Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qurʾān. By Gordon Nickel. History of Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 13. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. xx + 244. $146.

Liberal political thought-from its origins in the seventeenth-century through today's rights discourse-is grounded in the ideal of the autonomous individual. As the theory holds, these individuals are 'born in freedom' from religious, political, social or economic obligations and then construct these systems through individual and collective choices. Over the past thirty years, however, this understanding of freedom has been challenged from a variety of perspectives. Eldon J. Eisenach has been at the forefront of that challenge, stressing the centrality of religious (...) elements and assumptions in liberal writings that many scholars suppressed or ignored. In Narrative Power and Liberal Truth Eisenach brings together eleven of his previously published essays to demonstrate that many 'postmodernist' ideas of persons and freedom are already present within the tradition of liberal political philosophy and that liberalism itself is more capacious of human experience and meanings than modern critiques allow. (shrink)

The Jamesian mode of writing, it has been claimed, actively works against an understanding of the way truth, history and power circulate in his texts. In this collection of essays, leading scholars of James analyse the strategies James used to address these crucial issues. Enacting History in Henry James claims that, because the type of knowledge available in James's fiction is never of a cognitive kind, the reader can never know 'truth' in any verifiable sense. James's writing instead promises (...) an experiential type of knowledge, one that is attained by participating in the power games and moral dramas that unfold within the text. This collection argues that reading James ultimately requires not just an emotional responsiveness, but also an ethical assumption of responsibility for the act of reading. By placing James's work in a fresh theoretical context, this book throws new light on this most enigmatic of writers. (shrink)

Proposing narratives that reflect our values and address what we believe to be, and what in fact in this case are, valid concerns is no doubt an attractive venture. But good intentions are not enough, and often it is careful analysis that shows why this is the case. Alastair Morgan's (2023) essay Power, Threat, Meaning Framework: A Philosophical Critique is a bright example of philosophy-in-action; it demonstrates, to use a popular expression, that the road to hell is paved with (...) good intentions. In this commentary I argue that while the concerns of the authors of the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) are valid, their proposed solutions lead us to yet another master narrative.The PTMF presents itself as an... Read More. (shrink)

The article compares Pope Francis's encyclical “LAUDATO SI” (2015) and the report by the Club of Rome, “”ome On!: Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet” (2018), in how they harness the narrative potential of the concept of home. Both with overtly religious and entirely secular arguments, the narrative of our common home is presented as a possible alternative to the prevailing narrative of growth today. The metaphor of home possesses not only conceptual but also (...) generative power to offer concrete solutions to two of humanity's most pressing issues today: the problem of waste and the problem of climate change. The narrative of home activates the power of local places while simultaneously seeking global balance on a worldwide scale. The study focuses on how the narrative of home transforms the relationship with places and the balance between the local and the global. (shrink)

"Disenchantment" is a key term in the self-understanding of modernity. But what exactly do we mean when we use this concept? What was its original meaning when Max Weber introduced it? And can the conventional meaning or Max Weber's view really be defended, given the present state of knowledge about the history of religion? This book is an attempt to divest this concept of its enduring enchantment. The first chapters of the book deal with the three empirical disciplines history, psychology (...) and sociology of religion to develop an understanding of religion that then lays the groundwork for what is presented in chapter 4, namely the most thorough study of Weber's views on disenchantment that has ever been undertaken. It turns out that Weber's use was highly ambiguous and that his grand narrative leading from the prophets of ancient Judaism to the crisis of meaning on the eve of the First World War collapses when we recognize this ambiguity. This makes it possible to construct an alternative that takes into account the dynamics of ever new sacralizations, their normative evaluation in the light of the values of a universalist morality and the dangers of the misuse of religion in connection with the formation of power. This book constitutes a challenge - for believers and non-believers alike. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the discourse of othering of non-Western migrants has been growing in many European societies. And since 2015, refugees have become a quite visible component in this discourse. Although, for decades, the dominant image of refugees has been constructed as people ‘at risk’, new competing images of refugee men ‘as risk’ have recently gained ground. For refugee women, however, the image of being victims and ‘at risk’ still prevails. This shows a strong underlying gendered (...) logic of feminine vulnerability and masculine threat. In this article, I show how these images are situated within the dominant Dutch discourse of migration with taken-for-granted taxonomies of the self and the other. Specific in this normalised discourse for refugee women is that their agency is either ignored or their possible position as activists is not acknowledged to exist. Using examples from two studies in which my research team engaged with the method of narrative engaged research, I show the importance of this particular narrative method in unsettling the normalising power of othering. The theoretical argument of this article engages with ongoing discussions on power and agency. It argues that, when the power of exclusion works through repetition and is manifested in the daily normalisation of actions, agency needs to provide an alternative in the same fluid manner. Narratives in dialogue provide an illuminating angle for discussing this specific kind of agency, as I will show through some examples from research. (shrink)

