris, France)
Presenting Author: Jens Brockmeier
Research in many fields has challenged the assumption that human memory can be reduced to a clearly
identifiable function or part (or network of systems) of a single brain. This tendency is obvious in areas
such as social, collective, and cultural memory, but also in clinical disciplines, narrative studies,
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discursive psychology, and studies on life-writing. Recently, brain research too has provided support for
this view. Drawing on new neuroscientific insights, I want to discuss one argument that emphasizes the
fundamentally intersubjective nature of human remembering. From a neurological point of view, the
brain has no binding obligation to veridicality; there is no “mechanism” underlying neuronal activities
meant to produce what traditionally has been called “true” memories – whether on a molecular,
neuronal, or the neurocognitive level. On the contrary, we assimilate the views and experiences of
others as intensely and richly as if they were our own primary experiences – and remember them
accordingly, indeed “truthfully.” Yet this inherently subjective twist of our memories, especially manifest
in autobiographical narratives, is not to be seen as shortcoming, failure, or “sin” of our brain. Instead, it
demonstrates the biologically in-built subjectivity and, at the same time, intersubjectivity of human
remembering because it is this very nature of our remembering processes that allows us to assimilate
the experiences of others, indeed of the whole of our cultural world. It enables us to enter into and
contribute to the common mind, as Oliver Sacks puts it. This intersubjective sharing and empathetic
interconnecting would not be possible if all our memories were seen as exclusively ours, as private
possessions, distinguished by a clear-cut borderline from those of others. “Memory,” in Sacks words, “is
dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.” That is the
argument I want to discuss.
Shared stories, memories, and interdependent identity in dementia
Lars-Christer Hydén (Linköping University, Sweden)
Presenting Author: Lars-Christer Hydén
Personal identity is often conceived to be based on an individual’s own memories and to be expressed
as stories. Arguments in favor of this conception often refer to examples from literary autobiographies
or from life history interviews with healthy individuals. The aim of this presentation is to challenge this
theoretical notion through the use of material from an empirical research project concerned with
identity and identity change in couples where one spouse has developed dementia. First, by involving
persons with Alzheimer’s disease the individualist conception of identity is challenged as persons
suffering from the disease could be expected to lose their identity as a consequence of their severe
memory problems as well as their problems with storytelling. Second, a research design based on joint
interviews with couples will challenge the idea of identities as being primarily individual but rather
shared and interdependent. An analysis of joint interviews with 13 couples shows that individuals living
together over longer periods of time develop a common ground consisting of for instance stories about
shared experiences. Both spouses know the stories and can use them as resources when displaying and
negotiating their shared identity (the “we”) in the conversational activity. The “remembering” activity in
the joint storytelling has less to do with remembering some kind of original events or experiences, but
rather with remembering stories and how to tell them. When one spouse develops Alzheimer’s disease
the common ground starts to erode because he/she will have problems remembering stories and
important details in the stories. One possibility for the healthy spouse in this situation is to take over
responsibility for the common ground and scaffold the storytelling of the person with dementia thus
making it possible to sustain the shared identity. A practical implication for the care of persons with
dementia is the necessity of sharing the common ground with others for instance through the practice
of life history construction.
Neurotrauma, identity, and narrative: A longitudinal perspective
Maria I. Medved (University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris, France)
Presenting Author: Maria I. Medved
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Neurotrauma can affect the cognitive and communicative abilities that undergird one of our most
powerful meaning-making tools, narrative. For individuals with brain changes, narrative discourse as in
“narrative scaffolding” – the co-construction of stories with others – therefore becomes essential
because it can help them understand their condition and, perhaps, construct a new identity that
incorporates their new reality. Typically it is the family that is most involved in this narrative-discursive
scaffolding. However, even decades after their head injuries, affected individuals often state that they
never regain a sense of self. This suggests that their identity re-construction is an ongoing
developmental process that might take years. Sometimes it even remains without a satisfying
resolution. Against this background, I present findings from a research project that involves repeatedly
interviewing families with affected individuals over a period of time. How do these family narratives (as
well as the individual narratives of family members) change over time? How does the understanding of
brain injury, identity, and personal agency change, if at all? How does one learn to live with an injured
brain?
8.3
Paper session: Therapy and knowing
Moderator: Matti Hyvarinen
The impact of scaffolding on the construction of the life narratives of institutionalized children:
Temporal macrostructure and productivity
Pedro S. Saraiva (University of Porto, Portugal), Elsa Braga (University of Porto, Portugal), Sara Silva
(University of Porto, Portugal), Tilmann Habermas (Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany); Margarida
R. Henriques (University of Porto, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Pedro S. Saraiva,Tilmann Habermas
The present study is part of a broader research program that aims to characterize the autobiographical
narrative competence of institutionalized children who were exposed to early experiences of
deprivation, abuse, and detachment. This presentation analyzes the impact of scaffolding in the
construction of the life narratives of children living in institutional care. Narratives were collected using
the Life Narrative Interview for Children – LNIC (Henriques, Ribeiro, & Saraiva, 2009), which provides
gradually increasing support in terms of elicitation techniques. Children were asked to tell their life
narratives, first in a spontaneous form and ultimately guided by the interviewer’s prompts. Participants
were 43 children, 23 (53%) boys, aged between 6 and13 years (M = 9.79; SD = 1.75). The narratives
produced in the two forms (spontaneous and guided) were transcribed verbatim, then analyzed in terms
of temporal macrostructure according to the Beginnings and Endings Coding Manual (Habermas, 2013),
in terms of productivity (number of words) and number of specific memories. Productivity as well as the
beginnings and endings scored significantly higher in guided life narratives when compared with
spontaneous life narrative for all age groups considered. The magnitude of the benefit in temporal
macrostructure provided by scaffolding is higher in the older children aged 11-13 years than in those
aged 9-10 years. Moreover, scaffolding also led to an increase in the number of specific episodic
memories told. These being the building blocks of a coherent life narrative, they will allow identity and
self-creation to be worked through. In short, despite their early experiences of abuse and adversity,
children living in institutional care were able to construct temporally coherent narratives about their
lives, with a notorious benefit arising from the presence of support of an adult in this task.
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Creating the clinical narrative knowledge: Listen into the life history not yet enough being lived
Masayoshi Morioka (Kobe University, Japan)
Presenting Author: Masayoshi Morioka
The aim of this research is to refine the practice of listening as a methodology for psychosocial support
from the viewpoint of narrative based approach. Narrative in practice has basic function of connecting
the contradictory divided items such as mind and body, I and the other, life and death. (Bruner 1990;
Morioka 2002). It is useful for the description in the complex field of practice such as medicine and
clinical psychology. Recently the tendency of narrative approach for practice seems to shift from the one
of psychotherapeutic practice to the ethical one that the therapist is a witness for co-authoring concrete
description on the story of other’s suffering （Kleinman1997;Charon2006). Three points of view will be
discussed on the basis of clinical materials in this paper. 1) Listening in person’s life history is not only as
a research methodology but also as formative and therapeutic one. Telling and listening one’s story is in
itself self-formative activity. It is remarkable point that the personal narrative has to be listened as the
stories in the making. 2) The history of one’s illness is in itself “the life story/history of patient” in which
both medical staffs and the patient are involved collaboratively. When we listen into the illness of the
patient history, we accept his/her part of life not yet enough being lived. Illness includes implicitly
his/her internal life theme. We can read patient’s latent not yet realized theme if we listen his story
carefully. 3) A life history is authored by the unique person who has one’s proper name. The discourse of
life history is made of the mode by not only the third person but also by the first person. The author
investigates the potentiality of the first person’s description for a creative research method of human
science.
Narrative play and the reimagining of the self in the therapeutic relationship
John Patrick McTighe (Sacred Heart University, USA)
Presenting Author: John Patrick McTighe
This paper will consider the intersection of narrative and the work of Object Relations theorists such as
Donald Winnicott. Winnicott’s writings on play as well as transitional space and phenomena provide an
important framework for understanding the unfolding exploration of the experience of the self in the
therapeutic relationship as a unique form of narrative knowing. The paper will examine the narrative
construction of the self in the world and the influences (particularly the impact of significant others) that
have contributed to its shape and evolution. Through its ability to uncover and examine these narratives
and the stories of the self that have been both privileged and subjugated over time, the therapeutic
space of play will be considered as a co-constructed holding environment in which the internalized
representations of self may be both brought to light and reimagined. This kind of narrative knowing may
thus be seen as an important vehicle for healing and growth.
8.4
Paper session: Religion and narrative
Moderator: Marzia Caporale
Stories of the call to prayer: an inquiry into aspects of Turkish cultural identity using psychologically
based methods of narrative analysis
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Eve A. McPherson (Kent State University, USA), Sandra B. McPherson (The Fielding Graduate University,
USA), Roger Bouchard (The Fielding Graduate University, USA), Robert Heath Meeks (The Fielding
Graduate University, USA)
Presenting Author: Eve A. McPherson, Sandra B. McPherson
The Islamic call to prayer has given rise to many stories about such topics as the beautiful, voice, the
power to convert, and the idealized nation-state. This study examined materials collected by an
ethnomusicologist in Turkey as a means of inquiry into aspects of cultural identity. Psychologists often
rely on stories as a way to understand aspects of identity, values, and attitudes of individuals, seeking
insights helpful in clinical interventions. Beyond the clinic, qualitative thematic analysis has been
identified as a research tool for exploring constructs that underlie human behavior (Aranow, Weiss, &
Reznikoff, 2001; Bellak & Abrams, 1997). In this study, the field data of the ethnomusicologist were
submitted to multiple psychological analyses in an effort to refine understanding of content and to
explore the usefulness of clinical psychological methods in ethno-cultural research. Stories from
individuals, scholarly collections, and media sources were analyzed using Thematic Apperception Test
methodology based in psychodynamic theory. Data evaluation included efforts to address reliability.
Conclusions were based on specific score outcomes, as well as by the application of qualitative narrative
analysis to clinically derived thematic content. Results were complex and supportive of the materials
and the methods as allowing articulation of underlying meanings of cultural/religious narrative materials
as windows into ethnic identity, beliefs, and concerns. The research process also illustrated the
difficulties of work with such materials and methods that do not lend themselves to reductionistic
approaches and to the advantages and disadvantages of cross disciplinary research. Findings supported
the importance of the aesthetic, theological, heroic, and political content as illustrative of aspects of
Turkish identity along with features of miraculous and clinically interesting modes of communication
with deity often seen across cultures.
God’s ways with the world: Religious belief and narrative explanations
Greger Göran Andersson (Örebro Universitet, Sweden)
Presenting Author: Greger Göran Andersson
I am interested in religious groups like Pentecostals and their use of narrative explanations.
Pentecostalism has been described as a paramodern and narrative movement. The first term implies
that Pentecostals live in, and partly accept, modern society and a modernistic, rationalistic world view.
Yet, they still believe that God is active in the world through the Holy Spirit. The second term, narrative,
suggests that Pentecostals relate their lives to the large Christian narrative, that they read narrative
parts of the Bible from their own experiences, and that they interpret their own lives, the life of the
church and history in general, as a narrative. In this paper I focus on Pentecostals’ narrative
interpretations of their lives. Yet I narrow this subject down to Pentecostals’ understanding of illness
and healing. Narrative explanations are an important yet difficult subject both in the Bible and in
religious groups. In my discussion of this subject I suggest a distinction between different types of
explanations. One such type is systematically oriented causal explanations, which are problematic since
they often appear difficult to apply and tend to conflict with other explanations and world views.
Pentecostals have thus for example at times been in conflict with the health-care system. Yet, there are
also religious explanations like non-systematic causal explanations, teleological explanations, and
explanations based on a kind of double causality. These explanations do not seem to generate the same
kind of conflicts as systematic causal explanations. It could even be suggested that these explanations
can work as effective strategies in times of crises. However, they seem to result in the above-mentioned
paramoden stance.
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Ancient narration and knowledge: The archaeology of sacred time
Robert Kawashima (University of Florida, USA)
Presenting Author: Robert Kawashima
The premise of this paper is that ancient narratives give literary form to discrete modes of religious
thought, distinct ways of conceiving of the gods, the world, and humankind — what Foucault would
have referred to as epistemes. I thus propose to trace the “archaeology” of ancient religious thought,
specifically, of sacred time, by analyzing three ancient narratives: the Mesopotamian myth of creation,
Enuma Elish, dating to the second millenium B.C.E.; the first-millenium creation story found in Genesis 1;
and Jubilees, an apocalyptic retelling of Genesis. These narratives correspond to a succession of three
discursive formations: myth, history, and apocalypticism. If myth, following Eliade, conceives of the
cosmos as a static system, an eternal and necessary structure (whence the notion of cyclical time, the
eternal return), history redefines the world as a realm of contingent, properly temporal events (whence
the notion of linear time). The episteme of apocalypticism collapses myth and history into a radically
new conception of reality: history is no longer contingent but necessary or predetermined; historical
time is no longer homogeneous but heterogeneous, analyzable into discrete ages or periods. These
three epistemes deploy, respectively, three distinct methods for calculating or measuring sacred time.
Within the cyclical time of myth, sacred time is calculated in relation to the repetitions of nature — the
lunar month, the solar year, etc. Within the linear time of history, this calculation is suddenly cut loose
from these natural cycles — whence the purely abstract construct of the Sabbath, based wholly on the
number 7. Within apocalyptic time, finally, eschatological speculation reveals within history itself certain
cosmological recurrences — or figura, as Erich Auerbach would have called them.
8.5
Panel session: Véridiction et mensonge dans la relation thérapeutique
Chair: Maria de Jesus Cabral (Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Portugal)
La rencontre entre récit et médecine s’est renforcée et développée surtout à partir des années 1990,
par le biais de la narrativité, sous l’égide de la philosophie de Paul Ricœur dont les travaux avaient mis
en relief les racines narratives de l’identité personnelle. Elle s’est précisée de manière concrète avec le
concept de Narrative medicine, forgé par le médecin et critique littéraire Rita Charon pour définir une
compétence que le médecin doit acquérir de façon « à reconnaître, absorber, interpréter et être ému
par les récits de maladies […] dans le but d’améliorer l’efficacité thérapeutique » (Charon, 2001). Mais le
dialogue, la confiance et la sincérité sont depuis toujours considérés comme primordiaux pour une
relation thérapeutique de qualité. Ce panel vise à explorer l’entrecroisement complexe, ambigu et
nullement facile à gérer, au fil des temps entre vérité et mensonge au sein de la relation thérapeutique.
Dans ce but, nous ferons dialoguer trois champs disciplinaires articulés dans le domaine de la Médecine
narrative : l’histoire de la médecine, la philosophie et les études littéraires. Par le biais d'une réflexion
phénoménologique sur la communauté vivante, nous interrogerons le rôle de la narrativité au sein de la
relation clinique. La prise en compte du seul récit est-elle suffisante pour reconnaître ce qui est en jeu
lors de la rencontre thérapeutique et pour en améliorer l'efficacité? Finalement, le panel se propose de
prolonger le questionnement sur la relation médecin patient au cœur de la médecine narrative, par-delà
le simple récit. Fondé sur un système d’échanges in vivo, où les attitudes linguistiques et non
linguistiques ont une présence singulière, où le langage est corps et le corps est langage, le théâtre
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pourra constituer face aux défis actuels des humanités médicales, un domaine particulièrement fertile
pour penser le rapport de soi à l’autre, dans sa dimension à la fois créative et herméneutique.
Guérison par la parole et légitimité du mensonge chez Rodrigo de Castro
Adelino Cardoso (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New U. of Lisbon, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Adelino Cardoso
L’œuvre de Rodrigo de Castro, le Medicus Politicus (1614), est fortement marquée par son époque, tant
pour sa forme que pour l’ampleur de sa thématique, qui porte sur ce qu’on nomme aujourd’hui
l’éthique médicale, le statut de la médecine et sa place dans le cadre des sciences, mais aussi sur
l’analyse de cas difficiles et la discussion de thèmes controversés, par exemple, si le médecin doit,
quelles que soient les circonstances, dire la vérité au malade ou s’il lui est permis d’omettre la vérité ou
même de mentir au malade, pourvu qu’il ait l’intention d’améliorer sa santé. Est-il licite de cacher au
malade la gravité de son cas et de lui donner l’espoir qu’aucun pronostic ne peut valider? Castro admet
à la fois le principe de la véracité et le recours au mensonge officieux, à condition que ce mensonge soit
bénéfique au malade. Selon Castro, le médecin a l’obligation de dire la vérité au malade, cependant le
mode de sa communication dépend en large mesure du caractère du malade, de la façon dont il assume
sa vie, de ses attentes. La vérité n’est pas dans les mots, mais dans l’esprit et dans la vie qui les anime.
Ainsi, devant un malade bien formé et préparé pour n’importe quelle occurrence, le médecin doit
l’informer directement de son état de santé. Mais, si le malade est inculte et craint la mort, alors le
médecin doit omettre la gravité de son cas, laissant aux assistants la tâche de transmettre toute la vérité
au malade quand cela sera opportun et de la façon la plus adéquate. En rappelant les enjeux majeurs du
rapport vérité/mensonge chez Rodrigo de Castro, ma communication s’interrogera plus spécifiquement
sur la place du mensonge dans la relation thérapeutique.
Communauté, ipséité et vérité de la narration : A partir de la phénoménologie matérielle de Michel
Henry
Nuno Proença (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New U. of Lisbon, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Nuno Proença
Dans un long chapitre de sa Phénoménologie Matérielle, le philosophe et romancier français Michel
Henry se consacre à la question qui porte sur l’essence de la communauté, qu’il met en rapport avec
celle de l’ipséité. Selon Henry, cette essence est la vie elle-même. Or, cette vie, qui est celle de la
pluralité des vivants qui composent n’importe quelle communauté, est chaque fois et nécessairement
celle d’une subjectivité vivante. Elle ne se réduit ni à des propriétés organiques, ni à des fonctions
comme la motilité, la nutrition, l’excrétion ou la reproduction. Il faut plutôt l’entendre comme un mode
de révélation à soi de chaque ipséité incarnée, par lequel se donne, simultanément, la communauté des
vivants. Selon Henry, ce mode initial de révélation à soi et de donation des autres en soi est celui de
l’affectivité : la communauté est avant tout pulsionnelle et “entre-affective”, l’ipséité se confond avec
l’immédiateté de l’épreuve de soi chaque fois impliquée dans une pluralité vivante. Un des exemples de
cette communauté est celui de la relation clinique (en particulier psychanalytique). Selon Henry, la
narration n’y a pas un rôle primordial. Au lieu d’être ce par quoi l’ipséité se constitue dans une
communauté relationnelle, le récit, en raison même de la médiation symbolique qu’il requiert, est
entendu comme une forme d’écart à soi et comme un éloignement du savoir et de la vérité de ce qui est
en jeu dans chaque rencontre et dont les racines se trouvent dans l’expressivité du corps vivant et dans
l’immédiation affective. Nous aimerions reprendre cet argument pour éclairer la question du rapport
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entre l’affectivité, la subjectivité du savoir et les formes discursives par le biais desquelles se déroule la
recherche de la vérité dans la rencontre clinique.
Ce que le récit ne dit pas : La relation "médecin-patient" à l’aune de la théâtralité
Maria de Jesus Cabral (Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Maria de Jesus Cabral
Le développement des recherches dans les humanités médicales invite à l’élargissement heuristique de
la relation thérapeutique par le truchement des « acts of narration and performances, listening and
interpretation […] to good clinical pratice » (Hurwitz & Spinozzi 2011). Cette communication se pencher
sur les rapports entre le théâtre et la médecine, deux arts unis par la question du sens et de
l’interprétation in vivo d’un ensemble complexe de signes visibles et non visibles dont le rapport engage
le corps et le langage. Envisagée comme une relation qui met face à face et en contact intersubjectif un
acteur, un ‘public’ et le vécu – historique, social, culturel – de chacun la rencontre thérapeutique est lieu
et moment d’interactions sémiotiques et herméneutiques complexes exigeant au médecin, pour
reprendre le mot de G. Canguilhem, « dédoublement […] se projeter lui-même en situation de malade,
l’objectivité de son savoir étant non pas répudiée mais mise entre parenthèse» (Canguilhem, 1968).
Inspirés de la notion de théâtralité forgée par R. Barthes et définie comme « polyphonie
informationnelle » et « épaisseur de signes et de sensations qui s’édifie sur la scène » (Barthes, 1963),
nous tâcherons de montrer qu’en tant que système d’échange in vivo, dans lequel langage est corps et
le corps est langage, le théâtre constitue un domaine fertile pour penser le rapport de soi à l’autre, dans
sa dimension à la fois créative et herméneutique. C’est notre hypothèse de base, que nous tâcherons
d’illustrer des premiers résultats d’une observation de consultations à travers une grille de lecture du
théâtre.
8.6
Paper session: Performing self-knowledge
Moderator: Arlene C. Vadum
Autobiographical knowledge, memory, narrative, and genre: Could all four elements be embraced by
one consistent system?
Lars-Åke Skalin (Örebro University, Sweden)
Presenting Author: Lars-Åke Skalin
Autobiographical telling in genres such as written memoirs and orally performed narratives of
memorable experiences is a central topic in narratology. Autobiographical knowledge and
autobiographical memory and their relationship to narrative form have shown to be matters of central
importance also to cognitive psychology. Research of the latter type usually pays attention to levels of
knowledge structures and memory processing more basic than those considered by traditional
narratology. However, the narrative element has confronted theorists of psychology with a problem:
The research object, is it properties of a memory system or of narrative organization? Or could the
elements work together in a theory constructing a smooth chain of increasing complexity, yet obviously
constituted by elements that will carry the same meaning for psychologists and narratologists alike? I
contemplate the problem with regard to how autobiographical memories, when passed on to others,
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are steeped into different genre forms, because it seems to be at this point that ambiguity in the
concept of narrative is most apparent. Winston Churchill’s My Early Life presents vivid images of thrilling
experiences. His granddaughter, Celia Sandys, though, has proved in a book that some details of these
recollective experiences reveal slips of memory; as autobiographical knowledge they are inaccurate.
However, when Churchill’s readers are confronted with her incontestable demonstrations, their reaction
might very well be confusion. They may recognize that, concerning their reading experience, the
accuracy question was temporally suspended; patterns of the narrative design had obviously made
reading slide from one knowledge system into another. From this observation I discuss ambiguity in the
concept of narrative, for instance in relation to some technical terms used in psychological theorizing on
autobiographical memories, terms that seem to correspond to certain narratological notions.