By revealing the centrality of stories to action, to social life and to inquiry together with the implicit assumptions in polyphonic stories about the nature of humans, of life and of physical reality, this paper examines the potential of stories to transform civilization. Focussing on the failure of environmentalists so far in the face of the global ecological crisis, it is shown how ethics and political philosophy could be reconceived and radical ecology reformulated and reinvigorated by appreciating and exploiting the (...) potential of stories. This could enable radical ecologists to effect the major social and economic changes necessary to meet the global ecological crisis. What we need, it is argued, is a new, polyphonic grand narrative. (shrink)

This paper contrasts Kierkegaard's response to Epicurean indifference to death in "At a Graveside" with attempts in contemporary analytic philosophy to overcome Epicurus ' challenge to the rationality of fearing death. I argue that attempts by Nagel, Pitcher, Feinberg etc. to show why death is a harm rely on a narrative understanding of life that, according to Kierkegaard, is unavailable with respect to one's own death. Kierkegaard's approach, by contrast, involves becoming phenomenally co-present with one's own death via a (...) specific mode of "earnest" contemplation. (shrink)

In inter-war France, history of philosophy was a very important academic discipline, but nevertheless its practitioners thought it necessary to defend its identity, which was threatened by its vicinity to many other disciplines, and especially by the emergent social sciences and history of science. I shall focus on two particular issues that divided traditional historians of philosophy from historians of science, ethnologists and sociologists, and that became crucial in the definition of the identity of their disciplines: the conception of history (...) and the interpretation of texts. By analysing representative discussions and positions, I shall show that traditional historians of philosophy needed to reassert their own approach to history, which, borrowing the term from Bergson, I define as ‘snapshot’. This approach is focused on a particular idea or text rather than a narrative. I shall also show that history of philosophy, in its traditional form, would have been undermined both intellectually and institutionally by the opposite ‘narrative’ approach of history of science and of the social sciences. Social scientists openly attacked history of philosophy’s methods and, in the eyes of traditional philosophers, its existence as an academic discipline. The same opposition is to be found in evaluation of past texts, which for traditional historians of philosophy were to be read as timeless documents, while for historians of science, ethnologists and sociologists were to be considered as documents exhibiting a particular mentality. However, between these alternatives there were intermediate positions. I shall in particular consider that of Léon Brunschvicg: he embraced a narrative approach and considered texts as documents of different ways of thinking, but at the same time carried on employing philosophical methods and defending the institutional position of philosophy. I shall argue that this was possible partly because of the considerable amount of power he enjoyed at the Sorbonne. (shrink)