Understanding a storyteller’s self-presentation as strategies for communicative effectiveness of a
contemporary storytelling performance
Soe Marlar Lwin (National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Presenting Author: Soe Marlar Lwin
Oral storytelling ranges from everyday social behaviour to theatrical performance. Over the last few
decades, increasing interest in oral narratives as a point of entry into understanding self-presentation
and construction of personal and social identities has led to numerous studies which adopt a
contextualized approach to analyses of everyday conversational narratives. Adopting a similar
contextualized approach, yet focusing on a less spontaneous and more institutionalized type of oral
storytelling, this study examines the presentation of self and construction of personal and social
identities by a contemporary professional storyteller during one of her performances at a storytellers’
showcase event held recently in Singapore. Through an analysis of the subtle shifts between different
engagement frameworks for the storyteller, the show host and the audience, as well as multimodal
features in her storytelling discourse, the study shows how the storyteller’s presentation of self and
construction of personal and social identities during the storytelling event could be seen as the
strategies used to enhance the communicative effectiveness of her storytelling performance. The study
extends our understanding of the ways in which various institutions in contemporary society have been
using oral storytelling performances as an educative, interpretative and meaning-making tool.
How vicarious experiences affect self-knowledge and autobiographical narrating
Irene Kacandes (Dartmouth College, USA)
Presenting Author: Irene Kacandes
In the course of doing research on family memory, I discovered five different versions of my father's
narrative of what had happened to him during the Occupation of Greece and the beginning of the Civil
War that were given orally and then transcribed or reported on in newspaper articles over six decades
(from 1945 to 2005). In this paper, I examine and compare those versions to demonstrate how historical
events (like new understandings of the Nazi Judeocide) and consuming products of culture (from history
books to feature films such as The Guns of Navarone and documentary films such as Shoah) can affect
what an individual thinks s/he understands about her own life experience and in turn influence the
actual content and framing of how an individual tells his or her own lifestory. Utilizing elements of
trauma theory (e.g., Wigren on narrative completion, Laub on producing the traumatic narrative), as
well as of linguistic theory (e.g., Deborah Schiffrin's work on Holocaust narratives), I make the case for
evaluating discrepanices in traumatic narratives not as the product of repression, forgetting, or
narcissism, but rather as compelling testimony to the insistent but dynamic need to use (external)
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"social frameworks" (Halbwachs) to learn about the self and then tell others about that self. As
individuals live in constantly changing social contexts, the social frameworks that individuals consciously
or unconsciously decide “fit” their life narrative will change, too.
8.7
Paper session: Récit et savoir dans le cinéma hollywoodien classique
Moderator: Anne Goliot-Lété
Découpages narratifs : La production du savoir et sa déconstruction dans le film Bhollywoodien
classique
Mathias Kusnierz (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Mathias Kusnierz
Les théories du cinéma classique hollywoodien pensent le montage en termes de raccords et de
continuité. Elles masquent un parti pris idéologique fort que la recherche américaine a étudié en
profondeur depuis les années 1960, fondé sur la transparence formelle et l’adhésion du spectateur à un
discours indiscernable. Mais ces théories dissimulent aussi un déni : celui du montage comme puissance
de discontinuité, de disruption et de soustraction. A la place du montage pensé comme raccord et
suture, le monteur Walter Murch a proposé une conception fondée sur la mécanique de l’œil humain. Il
faut, dit-il, que dans un film les coupes soient aussi naturelles qu’un œil qui se ferme et s’ouvre et
qu’elles coïncident avec le battement de la paupière. Le montage assigne donc au spectateur une
position fixe : on fait correspondre de force son regard à celui du film par le battement artificiel de la
coupe. En mettant en ordre la continuité filmique, le découpage fabrique un discours qui est
implicitement un discours de vérité en vertu de la position assignée au spectateur. La théorie de Murch
suggère la possibilité d’un découpage qui mettrait en crise la production de la vérité dès lors qu’on
supprimerait la correspondance entre les battements de la coupe et de la paupière humaine. De tels
découpages ont vu le jour dans les films B à Hollywood. Leur montage heurté produit un décalage entre
le découpage et le battement de la paupière, et en fait des objets narratifs à double tranchant, qui
participent de la production d’un savoir de vérité mais le mettent en crise dans le même temps. Nous
voudrions esquisser, autour des concepts de ponctuation, de découpage et de syncope, une théorie des
modes de subversion du discours de vérité que déploie cette production. A partir des pratiques de
découpage de Mann, Florey et Werker, nous proposerons de comprendre la manière dont la production
B travaille et subvertit, de l’intérieur, la production d’un savoir et d’un discours de vérité.
"Where is the conscience of the world?" : Engagement, fiction et savoir à Hollywood (1942-1945)
Jacqueline Nacache (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Jacqueline Nacache
Jusqu’à l’automne 1941, les quelques films courageux qui, à Hollywood, évoquaient la situation
politique internationale, étaient considérés par les milieux conservateurs avec la plus grande méfiance.
L’entrée en guerre des États-Unis met un terme brutal à cette période ; désormais, le cinéma est invité à
se joindre à l’effort de guerre. Avec ses moyens propres, il doit contribuer à construire un savoir d’ordre
géographique (forger une idée des rapports de force à l’échelle du monde), d’ordre politique (expliquer
les enjeux du conflit), d’ordre économique (faire connaître l’état de l’armement et les progrès de
l’industrie dans ce domaine), d’ordre psychologique (stimuler un patriotisme inexistant). L’effort fut
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considérable, mais la nature de divertissement propre au cinéma hollywoodien fait que son efficacité
didactique n’a pas souvent été examinée avec sérieux. Nous nous demanderons ici, à partir d’un corpus
représentatif, si les récits hollywoodiens sont parvenus, dans cette période unique, à devenir le lieu de
la construction et de la transmission d’un savoir. Comment les films ont-ils transformé leurs formes,
leurs contenus, leurs structures ? Comment ont-ils traduit à l’écran des événements dont la réalité,
réinterprétée dans les codes cinématographiques, paraissait précaire ? Comment ont-ils évoqué la
violence de la guerre, alors que les règles d’autocensure en vigueur limitaient sévèrement le champ du
visible? Comment ont-ils concilié leur mission pédagogique avec les conventions narratives, la syntaxe
des films de genre, l’invulnérabilité des stars? En tentant de répondre à ces questions, nous
déterminerons dans quelle mesure la fable hollywoodienne, si souvent soupçonnée pour sa capacité à
défigurer le réel, fut ce qu’on lui demandait d’être pendant ces quelques années : le lieu d’une prise de
conscience et d’une ouverture à autrui qui étaient, en temps de conflit mondial, le plus crucial des
savoirs.
8.8
Paper session: The social construction of illness
Moderator: Lynn Penrod
In between coffee and God: Testimony of life in a landscape of nerves
Mona Anita Kiil (University of Tromso / The Arctic University of Norway, Norway)
Presenting Author: Mona Anita Kiil
The region of Northern Troms in Northern Norway is commonly described as ”where the three tribes
meet”- a crossing point between the indigenous Sami people, the Kven, descendants of Finnish
immigrants, and the majority population of the Norwegians, and for this reason the region has
historically been considered a cultural melting pot. Despite this obvious cultural diversity, the notion of
culture has been, and still is tense and connected to several ambiguities - particularly concerning the
Sami identity. Unofficial health practices exist in many North Norwegian communities. These informal
networks of care, consisting of traditional healers which people actively use or would consider to use
when facing illness or crisis, are often complementary to the public, conventional health care system.
Patients at an outpatient clinic in Nordreisa find themselves between these different medical and
cultural systems. The aim is to explore conceptualizations of culture and emotion within this context.
The material has been analyzed from a theoretical perspective focusing on approaches from critical
medical anthropology, such as Veena Das` understanding of cultural pain. This project is based on an
ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the municipality of Nordreisa in 2011 among patients who used
the conventional outpatient mental health care clinic for Northern Troms. In-depth interviews were
performed both at the clinic and in the participants own homes. Through passages from Jacob`s story,
this is an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future
in regards to how they place themselves in the world. It gives voice to stories of dispossession and a
“exile state-of-mind”. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal
memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national and local history and culture.
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Social construction of optimism, hope and positive thinking in narratives of illness
Laurene Sheilds (University of Victoria, Canada), Anne Bruce (University of Victoria, Canada), Anita
Molzahn (University of Alberta, Canada), Kara Schick Makaroff (University of Alberta, Canada)
Presenting Author: Laurene Sheilds, Anne Bruce
Many authors have written about the integral role of optimism, hope and thinking positively within the
context of illness. Yet, little is known about how these phenomena arise and are sustained within the
stories of people living with life-threatening illness. Intersecting with personal narratives of lifethreatening illness are tangles of socio-cultural narratives that infuse shape and inscribe personal
accounts. This paper explores stories of 32 participants living with life-threatening illness (cancer, endstage renal disease, HIV) who participated in four in-depth interviews over a period of three years. Using
narrative analysis, stories of optimism, hope and ‘positive thinking’ were identified alongside the
processes of inscribing personal stories of illness with social narratives of positivity. Findings indicate
that being optimistic is a deliberate act in the creation of illness stories. Narratives of optimism, hope
and thinking positively allow participants to define and contextualize their experience of illness, and to
more easily navigate interactions/relationship with family and health care professionals. However,
findings also raise questions of potential tyranny in valorizing such positivity. Performative aspects of
storying are examined to articulate how existing social narratives of optimism, hope and positive
thinking also construct and constrain illness narratives—and the lives of people living with life
threatening illness.
“I was about to walk up a hill and didn’t think I was able to”: Embodied stories of chronic illness
Anita Salamonsen (University of Tromsø /The Arctic University of Norway, Norway)
Presenting Author: Anita Salamonsen
I will in this presentation discuss stories of chronic illness as embodied stories. Leaving the physical body
outside narrative studies can theoretically be linked to a “cognitivist” conception of stories and
storytelling. Such disembodied stories may exclude the various ways everyday embodied, modal
experiences actually are used by both tellers/writers and listeners/readers to construct and interpret
stories of illness. Such an approach to embodiment can be linked to an interactionist-constructivist
understanding. The central issue is the manner in which the body is an existential condition of life, and
multiple modulations of embodiment are perceived as critical for the understanding of culture,
experience and self. Thomas Csordas has argued that such a paradigm of embodiment represents a
consistent methodological perspective that encourages reanalysis of existing data. Inspired by Csordas, I
conducted a secondary analysis of 12 in-depth interviews and four written stories about illness
experiences from patients living with multiple sclerosis (MS). My interpretations were discussed with
the writers during an analytical process that left me with an understanding of the importance of
including and honoring various aspects of actual, physical bodies in stories about chronic illness,
including theoretical perspectives on "broken bodies and narratives". Based on this work, I posit that
access to embodiment, and thus to embodied stories of chronic illness, takes place through action,
increased bodily awareness, and a verbalizing of bodily experiences and knowledge. In these MSpatients’ perspective, the body holds the authority. Illness is perceived as a never-ending learning
process with a focus on the relationship between body and mind. The body is perceived as being able to
communicate its distress and needs. These patients can be perceived as active explorers of health care,
often looking for “embodied interventions” recognized in alternative therapies and self-care.
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Parallel Session #9
9.1
Thursday, June 26th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: The self in history
Chair: Christin Köber (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)
The creation and maintenance of an individual and collective historical memory is an ongoing dynamic
social and psychological process. The panel presented here wants to explore the question of whether
and how historical events are remembered and transmitted to the following generations.
Therefore the first presented study (Köber & Habermas) covers the historical contexts as only one
possible context for the self’s development in order to compare its importance with the meaning of the
other contexts, i.e. family and environment. The second study (Stone et al.) then emphasizes how
limited the personal transmission, in terms of narrating war- related personal experiences, is, even
within the family. It shows that the transmission stopped in the following generations and barely
reached the third, i.e. grandchildren generation of the still living WWII affected family members.
The next two studies now bring the whole panel into present time. Svob will present results from the
civil war in former Yugoslavia and enlarge the findings regarding xenophobic attitudes. Results suggest
that the intergenerational transmission from parents to their children plays a role not only in childrens’
biographical knowledge, but also in their xenophobic attitudes. Finally, Meksin will report results of a
10-year longitudinal study about memories for the terrorist attack of 9/11 and enlighten how people
remember historic events by showing the interaction between individual mnemonic strategies and
mnemonic social practices. Prof. William Hirst will then discuss all presented results in terms of
collective and social memory.
Contextualizing one's life in the micro- and macrosystem of society in narrated life stories
Christin Köber, Tilmann Habermas (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)
Presenting Author: Christin Köber, Tilmann Habermas
Human development happens in nested sociological contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; 1991). With
social-cognitive development, individuals become aware of their embeddedness in increasingly wider
social contexts. We tested whether this was reflected in life stories. In a longitudinal study with three
measurement times covering 8 years and 6 age groups spanning life from age 8 to 70 we coded the
occurrence of four different kinds of socio-historical contextualization of narrators’ lives according to
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory: family constellation implying one’s microsystem, family
history presenting the mesosystem, socio-economic status referring to one’s exosystem, and historical
context representing the macrosystem. Contextualizations were coded in the initial parts of life
narratives to check whether narrators put themselves retrospectively as infants in their early
sociological context. Increasing percentage of the contextualisations indicate the development of an
awareness of the individual belonging to society, whereas only participants impacted by historical
events embedded their lives in history.
Cultural vs. communicative memory: An examination of how World War II memories/narratives
transmit across generations within Belgian, French-speaking families
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Charles B. Stone (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA), William Hirst (New School for Social
Research, USA), Aurélie van der Haegen (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), Olivier Luminet
(Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium)
Presenting Author: William Hirst
We examined whether and how memories/narratives (anecdotes) of World War II (WWII) transmitted
from the oldest generation to the middle and youngest generations. We recruited five French-speaking
Belgian families and interviewed one member from each generation. The oldest generation had to be
alive during WWII. Each individual was asked about four WWII events (two of which were likely to be
controversial based upon the attitudes/behavior of the oldest generation) specific to Belgium.
Additionally, the middle and youngest generations were asked the source from which they learned
about these events: was it communicatively (e.g., through family discussions) or culturally (i.e., social
artifacts: books, school, monuments, etc.) transmitted? Our results suggest that transmission of
memories/ narratives across generations was limited. The oldest generation’s memories/ narratives
transmitted to the middle generation (to a certain extent), but not to the youngest generation.
Furthermore, the extent to which the youngest generation was familiar with the WWII events at all
largely depended upon communicative memory (i.e., not cultural memory). We discuss these results in
terms of Assmann’s (1995, 2011) distinction between communicative and cultural memory and the
importance of transmitting WWII memories/narratives to the youngest generation in shaping both
Belgium’s collective memory and identity in the future.
Intergenerational transmission of a parent’s life story and its effects on xenophobia
Connie Svob, Norman R. Brown (University of Alberta, Canada)
Presenting Author: Christin Köber
This study examines the degree to which biographical conflict knowledge is transmitted through a
parent’s life story, and the potential effects this may have on the next generation’s social attitudes. This
was accomplished by examining nominated important events from a parent’s life, particularly, a parent
that had lived through the civil war in the former- Yugoslavia. Two groups of post-war Croatians were
compared: those from Osijek (one of the hardest hit regions in the war) and those from Rijeka (affected
relatively little by the war). We compare the groups to determine the degree to which a parent’s war
experience impacts what is remembered by the next generation. Further, this generation’s xenophobic
attitudes are compared with the xenophobic attitudes reported by their parents’ generation shortly
after the war ended. By doing so, we are able to determine the degree to which attitudes toward ethnic
out-groups may or may not diminish across generations and the degree to which a parent’s life story
may be implicated. In general, xenophobic attitudes were prevalent in both groups, but were reported a
greater rate in Osijek. This suggests that xenophobia is culturally transmitted and its intensity is affected
by the life stories recalled by the former generation.
Remembering public traumas: Examining the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 over a ten year
period
Robert Meksin (New School for Social Research, USA)
Presenting Author: Robert Meksin
Traumatic public events can leave lasting memories of the events themselves (event memories) and
memories for the circumstances in which one learned of the event (flashbulb memories). I report on a
10-year longitudinal study conducted by the 9/11 Memory Consortium of memories for the terrorist
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attack of 9/11. For both event and flashbulb memories, forgetting rates were steep the first year, but
then flattened over the next nine years. Confidence ratings remained high throughout. We tracked the
changes in the content of the flashbulb memories and event memories over the ten-year period. Both
types of memories tended to converge around a stable rendering, what might be construed as a
canonical story. The canonical flashbulb memory story was built around the repetition of memories that
were consistent over the first year, as well as repetitions of the false recollections that emerged in the
first year. That is, it was a story lasting for ten-years based on both accurate and inaccurate
recollections. The canonical event memory story showed small changes over time. The central elements
of the 9/11 story, as told by the American media, were fairly accurately remembered over the ten years
and initial errors were corrected, again, through the influence of the media. Peripheral elements were
not well remembered initially and tended to be repeated if they did not surface prevalently in media
accounts. The stories people tell about the past are a complex interaction between individual mnemonic
capacities, individual mnemonic strategies, and mnemonic social practices. Flashbulb memories reflect
individual strategies over social practices, whereas event memories reflect social practices over
individual strategies.
9.2
Paper session: Music and narrative
Moderator: Cigdem Esin
Different narrative structures in Chopin’s last style
Julie Walker (Université de Strasbourg, France)
Presenting Author: Julie Walker
The last style of Chopin is a new notion in musicology in France. In spite of the fact that the authors
admit its existence, very less studies concern this subject, particularly in France. All along our
researches, the analysis of the works of our corpus shows us different narrative structures, among which
we would like to present two examples. The narrative framework, proved by some theoretician of
literature, is the thread of the main conventional narratives and can also govern the musical discourse:
initial situation (tranquillity, exposition), inciting incident, quest and adventures, crisis, resolution and
final situation. In the romantic period, the artists change these traditional paths to express their new
aesthetics ideas and cause a bursting of the classical structures, which will more freely model the
narrative framework. The Impromptu op. 36 in f sharp major (1839) juxtaposes different themes and
textures (with six narrative actors) which evolve almost constantly in such “euphoria”. Only a few
punctual moments occur to create some tension. The narrative course is consequently less contrasted.
The second work, the Fantaisie op. 49 in f minor (1841) is built in a more complex way. The different
“themes-actors” offer a form sinking gradually into “dysphoria”, (thanks to the theme of the “ballade”,
more and more dramatic) until the climax of the piece, and then solving to a euphoric end. The results
of these researches reveal different “narrative courses” used by Chopin in the works of the last style:
binaries oppositions and teleological form (Polonaise Fantaisie op. 61 or Polonaise op. 53), simple
narrative course (Mazurka op. 63 n°3 or Nocturne op. 55 n°2), complex narrative course (Fantaisie op.
49 or Mazurka op. 59 n°1 and n°3) or not contrasted course (Impromptu op. 36, Barcarolle op. 60).
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Musical narratives: Composing musical identities through the narratives of compositional thought and
practice
Margaret Sylvia Barrett (The University of Queensland, Australia)
Presenting Author: Margaret Sylvia Barrett
Investigations of music creativity have focused on the creative thought, activity, and products of novice
composers, working in classroom settings on individual and group composition tasks. Compositional
tasks aim to develop domain relevant skills (e.g., methods, techniques, and models of compositions),
creativity relevant skills (including work and thinking styles that embrace complexity, ambiguity, and
concentrated effort), and motivation. The development of ‘composer voice’, that is, a distinctive
compositional identity, is of less concern. As students move beyond novice status the development of
‘composer voice’ becomes a more pressing concern. Musical identities research has explored Identities
in Music (composer and performer roles for example) and Music in Identities (the ways in which music
provides a means to fashion multiple aspects of the self as a participant in various social and cultural
settings). Music provides a means by which individuals and groups story and narrate multiple aspects of
self as well as identify with particular musical roles. Learning to become a composer involves both of
these meanings, and more. This presentation draws on a longitudinal investigation of the teaching and
learning practices of eminent composers who teach when working with advanced students of
composition in tertiary or semi-professional composition education settings. These include one-on-one
tertiary composition studios, a composers’ workshop with a professional vocal ensemble, and a
composers’ workshop with a professional symphony orchestra. Data includes multiple interviews of
student and eminent composers, observations of teaching and learning practices, and artefact (score)
analysis. The analysis of these data identifies the ways in which compositions, composing processes, and
pedagogies may be viewed as narrative forms through which composers story their experience and
fashion a musical identity as a composer with a distinctive ‘composer voice’.
Using narrative to re-story and restore musical creativity
Sandra L. Stauffer (Arizona State University, USA)
Presenting Author: Sandra L. Stauffer
The premise of this paper is that narrative thinking, or a narrative mindset, can be a means of nurturing
musical creativity. One of the problems of contemporary education reform movements has been the
slow demise of musical creativity and expression in favor of standardization. In the United States, for
example, the words “feeling,” “emotion,” and even “expression” are largely missing from the national
music standards document. Performance standards statements emphasize how to sing or play
“accurately,” not how the experience of making music feels to students or how their ability to play
reflects their own expressive intentions. Creating standards statements emphasize narrow tasks that
demonstrate theoretical knowledge only, not expressive intent, imagination, or creative agency. This
paper describes a project that engaged teachers and children in musical creating through a narrative
perspective. The premises of the project were that narrative thinking in music is an experiential mindset
rather than a (musical) theoretical one, and that narrative thinking in music might capitalize on human
life experience, imagination, and feeling as a means of engaging musical expression and sense-making in
music. In the project, teachers engaged in creating music through four qualities common to narrative
and music: emotion, chronology, perspective, and the human condition. Teachers then engaged children
and young people in similar narrative-musical creating experiences. Findings suggest a shift in from
statements that locate emotion in the music toward statements that locate emotion in the person who
is experiencing music enhanced creative thinking. Narrative thinking helped this shift. The narrative
mindset encouraged aural imagination and acknowledged children as feeling human beings capable of
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creating music in ways that are meaningful to them. Students’ capacity to create is part of the story of
their lives and a vital means of understanding themselves and others.
9.3
Paper session: Récit e savoir au cinéma : Varda & Truffaut
Moderator: Anne Goliot-Lété
Portraits brisés, portraits croisés : Les récits kaléidoscopiques dans Jane B. par Agnès V. d’Agnès Varda
Nathalie Mauffrey (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Nathalie Mauffrey
Aucun récit de vie, aucun portrait ou autoportrait dans le cinéma d’Agnès Varda, ne se fait sans passer
sous le faisceau intermittent et critique d’une myriade de points de vue qui donnent à l’allure de sa
cinécriture le mouvement ambivalent et rythmé d’un kaléidoscope cognitif, ou celui d’une spirale
puisant le terreau de son savoir alternativement dans la fiction et la non-fiction, l’imaginaire et le réel,
l’humble et le sublime, l’individuel et le collectif. Pour rendre compte de cette alternance, la cinéaste se
place sous le signe duel des Gémeaux (le couple de la Pointe Courte face aux villageois de Sète, la Cléo
futile et la Cléo lucide dans Cléo de 5 à 7, les deux femmes interchangeables du Bonheur, Pomme la
chanteuse et Suzanne la féministe dans L’une chante, l’autre pas, Varda face à Viva ! dans Lions love (…
and lies), Jane Birkin dans Jane B. par Agnès V., Jacques Demy dans Jacquot de Nantes ou face aux
autres glaneurs dans Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse…) jusque dans ses installations photographiques et
audiovisuelles où les Portraits brisés des anonymes font face aux autoportraits en mosaïques de la
cinéaste. Raconter autrui c’est se raconter. Notre propos sera d’analyser la dynamique cognitive propre
à ce rythme particulier du récit cinématographique vardien qui, à l’image de l’organisation rythmique du
kaléidoscope qui sert de comparant à Bergson dans L’Évolution créatrice pour rendre compte du
caractère cinématographique de notre connaissance , confronte successivement des points de vue
différents, réajustant sans cesse notre savoir, pour dresser un portrait global cohérent dans son
hybridité et son ambivalence. Nous appuierons de manière privilégiée notre réflexion sur l’analyse du
film Jane B. par Agnès V. (1987), film documentaire ou « portrait-en-cinéma » qui construit le portrait de
Jane Birkin par l’insertion de fictions imaginées par les deux artistes.