이 글은 두가지 새로운 전제에 입각해 있다. 첫째, 중국 70년의 사회주의 역사는 이제 사회주의 신념보다는 국가경영의 차원에서 다루어져야 한다. 둘째, G2로서 중국은 신중화제국의 재구성이라는 목표를 두고 있는 만큼 변화된 위상에 맞는 질문을 해야 한다. ‘약한 타자’가 아닌 ‘강한 타자’로서 G2 중국에 어울리는 새로운 질문이 필요하다. 기존의 이데올로기 장막을 걷어내고 체제의 정치적 구조와 새롭게 부활한 21세기의 지정학을 주목해야 중국의 본 모습을 드러낼 수 있다.BR이 글은 ‘중국 지식’을 구성하는 두 가지 뼈대인 중화제국체제(조공체제)와 1949년 이후의 사회주의에 대한 보다 본질적 검토가 불가피한 상황에 이르렀다는 (...) 판단 아래 쓰여졌다. 이 검토를 위해 이 글은 ‘메타서사’라는 개념을 제시한다. 그 이유는 이 개념이 중국인의 심리를 지속적으로 지배해왔고 앞으로도 계속해서 지배할 것이라 보기 때문이다. 첫째, 서구제국주의로부터 받은 치욕을 되갚아주기 위해 중국이 150년 동안 힘써온 ‘부강’의 ‘가치’ 추구는 정당하다는 인식이다. 둘째, 중국의 봉건과 서구의 자본주의에 대한 동시극복을 위해 선택한 사회주의 신념이 인민공화국 건립 이후에도 관철되고 있었다는 인식이다. 셋째, ‘평화로운 조공체제’라는 ‘편견’과 이에 근거한 중화제국 체제의 21세기적 재구성은 정당하다는 인식이다. 넷째, 서구 근대의 식민주의가 문명화 담론과 인권을 가지고 비서구사회에 개입해왔다고 보고 이의 대안으로 중국을 내세우는 것은 정당하다는 인식이다. 이 ‘메타서사’를 현재까지 지속하게 해주는 사상적, 심리적 기제는 중화내셔널리즘이다.BR21세기 시진핑 정부의 목표는 다민족 신중화제국의 영광을 조공체제보다 확장적으로 재현하는 것이다. 이를 위해서는 ‘메타서사’의 실현이 전제조건이다. 그러나 역설적이게도 중국은 ‘메타서사’에 집착할수록 세계를 설득할만한 소프트파워를 생산할 가능성에서 멀어진다. 신중화제국체제의 재현과 소프트파워의 생산은 반대의 방향을 취하고 있기 때문이다. 아무리 경제가 성장한다 해도 문화의 최종심급인 정치민주가 요원하다면 비판과 창의는 보장받을 수 없다. 따라서 ‘메타서사’를 근원적 차원에서 성찰하지 않는 한 중국 21세기의 소프트파워의 생산 가능성은 높지 않다. ‘21세기 중국 소프트파워의 딜레마’는 바로 여기에 있다. 이 글은 위와 같은 문제 의식 아래 ‘메타서사’ 추구의 과정 자체가 성찰을 동반한 것이어야 한다고 주장한다. 이를 위해 이 글은 첫째, 20세기 초기 마이너리티 지식인의 사상의 소환을 제안한다. 둘째, G2와 리더국가로서 중국의 밖과 소통하기 위해서는 다양한 차원의 공공재를 제공하고 중국의 위상에 어울리는 책임과 역할을 적극적으로 고민해야 할 것을 제안한다. 그랬을 때만이 장기적으로 소프트파워의 생산이 가능하고 그들이 주장하는 소위 ‘아름다운 사회주의 현대화 강국’의 실현도 가능해질 것이다. (shrink)

High-quality education has been considered important for social justice, although what good education means is contested. A project aimed at identifying varieties of conceptions of ethical competence was presented as well as another that focused on a fiction-based approach to ethics education. A multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives was shown as a strong contribution to EE. The aim was to discuss as to what extent such a multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives could (...) be understood as powerful knowledge. Sweden, where national tests lately have been understood as a tool to increase achievements, but where an unclear understanding of desired knowledge in EE exists, was the setting. Methodologically, the article drew on Michael Young’s definition of powerful knowledge, a hermeneutic meta-study on the findings of EthiCo concerning conceptions of ethical competence, as well as Mark Tappan’s sociocultural perspective on moral development. These perspectives were brought together to discuss powerful knowledge in EE as a contribution to education for social justice. Whether a multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives could be understood as powerful knowledge was shown to be dependent on the definition. Whilst Young’s powerful knowledge is restricted to an academic language, Tappan stresses vernacular language as characteristic for a functional moral discourse. One conclusion was the centrality of fiction in EE for the development of moral discourses that transcend reality and shape ‘knowledge of possibilities’ – powerful in the shaping of societal justice. (shrink)

Steven Spielberg‘s filmed representation of the Holocaust dares its viewers to experience, as secondary witnesses, atrocities committed by the Nazis in Poland. The film is yet another form of testimonial narrative (audio-visual but lacking a full historical context, except for a few on-screen titles) which aligns the survivors, who have come to be known as the Schindler Jews, and their descendants, on the one hand, and Spielberg‘s cameraman (comparable to an internalized narrator), Spielberg the film director (an external, omniscient (...) narrator), and the film-theater audience, on the other. We are all turned into witnesses in the same process and at the same time in which the real witnesses, the survivors, testify to the horror of the Holocaust. (shrink)

One way of characterising the present political conjuncture - worldwide, not just in Europe and North America - is to point to the rise to power of politicians best described as demagogues. Trump, Duterte, Putin, Modi, as well as the leaders of Europe's neo-fascist racists have in common not just certain policies and attitudes, but, significantly, a political style: that of the demagogue. Thinking through that term, ‘demagogue', is instructive in helping us to understand this phenomenon, no less historically (...) than politically. (shrink)