Fenêtre ouverte sur l'éducation d'un jeune sauvage : Truffaut/Itard et Victor de l'Aveyron
Anne Goliot-Lété (Université Paris Diderot, France), Sophie Lerner-Seï (Université Paris Descartes)
Presenting Author: Anne Goliot-Lété, Sophie Lerner-Seï
A l’origine de ce projet, un film : L’Enfant sauvage de François Truffaut (1970), célèbre adaptation des
Mémoire et rapport sur Victor de l’Aveyron rédigés respectivement en 1801 et en 1806 par le Docteur
Itard. La présente contribution a pour ambition de mettre le film à l’épreuve d’un double regard
analytique : celui des sciences de l’éducation et celui des études filmo-narratives. Que représente le
savoir pour les trois personnages du film ? Qu’apprend (ou n’apprend pas) l’enfant au contact du
docteur et de sa gouvernante ? Qu’apprend le docteur qui est aussi un chercheur ? Que pensent et
ressentent les deux adultes face à cet enfant étrange ? Comment s’articulent soin, éducation et
enseignement autour de lui ? Il s’agira d’analyser les modalités du rapport au savoir de chaque
protagoniste, dans sa subjectivité et sa singularité. Le savoir est placé ici au rang d’objet au sens
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psychanalytique du terme, c’est-à-dire comme lieu d’investissement pulsionnel et fantasmatique
(Beillerot, 2000). Dans cette perspective, le rapport au savoir s’enracine dans les premières relations du
sujet avec son entourage (Winnicott). Ce sont ces liens complexes que nous tenterons de comprendre
chez les trois personnages de ce récit. Cette approche croisera une lecture plus directement filmique,
attentive à l’expressivité des images en noir et blanc ainsi qu’à l’architecture du récit (organisé selon une
alternance de séquences avec voix off à la première personne, de passages dialogués et de moments de
rêveries accompagnés de musique). La question de la narration attirera particulièrement notre
attention, une narration à la fois très « impersonnelle » (pour reprendre le concept de Christian Metz),
assumée par une caméra au point de vue très singulier, et très « personnelle » lorsqu’elle se trouve
déléguée à un personnage-narrateur incarné par Truffaut lui-même.
9.4
Panel session: Narrativité et transmission: Le roman français
contemporain et les discours sur le savoir
Chair: Francis Langevin (University of Toronto, Canada)
Le roman est capable de représenter les discours critiques et les métarécits institutionnels. Qu’il
s’agisse, fait saillant de la modernité, de représenter son propre discours institutionnel, le Littéraire, sur
un mode autoréflexif, ou alors de représenter, fait saillant de la postmodernité, celui d’autres «
disciplines » discursives (l’histoire de l’art, la philosophie ou les sciences humaines) : chaque fois se
retrouve mise en évidence la parenté entre les divers discours de savoir, dont l’autorité repose le plus
souvent sur le maniement convaincant de leur propre narrativité. Ce panel s’intéressera aux différents
discours constituants (Maingueneau) et aux genres qu’ils transmettent afin de voir comment la
littérature se les approprie. Sur le mode parfois enthousiaste, ou encore, sur le mode critique, la
littérature française contemporaine se fait triplement critique: «envers l’objet qu’elle se donne; envers
[ses] formes canoniques […]; envers sa propre manière de l’aborder»(Viart). Il s’agira de penser la
narration comme une médiateté qui permet de donner accès au savoir que véhiculent les métarécits en
dénudant ou en détournant le dispositif —la narrativité—, ce qui court-circuite la transparence
supposée des discours autorisés et permet, comme on le sait, d’ébranler les fondements de leur validité.
Nous tenterons d’observer comment la narrativité et la fiction peuvent venir brouiller ces frontières,
surtout lorsqu’il est question de l’autorité de ces discours. Les communications aborderont cette
question par le biais d’oeuvres qui permettent d’analyser la mince frontière entre transmission du savoir
et discours critique; qui, par exemple, pactisent avec des schématisations cognitives de la pensée et du
savoir non narratives ou qui fonctionnent, au contraire, par excédent de narrativité ou qui, enfin,
s’approprient la narrativité des discours non littéraires pour remettre en question les choix de
transmission du savoir.
Jean Echenoz biographe : Le narrateur et les modalisations de son savoir
Francis Langevin (University of Toronto, Canada)
Presenting Author: Francis Langevin
Dans ses romans Ravel (2006), Courir (2008) et Des éclairs (2010), Jean Echenoz se fait le biographe de
figures célèbres de la modernité : le compositeur Maurice Ravel, le sportif Emil Zatopek et l’inventeur
Nikola Tesla. Livres très brefs (environ cent pages), ces romans mettent en scène un narrateur dont les
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stratégies énonciatives s’éloignent pourtant du biographe discret, dévoué tout entier à transmettre un
savoir sur le biographié : bien informé, méticuleux, objectif, effacé, ce narrateur montrerait toutes les
preuves de son autorité sur le savoir biographique. Or, c’est à une tout autre entreprise que se livre ce
narrateur. De toutes parts, en effet, surgissent les traces de sa subjectivité sur le contexte historique
entourant la vie et l’œuvre des biographiés (la Première et la Deuxième Guerre mondiales, le crash
boursier de 1929); l’avancée du récit est constamment commentée (on assiste en particulier à une
accélération des événements « majeurs » et à un ralentissement des événements du quotidien); de
nombreuses phrases parfaites détournent l’attention du propos vers le discours; etc. Bref, le narrateur
apparaît partout comme un modalisateur du savoir qui, de ce fait, évalue les types de discours qu’il
imite (journalistique, encyclopédique ou biographique, même), ce qui donne lieu à la dévalorisation des
sources discursives du savoir biographique. Cette communication proposera une analyse narratologique
et éthique (une lecture des valeurs) et s’intéressera aux glissements de la subjectivité du narrateur
lorsqu’il aborde les savoirs historiques, technologiques et « spécialisés » (en particulier la musique et
l’athlétisme).
La survivance du savoir : Narration et histoire de l’art dans Terrasse à Rome de Pascal Quignard.
Mathilde Savard-Corbeil (University of Toronto, Canada)
Presenting Author: Mathilde Savard-Corbeil
Terrasse à Rome de Pascal Quignard retrace la vie de Meaume le graveur, intégrant à la fois des aspects
biographiques et personnels à ceux de la production artistique de ce personnage fictif. La narration vient
ici investir le rapport à la conservation de l’œuvre d’art. Dans ce roman, la fiction se pense comme une
solution face au temps et à l’Histoire, qui ne sont pas toujours capables de sauver les œuvres. Le roman
se propose alors comme lieu de conservation puisqu’il résiste aux intempéries matérielles, mais aussi
aux dérapages idéologiques. L’exemple des gravures érotiques sacrifiées par puritanisme illustre
exactement comment le roman peut garder les traces d’une œuvre lorsque le musée et l’institution de
l’histoire de l’art s’avèrent inefficaces : « Les gravures furent retirées de la vente. Les planches de cuivre
et tous les tirages qui se trouvaient chez le marchand d’estampes à l’enseigne de la Croix noire, qu’ils
fussent de la main de Meaume ou de celle d’autres artistes, furent acheminées sur une charrette à
cinquante mètres de là, dans le Champ des Fleurs, où ils furent brûlés et fondus en présence de la foule.
» [Quignard, 2000, pp.86-87]. En faisant le récit de ces œuvres, de leur création à leur destruction, le
roman, par la narration, assure en revanche leur transmission. En assurant à la fois la transmission et la
survivance de l’œuvre d’art, plus précisément celles des gravures érotiques fictives de Meaume, on
observe dans un brouillage entre une narration de la connaissance et une narration critique. Cette
communication proposera alors des pistes pour comprendre comment, par le dispositif fictionnel, la
narration peut s’approprier le discours de l’histoire de l’art et faire preuve d’un discours critique face à
ses choix. Et c’est cette tension qui sera ici mise en lumière à travers la représentation de ces gravures
sombres et mystérieuses.
Refaire le cabinet de curiosités à l’image du contemporain : L’œuvre romanesque d’Éric Chevillard
Rob Inch (University of Toronto, Canada)
Presenting Author: Rob Inch
Que partagent une tulipe à pétale unique, une cuillère, un nez, une anguille, une anse, un pique-nique,
un concombre, une patte de grizzli et des moutons, objets hétéroclites évoqués en succession dans le
premier chapitre de L’Absence du Capitaine Cook d’Éric Chevillard sans que le capitaine n’entre en scène
? Si la narration chevillardienne semble à première vu passer du coq-à-l’âne, c’est parce que selon la
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logique incongrue mais rigoureuse de l’aventure narrative et langagière de l’œuvre chevillardienne, ces
derniers partagent une parenté commune. Fort sensible aux lieux communs et à la schématisation
cognitive et taxinomique qui sous-tend le savoir et la pensée, le récit chevillardien passe d’objet en objet
selon un subtil jeu d’associations – ou plutôt un délire narratif — à l’écoute du bruissement de la langue
et des représentations figées qui traverse le discours contemporain. Comme le souligne Roland Barthes,
« en chaque signe dort ce monstre : un stéréotype : je ne puis jamais parler qu'en ramassant ce qui
traîne dans la langue » (Leçon, 1981 : 17). Chevillard n’hésite pas à réveiller ces monstres somnolents
dans sa recherche ludique des possibles narratifs et langagiers, interrogeant en même temps les
préceptes idéologiques et structuraux du roman, de la langue, de la pensée, des discours de l’institution
littéraire et des autres disciplines discursives. En nous penchant sur le coq-à-l’âne, l’hétéroclite et
l’inédit de la narration chevillardienne, nous analyserons le lien curieux qui s’établit entre le savoir et la
narrativité dans l’œuvre de Chevillard, proposant que cette dernière devienne une espèce de cabinet de
curiosités romanesque qui se refait à l’image du monde contemporain, produit ultime d’une « réforme
radicale du système en vigueur » (Le caoutchouc décidément, 1992 : 18).
9.5
Paper session: Restorying violence (II)
Moderator: Greger Goran Andersson
Radicalisation and engagement in political violence explored through conversion motifs
Neil Ferguson, Eve Binks (Liverpool Hope University, UK)
Presenting Author: Neil Ferguson
According to Jindra (2011), although there is considerable literature on processes of conversion, there is
a lack of research which compares the processes between different groups. The majority of research in
this area (e.g. Rambo, 1993, 1999; Paloutzian et al., 1999; C’de Baca & Wilbourne, 2004) focuses on
religious conversions, suggesting that conversion is far from passive and submissive, rather, individuals
have agency and these processes of conversion are often innovative and resistant. The current study
seeks to investigate the process of conversion, drawing upon theories such as Quantum Change (Miller
& C’de Baca, 1994) to investigate the processes of radicalisation and engagement in politically
motivated violence, commonly referred to as terrorism. Such theories have yet to be developed by
international scholars and the current research represents a leading attempt at developing a more
holistic understanding of the processes involved in conversions to terrorism. To explore these processes
the researchers are exploring biographical narratives produced through semi-structured interviews with
people who have made the 'conversion' from non-violent protest and activity to violent political activity.
In this way it is hoped that the current research will aid academic, civilian, military and government
understandings of these processes.
Narrative inquiry and the investigation of post-traumatic loneliness: When research objective and
research method merge
Jacob Y. Stein (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel), Rivka Tuval-Mashiach (Bar-Ilan University /
Ramat-Gan / Trauma Center, Israel)
Presenting Author: Jacob Y. Stein, Rivka Tuval-Mashiach
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Our story begins when we decided to investigate the lived experience of the life after trauma. More
specifically, those lives that come into being in the aftermath of war and captivity. We were interested
in uncovering the characteristics of one agonizing experience with in the whole – that of isolation and
loneliness. Naturally, we turned to narrative inquiry. NATAL's (Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror
and War) testimonial project became a natural treasure of rich depictions of those lives. As we were
excavating the life-stories in search of those experiences of painful isolation, it soon became evident
that they were all rooted in a deep sensation of unshared experience. Four primary categories directed
this understanding: a) Two experiential worlds; b) Two populations; c) Failed intersubjectivity; and d)
Incommunicable experiences. Attending to our participants' insinuations and exclamations that they are
in need of profound understanding of their lived experiences, both intra-personal understanding and
inter-personal, it seemed that what we are engrossed in attends to what they long for. Thus, paying
grave attention to these cries of failed intersubjectivity, it clearly became evident that our method of
inquiry is also a therapeutic opportunity. As language and words fail to carry those experiences, it
seemed that only within the richness of narrative emplotment and storytelling may they find solace.
Thus, by heeding to their stories of isolation within the boundaries of traumatic and post-traumatic
experiences, and by giving voice to them, we are in actuality assuming a role in partially alleviating their
loneliness.
Half-truths
Amanda Maria Young-Hauser (University of the Free State, South Africa)
Presenting Author: Amanda Maria Young-Hauser
Child sex abuse is a serious public health concern, involving considerable public scrutiny and scorn.
Sexual violation against children evokes strong emotions. It is a contested, complex and taboo topic, yet
it permeates society at all levels and is extraordinarily prevalent. When sexual abuse occurs, it inevitably
affects many people. Child sex abuse narratives are framed through particular lenses—victim, police,
judiciary, forensic, correction, risk and recidivism, for example—to form a coherent story, to make sense
and to create specific knowledge. In this presentation I draw on the narratives of men who have sexually
abused children and have spent time in prison. Kierkegaard proposed that to tell one’s life is to assume
responsibility for that life. Opportunities to ‘tell one’s life’ when that life contains episodes of sexually
abusing children are largely denied to men who committed such crimes. The true nature of their crimes
‘must’ be disguised or kept secret. Silencing or the telling of half-truths causes trepidation, which raises
the question of what processes take place when particular kinds of stories are withheld or articulated. I
argue that telling one’s own story and sharing personal experience—as opposed to prescribed frames
(judiciary, correction, for example)—fulfils crucial functions for men who abused to achieve a sense of
openness and honesty towards themselves and the public. This allows these men to take responsibility
and enables the forging of new and improved selves with a more positive outlook on life. As the
research topic is ‘contaminated’, the silencing extends to the researcher. It requires framing, explaining
and justifying because these narratives are often deemed too abhorrent and ‘unworthy’ of listening to.
9.6
Paper session: Embodying stories
Moderator: Soe Marlar Lwin
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Situating AFFECT in one hundred novels
Martin Joel Gliserman (Rutgers University, USA)
Presenting Author: Martin Joel Gliserman
This study of the semantic webs of literary narratives reveals how culture is transmitted by encoded
patterns. These complex patterns are not likely to be seen by writers or readers of narrative unaided by
computer prosthetics, and yet they are perceived and enacted by writers and experienced by readers,
and thus suggesting the powers of the brain unencumbered and unaided by computer prostheses. The
presentation will demonstrate the flow of AFFECT in a corpus of one hundred Anglophone literary
novels written between 1719 and 1997. The investigation is looking at eight central affect categories
and a lexicon of five hundred words. AFFECT will be shown in the larger semantic context of four core
domains--Raw Universe, The Human Body/Being, The Constructed Universe, and The Built Universe. The
four domains are proportioned consistently across the corpus, as are the fifteen sub-domains
immediately below. The question for which i plan to answer at the conference is this: are affects
distributed proportionately across this span of novels.
Somatic narrative: impact: An exploration of the physical impact of words
Catherine Mellor, Ben Arcangeli, Rachel Carbonara, Adeline Dettor, David Goodman, Daniela Moreno
(Lesley University, USA)
Presenting Author: Catherine Mellor, David Goodman
Individuals have a somatic experience of language. Trauma lives in the body and often must be treated
on the bodily level. There is physical power in words and the experiences we associate with them. While
others have looked at the somatic impact of physical and/or emotional trauma, this research looks at
the somatic impact of our autobiographical narratives, and/or internalized self-narratives, exploring how
the stories that we perpetually repeat to ourselves about who we are manifest on a physical level. In
this presentation, the authors detail the nature of an ongoing research and intervention project titled
“Impact: An Exploration of the Physical Impact of Words,” which works to explore how negative words
and the experiences associated with them manifest on a physical level. For this project, volunteer
participants were asked to name the label that most negatively impacted them and where in their
bodies they felt it. Then, through experiential work involving make-up and face paint, participants
created a “bruise” on the specified area of their body (to the participants’ specifications), with the word
inside of it. Photography, film, and voice recordings are used to document the process. A compilation of
these documents has been organized into a short film. This research hypothesizes and measures the
ways that “Impact: An Exploration of the Physical Impact of Words,” may facilitate participants adjusting
their self-narrative though sharing and embodying their story. Viewers of the film can also have a shift in
their own narrative as they share in the participants’ experience by acting as a witness. The
methodology of this project draws from the work of Ann Pellegrini, Michel Foucault, and Mark Freeman.
Specifically, “Impact” is looking at the linguistics and narrative of trauma and the psychosomatic
connection that is established through the stories we create.
Disrupting common plotlines: A narrative inquiry into the experiences of sub-Saharan African
immigrants living with HIV in Canada
Aniela dela Cruz, Judy Mill, Vera Caine (University of Alberta, Canada)
Presenting Author: Aniela dela Cruz, Vera Caine
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In this paper we explore the importance of attending to the context, place, and time in the lives of
research participants as narrative inquirers (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). We draw on this work with
three sub-Saharan African immigrants living with HIV in Canada over the past two years, by attending to
the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts in people’s lives. We see the intersections and
tensions within the multiplicity of experiences in diverse places. Following Dewey’s understanding of
human experience as an unfolding inquiry, we also see experiences as layered over time. Seeing
experiences as unfolding, as well as multiple and shaped by places, required us to be wakeful to
restrictive stories, categories, or common plotlines that can overshadow diverse understandings. As we
listened closely to the stories told and retold we could see that there was no linearity of movement
across borders, or a closure to previously difficult life stories, including stories of trauma, discrimination
and stigma. Slowly we began to see a disruption to the canonical cultural narratives of immigrants
arriving in Canada, of seeking and finding a new and better life, the life of ‘newcomer’, or a life without
stigma and discrimination. The stories we heard were neither detached from past lives and
relationships, nor did they seek new and better lives. Instead, we could see the significance of seeing
stories to live by as unfolding, to continue to seek narrative coherence and the importance of
understanding the unfolding relationships to found and chosen communities. In this way narrative
knowing is not only key to the ways in which we attend to lives, but also in the ways in which narrative
knowing disrupts common plotlines and offers us more meaningful ways to understand the lives of
immigrants living with HIV.
9.7
Paper session: Narrative, action and small stories
Moderator: Masayoshi Morioka
The act of narration
Jonah Willihnganz (Stanford University, USA)
Presenting Author: Jonah Willihnganz
Most scholarly attention to narrative examines the structure, functioning, and effects of narrative or the
modes of interpreting narrative. Predominantly, scholars analyze narrative objects (texts of one kind or
another) or they examine activities (social structures or identities) as texts. This paper proposes that
new interest oral narrative is encouraging us to now examine the act of narration as site of knowledge
production as opposed to provision: a process of disclosing the self or the world. This perspective
understands the narrative act as more than a transmission of knowledge, more than an expression or
version of some story already completed in the mind; it sees the narrative act as generative, as inventing
meaning that has not existed a priori, with complexity unrecognized at the moment of creation. This is
not, of course, a brand new perspective—writers have long described the insight that comes from the
act of narration and our everyday experience often shows us that we create meaning, even meaning
initially hidden to us, in narrating our experiences. But this perspective is not generally taken up in the
social sciences or humanities outside of therapeutic psychology. Even fields most focused on practice,
like anthropology, still default to the examining the story, not the telling of the story. This paper will look
at the act of narration as discovery in three places: scenes of narration in literature (Woolf, Joyce,
Nabokov), reproductions of narration in performance (Anna Deavere Smith), and occasions of narration
in conversation (documentary interviews). Building on some of the latest discoveries in cognitive
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psychology and neurobiology, the paper will then develop a case for researching and teaching the act of
narration as a process for disclosing the self and the world.
Using a fonds of Edwardian postcards to construct a family’s “small stories”
Mary-Louise Craven (York University, Canada)
Presenting Author: Mary-Louise Craven
“How do narratives imagine the past, collective identity and collective memory? ” I will use a fonds of
Edwardian-era postcards as my database to answer (tentatively) the first part of this question. The
narrative inquiry approach I adopt is to look for the “small stories” (see Georgakopoulou, 2006) that
emerge from the postcard messages. Normally, researchers intent on looking at postcards as “historical
records” base their findings on a specific collection of postcards. (A collection being “archival documents
that have been artificially accumulated through conscious collection practices”). See, Schor’s (1994)
analysis of early postcards of Paris. But when a researcher can study a fonds of postcards from this
period, she has the potential to construct fragments of narratives which wouldn’t be possible in a
collection. (A fonds is a set of “archival documents that have been naturally accumulated…by an
individual, [family], company, institution, etc. as a byproduct of business or day-to-day activities.”) Most
of the 1,327 postcards in the Auckland Family Postcard Fonds were sent to, or sent by the three
Auckland sisters from 1905-1915. There are also postcards exchanged with their cousins, their friends
and the girls' students. Thus, this fonds of 1327 postcards provides a window into social relations in a
reasonably prosperous farming family in the first years of the twentieth century. Unlike a collection, one
layer of meaning that analyzing a fonds of postcards makes possible is the underlying structure of the
social/communication network. I have digitized the fronts and backs of all the cards, and then set up a
database which allowed me to use graphing software to establish a picture of the social networks
among the sisters, their friends and students. Now, I can retrieve their “small stories” by looking at the
messages. This is what I will report on in my presentation.
The case for nesting big and small stories
Annetta Spathis (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Presenting Author: Annetta Spathis
When it comes to narrative approaches to both data collection and data analysis, researchers are spoilt
for choice. This diversity of approaches is intensified by the widespread use of narrative from competing
ontological, epistemological and theoretical perspectives across different contexts and for different
purposes. As a result, particularly in the social sciences, there has been a focus on trying to make sense
of this diversity and to create a coherent taxonomy. This paper explores the distinction between big
stories and small stories (Bamberg, 2006, 2011; Freeman, 2006, 2011; Georgakopoulou, 2006, 2007)
which has evolved within this effort. Although this paper supports the distinction between big and small
stories), it argues that research which combines both approaches is much richer, providing a more
holistic narrative inquiry and a deeper understanding of the complexity of agents’ realities. This paper
argues that without the details of embedded small stories, the big story is too broad brush, and lacks
depth and is ultimately only half the story. The paper demonstrates the strength of nesting the two
scales of narrative by reporting on educational research which focusses on experiences of two
transnational pre-service teachers as they enter new social situations while making their way through a
teacher education program in an Australian university. Big story accounts of how these agents
reflexively design and redesign their transnational life projects in the light of the questions: “What do I
want?” and “How do I go about getting it?” (Archer, 2007, p.19) reveal who these transnationals
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students are, while their small stories reveal how they reflexively confront and negotiate the highly
regulated institutional structures of local teacher education. Nested together, big and small stories
provide an alternative way of understanding transnational pre-service teachers and their projects as
more than potential migrants, or culturally circumscribed students.
Parallel Session #10
10.1 Thursday, June 26th 2014 at 4:00 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Panel session: Narrative knowledge production in cross-cultural research:
New debates
Chair: Cigdem Esin (University of East London, UK)
There has been a growing trend in conducting social science research across cultures and with it a
requirement to translate research from one context to another. These studies expose queries about
multiple narratives and context-specific versus universal (or claims thereof) meanings. Narrative inquiry
pays attention to these narratives by bringing to the fore human experience, different views and
interpretations of human lives. Therefore, it leads to a different viewpoint of the relationship between
agency and structure (Stanley, 2013). However, it as been noted that the narrative’s insistence on
imposing meaning to experiences after the event may distance the object of research from the outcome
of the knowledge production process (Nordstrom, 1997). This poses challenging questions about
knowledge in social science research in general. This panel explores the role of narrative inquiry in the
production of knowledge and its contribution to cross-cultural research. It asks questions on the
relationship between knowledge production and narrative: Does narrative operate as an obstacle to
cross-cultural research or, conversely, does its alternative way of knowing contribute to cross-cultural
research? Does this convert the research process into a path of co-construction and transformation? Or
does it act as a transferal or transversal? As Bruner (2002) observes, stories “are so particular, so local,
so unique - yet have such reach. They are metaphors writ large: their loft is like the loft of myth” (p. 35).
Hence it is clear that bringing narrative inquiry to the fore can destabilise knowledge as ‘we’ know it;
cross-cultural research adds another layer of intrigue to these important questions about narrative
knowledge production. This panel discusses those questions by taking an interdisciplinary approach to
narrative inquiry and includes approaches from sociology, feminist research and international relations
and alternative methodologies.
Narratives in and out of context
Aura Lounasmaa (Global Women’s Studies Programme, NUI Galway, Ireland)
Presenting Author: Aura Lounasmaa
Is it possible for us to find meaning in narratives without understanding, or indeed knowing the context
they have emerged from? Bruner (2002) attests to the universality of stories despite their uniqueness,
and in Plummer’s words: “The proper study of humanity is humanity and its stories […] How we tell,
listen to, appreciate and live our stories really matters: it is the royal road to humanity” (2013: 218). If
the narrative form is truly universal and central to humanity, finding meaning, although not “truth”,
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should then be possible even when the context is entirely removed. This paper discusses three
narratives that have emerged from the author’s PhD research and asks the audience to consider the
meanings these stories carry. What kind of universal meanings can we attribute to these stories when
the context is not known? Do these meanings alter considerably once the cultural context as well as the
context in which the stories were constructed is revealed? As Baker (2006) states, a translation is always
flawed, never “bridging gaps” between cultures or languages. Spivak (2012) reminds us that presenting
the other through translation always removes her from her own context and situates her into our
Eurocentric framework. If finding meaning from narratives is always bound in the cultural context in
which they emerge, is it ever possible to translate the narratives and their meanings to different cultural
contexts? This paper therefore highlights the imperative of allowing narratives to carry multiple
meanings and accepting that other meanings exist outside of those imposed on them by us as
researchers, writers and readers.
Narrating resilience: What can we learn from people’s experiences across cultures and contexts?
Tanja Kovačič (UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, NUI Galway, Ireland)
Presenting Author: Tanja Kovačič
Stories provide coherence and meaning to human lives (Bruner, 1990; Plummer, 2013) and offer an
insight into personal and social in a particular setting. Morrow (2013) claims that humans cannot be
understood outside of their living contexts and relations they establish in those settings. Therefore, the
use of narrative inquiry demonstrates the complexity of human lives (Josselson, 2006) set in particular
environments. In this regard, production of narrative knowledge is considered to be contextualised and
situated. However, this perspective does not provide an adequate answer to the question of production
of knowledge about common human experiences being shared across the living contexts. The aim of
this paper is to explore how to approach the production of meaning of human experience with
resilience over place and time. How can narrative approach help to produce knowledge on resilience
building processes in various socio-political and cultural settings? Does narrative inquiry contribute only
to contextual or also wider, humanistic production of knowledge about individuals’ coping? This paper
uses diverse research data to explore the challenge of production of knowledge across socio-cultural
and historical contexts: personal wartime letters of two American soldiers and cross-generational
interviews with participants from Slovenia. What do soldiers set in the battlefields of the Second World
War and participants growing up in various socio-political systems in Slovenia have in common and what
makes their personal experiences with resilience different? The paper argues that production of
knowledge in cross-cultural research is not a search for the “ultimate truth”. However, narrative inquiry
can help us to produce knowledge about a common human experience across the living contexts, as
illustrate the examples from historically, culturally and contextually different settings.
Narrating the self across cultures: The narratable self and subjectivity
Emma Brännlund (Global Women's Studies Programme, NUI Galway, Ireland)
Presenting Author: Emma Brännlund
The question of narrative knowing has been widely discussed amongst scholars doing cross-cultural
research. Bruner (1990), and Ochs and Capps (2001) argue that human experience is ordered through
narratives. It is through the connection and retelling of events that we make sense of ourselves and our
place in the world. However, Nordstrom (1997) points out that narrative organises experience after it
has taken place and merely gives a “now to then” account of experience. This poses a challenging
question about the limitations of narrative form when researching experiences and subjectivity across
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cultures. In this paper, I address the issue of how to account for the limitations of narrative knowing and
how this can aid in the production of more nuanced analysis. Specifically, I focus on the concept of
“narratable self” (Tamboukou, 2008), which deals with the creation and recreation of subjectivity. This is
achieved through an exploration of women’s narratives of their everyday experiences of security. These
experiences were told “now to then” across cultures and languages; the narratives were collected
during interviews with politically active women in the Kashmir Valley, the contested area in northern
India, by me, a Swedish researcher based in Ireland. I argue that the relocation of experiences as
narratives told “now to then” provides us with an insight into how the self is constantly in a process of
creation and recreation. Bringing a narrative of the self across cultural and linguistic borders adds
additional layers of recreation. Hence, paying attention to the limitations and contradictions of
narratives, the interviewed women’s shifting subjectivity (gendered, classed, based on religion, etc.)
becomes more visible; only by acknowledging and engaging with the limitations of narrative form, we
can come closer to a description of the world as the messy, unruly and contradictory place that it is.
Panel session: Narrative identity: Developmental perspectives and clinical
implications
Chair: Andrea V. Breen (University of Guelph, Canada)
Constructing stories is a basic human process that helps individuals to understand their experiences and
themselves. Narratives allow organizing and remembering events in a coherent fashion while integrating
thoughts and feelings. In essence, this gives individuals a sense of predictability and control over their
lives, as well as a sense of the self as a coherent being who persists across time (e.g. Chandler, Lalonde,
Sokol, & Hallett, 2003; McAdams, 2001). In recent years researchers have begun to examine the
implications of processes of narrative identity development for well-being (e.g. Chandler et al., 2003;
McLean, Breen, & Fournier, 2010) and illness, including schizophrenia (e.g. Raffard, D’Argembeau, Lardi,
Bayard, Boulenger, & Van der Linden, 2010). This panel brings together three groups of scholars to
further explore the potential clinical implications of developmental processes relating to the
construction of narrative identity. In the first study, Köber & Habermas present longitudinal data
exploring whether, under which circumstances and at what age autobiographical reasoning as an
instrument for narrative coherence predicts well-being. In the second paper, Breen, Ingram, McLean, &
Lewis use narratives of non-suicidal self-injury to explore the place of “embodiment” in relation to
narrative processes of identity development and suggest that attending to stories told with and through
the body may be especially relevant to the study of narrative identity in adolescents and young adults.
Finally, the paper by Alle, Kobayashi, Danion, & Berna examines narrative coherence in individuals with
schizophrenia, emphasizing both developmental considerations and clinical implications. Together these
three papers contribute to an understanding of the role of processes of narrative identity development
for individuals’ experiences of well-being and suffering.
Autobiographical reasoning and well-being
Christin Köber, Tilmann Habermas (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)
Presenting Author: Christin Köber, Tilmann Habermas
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A coherent sense of identity requires actively constructing a sense of personal continuity across the
numerous changes in life over time. We argue that the life story and its use in autobiographical
reasoning is the most potent instrument for creating personal continuity across change. Further, there is
a broad consensus that well-being is related to, and maybe the result of, a well-integrated and coherent
life-story (e.g. Baerger & McAdams, 1999; Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011; McLean, Breen & Fournier,
2010). However, recently this has been called into question (McLean & Mansfield, 2011). Apparently,
age, the valence of life events, and personality traits influence the effects of autobiographical reasoning
on well-being. We wanted to explore whether and under which circumstances autobiographical
reasoning predicts well-being. In a longitudinal study with three measurement times covering 8 years
and 6 age groups spanning life from age 8 to 70, we coded 470 life narratives for autobiographical
reasoning and collected questionnaires data about well-being, psycho-pathological symptoms, the big
five personality traits, and critical life events. First results will be presented, how these factors mediate
the relationship of autobiographical reasoning and well-being.
Narrative identity and embodiment in the context of self-injury
Andrea V. Breen (University of Guelph, Canada), Carly M. Ingram (University of Guelph, Canada), Kate C.
McLean (Western Washington University, USA), Stephen P. Lewis (University of Guelph, Canada)
Presenting Author: Andrea V. Breen
Narrative approaches to the study of identity development emphasize the use of stories to construct a
sense of a unique and coherent self that persists in time (McAdams, 2003). Adolescence and early
adulthood are important stages in the development of identity (Erikson, 1968). Although physical
changes associated with puberty mark the onset of adolescence, consideration of the body has been
almost entirely absent from psychological scholarship on the development of narrative identity in
adolescence and early adulthood. This despite the fact that Erikson—a key figure in psychological study
of identity suggested that one of the key “concomitant” of mature identity is “a feeling of being at home
in one’s body”(Erikson, 1968, p. 165). As Krieger (2005) instructs, bodies themselves tell stories,
including those that we cannot or will not tell by other means. In this talk we use Breen and colleagues’
recent research on self-injury and identity processes (Breen, Lewis, & Sutherland, 2013) as the launching
point to make the case for bringing the body into studies of narrative identity development. We draw on
two largely separate literatures. First, we use scholarship on mind-body connections (e.g. Damasio,
1999; 2010; Pasupathi, in press), which emphasizes bodily experiences of emotion, memory and telling.
Second we draw on feminist and disability scholarship on embodiment, which emphasize the existence
of bodies at the intersections of culture, society, and selves (Krieger, 2005; Rice, in press). We argue that
the body is a site for storying the self, key to experiencing, telling, and positioning stories. And we
consider the clinical and research implications of bringing the body into the study of narrative identity
development.
Decreased coherence in the life story of patients with schizophrenia
Mélissa Alle, Hiroshi Kobayashi, Jean-Marie Danion, Fabrice Berna (University Hospital of Strasbourg,
France)
Presenting Author: Mélissa Alle
Patients with schizophrenia suffer from self-disorders. Autobiographical memory, which is known to
support sense of identity, is impaired in schizophrenic patients. Autobiographical memory comprises
both memories and details of past single events and abstract structures such as the life story schema
(Conway, 2005). Studies in schizophrenia have mostly focused on memories of single events and have
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shown evidence for experiential-self impairment. However, we lack knowledge on how patients
integrate memories of personal events and bind them in a whole life story. We aimed to investigate life
narratives of patients with schizophrenia, in particular the coherence of these stories in order to assess
the narrative identity. In the present study, patients with schizophrenia and controls were asked to
recall their seven most important life events and to integrate them in their life story narration. We
analyzed narratives across three main indicators of coherence (temporal, causal and thematic)
(Habermas et al., 2008), and compared their proportion into the patients and controls’ life story. Our
preliminary results showed a decrease of causal coherence in patients’ narratives compared to those of
controls. Temporal coherence did not differ between groups. The deficiency of causal coherence was
correlated with patients’ executive functions impairment. The difficulties for patients to integrate events
with the self across their life story may account for the disturbance of personal identity reported in
patients with schizophrenia. Given that schizophrenia develops itself during adolescence and early
adulthood, a critical period for the identity construction, we will discuss our results from a
developmental perspective.
Panel session: Narrative knowing in lived religion
Chair: Tuija Hovi (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
Today, scholars of religion talk about lived religion (e.g. McGuire 2008) while focusing on everyday life
and personal experience. These are dimensions of religiosity which are difficult to reach by purely
experimental and quantitative methods. Alongside surveys and correlation studies, narrative analysis
has been adopted in psychology of religion as a qualitative method while investigating, for instance, the
complex themes of meaning making, transformation, traumatic experiences and coping strategies.
(Hood & Belzen 2005.) These themes are often approached by compiling life stories as life course and
knowledge based on people’s often ambiguous, multileveled and even chaotic rather than doctrinally
systematic worldviews. The proposed panel discusses narrating as a dynamic process with various
functions (cf. Schiff 2012). The papers address the themes of narratives communicating and producing
knowledge in the context of everyday religiosity. They all deal with interview materials that, in one way
or another, concern life historical questions about religious identity; how narratives depict the past,
collective identity and collective memory, and how they build up causality for creating a meaningful
experience of what has been lived through; how narrative can operate possibly as an obstacle to
knowledge. The papers presented in the panel are based on qualitative studies on psychology of religion
focusing on the functions and meanings of narratives and narration as well as narrative analysis as a
methodological alternative in the study of lived religion.
The religious construction of coherence in life narratives
Ulrike Popp-Baier (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Ulrike Popp-Baier
In the last decade some scholars have linked research on lived religion to the so-called narrative turn in
the social sciences arguing that we think primarily in stories that carry concepts and implied causes
within their narrative structure (cf. Ammerman & Williams 2012).The features of this kind of thinking
have been studied in narrative psychology, where narrative rationality and narrative reasoning have
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become rather popular notions (cf. Popp-Baier 2013).. We can explain or understand an action by telling
a story about it; a good story can be as persuasive and solid as purely formal and logical argumentation.
We explain how a particular event became possible by narrating the events leading up to its occurrence.
A narrative explanation may also show how the event figures in an intelligible series of events. Narrative
reasoning usually relies upon retrodiction to indicate how the present is a possible consequence of the
past by creating a coherent story. Although not uncontested (cf. Hyvärinen et al. 2010), many narrative
theories in psychology identify coherence as an especially significant feature of life narratives. Baerger
and McAdams (1999) operationalized coherence in terms of four dimensions (orientation, structure,
affect and integration) and Habermas and Bluck (2000) coined the term autobiographical reasoning to
denote a process of self- reflective thinking about the past that involves producing links between
elements of one’s life and the self. These authors distinguished four types of coherence which are linked
to autobiographical reasoning: temporal coherence, causal coherence, thematic coherence and
autobiographical coherence. In this paper I shall focus on religion as a resource for personal narratives
and shall demonstrate the multiple ways religion can enhance narrative reasoning and contribute to the
coherence of life narratives. It will be argued that the main narrative function of religious elements in
life stories is to enhance structure, causal coherence and autobiographical coherence.
Counter narratives vs. master narratives in religious involvement
Tuija Hovi (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
Presenting Author: Tuija Hovi
A salient aspect of narrative is actions that can be accomplished with them. Narration as expressive
action makes former experience present. (Schiff 2012.) In the proposed paper, I will discuss the dilemma
of the socially shared master narratives and more or less idiosyncratic counter narratives. I focus on how
narration attributes cause and agency to experiences and establishes social identity.
One of the key functions of master narratives is that they offer people a way of identifying what is
assumed to be normative experience (Andrews 2004). The power of master narratives derives from
their internalization. They routinize, normalize and naturalize ways of perceiving and interpreting things
and guide everyday life (Bamberg 2004). In religious traditions, the ways of experiencing and giving
meanings is defined according to respective tradition that is supposed to be internalized by a believer,
and that is therefore systematically taught to a newcomer. Also the limits for autobiographical narration
emerge from the cultural repertoire of narrative models (cf. Brockmeier 2000). However, when an
individual’s experience does not fit the culturally (religiously) acceptable frame, one has to look for a
more suitable explanation elsewhere. Counter narratives only make sense in relation to something else,
that which they are countering or contesting. But what is dominant and what is resistant are not, of
course, static categories, but rather are forever shifting placements. (Bamberg 2004.) Thus, the
discussion of counter narratives is ultimately a consideration of multiple layers of positioning; Whose
perspective? What does it tell? When is it possible? Why is it told? The proposed paper discusses the
roles of counter narratives in the context of a Christian community of prayer service team members who
regard themselves simultaneously as active insiders and marginal exceptions in their religious
communities.
Narrative constructions at liminal hotspots: Affectivity in the poetics of selfhood
Paulo R. Jesus (Portucalense University, Portugal)
Presenting Author: Paulo R. Jesus
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Liminal selves are storytelling animals whose tales are not organic and harmonious wholes. Rather, they
are open, plastic structures in continuous morphogenesis, redesigning the landscape of time and spacerelations in accordance with one's own changeable self-interpretive positioning. It hence follows that
life stories are often characterized by temporal ruptures and large blind spots that jeopardize the
possibility of a semantic and narrative continuum. Liminal selves inhabit joint narrations punctuated by
emotional intensities, like loss, trauma, separation, (de)conversion or other forms of metamorphosis
where the unstable unity of the diachronic and subjective intentionality is laboriously constructed and
deconstructed. The self-ironic practice of deconstruction increases metanarrative consciousness and
liberates from narratological canons, allowing apparent nonsense to become an alternative authentic
discourse. But then where are the bounds of narrative expression? Are they imposed from without, as in
Bourdieu's structural critique of free life-trajectories, or from within, as in G. Strawson's claim of merely
synchronic personalities? We explore an alternative way: they lie in the pragmatics of self-presentation
through multiple, polyphonic, language games with distinct life-possibilities, in which one learns the
semiotic rules for converting lived experiences into firmly unified or loosely fragmented tales.
Furthermore, the process of self-narrative construction is embedded in an attitude of belief or suspicion
towards a metanarrative architecture, that is, a horizon full or deprived of ultimate meaning. In this
sense, every self-narrative encompasses a religious or spiritual questioning.
Religion, spirituality, and self-construction at the interface of narrative and structural psychological
development
James Day (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium)
Presenting Author: James Day
For some people, psychological development involves interest in, functioning with, and appropriation
of, elements from religious belief, practice, and belonging. This presentation explores how this happens
at the interface of narrative strategies and options, and structural-developmental features of
psychological functioning in cognitive and socio-moral development.
Paper session: Récit et médecine
Moderator: Catherine Bruguière
Récits de situations complexes authentiques produits par les internes de médecine générale :
Exemple de l’erreur médicale
Eric Galam, Katell Mignotte, Jean-Pierre Aubert, Michel Nougairede (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Eric Galam
La production écrite de traces d’apprentissage s’inscrit dans le cadre de la pédagogie constructiviste.
Elle fait partie intégrante du cursus qui conduit les internes à l’obtention du Diplôme d’études Spécialisé
(DES) dans les Départements de Médecine Générale (DMG) en France. Méthode de formation et
d’évaluation de l’acquisition des 11 compétences de médecine générale, elle est source d’échanges
pédagogiques entre l’interne et ses enseignants, maître de stage et tuteur. Le récit de situation
complexe authentique (RSCA) en est la forme la plus élaborée. Il s’agit d’un récit impliqué, descriptif et
analytique d’une situation professionnelle complexe (couvrant des éléments de nature différente :
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clinique, relationnels, sociaux, éthiques, administratif, ….) vécue par l’interne authentique. Il est
complété par une analyse critique de la situation, les questions qu’elle a induites et leur hiérarchisation,
les réponses apportées, les modalités de leur obtention, enfin par une analyse critique, une recherche
d’éventuelles informations complémentaires et une bibliographie succinte. Il illustre la capacité à
décrire une situation de manière impliquée et contextualisée. Les différentes parties, des RSCA sont
variables en fonction de la situation traitée et de l’interne. La partie narrative est plus ou moins riche et
développée mais indispensable à la validation de la trace. Le DMG Paris Diderot dispose d’une base de
données recueillant toutes les traces d’apprentissage produites par ses 550 internes. Du 13/05/10 au
03/09/13, 3646 traces ont ainsi été produites et validées parmi lesquelles 2681 RSCA. Les mots clés
attachés à chaque trace en permettent une analyse structurée. A titre d’exemple, durant cette période,
le mot clé « annonce d’une mauvaise nouvelle » a été attribué à 68 traces. Le mot clé « erreur médicale
» a été attribué à 38 traces dont la partie narrative a fait l’objet d’une analyse de contenu qui sera
présentée.
Utilisation du récit de situations complexes authentiques (RSCA) dans la formation des internes de
médecine générale en France depuis 2004
Céline Buffel du Vaure, Christian Ghasarossian, Philippe Jaury (Université Paris Descartes, France)
Presenting Author: Céline Buffel du Vaure
Objectif : Décrire l’utilisation du récit comme moyen de formation et d’évaluation des internes de
Médecine Générale en France. Dans les universités françaises, la formation des internes est à la fois
clinique (hôpital ou ambulatoire) et facultaire. Durant ce 3ème cycle professionnalisant, le choix
pédagogique a été celui d’une approche centrée sur les compétences. Le récit a ainsi été choisi comme
moyen de formation et d’évaluation, avec un objectif à terme de certification. Chaque semestre, un
travail d’écriture clinique relatant une situation complexe, vécue en stage et soulevant des difficultés,
est demandé aux internes. Ce récit permet d’aborder la complexité de la situation et les enjeux de la
relation médecin-malade. Chaque interne est accompagné par un tuteur pédagogique chargé de
l’encadrer et d’évaluer sa progression au cours des 3 ans de sa formation. Ces récits constituent une
trace d’apprentissage, recueillies au sein d’un portfolio de validation. Le travail attendu doit comporter
le récit de situation, les problèmes rencontrés ainsi que leurs réponses. La conclusion précise les acquis
de l’interne utiles pour une situation ultérieure. Des grilles d’évaluation critériée permettent une autoévaluation et/ou une hétéro-évaluation. Grâce à ce travail réflexif de l’interne après l’action et les
échanges avec le tuteur, les enseignants évaluent des observations de mise en situation mais aussi la
progression des compétences. Cette pédagogie concerne 33 départements facultaires en France,
représentant près de 14000 internes. La mise en place de ce nouvel outil pédagogique n’a pas été sans
difficulté, avec un temps d’appropriation nécessaire. La compétence d’écriture, exigence
supplémentaire demandée aux étudiants, dans une formation dont la finalité est le soin, a entrainé une
polémique parmi les enseignants. L’absence d’autre stratégie, en dehors de l’observation en situation
de soins, permettant de certifier les compétences a finalement convaincu !