The epidemic outbreak of the coronavirus has meant a sudden, temporary ceasing of activities as we knew them. The health crisis has led to a social and economic crisis, and these circumstances have revealed solidarity on a global scale. In moments of separation, when culture has brought us closer together, the global phenomenon of charity songs has emerged, generating financial aid for scientific research and care for the most vulnerable people. This work focuses on a charity song turned into a (...) hymn, a narrative poem in the first person that tells everyone's common story, “Aves enjauladas” by the Spanish singer-songwriter Rozalén. This paper carries out a linguistic, stylistic and audiovisual analysis of this multimodal event, which has been transmitted through a ‘lyric video’ and spread in a vertiginous way on digital platforms and social networks, reaching millions of views. Ultimately, the paper analyses the spiritual and material impact, the body and soul of this living poem, taking a still photograph of the artistic recreations and musical, visual, pictorial and pedagogical ‘echoicities’ of this work, as well as appreciating its material socio-economic repercussions in the real lives of families at risk of exclusion. (shrink)

The rise of private standards, including those involving multi-stakeholder processes, raises questions about whose interests are served and the kind of power that is exerted to maintain these interests. This paper critically examines the battle for ideas—the way competing factions assert their own narratives about value chain relations, the role of standards and related multi-stakeholder processes. Drawing on empirical research on the horticulture and floriculture value chains linking Kenya and the United Kingdom, the analysis explores the framing of sustainability (...) issues, especially around labor issues and good agricultural practice, and the choice of response with respect to private standards and multi-stakeholder initiatives since the late 1990s. We identify four competing narratives currently in play: a dominant global sourcing narrative, a pragmatic development narrative, a broader development narrative and a narrative we term potentially transformative. This last narrative is currently emerging through the unpacking of narratives in relation to the framing of sustainability problems and solutions, and in terms of legislative, executive and judicial governance. The paper contributes to emerging understanding of power in value chains, moving beyond material power to a consideration of how ideational power is exerted and resisted. (shrink)

This paper is informed by my own participant observation and uses my own ethnography which included conducting in-depth interviews with anonymous paid egg donors and observing a listserv for women considering, pursuing, or having completed egg donation, to illustrate the way that power operates at this particular site of the reproductive center in postmodernity. After outlining who the consumers and providers of eggs are, I will use Foucault's concepts of biopower, disciplinary power, and normativity to describe how anonymous (...) paid egg donation plays a socially useful role in reproducing privilege and in preserving the myth of the nuclear family. Drawing on feminist theorizing to problematize altruism, I will show how the construction of the altruist narrative feeds the preservation of that myth by giving egg donors appropriately feminine motivations. Finally, I will focus on one particular site of resistance on the part of egg donors—controlling their self-presentation, tweaking the pool of eggs—to underscore the simultaneity of control of and control by egg donors. (shrink)

One of two primary aims of this article is to advance a pragma-cognitive approach to the analysis of narrative reports used as parts of short narratives which draws on two salient theories: the Cognitive Approach proposed by Chilton (2004, 2005, 2010, 2014) and Cap's (2006, 2010, 2013, 2017) Proximisation Theory. The other equally important objective is to propose a taxonomy of covert sayers, i.e. actors whose words are reported by the current speaker (cf. Vandelanotte 2006, 2008, 2009), whose identity (...) is concealed and may be retrieved via inferences drawn on the basis of shared values and common ground. This paper essentially concentrates on sayer's utterances rendered via reported speech frames and explains their role in maintaining the aura of belonging and inclusion, as well as of dissociation and exclusion. My research assumes that reported speech frames are selected strategically as rhetorical devices to foster (de)legitimisation and image construction. The research data comprises a corpus of texts of presidential public addresses written to be delivered rather than transcripts of spoken discourse, as its purpose is to investigate the process of speech construction. (shrink)

This article introduces and develops the concept of trade narrative to understand how business sectors defend against public disapproval and the threat of increased regulation or removed subsidy. Trade narrative works by accumulating lists of benefits and occluding costs, and is created by consultants for economic interests organized via trade associations. This represents an under-analysed ‘policy-based evidence machine’, the aim of which is to format the discourses of the media and political classes about the contribution of the sector (...) in ways that frame political choice about what is thinkable and doable. In doing so it supports elite power by providing a relay for intra-elite communication. Using illustrations from privatized railways, banking and pharmaceuticals in the UK and US, the argument explores how the causal arrow runs in the opposite direction from that supposed in most discussion of discourse-economy relations in the field of cultural economy. (shrink)