Analyse de récit et compréhension du processus de rétablissement en psychiatrie
Brice Martin (Centre Hospitalier le Vinatier Lyon, France)
Presenting Author: Brice Martin
Dans le domaine de la psychiatrie contemporaine, et plus précisément du soin de réhabilitation, la
compréhension du « processus de rétablissement » apparait ces dernières années comme un enjeu
important susceptible d’avoir un impact considérable sur l’organisation et les techniques de soin
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utilisées. Par « processus de rétablissement», il est possible de désigner le processus personnel par
lequel une personne touchée par une pathologie psychiatrique sévère (schizophrénie, trouble
bipolaire…) parvient à « se dégager d’une identité de malade psychiatrique et recouvrer une vie active
et sociale » (Pachoud, 2012). Convoquant des processus tels que la « redéfinition de soi » ou encore
l’accès à des espaces d’ « empowerment » (« pouvoir d’agir »), la compréhension des logiques du
rétablissement semble difficilement accessible par les approches scientifiques classiques, d’inspiration
positivistes (notamment les études quantitatives longitudinale). Par conséquent, de nombreux auteurs
invitent, actuellement, à utiliser le récit, et plus précisément certaines méthodes, qualitatives, d’analyse
du récit comme une porte d’entrée dans la compréhension de ce processus très subjectif. Nous
proposons, dans notre communication, de revenir sur l’une de ces méthodes qualitatives, d’inspiration
phénoménologique, fortement inspirée des travaux de Larry Davidson à Yale (Davidson, 2003). Après
avoir retracé quelques grands repères de cette méthode (notamment des techniques de recueil et
d’analyse du récit), nous illustrerons notre propos par quelques résultats issus d’une analyse qualitative
du récit de quelques personnes suivies en psychiatrie, en parcours de rétablissement.
Paper session: Digital narratives (II)
Moderator: Corinne Squire
Wolfgang Herrndorf’s autobiographical suicide blog “work and structure” as an “unnatural” challenge
to narrative knowing
Nora Berning (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Germany)
Presenting Author: Nora Berning
End-of-life stories on the Internet such as the autobiographical blog ‘Work and Structure’ by the recently
deceased best-selling author Wolfgang Herrndorf poses numerous challenges to contemporary narrative
and genre theory. If one accepts the idea of ‘genres as fields of knowledge’ (Dimock 2007), then
autobiographical works about suicide can be seen as a privileged mode of knowledge insofar as
knowledge about death is denied to us in our own lives. Herrndorf’s blog contributes not only to our
understanding of suicide as a multidimensional ‘illness’, but precisely because it merges current thinking
and empirical research findings the blog simultaneously constructs and disseminates human and
medical knowledge. The relationship between narrative and knowledge is far from unproblematic
though in Herrndorf’s blog, because, as will be shown with the help of a narratological analysis, suicide
and death resist attempts at knowledge and explanation. A site of textual indeterminacy, Herrndorf’s
blog is not only a pertinent example of how new media can help writers to mend the fragmented self,
but it is also an epistemologically opaque means of pursuing the truth about suicide and death. In my
analysis I will make use of ethical narratology as a conceptual framework for shedding light on the
double-edged nature of suicide blogs and their role in the production of knowledge. Herrndorf’s blog
challenges the static models of formalism and structuralism and highlights the need to‘re-humanize’
or‘re-socialize’ the narratological toolkit in such a way that it can adequately deal with the sensitive
issue and human problem of suicide. Besides making a genuine contribution to the contested epistemic
powers of narrative, I hope to contribute to the thriving field of medical humanities and, more
specifically, to the variegated nature of illness narratives as well as their medialization.
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Online local memories lubricating the emergence of community empowerment
Mike de Kreek (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands)
Presenting Author: Mike de Kreek
The analysis of the cultural dynamics in the online communication on two local memory websites offers
insights into the social benefits they can offer. Active local memory websites are claimed to be
empowering on individual, group and community levels, because they offer settings where locals
participate in the creation, sharing and improvement of their community narratives and personal
stories. The current academic literature presents the accessible and online nature of local memory
websites as a key driving force of their empowerment capabilities, especially on the group and
community levels. On the community level, the empowerment is predominantly described in terms of
community memory, cultural citizenship and community capacity. Firstly, in the construction of
community memory, residents present their own view on local knowledge online and, by doing so, they
influence how their surroundings’ past and present should be represented. Secondly, as a practice of
cultural citizenship, people use these online environments to creatively express their experiences and
opinions within the present local culture. This way meanings in life are negotiated and cultural value is
judged by ordinary people. Thirdly, with respect to community capacity, community members share
memories and experiences in new online social networks, through which they create their own
discourse in favor of social power that can influence the community’s future. In order to arrive at
insights into patterns with respect to these processes en outcomes of community empowerment, we
conducted an exploratory content and network analysis on the data of two active local memory
websites (over 20.000 contributions). The results will be presented as well as their translation into a
thorough narrative analysis of selected clusters of data using microstoria analysis to further explicate
local ways of knowing.
Digital enquiries: Narrativisation of sources in European integration history
Florentina Armaselu (CVCE, Luxembourg)
Presenting Author: Florentina Armaselu
According to Hayden White, "narrativisation" refers to the transformation of a set of historical materials
into a representation endowed with the structure of a story, i.e. with a certain “coherence” and
“moralising” meaning. Our study addresses the question of narrativisation in a digital, online
environment (www.cvce.eu). The enquiry focuses on structured and contextualised collections
assembling different types of multilingual sources, as well as synopses, bio-bibliographical information
and interactive materials, intended to convey knowledge on the European integration process. The
study deals with the “Historical events in the European integration process (1945–2009)” which
chronologically presents the landmarks of European integration from the end of the Second World War
to the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.The collection (7413 texts, 2051 images, 644 videos, 225
audios, 75 maps and diagrams, 58 short biographies) is organized as a tree-like structure accessible via
sidebar navigation. For each selected unit, a double-faced content area is proposed for exploration. The
“Context” side displays a synopsis while the “Resources” allows the discovery of the sources related to
the events (official publications, press articles, photos, cartoons, audiovisual archives,etc). Apart from
the structuration of the material (chronological order, hierarchy of units), the synopses and captions
attached to resources seem to engender a “narrativisation” of sources that facilitates the
contextualisation and the circulation of meaning inside the collection. Computational processing of
synopses and captions, via network or statistical text analysis (TexTexture, Taporware, Iramuteq) or
named entities recognition can highlight different types of knowledge derived from the narrative: most
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relevant topics, connections between units, concordances, main “actors” (persons, organizations,
locations, dates). The paper will present the collection and the experimental results.
Paper session: Savoirs implicites dans la littérature
Moderator: Jean Michel Baudouin
Faire avec, faire sans : Sur les rapports de quelques écrivains contemporains à l'anthropologie
Eléonore Anna Devevey (ENS-Lyon 2 Lumière, France)
Presenting Author: Eléonore Anna Devevey
Nous nous proposons d'interroger, du point de vue de l'histoire intellectuelle et de l'histoire littéraire,
les pratiques interdiscursives entre anthropologie et littérature à la fin du XXe siècle : comment, après le
moment d'incertitude « entre science et littérature » (V. Debaene) qui a caractérisé l'ethnologie
française jusqu'aux années 1960, se pose alors la question de leurs rapports ? L'institutionnalisation de
la discipline les a transformés, traçant une ligne de démarcation plus ferme entre écrits savants (qui
peuvent rester de facture littéraire) et textes littéraires (empruntant à l'anthropologie certaine de ses
démarches ou préoccupations), dans le cadre d'une reconfiguration des rapports globaux entre écritures
littéraires et savoirs. Il s'agira donc d'analyser les façons dont un paradigme d'écriture scientifique peut
susciter des usages non-savants et créatifs, et d'envisager les modes sous lesquels il se manifeste dans
les écritures littéraires contemporaines. Plutôt que de postuler une hypothétique frontière ou zone
d'indistinction entre anthropologie et littérature, il est plus fécond d'envisager leurs rapports en termes
d'analogie partielle et de prélèvements choisis. En partant de l'examen de la poétique de grands textes
narratifs d'anthropologues français, nous montrerons que certains traits (modes de restitution de
l'expérience du terrain et dramatisation du processus de connaissance, mélancolie et hantise de la
disparition, restitution du sensible et goût du réel) ont pu informer les écritures littéraires
contemporaines, de Georges Perec à François Bon, en passant par Pascal Quignard ou Gérard Macé. En
mettant ainsi en lumière ces deux aspects, notre objectif est de considérer d'une façon renouvelée leurs
rapports – sans perdre de vue l'autonomie disciplinaire et savante de l'anthropologie, ni renoncer aux
questionnements théoriques sur la "connaissance anthropologique" à l’œuvre dans les textes littéraires.
La sociologie implicite dans la littérature
David Ledent (University of Liege, Belgium)
Presenting Author: David Ledent
Au fondement de la sociologie comme discipline scientifique se trouve l'idée de rupture
épistémologique avec le "sens commun" qu’Émile Durkheim a clairement exposée dans Les Règles de la
méthode sociologique en 1895. Le fondateur de l'école française de sociologie exprimait ainsi la
nécessité de recourir à un double travail de problématisation et de conceptualisation. Avec son
institutionnalisation en France, la sociologie se sépare de toute connaissance qui ne serait pas
"objective", ce qui incite Durkheim à écarter la philosophie, qu'il considère comme spéculative, et, sans
la mentionner directement, la littérature dont la dimension poétique serait éloignée de toute entreprise
scientifique. Pourtant, Wolf Lepenies a montré dans Les Trois cultures (1990) que le savoir sociologique
ne s'est pas exclusivement développé autour du modèle objectiviste des sciences de la nature, la
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littérature ayant également joué un rôle déterminant. Le cas Zola est notamment troublant dans la
mesure où ses récits sont élaborés à partir des principes du positivisme pour les appliquer au domaine
littéraire. Zola n'hésite d'ailleurs pas lui-même à qualifier le roman naturaliste d'expérimental tant il est
fasciné par les discours de la science et leur possible utilisation dans le processus de création littéraire.
Dans la continuité des analyses formulées par Anne Barrère et Danilo Martuccelli dans Le Roman
comme laboratoire (2009), nous mènerons une réflexion épistémologique autour de l'idée de
"sociologie implicite" que l'on trouve en particulier chez les "romanciers du réel" (Jacques Dubois, 2000).
Récit et savoir ne sont alors plus envisagés comme des catégories abstraites renvoyant aux pôles
respectifs du subjectivisme et de l'objectivisme mais comme des catégories transitives qui rendent
possible une sociologie par la littérature.
Les récits d’alpinisme : Des vecteurs de transmission de savoirs et de représentations
Delphine Moraldo (Centre Max Weber, Lyon, France)
Presenting Author: Delphine Moraldo
On se propose d’étudier la relation entre les récits et les savoirs alpinistiques à partir d’un corpus
d’autobiographies d’alpinistes anglais et français (écrites entre 1920 et 2012). L’alpinisme, depuis ses
débuts au XIXe siècle, est le lieu d’une production constante de récits d’ascension et de récits
autobiographiques. L’existence d’une telle trame narrative, produite par les sportifs, n’est pas sans
rapport avec les propriétés sociales des alpinistes, traditionnellement issus de milieux sociaux cultivés
malgré de rares épisodes historiques de démocratisation. Cette production narrative est également le
propre de l’activité même, "sport à part"(Hoibian, 2000) qui nécessite que l’alpiniste produise un récit
pour obtenir la validation de ses exploits par les pairs et légitimer sa place dans le champ de l’alpinisme.
Deux points principaux seront développés. D’une part, la place centrale de ces récits dans la
transmission de la culture et des savoirs alpinistiques : les alpinistes font presque toujours état de récits
et autobiographies d’alpinistes ayant orienté leur vocation, guidé leur découverte de l’activité, et
façonné leur vision de l’activité. Le récit d’alpinisme est donc un vecteur important de socialisation et,
au-delà, un véritable guide pour l’action pour l’alpiniste qui y trouve des réponses pratiques à des
situations concrètes. En outre, ces récits semblent, pour certains outsiders de milieux populaires,
constituer un moyen d’acculturation littéraire, au-delà de la littérature alpine. D’autre part, si l’on
s’intéresse aux récits eux-mêmes, tels que cités par les alpinistes du corpus, on peut remarquer des
préférences nationales et générationnelles qui reflètent autant de représentations de l’alpinisme
socialement et historiquement ancrées. En conclusion, ces récits, qui sont porteurs de représentations
de l’alpinisme socialement et historiquement situées, agissent comme vecteurs de transmission de
savoirs pratiques et d’éthos alpinistiques.
Paper session: Travel narratives (II): Travel narratives and narratives
landscapes
Moderator: Ann Phoenix
Between perfomative and possessive knowledge: The privileged case of travel writing
Stefano Calzati (University of Leeds, UK)
Presenting Author: Stefano Calzati
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The starting assumption of this paper is that travel writing represents a ‘privileged’ narrative genre in
relation to knowledge and its underpinning logics. More specifically, by critiquing three well-established
definitions of travel writing proposed respectively by Fussell (1980), Holland and Huggan (1998) and
Borm (2004), I come to consider travel writing as a “rhetorical praxis of knowledge”. Following both
Miller’s (1984) argument that “an understanding of genre can help us account for the way we
encounter, interpret, react to, and create particular texts”, as well as Butor’s (1974) notorious idea that
“to travel, or at least to travel in a certain way, is to write and to write is to travel”, I argue that
travelling and writing are two specular acts of knowledge: the former, far for being only a displacement
in space, leads to encounter otherness (Blanton, 2002); the latter, as a “differed” and “deferred” act
(Derrida, 1976), is per se an inscription of the self in the text. Therefore, travel writing, as a genre,
comes to embed a ‘cross-cultural’ (knowledge of the other) and ‘gnoseological’ (knowledge of the self)
“capital” (Zilcoski, 2008). From here, I advance a comparison between four French-English contemporary
travel books and blogs about China and through a Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) I investigate
how the “intermedial transposition” (Wolf, 2008) of travel writing in these two media affects 1) the
factual/fictional feature of the texts; 2) the representation of the traveller and the other; 3) the relation
between medium and narrative. In other words, the paper seeks to answer two questions: do travel
books and blogs provide an effective performative (Butler, 1988) knowledge, or do they re-enact a type
of knowledge intended as mere “possession” (Adorno, 1991)? How the comparison between ‘old’ and
‘new’ media asks us to rethink the narrative and the relation genre-medium?
Disney theme parks as cognitive artifacts: On the practical uses of narrative landscapes at the
"happiest place on Earth"
Thibaut Clément (Paris 4 Sorbonne, France)
Presenting Author: Thibaut Clément
Following their designers' claim that they work primarily as a storytelling medium, this paper argues that
Disney theme parks rely on the socio-cognitive features of stories to set up contextual, cognitive frames
and give rise to a narrative, socio-technical order. Drawing from cognitive narratology, distributed
cognition and actor-network theory, the paper will base its claims on internal sources as well as field
data collected through participant observation. Placed in fictional environments and invited to think of
themselves as characters in a live, first-person narrative, park users are given a role in a wider story, in
accordance to which personal feelings and individual behaviors will be evaluated and, if need be,
conformed. The park's organization of labor demonstrates a performative character, as employees are
required for the delivery of services to stay “in character” and follow not just pre-scripted lines but
specific emotions. The internalization of the park’s narrative order extends to visitors, to the point that
social interactions take on the appearance of “play”. The park’s narrative environment therefore
emerges as a cognitive artifact for the active elicitation of feelings deemed desirable or appropriate with
the user’s narrative surroundings. Even processes of decision-making are “externalized”: the landscape
is meant to appear as a repository of “objectified” values or “stage cues” which the user needs only
consult to determine the appropriate conduct. Storytelling thus appears as a technical activity, allowing
park designers to determine the environment's underlying script or sanctioned "good" use. Also,
drawing from Bruner’s conception of stories as socio-cognitive tools for mutual understanding and
consensus building, it will finally appear that the park’s narrative landscapes work at articulating
previously antagonistic subsets of values, such as the nation’s conflicting pastoral and industrial
aspirations.
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Between hope and voyeurism: Online infertility travel narratives as para-ethnographic “sites”
Heather Louise Walmsley (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Presenting Author: Heather Louise Walmsley
Online blogs and discussion forums are an increasingly popular source of narrative “data” for qualitative
health researchers. Compelling analyses abound, focused on diseases as diverse as obesity and
Parkinson’s. Whilst generating rich insights into both individual experience and online community, many
such analyses devote little space to the ethical or epistemological status of their findings. This paper
argues for the urgent centrality of both, through a para-ethnographic analysis of a popular infertility
travel forum. The “travelling abroad for IVF” forum on the Canadian infertility website www.IVF.ca is
frequented by women considering travel overseas for fertility treatments. This paper first illustrates the
wealth of knowledge generated via thematic analysis of this “public’ venue (amidst the data desert in
which the researcher of “reproductive tourism” operates). This includes rich insight into popular choices
of fertility destination, clinic and doctor, motivational factors, and the emotional and physical
experiences of individuals. It reveals dominant narratives of hope and solidarity operating within this
imagined community, and how it functions as a living repository of lay expertise. The paper then turns
to some exclusions and discomforts haunting the edges of its own analysis. It questions the ethics of
covert observation in which the analyst feels like voyeur and participants articulate privacy concerns. It
questions the quality, status, and reliability of knowledge generated, through attention to minority
narratives and voices of dissent. Finally, it advocates a para-ethnographic methodology, in which online
forums are considered as one in a network of research “sites”, and participants are viewed as research
collaborators. Viewed as partial and situated knowledge, both dominant narratives and uncomfortable
ethical and epistemological questions become valuable resources to further a challenging research
agenda.
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FRIDAY
Parallel Session #11
11.1 Friday, June 27th 2014 at 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Paper session: Knowing fictional minds
Moderator: Brian Schiff
Knowing fictional minds
Brian Richardson (University of Maryland, USA)
Presenting Author: Brian Richardson
For over half a century, it has been widely accepted that fiction is qualitatively different from nonfiction
since it is able to fully disclose the contents of other minds. This seemingly unobjectionable stance has
recently come under attack by cognitive and mind-oriented narratologists, most notably, David Herman.
Herman denies that “readers’ experiences of fictional minds are different in kind from their experiences
of the minds they encounter outside the domain of narrative fiction” (Emergence 8) and further denies
that “only fictional narratives can give us direct, ‘inside’ views of characters’ minds, and that fictional
minds are therefore sui generis, or different in kind from ordinary minds” ( 9). He argues against what
he calls the “Exceptionality Thesis” (11) that insists on the basic, qualitative difference between fiction
from nonfictional discourse; in its place, he wishes to “develop a unified picture of mind representation
of all sorts, fictional and other.” Such an attempt does not merely negate what Dorrit Cohn has called
the “distinction of fiction,” but would also subsume fictional minds to a mimetic framework. I will
examine this thesis by offering a brief survey of our knowledge of other minds in nonfiction, realist
fiction, modernism, and postmodernism, drawing on cases where “mind reading” fails (Joyce), is made
literal (Rushdie) or omniscience is temporarily lost by a third person narrator (Gogol) or abruptly
provided to a character narrator (Vasquez). I will go on to explore the implication of these findings for
any theory of narrative knowledge; I will reaffirm the fundamental difference of fictionality, and argue
for a dialectical, dual approach to represented minds.
Beckett and the cognitive method: On fictional cognitive modelling
Marco Bernini (Durham University, UK)
Presenting Author: Marco Bernini
In his 1923 essays on Ulysses, Order and Myth, Elliot elucidates how “Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method
which others must pursue after him […]. Instead of a narrative method, we may now use a mythical
method” (167). In Elliot’s perspective, Joyce’s methodology is a formal manipulation upon the outer
world conducted by reshaping and combining raw cultural and historical materials into new meaningful
configurations. Beckett’s cognitive method, I argue, is instead an investigation into, to quote Molloy, the
inner “laws of the mind” (9). This investigation is operated by means of narrative devices, raw
narratological tools of narration that Beckett defines as the “old rubbish” that can nonetheless “still be
of some use” (BL II, 132). Beckett’s method is cognitive, I claim, in three intertwined senses: (1) his
writing takes cognitive processes as an object of research (2) His writing relies upon the cognitive effect
that his (mis)use of narratological elements has on the reader’s mind (deictic shift, intentional
attributions, gaps, temporal sequencing, and so on). (3) He designs, I claim, (narrative) cognitive models
for his investigation. Cognitive models serve the purpose of running simulations and making predictions
about structural functioning, architectures, relations and possibilities of a particular cognitive process.
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These models are simplifications of the reality, yet with a strong explanatory and exploratory power. My
contention is that Beckett, by means of narratological devices, shapes fictional cognitive models for the
investigation of specific cognitive processes, often beyond the limits of human accessibility. Needless to
say, once shaped, these models are neither run by computers nor transposed into quantitative analysis.
Rather these models are transformed into reading experiences activated by readers. In a nutshell,
fictional cognitive models animate abstractions with experience, transforming cognitive research into a
phenomenology of reading.
Fictional narrative as a source of counterintuitive knowledge: Kafka's metamorphosis
Michael Keren (University of Calgary, Canada)
Presenting Author: Michael Keren
The growing addiction of individuals all over the world to the Internet and the long hours they spend in
virtual environments (environments in which "What you see and what you do looks and feels real, but is
only a computer simulation of the real situation" ) have raised hard questions on the "posthuman"
condition. Katherine Hayles defines the "posthuman" as the privileging of informational patterns over
material instantiation so that "embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history
rather than an inevitability of life." This theory blurs the distinction between human beings and
intelligent machines and gives rise to the model of the individual as a cybernetic organism, or "cyborg."
As she puts it, "In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between
bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot
technology and human goals." In my paper I show how a fictional narrative developed a century ago –
Kafka's The Metamorphosis – enhances our knowledge on the posthuman condition studied by
computer scientists, communication researchers, psychologists, philosophers and others today. While
written long before the digital revolution, the story of Gregor Samsa who awoke one morning from
uneasy dreams and found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect provides useful and
counterintuitive insights on that revolution and its consequences. I show in particular how the Kafkaean
narrative enlightens us on the model of the "cyborg" in terms of such variables as its relations with the
physical environment, its uses of language, the domestic and social responses to it and the cognitive
changes entailed by its transformation.
Metalinguistic signs in Ousmane Sembène's Les Bouts de bois de Dieu. Banty mam Yall
Gerald Prince (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Presenting Author: Gerald Prince
Among the many signs in narrative that foreground questions of knowledge, metanarrative signs are
those that refer explicitly to one of the numerous codes or subcodes in terms of which narratives signify:
the linguistic code through which a narrative is represented, for example, the cultural code or body of
cultural knowledge relied on by the narrative in making sense, or the symbolic code according to which
the symbolic dimensions of various passages are constituted. Like other sets of signs found in narratives,
metanarrative signs and, more particularly, metalinguistic signs can perform various functions. They can
illustrate a theme, serve as a characterization device, contribute to the definition of the narrator, the
narratee, and their relationship; and, in general, help to constitute and foreground the text's ideology.
An analysis of their functioning in Ousmane Sembène's 1960 Les Bouts de bois de Dieu. Banty mam Yall
sheds light on that novel and its general thrust as well as on the author's attitude toward (linguistic)
knowledge, toward legibility, and toward his own art and its role.
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Paper session: Où l'épistémologie, le style et le récit se rencontrent
Moderator: Eric Galam
Mises en scène fictionnelles de la rupture épistémologique à la fin de la Renaissance et au lendemain
de la Révolution française : Quelques rémanences intertextuelles et poétiques (Rabelais, Cervantès,
Goethe, Flaubert)
Danielle Perrot-Corpet (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, France)
Presenting Author: Danielle Perrot-Corpet
Michel Foucault, dans Les Mots et les Choses : une archéologie des sciences humaines (1966), montre
que la configuration générale du savoir occidental évolue, du XVIe au XXe siècle, au gré de deux
changements de paradigme ou « ruptures épistémologiques » qui séparent l’épistémè renaissante de
l’Age classique, puis l’Age classique de la Modernité. Le Quichotte de Cervantès (1605-1615) est selon
Foucault l’œuvre représentative par excellence de la première rupture épistémologique, car le divorce
entre « les mots » et « les choses » s’inscrit au cœur de son dispositif narratif. Mais le trouble
épistémologique qu’induit la progressive sécularisation de la pensée occidentale est déjà sensible par
exemple dans le Tiers Livre de Rabelais (1546). Chez Rabelais et Cervantès, ce trouble épistémologique
s’exprime d’abord par la mise en scène (comique) de la discorde des autorités « savantes » et, plus
profondément, de la discordance des discours du « savoir », source d’une suspension sceptique du
jugement. Nous voudrions montrer qu’on retrouve, dans des fictions narratives qui prennent acte de la
seconde rupture épistémologique du tournant des XVIIIe-XIXe siècles, certaines analogies structurelles
et stylistiques avec les fictions critiques de la Renaissance finissante : dans Les Affinités électives de
Goethe (1809) et Bouvard et Pécuchet de Flaubert (1880), œuvres de la conquête de la modernité, la
remise en cause des discours savants hérités de la Raison des Lumières rejoint un esprit de rébellion
antidogmatique et humoristique qui caractérisait certains textes troublés de la fin de la Renaissance :
contre le mouvement de spécialisation des discours savants qui aboutit, à la fin du XIXe siècle, à
l’éviction de la « littérature » hors du champ de la connaissance désormais réservé aux « sciences »,
Goethe et Flaubert revendiquent pour la fiction littéraire une légitimité inédite, conquise sur les
baudruches des faux savoirs.
Récit et prose scientifique
Stéphanie Smadja (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Stéphanie Smadja
L’histoire de la langue française aux XIXe et XXe siècles ne prend guère en compte la prose scientifique,
alors que les grands savants de cette période continuent d’élaborer et de diffuser leurs théories et leurs
connaissances dans une langue qui n’est pas réservée à des spécialistes. Les textes majeurs des
scientifiques français, par exemple La Philosophie anatomique de Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1818), le
Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe de Cuvier (1822), l’Astronomie populaire d’Arago
(1854-1857), l’Introduction à la médecine expérimentale de Claude Bernard (1865), constituent un
corpus à partir duquel pourrait être mises en rapport l’évolution de la langue des scientifiques et
l’histoire générale de la langue française. Le XIXe siècle peut en effet être considéré comme un tournant
capital dans l’histoire des relations entre littérature et sciences. Science et littérature se dissocient alors
progressivement ; les disciplines scientifiques s’institutionnalisent et se coupent, de ce fait, de la
communication directe avec le public. Ce qu’on appelle désormais « littérature » n’a plus vocation à
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transmettre les connaissances scientifiques mais résiste en prétendant devenir le lieu de production
d’un savoir spécifique : les écrivains se nourrissent des sciences humaines émergentes et contribuent
également au progrès et à la définition de ces dernières. De ce point de vue, la prose scientifique au
tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles constitue un lieu privilégié pour interroger le rapport entre récit et
savoir. Dans quelle mesure le récit constitue-t-il l’une des formes privilégiées de transmission des
savoirs, dans des écrits scientifiques ? Quels sont par exemple la part et le rôle du récit dans les études
de cas, en psychanalyse ? Comment fonctionnent et comment sont structurés les récits, dans une prose
qui ne se veut pas d’abord littéraire ?
Le délire de mémoire hystérique, source commune à la psychanalyse, la littérature et la médecine
narrative
Samuel Lepastier (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Samuel Lepastier
A la fin du XIXe siècle, Charcot a donné une description de la « grande hystérie » dont, malgré sa rareté,
il fait le « type » de l’affection car elle contient toutes les autres formes cliniques. Il identifie quatre
phases : la phase tonique initiale, lui succède la phase des grands mouvements, elle-même se résout en
phase des attitudes passionnelles. Dans la phase terminale du délire de mémoire, les mouvements
convulsifs cessent alors que le malade révèle dans un récit affecté, la passion qui l’habite. Tout se passe
alors comme si, en s’énonçant, la parole avait apporté la guérison. Transes rituelles et hystérie ont une
source commune : la dissociation de la conscience lors de crises faisant émerger l'inconscient pulsionnel.
La cure psychanalytique qui inclut dans son protocole la position allongée du sujet en crise apparaît
comme le prolongement d’un délire de mémoire. Si au cours de l’histoire, l’hystérie a été interprétée en
fonction des paradigmes culturels dominant, la psychanalyse est une élaboration de la clinique de cette
affection érigée au rang de paradigme. Au moins partiellement, les pratiques contemporaines de
médecine narrative s’inscrivent également dans cette perspective. Dans l’hystérie, la plus grande
difficulté pour le médecin reste que, avec ses instruments d’évaluation, il ne peut prendre en compte le
corps érotique ainsi mis en scène puisque si la clinique médicale repose sur la perception du corps du
patient, elle refoule toute connexion avec la tendresse, la sensualité et l’érotisme à son contact. Si Freud
déplorait que ses cas cliniques d’hystérie puissent être lus comme des nouvelles, à l’inverse le point
d’origine du roman, comme également d'autres expressions littéraires, apparaît comme une
transcription de délire de mémoire. La vérité qu’exprime le patient hystérique n’est pas celle des faits
mais celle de son psychisme. Ce qui est exclu de la médecine est repris par la littérature. L'exposé sera
illustré d'exemples cliniques.
"Narrative knows…" (" Le récit sait… ") : Quelques réflexions sur le style théorique d’Ann Banfield
Sylvie Patron (Université Paris Diderot, France)
Presenting Author: Sylvie Patron
Cette communication ressortit à la stylistique, mais à une stylistique considérée comme un instrument
de diagnostic épistémologique. Dans l’introduction, je présente ce que j’appelle « les deux styles d’Ann
Banfield » : un style qui peut être aussi envisagé comme un non-style, comme l’adoption d’une
neutralité déstylisante en apparence, et un second style, qui apparaît essentiellement dans la conclusion
de Unspeakable Sentences, et qui se distingue fortement du premier, notamment par sa tendance à
l’hermétisme. Je m’intéresse ensuite à deux traits de style qui me paraissent caractéristiques de ce
mode singulier de conclure. Premièrement, la tournure « Narrative knows… » (« Le récit sait… ») : a-t-on
affaire à une métaphore, un simple moyen de traduire, d’exprimer un phénomène ? ou la métaphore
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est-elle intériorisée ? Autrement dit, le phénomène est-il pris comme le signe d’une propriété
substantielle ? Deuxièmement, l’analogie entre les phrases sans parole du récit de fiction et les
machines ou les instruments scientifiques — analogie que je soumets également à la critique. Cette
communication, qui convoque de nombreux exemples, propose un parcours dans l’œuvre de Banfield, à
partir de Unspeakable Sentences et dans les ouvrages et articles ultérieurs. Elle s’appuie sur la
connaissance que j’ai de cette œuvre, mais également sur mon expérience de traductrice.
Panel session: Narratives of the everyday
Chair: Heather Elliott (Institute of Education, UK)
This panel explores how the everyday is narrated and understood in different ways. The study of the
everyday is recognised as central to the understanding of identities, agency and social life. However,
often attempts to research the mundane fail to capture its complexity because the everyday is not
attended to and is invisible, while simultaneously being about what seem like other, larger issues. Thus
the everyday frequently seems intangible. Yet people's stories are saturated with ordinary episodes that
together construct individual and collective lives, politics and identities and practices. In turn these
everyday episodes are microcosms of social relationships, power relations, personal and social histories
as well as situated in place and time. How such stories are crafted offers insight into toutine practices
that constitute much of the everyday. They suggest difficulties of apprehending everyday processes
marked by emotion as they are lived and of transforming painful life events into stories of the habitual,
thereby making them safe. The three papers offer different entry points to narratives of the
everyday.Sandino's paper engages with the routinisation of habitual practices by focusing on talk about
some of the most taken-for-granted household routines. By interrogating the interface between
chronicle and narrative, Sandino engages with the complexity of theorising and analysing the everyday
in narratives. Brannen's and Elliott's paper, addresses the intersection between the individual/agent and
social structures within the habitual, ‘quotidian practices’ related to family lives, in particular
fatherhood. Riessman's paper shows how difficult tasks and emotions can be engaged with in a reflexive
process that serves to rework them as possible and part of the everyday, rather than perplexing. She
describes working towards a balance between accountability to audiences and excessive introspection,
as a commitment to undertaking ‘research from somewhere’.
The chronicle: An everyday narrative form?
Linda Sandino (University of Arts London, UK)
Presenting Author: Linda Sandino
Can a chronicle function as narrative of the everyday, as an ‘everyday narrative’ form? The
historiographer Hayden White has argued that chronicles are not of themselves narratives but rather
await the historian to emplot the events and actions they register into a meaningful [hi]story. To
emphasise his point, he asserted that journalism, despite its details and informative reporting, ‘‘remains
locked within the confines of the purview of the ‘chronicle’’ lacking retrospective reflection: the ‘aura of
historicality’ (White1987). In Paul Ricoeur’s tripartite conception of narrative mimesis, he also
foregrounds the significance of configuration in the creation and constitution of
narratives. Nevertheless, for Ricoeur the chronicle functioned as a ‘proto-narrative’, a ‘symbolic mode
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in which human experience of ‘within-time-ness’ achieves expression in discourse (Ricoeur, 1988). This
paper will explore the chronicle and its related expressions the timetable and the calendar. It will
propose these as forms that not only document the everyday, but have the capacity to project an ‘aura
of historicality’ and narrative reconfiguration that engenders social connectedness across and within
time making distinct the meaning of the ‘everyday’.
Building "liveable lives": The everyday as achievement in migration stories
Julia Brannen, Heather Elliott (Insitute of Education, UK)
Presenting Author: Heather Elliott
This paper considers how the experience of migration in early life reverberates through the life course,
through an analysis of narratives of men who came to Britain from the Caribbean and from Ireland in
the middle of the twentieth century. We draw on data from Transforming Experiences, a psychosocial
study of adults looking back on their ‘non-normative’ childhoods, and Fatherhood over the Generations,
an intergenerational, sociological study. Analysing these two studies alongside one other enables us to
consider how the distinctive and complicated colonial relationships between each nation and the UK can
be read in mens’ narratives about building everyday lives. This includes talk (and silences) around
dealing with everyday racisms and of managing the apparently ordinary tasks of finding homes and
raising families, which are often narrated as considerable achievements. In the words of one of our
informants “When I asked my boss if you put yourself in my place ... would you think you’d survive to
raise a family, buy houses and, you know, live a life? He said, no way he could he do it ... No way could
he do it you know. And I said that’s what I done.” Some accounts were given smoothly and treated as if
crafting lives in the habitual is taken-for-grantedly ordinary, but at times this talk ruptured revealing the
effortfulness in the attempts to make the extraordinary routine. In other accounts, the everyday is
lived as heightened horror and some of the pain of it is that an ordinary ‘liveable life’ cannot be taken
for granted.
Reflexivity and the everyday practice of narrative research
Cathy Kohler Riessmann (Boston University, USA)
Presenting Author: Cathy Kohler Reissmann
When asked to contribute a chapter on reflexivity to a narrative research collection, I was thrust into a
dilemma. Not knowing the literature and not thinking of my own research in this way, how could I? Like
other investigators critical of “the view from nowhere” (Nagel1986), I needed to find a way to include
myself responsibly in the written product but not have the paper be “all about me.” I summarize the
path I found, for it is akin to the struggles we all go through in our everyday lives as narrative
researchers. Entering a hall of mirrors, we are invariably implicated in studies of the lives of others, and
their responses to what we have produced. The presentation begins with some basic questions: what
does ‘reflexivity’ mean in social research? Where did the concept come from and who are the central
figures in the social sciences writing about and practicing reflexivity? Is there a continuum with
“weaker” and “stronger” versions? Has my narrative work over the years reflected the continuum? For
the individual investigator reflexivity can involve revisiting one’s past work and turning it into the object
of inquiry—a path many have followed, including me. Inevitably in these cases, personal narrative and
reflexivity are joined. Over the last several decades scholars have modelled reflexivity in narrative work
in a variety of ways, either by elaborating a single component fully---producer, process, or product-- or
by braiding them together throughout a study in their thinking and writing so that the “the audience
assumes the producer, process, and product are a coherent whole” (Myerhoff and Ruby 1982:6). By
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invoking the language “audience” here, the anthropologists bring home the essential point: the need to
account for ourselves in our research performances.
Paper session: Storying social practices (II)
Moderator: Tuija Hovi
The narrative process or processed narratives: The intersection of scientific language, economic class,
and treatment
David Michael Goodman, Samuel Gable, Adeline Dettor, Katie Lynn Howe (Lesley University / Harvard
Medical School, USA)
Presenting Author: David Michael Goodman, Katie Lynn Howe
The relationship between narrative and scientific discourse is complex and multi-faceted, particularly
when considering dimensions related to economic class. In this research, the authors draw a comparison
between the availability and consumption of processed foods within under-resourced segments of
society and the “processed” forms of psychological treatment, narratives, and “technologies of self”
often distributed in lower income contexts. The presence of “food deserts” is a well-documented
phenomenon in low-income neighborhoods within the United States (Kwate, 2008); contexts wherein
processed foods—meals high in calories and low in nutritional content (often associated with a variety
of serious medical conditions)—are the prevailing options available to the surrounding population
wherein economic and political opportunities are scarce. Processed food becomes a part of family
recipes and individual preferences. This is, in part, how economic and social class divisions, habitus, and
narratives are transmitted and maintained (Bourdieu, 1984). In this presentation, the authors draw a
significant parallel between the phenomenon of food deserts and a type of psychological treatment
desert that exists in economically impoverished neighborhoods. It is argued that the diverse narrative
possibilities represented in a variety of psychotherapeutic theories and interventions are frequently
narrowed into more circumscribed treatment options in low-income contexts. As such, narrative
possibilities for one’s sense of self, one’s experience of suffering, and one’s understanding of healing are
pre-decided and diminished. Processed narratives—ready-made templates for experience and
identity—become a part of how language and story are produced in these contexts. In the concluding
portion, we explore some of the dangers around how the use of scientific validation language (e.g.,
“evidence-based practice”) can work to reinforce, reflect, and cloak this disparity in narrative potential.
Knowing to know entrepreneurship: The uses of narratives and narrative genre in the stabilization of
different forms of entrepreneurial activity in current neoliberal Chilean society
Oriana Bernasconi (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)
Presenting Author: Oriana Bernasconi
Following Foucault’s wake, a series of governmentality studies have approached the enterprise form as
a regime of governance, offering a general mode of life and encompassing subjectivity itself. In Chile,
entrepreneurship activity was ideologically conceived during the 80s, initially implemented through
public programmes in the 90s and since then reinforced and expanded systematically during the past
two decades. Today entrepreneurship is the key economic modality for the enhancement of
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productivity and innovation, and also a main strategy for poverty reduction. Drawing in a year of multi
sited ethnographic fieldwork around different entrepreneurial projects in Santiago de Chile - from high
tech start-ups under incubation to social programmes tackling poverty and unemployment-, this paper
explores the entrepreneurial narratives been currently disseminated in this society. Following the
network of entities to which the figures of the testimonio, the manifiesto, and the motivational hymn
relates to in concrete entrepreneurial practices, and examining the content, structure and effects they
carry and help to produce, I show how these narratives contribute to the production of three practices
of stabilization of this regime and of the figure of the entrepreneur: i) interessement – the agency
component, ii) identification of the abilities needed for taking hold of this environment –the pragmatic
component, iii) dissemination of justifications for entrepreneurial activity and relatedly, protection
against critiques –the moral component. Thus, in association with other entities and in concrete
situations narratives help to the enactment of entrepreneurship in Chile.
He swallowed the Devil: Narrative strategies for making sense of madness in belief legends
Marie Purola (University of Eastern Finland, Finland)
Presenting Author: Marie Purola
Madness and disabilities have been an enigma to societies. Abnormal behaviour causes uneasiness and
fear of oneself going mad. Whether it is a medical explanation or supranormal one people need
narratives to help them make unusual events understandable. Belief legends are oral narratives that tell
about ordinary people encountering supranormal beings or events. These encounters had consequences
especially if the supranormal being was as potent as the Devil: Insanity could be the result of an
unsuccessful deal with the Devil. Sometimes the Devil revealing itself was enough to cause sane men
jump out of windows. Mental illness and disability were not excluded from every day environment in
the 1900:th century Finland as the mental hospitals were out of reach either because they were too
expensive or they didn’t have enough room for everyone in need. As madness was lurking behind the
façade of seemingly normal families, one had to have an explanation of why someone was different
from birth or why another became insane. The narrative action of belief legends created the explanation
of the origins of eccentric behaviour and passed the knowledge to others. In this presentation I am
explaining the different narrative strategies for making sense of madness in belief legends. I study
folklore archive material that has been collected between 1880 and 1960 from rural Finland and my
theoretical framework is semiotics and linguistic anthropology. My main focus is the Devil as a cause of
abnormalities of any kind. In belief legends insanity and disability could be the consequence of
disobeying social rules of behaviour and hence getting a punishment from the Devil or the Devil could
even sneak its way inside a person causing irrational behaviour. In this context the madness and
disabilities of the past could be avoided, understood and occasionally even cured.
A tale of two cities: Narrative, epidemics, and global citizenship across Boston, MA and Cape Town,
South Africa
Anna Louise Penner, Rajini Srikanth (University of Massachusetts, USA)
Presenting Author: Anna Louise Penner, Rajini Srikanth
This paper argues that narrative is a crucial pedagogical tool in the trans-disciplinary study of global
public health crises. We rely not only on scholarship on narrative theory, empathy, and medical
humanities, but also specifically on our experience teaching a year-long course on International
Epidemics. The course begins with readings in narrative theory, exposing students to theoretical debates
about narrative and giving them a means to analyze how different kinds of scholars and professionals
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come to understand epidemics and craft their responses to health care crises.
We and our students live and work in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States; by the end of our
course, students have spent time in Cape Town (and surrounding townships), South Africa and
interacted with a range of people and groups involved in HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections
healthcare delivery: they meet researchers, doctors, nurses, people living with HIV, TB nurses and
patients, government officials, community activists, lawyers, and artists. Though narrative’s complex
landscape of motivation, character, conflict, and perspective holds no guarantee of producing empathy,
we nonetheless find it a useful mode of engaging students. Through narrative techniques, we bring to
our study of international epidemics strategies for untangling the complex cultural, economic, ethical,
and scientific issues that epidemics engender, helping us foster within our students an ethic of global
citizenship. Our methodology is mixed: we use textual and visual documents, expert testimony, oral
interviews, and field observations to inform ourselves as scholars and educators. Our students learn to
write their own narratives and experiment with points of view and voice; they study the degree of
reliability of actors in the HIV/AIDS and healthcare contexts in South Africa and the United States, and
they learn to read with nuance issues such as agency, conflict, and power.
Paper session: The use of stories for life
Moderator: Jochen Hoock
Cows, zebras and elephants: Animal metaphors for thinking about narrating humans
Jill Bradbury (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Presenting Author: Jill Bradbury
Storytelling is definitive of being human, across all temporal and spatial boundaries. While history and
culture shape both the contents and forms of our narratives, it is because we are storytelling creatures
that history and culture are possible at all. The paper will utilize Vygotskian theory to metaphorically
explore aspects of this human capacity, creating a framework that incorporates both the cognitive and
social dimensions of narrative. First, Vygotskian theory provides an account of the formation of
concepts, arguing that language is the foundational premise not only for creative talk, writing and art,
but also for the development of analytic or scientific thought. The example of the ‘cow’ will show us
how! Second, Vygotsky’s notion of self-regulation is critical to the transmission and transformation of
culture creating ‘social selves’ through this internal narration, in which personhood and social life are
inextricably intertwined. The intergenerational quality of human life is juxtaposed with the repetitive
evolutionary adaptive patterns of the life form of zebras. Finally, focusing on elephants, who ‘never
forget’, enables us to think about the interconnections between individual memory and its recollection
in storytelling, and the collective narratives of cultural memory and history.
Other’s stories in the personal story: The case of the media
Andrea Breen (University of Guelph, Canada), Kate Carter McLean (Western Washington University,
USA), Dan P. McAdams, Dan P. (Northwestern University, USA)
Presenting author: Andrea Breen
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Traditional approaches to narrative identity have primarily examined how individuals story their own
personal experiences to construct a narrative understanding of the self. In this paper we introduce the
term “narrative ecology of the self” to argue that individuals not only story their own personal
experiences to construct a narrative identity, but they also use other stories in the cultural context in
which they are developing to define themselves. These stories can include those of one’s family
members, friends, romantic partners, larger historical narratives or events, as well as stories in the
media. In this paper we draw on three data sets (1) adolescents, (2) young adults, and (3) mid-life adults
to explore how individuals use media stories in the development of self-identity. The adolescent and
young adult samples were interviewed in 2012-2013 using similar interview protocols, which focused on
personally salient media stories (e.g., books, movies, songs), as well as use of social media. The mid-life
adult sample was interviewed in the 1990’s using McAdams’ intensive life story interview protocol,
which included questions about the media. We use case studies to detail similarities and differences in
these samples based on cohort (e.g., samples before and after widespread internet use), as well as age
(emerging adult versus mid-life). Overall findings suggest that media stories are an important
component of the narrative ecology of the self. They are used to identify, communicate and construct
the self; they perform important functions in relation to autobiographical memory, providing
connections to past and present selves; and they contribute to thematic development of the life story.
We conclude by considering both theoretical and methodological implications of our research for future
inquiry.
The use of narratives in gerontological counseling: A narrative therapy approach
Don Redmond (Mercer University, USA)
Narrative Therapy, a postmodern approach to counseling, maintains a focus on subjective truth and
whereby the counselor facilitates the "re-authoring" of stories by the client. Narrative techniques are
particularly useful when working with elder and disabled populations in that mainstream society often
promotes values and images that can discourage, if not oppress. By utilizing personal narratives,
counselors provide a framework and environment that counteracts a client’s subjective disempowering
story to uncover one that is about positive traits such as perseverance. Participants will learn helpful
conversational techniques originally proposed by Michael White – such as ‘re-authoring’ negative
narratives and ‘externalizing’ problems – that provide new avenues for personal narratives. In addition
to the research and writings of White and David Epson, participants will learn about the lifespan
development/psychosocial theory or Erik Erikson. Specific examples will focus on Erikson's final stages of
"generativity versus stagnation" and "integrity versus despair" and ways that a narrative approach can
help clients to more fully develop a sense of generativity and integrity when considering the past and
the future.
Paper session: Narrative inquiring
Moderator: Christin Kober
Places of practice: Learning to think narratively
Janice Huber (University of Regina, Canada), Jean Clandinin, (University of Alberta, Canada), Vera Caine
(University of Alberta, Canada), Pam Steeves (University of Alberta, Canada), Andrew Estefan (University
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of Calgary, Canada), Shaun Murphy (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Presenting Author: Janice Huber, Jean Clandinin, Vera Caine, Pam Steeves
The knowledge landscapes dominating professional places across Canada attend most closely to
paradigmatic knowledge (Bruner, 1987) rather than narrative knowledge. The focus on goals, outcomes,
and resources inform institutional policies and practices that in turn shape knowledge landscapes. As
researchers living on these knowledge landscapes, it is difficult to learn to think narratively, that is, to
think about lives within the temporal, personal, social, and place dimensions that shape narrative
thinking and narrative knowing (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). It is difficult to sustain ourselves as
narrative inquirers amidst knowledge landscapes that cast narrative inquirers as not knowing, as less
than, when seen from within dominant knowledge landscapes. It is also difficult to teach others to learn
to think narratively in sustained and sustaining ways. It is here that we wonder, might a counterstory
(Lindemann Nelson, 1995) be imagined and lived out? Creating spaces for learning to think narratively,
to engage in narrative inquiry, and to experience narrative inquiry as pedagogy are challenges taken up
at the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta, Canada.
This space, particularly the weekly Research Issues Table meeting, is a space created over more than 20
years ago and is marked by protocols that shape responses that encourage inquiry into the research and
practice stories of people from multiple disciplines. Practices that honour the relational ontological
commitments of narrative inquiry are lived out at the Research Issues Table. In this paper we take up
questions of practice and sites of practice for engaging in living, and sustaining narrative inquiry,
narrative pedagogy, and narrative ways of thinking.
Asserting silenced stories and knowledge through narrative performance
Briege Casey (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Presenting Author: Briege Casey
This paper is concerned with how unquestioned meta-narratives can serve to dominate the production
of knowledge within a mental healthcare education context. Referring to relevant literature in this
regard and using a case study to explore this phenomenon, the paper will posit that contrary or
alternative knowledge and understandings held by individual students often become suppressed and
unvoiced in these contexts. The paper will argue that the mismatch between the dominant pedagogical
narrative and students individual experiences and knowledge can result in uncertainty and frustration
among students. In addition; opportunities for multi-dimensional learning and sharing of pluralistic
knowledge are lost. The paper will present a classroom scenario from the writer’s experience wherein
some of this silenced knowledge was articulated and shared through a narrative performance. The
effects of this performance on influencing /disrupting the power, status and nature of ‘accepted’
knowledge in the class will be explored and a discussion will follow as to the capacities of narrative
performance to give voice to silenced stories and knowledge
Narrative constructions of social psychological reality in introductory textbooks
Jeffery Yen (University of Guelph, Canada)
Presenting Author: Jeffery Yen
Sociological and historical analyses of scientific narratives have shown how these have functioned in the
performance of “boundary work”, the rhetorical demarcation of scientific activity and knowledge from
competing forms of knowledge and practice. The discipline of psychology, in general, and social
psychology, in particular, have had—because of their reflexive nature—to perform a particularly
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delicate kind of narrative and rhetorical work from which other natural and social sciences appear to be
exempt. This paper demonstrates the utility of narrative analysis of introductory textbooks for critical
reflection on such boundary work, and more broadly, on the nature and practice of psychological
science. Focusing on the genre of introductory social psychology textbooks, it examines the role of
anecdotal or journalistic narratives (typically of shocking or counterintuitive events) used to introduce or
illustrate social psychological topics in performing three rhetorical or discursive functions: (i)
simultaneously establishing the real-world significance of social psychological research for lay or student
readers, while (ii) distancing social psychological explanations from lay or non-scientific explanations for
events, and (iii) "hailing" or interpellating readers into the subjective reality of social psychological
theories and explanations. In doing so, the paper addresses the role of “origin myths” as well as the
“aesthetic” dimensions of textbook writing in fulfilling the contradictory aims of both popularizing and
disciplining the boundaries of social psychological science.
Expanding analytical approaches: Using contemplative practices in narrative inquiry
Anne Bruce (University of Victoria, Canada), Laurene Sheilds (University of Victoria, Canada), Molzahn
Anita (University of Alberta, Canada), Kara Schick-Makaroff (University of Alberta, Canada)
Presenting Author: Anne Bruce, Laurene Sheilds
In nursing research, narrative inquiry resembles the oral tradition of eliciting and listening to stories of
health and illness. However unlike the tradition of storytelling, narrative researchers have shifted away
from listening to the nuances inherent storytelling, to primarily reading transcribed, text-based
representations of narratives. When analysis is limited to cognitive engagement with transcripts, the
textures and tones of participant stories are often lost or invisible. In this paper we examine the takenfor-granted privileging of transcribed text in narrative nursing research and the epistemology that
underpins this focus. In contrast, we will present alternative and expanded analytic strategies for
engaging with audio-taped and transcribed participant narratives. Using contemplative and mindfulness
approaches we will outline ways of listening to and analyzing qualitative data. Contemplation and
mindfulness are ways of knowing that complement rational and sensory knowing. Drawing on a recent
narrative inquiry of ‘Storying and Restor(y)ing Life with Serious illness’, we will examine three
approaches of: listening for, listening to, and listening into narratives of serious illness using
contemplative approaches to narrative inquiry.
Paper session: Narrative configuration and forms of experience
Moderator: Margaret Barrett
Articuler le récit à l’expérience pour repenser les fonctions anthropologiques des représentations
narratives
Raphaël Baroni (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Presenting Author: Raphaël Baroni
De nombreux chercheurs ont insisté sur la différence entre les formes narratives et l’expérience directe
des histoires nous arrivent. Parmi les arguments "séparatistes" certains soulignent que 1. l’unité formée
par la séquence narrative 2. le caractère dramatique de l’histoire et 3. la nature rétrospective des récits,
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seraient incompatibles avec l’expérience du réel. A l’inverse, d’autres soutiennent que le récit pourrait
être la forme même de l’expérience. Nous tenterons de réfuter les arguments habituellement avancés
par les séparatistes, tout en proposant de nouveaux critères de différenciation entre les formes
narratives les plus courantes (fictions, récits conversationnels, journalistiques ou historiographiques) et
l’expérience directe. Parmi ces critères, nous insisterons sur les dispositifs qui exploitent les jeux entre
séquence représentationnelle et séquence racontée (dont dépendent analepses, prolepses, pauses,
ellipses, etc.), plus aptes à définir la différence entre "récit" (en tant que forme de re-présentation) et
"expérience directe". Parmi les formes narratives, il existe deux postures représentationnelles opposées
: 1. Les représentations intrigantes visent à reproduire, par le biais d’une simulation impliquant une
immersion dans l’histoire, le caractère inachevé des événements qui échappent à notre contrôle ; 2. Les
représentations configurantes visent à colmater les brèches ouvertes par les événements en les insérant
dans des cadres interprétatifs (causalité, stéréotypie, généralisation, classification idéologique, etc.). Il
ne s’agit que de pôles opposés ouvrant la possibilité d’une mixité des postures au sein de genres
historiquement et culturellement déterminés. Un extrait de L’homme sans qualités de Musil servira de
fil rouge à l’argumentation.
Everyday knowledge in understanding fictional characters and their worlds
Kai Henrik Mikkonen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Presenting Author: Kai Henrik Mikkonen
The question of how readers use general everyday knowledge in reading fictional narratives has been
the subject of a lively debate in literary and narrative theory in the recent decade. Among some of the
more popular approaches to this question include theories of the implied author and implied reader,
founded on the idea of a relevant historical context of a narrative’s production and reception, or
cognitive studies of image schemata based on our everyday language and conceptual systems. By
contrast, the principle of minimal departure, developed in the possible world’s theory, emphasizes the
question of textual gaps and holds that whatever in narrative fiction is not explained as being different
from the reader’s actual world is similar to that actual world. Recently, in their Mind, brain and narrative
(2012) Catherine Emmott and Anthony J. Sanford investigate the psychological mechanisms, drawing on
neuroscientific evidence, that support narrative processing and inferences about a particular context,
and also relate their findings to the principle of minimal departure. The paper seeks to demonstrate
how the relevance of ‘everyday knowledge’ is defined in the theory of minimal departure and,
furthermore, how the issue of necessary inference in narrative processing, which Emmott and Sanford
seek to determine, can or cannot be related to this definition of relevance (of everyday knowledge). The
specific focus will be on the question what makes some gap of information relevant in the evaluation of
the reality or unreality of a fictional character and his or her world. A seminal part of the paper will be a
critical examination of the use of examples of fiction both in Marie-Laure Ryan’s theory of the minimal
departure and Emmott and Sanford’s psychologically based theory of inference.
Récits de vie et négativité narrative : La problématique de l’épreuve dans les formes de mimèsis
Jean- Michel Baudouin (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Presenting author: Jean-Michel Baudouin
Nos recherches nous conduisent à travailler sur des récits de vie, rédigés dans le cadre de séminaires de
formation. La préoccupation critique à l’origine de cette proposition de communication est de montrer
l’impact sélectif du genre de texte (ici le récit de vie) sur les matériaux biographiques portés à notre
connaissance. L’hypothèse générale de travail est que le fonctionnement du récit privilégie ce qui peut
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entrer dans un processus de dramatisation. Formulé d’une manière plus technique, il s’agit d’examiner
en quoi les formes de mimèsis, en particulier les représentations de l’action des protagonistes
(Baudouin, 2010), sont surdéterminées par le processus de mise en intrigue (Ricœur, 1984), en relation
avec un genre de texte spécifique (Rastier, 2001). Les régimes de l’épreuve propres au schéma narratif
organisant la mise en intrigue conduisent à une figuration agoniste des dimensions référentielles. La «
positivité » du projet épistémologique, produire des connaissances, est confrontée paradoxalement à la
« négativité » du récit, qui marche à l’épreuve. Le cadre institutionnel et empirique de ces travaux est le
suivant. Il existe depuis quelques trente ans à l’Université de Genève, dans le cadre d’un cursus en
sciences de l'éducation, un séminaire optionnel de recherche intitulé « Histoires de vie et processus de
formation des adultes » (Le Grand & Pineau, 2013), où des étudiants, âgés de 23 à 50 ans, font leurs
récits de vie sur la base du questionnement général suivant : repérer les dimensions formatives
principales de sa propre histoire. Quelques 600 récits ont été ainsi produits durant ces 30 dernières
années (Baudouin, 2009). En s’appuyant sur de nombreux extraits du corpus de travail, la
communication présentera en particulier une typologie des épreuves dans la configuration narrative
propre au récit de vie et les formes de figuration biographique qui en résulte.
Paper session: Le narrateur et le point de vue
Moderator: Marion Renauld
Les défis de la connaissance narrative empathique
Alain Rabatel (Université de Lyon 1, France)
Presenting Author: Alain Rabatel
Il est difficile de déterminer les relations entre récit et savoir en faisant abstraction des genres ou en
partant d’une conception abstraite du savoir et de la vérité. Je circonscris ma réflexion à un mode
d’écriture narrative, l’écriture empathique, dans laquelle le narrateur raconte selon le point de vue des
personnages (focalisation interne), rendant la voix auctoriale discrète et opaque. À rebours de la thèse
selon laquelle la narration empathique saperait radicalement toute prétention à la vérité, on opposera
la possibilité que ces récits fassent émerger d’autres modes d’élaboration des connaissances. Car la
confrontation de points de vue partiels permet de penser le complexe. Plutôt que d’ancrer la notion de
restriction de champ dans des conceptions ontologiques ou phénoménologiques discutables, figées, on
mettra en avant une conception du savoir des personnages dynamique, évoluant à travers l’espace, le
temps, les cadres de pensée. Les parcours et agencements pour construire des vérités historicisées
importent alors plus que les vérités sectorielles définitives. Si toute vérité est toujours rapportée aux
sujets et à leur histoire, quelle place pour des vérités ‘objectives’ ? Là aussi, certains récits permettent
de penser l’objectivation de savoirs passionnels et rationnels partageables, relatifs, cette relativité
n’ayant rien à voir avec un relativisme absolu. Une analyse pragma-énonciative permet une
interprétation de la polyphonie et de l’altérité qui révèle la contribution de ces récits à une réflexion sur
un mode de connaissance basé sur la capacité à articuler des points de vue en confrontation, en jouant
sur la proximité et la distanciation que permet la mobilité empathique. Evidemment, cette posture
interprétative s’appuie sur la capacité du narrateur à empathiser au plus près des personnages en se
défiant de la fusion (sympathie), a fortiori de la confusion.
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Le récit aberrant comme moyen de connaissance
Mervi Helkkula (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Presenting Author: Mervi Helkkula
Dans cette communication, je propose d’examiner les modes dont un récit peut constituer un obstacle à
la connaissance et en même temps, paradoxalement, nous donner de l’information sur le monde. Cette
façon d’enrichir notre connaissance est propre à la littérature : le savoir que nous transmet une œuvre
littéraire nous arrive non d’une manière directe mais par une voie biaisée et toujours à travers un travail
interprétatif de notre part. Mes observations portent sur deux ouvrages narratifs contemporains : la
nouvelle Tous mes amis de Marie NDiaye (Minuit 2004) et le roman Asiles de fous de Régis Jauffret
(Gallimard 2005). Chacun des deux récits met en scène un narrateur-locuteur fictionnel dont le discours
aberrant, de caractère très subjectif, obscurcit le réel du monde raconté. La tâche du lecteur est de
reconstruire le véritable état de choses, ce qu’il arrive à faire surtout en s’appuyant sur les
contradictions internes du discours du narrateur-locuteur. C’est le seul moyen dans le cas de la nouvelle
de NDiaye, où l’histoire est transmise par un unique narrateur, mais important aussi dans le roman de
Jauffret, qui présente cependant plus d’un narrateur, assurant ainsi plusieurs points de vue sur les
événements racontés. Le propre de ces deux récits est de représenter, par les aberrations même du
discours des locuteurs, les rapports de pouvoir et leurs perversions dans les relations interindividuelles.
Les champs d’activité de la société pris en examen par les deux ouvrages sont notamment la vie
familiale et le milieu scolaire. La vision critique que transmettent les deux récits des abus de pouvoir à
l’intérieur de ces institutions est sombre est impitoyable. L’étude d’extraits des discours des deux
locuteurs fictionnels a pour but de donner une idée des moyens narratifs utilisés par les deux auteurs en
vue de la transmission de leur vision.
Transformations formelles du récit biblique dans Bethsabé d'André Gide
Anne Susanna Riippa (University of Helsinki, Finland
Presenting Author: Anne Susanna Riippa
Bethsabé (1908) d’André Gide est un monologue dramatique qui reprend le récit célèbre de l’union
illégitime de David et de Bethsabé. Ce fameux épisode de la Bible se trouve dans le deuxième livre de
Samuel. Nous analyserons les modifications qui sont liées aux types de narration de ces deux récits. À la
narration biblique des livres historiques, s’oppose le type de narration choisi par Gide. Que dire du
mode de narration de ce dernier ? L’auteur a choisi de soumettre son art d’écrire, c’est-à-dire son envie
de tout dire, aux règles les plus strictes du bien-dire classique. Pour montrer la différence entre la
narration biblique et la narration gidienne, nous nous appuyons sur le fameux article d’Erich Auerbach
intitulé "La cicatrice d’Ulysse" dans son ouvrage Mimésis. Nous tentons de montrer que le récit de la
faute de David illustre un des modes de narration par excellence de l’Ancien Testament et que le récit
de Gide a des caractéristiques qui le rapprochent de la narration classique, donc de celle d’Homère telle
qu’elle est définie dans l’article d’Auerbach. L’analyse détaillée d’Auerbach montre qu’Homère présente
les événements de manière explicite afin que tout soit visible et clair pour le lecteur. Cela concerne
également la vie intérieure des protagonistes : là non plus rien ne doit demeurer secret et inexprimé.
Tout cela est valable aussi pour la narration gidienne. Bethsabé est une réflexion sur soi prêtée à un
personnage biblique. C’est une transposition essentielle, car ce qui se passe dans la Bible est différent.
Le narrateur biblique raconte les événements au fur et à mesure qu’ils arrivent sur un ton neutre qui ne
met nullement en avant le côté affectif des événements. Les événements y sont racontés d’un point de
vue externe. Quant à l’identité de l’hypotexte biblique, notre communication met en évidence que le
récit biblique de la faute de David ne constitue pas un texte « clos » mais qu’il reste ouvert aux
interprétations.
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Récit et savoir dans le roman khatibien : L’exemple de La Mémoire tatouée
Jamil Chaker (University of Tunis, Tunisia)
Presenting Author: Jamil Chaker
La question de la relation entre le récit et le savoir se pose d’une manière cruciale dans le roman de
Khatibi. L’auteur marocain de langue française a écrit à la fois des essais et des œuvres littéraires. Notre
approche consistera à rendre compte de ce double processus dans l’écriture de Abdelkébir Khatibi : - A/
On s’interrogera sur l’aptitude des savoirs (essentiellement sociologique et psychanalytique) à informer
des récits. On relève l’effet de discontinuité entre la matière narrative et le discours chargé de
connaissances, ayant une forte tendance à l’ « essai ». Le paradoxe et l’intérêt de Khatibi est que le
savoir dont il dispose en amont du récit n’informe pas le récit d’une manière « omnisciente » et linéaire,
mais conduit plutôt à traiter la matière narrative sur le mode de la déconstruction. La matière narrative
est filtrée par le point de vue de la focalisation interne, celle d’un narrateur-protagoniste incapable
d’hégémonie, en dépit du savoir dont il dispose. - B/ Comment le processus de production textuelle et
narrative permet-il de produire de la connaissance ? Nous verrons que Khatibi, grâce au mécanisme
dialogique et à la structure discontinue du récit, produit de nouvelles connaissances. L’idéal qui se lit en
filigrane de l’écriture khatibienne est en rapport avec une pensée essentiellement dialogique, au sens
khatibien du terme.
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INDEX
Index
Adams, Heather - Ball State University, USA: 3.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor), 5.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Albano, Marieangela - University of Burgundy, Italy: 7.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
Alle, Melissa - INSERM, France: 10.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Alma, Hans - University of Humanistic Studies, Belgium: 5.3 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m
(Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Almeida, Diana - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 2.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor)
Andersson, Greger Göran - Örebro Universitet, Sweden: 8.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room:
682 / 6th Floor) ; Moderator : 9.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Andrews, Molly - University of East London, UK: Friday, June 27th, 2 p.m to 3:15 p.m (Amphi 1A)
Arac-Orhun, Duygu Secil -Adelphi University, USA: Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor)
Archimede, Maeva – University of Laval, Canada: 2.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Armaselu, Florentina - CVCE, Luxembourg: 10.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Arwas, Esther - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel: 7.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
Ashby, Jo Louise - Manchester Metropolitan University, UK: Moderator: 1.3 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30
a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor) ; 5.1 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Averis, Kate - University of London Institute in Paris, France: Moderator: 5.6 – Wednesday, June 25th,
2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor) ; 6.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Bacholle-Boskovic, Michele - Eastern Connecticut State University, Canada: 1.1 – Tuesday, June 24th,
10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Baldwin, Clive – University of St. Thomas, Canada: 5.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor); 6.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Baliko, Krista Sarah - University of Regina, Canada: 2.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th
Floor)
170 | P a g e
Bamberg, Michael - Clark University, USA: Workshop leader Monday, June 23th, 2:00 p.m (Room 681,
6th Floor)
Baroni, Raphaël – University of Lausanne, Switzerland: 11.7 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Barrett, Margaret - The University of Queensland, Australia: 9.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room:
679 / 6th Floor); Moderator: 11.7 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Baudouin, Jean-Michel - University of Geneva, Switzerland: Moderator: 10.6 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00
p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor); 11.7 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Beatty, John - University of British Columbia, Canada: 3.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room:
682 / 6th Floor)
Berk-Seligson, Susan S. - Vanderbilt University, USA: 2.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Bernasconi, Oriana - University Alberto Hurtado, Chile: 5.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room:
791 / 7th Floor); 11.4 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Berning, Nora - International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Germany: 10.5 – Thursday, June
26th at 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Bernini, Marco - Durham University, UK: 11.1 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Blachere, Camille - Université Paris Diderot, France: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor)
Bostic, Heidi - Baylor University, USA: 3.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Bourdier, Juliette - Whitman College, USA: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Bouveresse, Jacques - Collège de France, France: Tuesday, June 24th, 3:15 p.m to 4:30 p.m (Amphi 1A)
Boyd, Alexis J. - Howard University, USA: 3.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Bradbury, Jill - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa: 11.5 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room:
678 / 6th Floor)
Brännlund, Emma Charlotte - National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland: 10.1 – Thursday, June 26th,
4:00 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Breen, Andrea V. - University of Guelph, Canada: 10.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor); 11.5 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room 678 / 6th Floor)
Brockmeier, Jens - University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris, France:
Moderator: 1.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor); 4.1 – Wednesday, June 25th,
11:15 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor); 8.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
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Brown, Catrina - Dalhousie University, Canada: 1.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor); 2.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Bruce, Anne - University of Victoria, Canada: 8.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor); 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Bruguière, Catherine - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France: 7.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
(Room: 789 / 7th Floor); Moderator: 10.4 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Brunel, Magali - Université de Grenoble Joseph Fourrier, France: 4.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m
Bteshe, Mariana - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 7.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
Buffel du Vaure, Céline - Université Paris Descartes, France: 10.4 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
678 / 6th Floor)
Buzukashvili, Tamara - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel: 7.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
Cabral, Maria de Jesus - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 8.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678
/ 6th Floor)
Caine, Vera - University of Alberta, Canada: 9.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor);
11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Caïra, Olivier – EHESS, France: 6.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Calas, Frédéric - Université Blaise Pascal, France: 5.7 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room:
789 / 7th Floor)
Calzati, Stefano - University of Leeds, UK: 10.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Caporale, Marzia - University of Scranton, USA: 7.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor) ; Moderator : 8.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Cardoso, Adelino - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 8.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor)
Carrard, Philippe - Dartmouth College, USA: Worskshop leader Monday, June 23th, 2:00 p.m (Room 681,
6th Floor); Friday, June 27th, 3:30 p.m to 4:45 p.m (Amphi 1A)
Carson , James - Queen's University, Canada: 4.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor)
Carter, Claire - University of Regina, Canada: 2.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Casal, Teresa - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 2.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
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Casey, Briege - Dublin City University, Ireland: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Chabot, Joceline - University of Montcon, Canada: 1.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Chaker, Jamil – University of Tunis, Tunisia: 11.8 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Chantran, Yannick - Université Paris Diderot, France: 4.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 785
/ 7th Floor)
Chassaing, Irène - University of Manitoba, Canada: 1.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Clandinin, Jean - University of Alberta, Canada: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Clément, Thibault - Université Paris IV – Sorbonne, France: 10.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
791 / 7th Floor)
Cohen, Leor - Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel: 1.7 - Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor); Moderator: 2.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Correia, Alda - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 2.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Craven, Marie Louise - York University, Canada: 9.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th
Floor)
Dani, Erzsébet - University of Debrecen, Hungary: 3.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
Davis, Collin - Royal Holloway, University of London, UK: 3.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room:
677 / 6th Floor)
Davis, Mark - Monash University, Australia: 8.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Day, James - Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgique: 10.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
Day, Natalie - University of Western Sydney, Australia: 2.2 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
de Chalonge, Florence - Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille 3, France: 6.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00
p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
de Kreek, Mike - Amsterdam University of Apllied Sciences, Netherlands: 10.5 – Thursday, June 26th,
dela Cruz, Aniela M. - University of Alberta, Canada: Moderator: 7.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
(Room: 785 / 7th Floor); 9.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
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Denzel , Valentina - Michigan State University, USA: 1.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 /
7th Floor)
Dérolez, Séverine – Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m
Desnain, Véronique - University of Edinburgh, UK: 6.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 682 /
6th Floor)
Devevey, Eleonore Anna - ENS - Lyon 2 Lumière, France: 10.6 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
789 / 7th Floor)
Dhavernas, Catherine - Queen's University, Canada: 4.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678
/ 6th Floor)
Dolce, Nicoletta – University of Montreal, Canada: 1.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor); 2.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Duhamel, André – University of Sherbrooke, Canada: 1.5 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Elliott, Mary Heather - Institute of Education, UK: 7.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor) ; 8.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor); 11.3 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m
England, Suzanne - New York University, USA: Moderator: 5.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room:
791 / 7th Floor) ; 6.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Esin, Cigdem - University of East London, UK: 7.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
; Moderator: 9.2 – Thursday, June 26th: 2:15 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor); 10.1 – Thursday, June 26th,
Evans, Dylan Sebastian - University of Nottingham, UK: 7.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Ferguson, Neil - Hope University, UK: 9.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Ferrer, Carolina – University of Québec, Canada: 6.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th
Floor)
Figueras, Carolina - University of Barcelona, Spain: 3.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Flexer, Michael - University of Leeds, UK: 5.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Flum, Hanoch - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel: 7.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
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Francis, Cecilia – University of St. Thomas, Canada: 5.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
Freeman, Mark - College of the Holy Cross, USA: Worskshop leader Monday, June 23th, 2:00 p.m (Room
681, 6th Floor); 4.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Frey, Lynette - Victoria University, Australia: 2.2 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Frie, Roger - Simon Fraser University, Canada: 4.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Fülöp, Erika - University of Hamburg, Germany: Moderator: 5.7 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15
p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor) ; 6.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Furci, Guido - Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle, France: 6.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m
Furlong, Dolores - University of New Brunswick, Canada: 6.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
677 / 6th Floor)
Galam, Eric - Université Paris Diderot, France: 10.4 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor) ; Moderator: 11.2 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra - King's College London, UK: Workshop leader Monday, June 23th 2014,
9:30 a.m (Room 677, 6th Floor)
Gliserman, Martin Joel - Rutgers University, USA: Moderator: 7.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room:
678 / 6th Floor) ; 9.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Goad, Rhiannon - University of Texas, USA: 6.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Goliot-Lété, Anne - Université Paris Diderot, France: Moderator: 8.7 – Thursday, June 26th at 11:45 a.m
(Room: 789 / 7th Floor); 9.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:45 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor) & Moderator
Goodman, David Michael - Lesley University, USA: 6.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor); 11.4 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Grishakova, Marina - University of Tartu, Estonia: 4.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor) ; Moderator : 5.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Guétemme, Geneviève - ESPE Centre Val de Loire, France: 6.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
682 / 6th Floor)
Gueullette, Jean-Marie - Université Catholique de Lyon, France: 4.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m
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Gurley-Green, Sarah - Lesley University, USA: 1.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor)
Habermas, Tillmann - Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany: 8.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m
(Room: 681 / 6th Floor) ; 9.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor); 10.2 – Thursday,
June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Haddad, Hubert, France: Workshop leader Monday, June 23th, 2:00 p.m (Room 789, 7th Floor)
Harpaz, Ruth - Academic Galilee College, Israel: 4.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Heavey, Emily - York St John University, UK: 7.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Helkkula, Mervi – University of Helsinki, Finland: 11.8 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor)
Heller, Caroline - Lesley University, USA: 1.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Heraud, Jean-Loup – Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m
Hirst, William C. - New School, USA: 9.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Hoock, Jochen - Université Paris Diderot, France: 5.7 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room:
789 / 7th Floor) ; Moderator : 6.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor) ; Moderator
: 11.5 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Horrocks, Christine - Manchester Metropolitan University, UK: 5.1 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15
Hovi, Tuija - Åbo Akademi University, Finland: 10.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th
Floor); Moderator: 11.4 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Howe, Kathie Lynn - Lesley University, USA: 6.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Huber, Janice - University of Regina, Canada: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Hurwitz, Brian Simon - King's College London, UK: 3.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 682 /
6th Floor)
Hydén, Lars-Christer - Linköping University, Sweden: 8.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
Hydén, Margareta - Linköping University, Sweden: 5.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 791 /
7th Floor) ; Moderator : 6.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
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Hyvärinen, Matti - University of Tampere, Finland: 7.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor) ; Moderator : 8.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Inch, Robert - University of Toronto, Canada: 9.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Jesus, Paulo R. - Faculdade de Letras, CF-U. Lisboa, Portugal: Moderator: 7.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30
a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor); 10.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Josselson, Ruthellen - Fielding Graduate University, USA: Workshop leader Monday, June 23th, 9:00 a.m
(Room 785, 7th Floor)
Julien, Anne-Yvonne - Université de Poitiers, France: 6.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 682 /
6th Floor)
Juntrasook, Adisorn - Mahidol University, Thailand: 4.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Kacandes, Irene - Dartmouth College, USA: 8.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Kähkönen, Lottamari - University of Turku, Finland: 1.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor)
Kaptein, Ad A. - LUMC, Netherlands: 4.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Kawashima, Robert - University of Florida, USA: 8.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor)
Keren, Michael - University of Calgary, Canada: 11.1 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Kiil, Mona Anita - University of Tromso - The Arctic University, Norway: 8.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15
a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Kingwell, Mark Gerald - University of Toronto, Canada: 2.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
Köber, Christin - Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany: Moderator: 4.6 –Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15
a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor); 9.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor); 10.2 –
Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor); Moderator: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m
Kokanovic, Renata - Monash University, Australia: 7.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Kovacic, Tanja - Child and Family Research Centre, Galway, Ireland: 10.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m
Kurschner, Manja - Kiel University, Germany: 7.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
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Kusnierz, Mathias - Université Paris Diderot, France: 8.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:45 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Lachuk, Amy Johnson - Hunter College, USA: 3.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor) ; Moderator: 4.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Lae, Jean-François - Université Paris 8, France: 3.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th
Floor)
Lafrance, Michelle - University of St. Thomas, Canada: 5.1 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m
Langevin, Francis - University of Toronto, Canada: Moderator: 7.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
(Room: 791 / 7th Floor) ; 9.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Lanser , Susan S. - Brandeis University, USA: 5.7 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Lautesse, Phlippe - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m
(Room: 791 / 7th Floor), Moderator 6.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Lavocat, Françoise - Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France: 3.7 – Wednesday, June 25th,
09:30 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Ledent, David - Université de Liège, Belgique: 10.6 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th
Floor)
Leibovici, Martine - Université Paris Diderot, France: 6.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
Lepastier, Samuel - Université Paris Diderot, France: 11.2 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Lerner-Sei, Sophie - Université Paris Diderot, France: 9.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:45 p.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
Lieblich, Amia - Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel: Workshop leader Monday, June 23th, 9:00 a.m
(Room 785, 7th Floor)
Litvak Hirsch, Tal - Ben Gurion University of the Negev – Eilat Campus, Israel: 1.2 – Tuesday, June 24th,
10:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Louis, Annick - Université de Reims, France: 1.5 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor) ;
Moderator: 6.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Lounasmaa, Aura - National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland: 10.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m
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Lutas, Liviu - Linnaeus University, Sweden: 6.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Lux, Elaine - Nyack College, USA: 3.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Luz, Nimrod - The Western Galilee College, Israel: 6.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
Lwin, Soe Marlar - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore: 8.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m
(Room: 785 / 7th Floor) ; Moderator: 9.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
MacDubhghaill, Ronan Luke - CEAQ Sorbonne, France: 4.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room:
678 / 6th Floor)
Madec, Annick - Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France: 3.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m
Magnante, Chiara - University of Bologna, Italy: 6.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor)
Mainguy, Barbara - Coyote Institute, USA: 1.2 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor);
2.3 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Mak, Ariane – EHESS, France: 5.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Martin, Brice - Centre Hospitalier Le Vinatier, France: 10.4 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Martinez, M. Angeles - Complutense University of Madrid, Spain: 7.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
Mason, Jean Schiller - Ryerson University, Canada: 2.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th
Floor)
Mauffrey, Nathalie - Université Paris Diderot, France: 9.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:45 p.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
Mc Tighe, John Patrick - Sacred Heart University, USA: 8.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
McCulloch, Scott – Independent researcher, Australia: 2.2 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
McKenna, Martha - Lesley University, USA: Moderator: 3.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room:
791 / 7th Floor) ; 4.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
McKim , Elizabeth – University of St. Thomas, Canada: 6.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 677
/ 6th Floor)
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McPherson, Eve Anne - Kent State University, USA: 8.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 682 /
6th Floor)
McPherson, Sandra - The Fielding Graduate University, USA: 8.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m
Medved, Maria Inge – University of Manitoba, Canada / The American University of Paris, France:
Moderator: 4.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor) ; 8.2 – Thursday, June 26th,
11:15 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Mehl-Madrona, Lewis Eugene - Coyote Institute, USA: 1.2 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor); 2.3 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Mellor, Catherine - Lesley University, USA: 9.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Meretoja, Hanna - University of Tampere, Finland: 3.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 677 /
6th Floor) ; Moderator: 6.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Meksin, Robert - New School, USA: 9.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Mikkonen, Kai Henrik - University of Helsinki, Finland: 11.7 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Montes, Stefano – University of Palerma, Italy: 7.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Montoya, Nathalie - Université Paris Diderot, France: 1.9 – Tuesday, June 24th, 11:00 a.m (Room: 793 /
7th Floor)
Moraldo, Delphine - Centre Max Weber – Lyon, France: 10.6 –Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 789
/ 7th Floor)
Morgan, Mary S. - London School of Economics, UK: 3.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 682
/ 6th Floor)
Morioka, Masayoshi - Kobe University, Japan: 8.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th
Floor) ; Moderator: 9.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Mueller, Ralph – University of Fribourg, Switzerland: 3.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 789
/ 7th Floor)
Murard, Numa - Université Paris Diderot, France: 3.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
Murphy, Shaun – University of Saskatchewan, Canada: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
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Murray, Michael - Keele University, UK: 4.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor) ;
5.1 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Musat, Carmen - University of Bucharest, Romania: 7.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Nacache, Jacqueline- Université Paris Diderot, France: 8.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:45 a.m (Room: 789 /
7th Floor)
Naghibi, Nima - Ryerson University, Canada: 6.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor)
Nichols, Jeananne Blythe - University of Illinois, USA: 4.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678
/ 6th Floor)
Noille, Christine - Université Stendhal Grenoble 3, France: 7.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room:
791 / 7th Floor)
O'Loughlin, Michael - Adelphi University, USA: 5.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor)
O'Malley, Andrew - Ryerson University, Canada: 1.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Orozco, Fatima - The American University of Paris, France: 3.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m
Orr, Noreen - University of Exeter Medical School, UK: 5.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 791
/ 7th Floor)
O'Toole, Sinead - University College Dublin, Ireland: 5.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Palmer, Beverly B. - California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA: 1.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30
Parker, Joshua - University of Salzburg, Austria: 7.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Passalacqua, Franco - Università degli Studi Milano – Bicocca, Italy: 4.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15
Patron, Sylvie - Université Paris Diderot, France: Moderator: 2.5 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room:
678 / 6th Floor); 11.2 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Paulin, Fabienne - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France: 7.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m
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Penner, Anna Louise - University of Massachusetts Boston, USA: 11.4 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m
Penrod, Lynn - University of Alberta, Canada: 7.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor); Moderator: 8.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor); 11.2 – Friday, June 27th,
10:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Pfersmann, Otto - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France: Moderator: 1.5 – Tuesday, June 24th,
10:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor); 2.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Phillips, Marion - UC Berkeley, USA: 7.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Phoenix, Ann - Institute of Education, UK: Moderator: 10.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 791 /
7th Floor)
Pianzola, Federico – ICI - Berlin, Germany: 3.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Pier, John - University of Tours, France: 3.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor) ;
7.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Podoroga, Ioulia – University of Geneva, Switzerland: 5.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 785
/ 7th Floor)
Polkinghorne, Donald - University of Southern California, USA: Tuesday, June 24th, 4:45 p.m to 6:00 p.m
(Amphi 1A)
Popp-Baier, Ulrike - University of Amsterdam, Netherlands: 10.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
Poulaki, Maria - University of Surrey, UK: 4.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Prince, Gerald - University of Pennsylvania, USA: 11.1 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Proenca, Nuno - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 8.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor)
Puech, Christian - Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle - Paris 3, France: 2.5 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30
Purola, Mari - University of Eastern Finland, Finland: 11.4 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 /
6th Floor)
Queler, Montana Ames - Adelphi University, USA: 5.4 - Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 682 /
6th Floor)
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Rabaté, Dominique - Université Paris Diderot, France: 6.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 681
/ 6th Floor)
Rabatel, Alain - Université de Lyon 1, France: 11.8 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Raby, Valérie – Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, France: 2.5 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Randall, William - University of St. Thomas, Canada: Workshop Leader Monday, June 23th, 9:30 a.m
(Room 681, 6th Floor); 6.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Redmond, Don - Mercer University, USA: 11.5 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Renauld, Marion - Université de Lorraine, France: 7.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor); Moderator: 11.8 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Richardson, Brian - University of Maryland, USA: 11.1 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Riessman, Catherine Kohler - Boston University, USA: 11.3 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
Riippa, Anne Susanna – University of Helsinki, Finland: 11.8 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 791 /
7th Floor)
Ritivoi, Andrea - Carnegie Mellon University, USA: 4.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 677 /
6th Floor) ; Moderator: 5.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Roda, Claudia - The American University of Paris, France: Moderator: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m
(Room: 791 / 7th Floor); Moderator/presenting author: 3.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room:
785 / 7th Floor)
Rolet, Serge - Université Lille III, France: 3.7 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor)
Ronveaux, Christophe - University of Geneva, Switzerland: Moderator: 3.7 – Wednesday, June 25th,
09:30 a.m (Room: 789 / 7th Floor) ; 4.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Roskin, Nitza - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel: 7.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
Rossholm, Göran - Stockholm University, Sweden: 6.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
Rutstein-Riley, Amy - Lesley University, USA: 1.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Sabato, Gaetano - University of Palermo, Italy: 7.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
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Salamonsen, Anita - University of Tromso-The Arctic University, Norway: 8.8 – Thursday, June 26th,
11:15 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th Floor)
Salles de Santiago, Clarisse Rinaldi - UFRJ – IPUB, Brazil: 5.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room:
679 / 6th Floor)
Samain, Didier - Université Paris Diderot, France: Moderator: 1.8 –Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room:
791 / 7th Floor); 2.5 – Tuesday, June 24th , 1:30 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Sanches, Zuzanna - University of Lisbon, Portugal: 2.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 682 / 6th
Floor)
Sandino, Linda - University of the Arts London, UK: 11.3 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th
Floor)
Saraiva, Pedro Sousa - University of Porto, Portugal: 8.3 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 /
6th Floor)
Savard-Corbeille, Mathilde - University of Toronto, Canada: 9.4 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room:
682 / 6th Floor)
Scherr, Alexander - Justus-Liebig-University, Germany: 11.5 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Schiff, Brian - The American University of Paris, France: 3.1 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room:
677 / 6th Floor); Moderator: 11.1 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Schneider, Barbara - University of Calgary, Canada: 1.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Schuhmann, Carmen - University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands: 5.3 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014
at 2:15 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Segev, Einav - Sapir Academic College, Israel: 3.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor)
Seligson, Mitchell - Vanderbilt University, USA: 2.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Shann, Steve - University of Canberra, Australia: 5.3 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
Shapira, Tamar - The Gordon Academy College of Education, Israel: 1.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m
(Room: 789 / 7th Floor); Moderator: 2.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Sheilds, Laurene - University of Victoria, Canada: 8.8 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
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Silverstein, Louise Bordeaux - Yeshiva University, USA: 1.2 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
Skalin, Lars-Åke - Örebro University, Sweden: 8.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Smadja, Stéphanie - Université Paris Diderot, France: 11.2 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 679 /
6th Floor)
Smith, Brett – Loughborough, UK: 4.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor) ; 8.2 –
Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Sools, Anneke - University of Twente, Netherlands: 4.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681
/ 6th Floor) ; 5.1 – Wednesday, June 25th 2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Sorokin, Siim - University of Tartu, Estonia: 4.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Spathis, Annetta - Queensland University of Technology, Australia: 9.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m
Spector-Mersel, Gabriela - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem / Ben-Gurion University, Israel: 1.3 –
Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
Squire, Corinne - University of East London, UK: 5.1 – Wednesday, June 25th at 2:15 p.m (Room: 677 /
6th Floor) ; 7.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor) ; 8.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15
a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor); Moderator: 10.5 – Thursday, June 26th 2014 at 4:00 p.m (Room: 785 / 7th
Floor)
Srikanth, Rajini - University of Massachusetts Boston, USA: 11.4 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room:
682 / 6th Floor)
Stauffer, Sandra - Arizona State University, USA: 9.2 – Thursday, June 26th: 2:15 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Steeves, Pamela Ann - University of Alberta, Canada: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
Stein, Jacob - Bar-Ilan University, Israel: 9.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Stone, Charles Beason - John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA: 9.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m
Stratiki, Kerasia - Hellenic Open University, Greece: 1.5 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 678 /
6th Floor)
Szilas, Nicolas - Université de Genève, Switzerland: 3.6 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 785 /
7th Floor)
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Taverna, Licia - Institute of Languages, Italy: 7.2 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Toulza, Pierre-Olivier - Université Paris Diderot, France: 1.9 – Tuesday, June 24th, 11:00 a.m (Room: 793
/ 7th Floor) & Moderator
Triquet, Eric - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France: 2.8 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 791
/ 7th Floor)
Trujic, Irena - Université Paris-Sorbonne, Switzerland: 1.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 677 /
Tuval-Mashiach, Rivka - Bar Ilan University, Israel: 1.3 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th
Floor); 9.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor)
Ubels, Gerdienke, ActiZ – Netherlands: 5.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Vadum, Arlene C. - Assumption College, USA: 7.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 678 / 6th
Floor) ; Moderator: 8.6 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
van Duuren, Thom - University of Groningen, Netherlands : 1.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room:
785 / 7th Floor)
van Goelst Meijer, Saskia - University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands: 5.3 – Wednesday, June 25th
2014 at 2:15 p.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
van Leuveren, Bram - University of Groningen, Netherlands: 1.6 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room:
785 / 7th Floor)
Védrines, Bruno - Université de Genève, Switzerland: 4.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 682
/ 6th Floor)
Visse, Merel - University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands: 5.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 2:15 p.m
Walker, Julie - Université de Strasbourg, France: 9.2 – Thursday, June 26th: 2:15 p.m (Room: 679 / 6th
Floor)
Walmsley, Heather Louise - University of British Columbia, Canada: 10.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 4:00 p.m
Walsh, Richard - University of York, UK: 3.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor),
4.2 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 679 / 6th Floor)
Watteyne, Nathalie - Université de Sherbrooke, Canada: 2.1 – Tuesday, June 24th, 1:30 p.m (Room: 677
/ 6th Floor)
Westerhof, Gerben - University of Twente, Netherlands: Moderator: 3.5 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30
a.m (Room: 678 / 6th Floor) ; 4.3 – Wednesday, June 25th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 681 / 6th Floor)
186 | P a g e
Willihnganz, Jonah - Stanford University, USA: 9.7 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m (Room: 789 / 7th
Floor)
Winston, Cynthia - Howard University, USA: 3.8 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room: 791 / 7th
Floor)
Winter, Joylon - Institute of Education, UK: 8.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 11:15 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th Floor)
Wise, Norton - University of California, Los Angeles, USA: 3.4 – Wednesday, June 25th, 09:30 a.m (Room:
682 / 6th Floor)
Yates, Candida - University of East London, UK: 7.1 – Thursday, June 26th, 9:30 a.m (Room: 677 / 6th
Floor)
Yen, Jeffrey - Guelph University, Canada: 11.6 – Friday, June 27th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 785 / 7th Floor)
Young, Venetia Emma - Cumbria CCG, UK: Moderator: 1.7 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 789 /
Young Hauser, Amanda - University of Free State, South Africa: 9.5 – Thursday, June 26th, 2:15 p.m
Ziergiebel, Ann - Lesley University, USA: 1.4 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room: 682 / 6th Floor)
Zilber Tammar B. - Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel: 1.3 – Tuesday, June 24th, 10:30 a.m (Room:
681 / 6th Floor)
187 | P a g e

Narrative Knowing / Récit et savoir – Paris, France

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