This book examines slavery and gender through a feminist reading of narratives including female slaves in the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, and early Christian texts. Through the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, the voices of three enslaved female characters—the female slave who questions Peter in Luke 22, Rhoda in Acts 12, and the prophesying slave of Acts 16—are placed into dialogue with female slaves found in the Apocryphal Acts, ancient novels, classical texts, and images of enslaved (...) women on funerary monuments. Although ancients typically distrusted the words of slaves, Christy Cobb argues that female slaves in Luke-Acts speak truth to power, even though their gender and status suggest that they cannot. In this Bakhtinian reading, female slaves become truth-tellers and their words confirm aspects of Lukan theology. This exegetical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary book is a substantial contribution to conversations about women and slaves in Luke-Acts and early Christian literature. (shrink)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” (1843) and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) encourage critical thinking about science and scientific research as forms of social power. In this collaborative activity, students work in small groups to discuss the ways in which these stories address questions of human experimentation, gender, manipulation of bodies, and the role of narrative in mediating perceptions about bodies. Students collectively adduce textual evidence from the stories to construct claims and present a mini-argument to the class, thereby (...) strengthening their skills in communication and cooperative interpretation of ethical dilemmas. This exercise is adaptable to shorter and longer periods of instruction, and it is ideal for instructors who collaborate across areas of expertise. (shrink)

ArgumentAs the deficit model's failure leaves scientists searching for more effective communicative approaches, science communication scholars have begun promoting narrative as a potent persuasive tool. Narratives can help the public make choices by setting out a scientific issue's contexts, establishing the stakes involved, and offering potential solutions. However, employing narrative for persuasion risks embracing the same top-down communication approach underlying deficit model thinking. This essay explores the parallels between movie censorship and the current use of narrative to (...) influence public opinion by examining how the Hays Office and the Catholic Legion of Decency responded to science in movies. I argue that deploying narratives solely as public relations exercises demonstrates the same mistrust of audiences that provided the foundation of movie censorship. But the history of movie censorship reveals the dangers of using narrative to remove the public's agency and to coerce them towards a preferred position rather than fostering their ability to come to their own conclusions. (shrink)

Numerous social, economic and academic pressures can have a negative impact on representations of biomedical research. We review several of the forces playing an increasingly pernicious role in how health and science information is interpreted, shared and used, drawing discussions towards the role of narrative. In turn, we explore how aspects of narrative are used in different social contexts and communication environments, and present creative responses that may help counter the negative trends. As traditional methods of communication have (...) in many ways failed the public, changes in approach are required, including the creative use of narratives. (shrink)

Combining textual, visual, and ethnographic approaches to discourse, this article examines a variety of resources employed in the narrative construction of Washington, DC’s Chinatown in a billboard advertisement that de-ethnicizes the neighborhood. Analysis of the linguistic resources of narrative structure, comparative reference, and lexical cohesion reveals how the gentrification of Chinatown is constructed as a positive transformation driven by a corporation. Further, the visual juxtaposition of text with photos and graphics appropriates the community voice and infuses it with (...) corporate identity. This ideological multimodal construction of the transformation of Chinatown is finally actualized in its durable material form and strategic spatial emplacement. Incorporating ethnographic observation and an interview, this article illustrates how the symbolic power of narrative in place-making is interdependent on the economic power of its producer to propagate ideological discourse in the material world. (shrink)

In his latest book, Marshall Gregory begins with the premise that our lives are saturated with stories, ranging from magazines, books, films, television, and blogs to the words spoken by politicians, pastors, and teachers. He then explores the ethical implication of this nearly universal human obsession with narratives. Through careful readings of Katherine Anne Porter's "The Grave," Thurber's "The Catbird Seat," as well as _David Copperfield_ and _Wuthering Heights_, Gregory asks the question: How do the stories we absorb in our (...) daily lives influence the kinds of persons we turn out to be? "__Shaped by Stories___ _weaves its own compelling story about the pervasive ethical effects of reading narrative, with Marshall Gregory serving as a highly engaging and ethically admirable narrator--a very model of good company." --_James Phelan, Distinguished University Professor of English, Ohio State University_ "Marshall Gregory's __Shaped by Stories_ _brings ethical criticism to the level of felt experience. Witty and passionate, full of personal reflections and sharp examples, this book will help anyone who has been drawn to the mysterious power of stories to think more carefully about the connections between narrative art and human ethos. Gregory reminds us that the urgency of our need for stories is tied permanently to the need to exercise judgment, belief, and empathy in the process of becoming who we are." --_Annette Federico, James Madison University _ "From a lifetime of reflecting on the ethics of fiction, Marshall Gregory has given us an elegant analysis of the power of stories to instruct and delight. No one interested in storytelling will want to be without this incisive guide to both the myriad ways that stories shape our lives and the strategies writers use to affect our responses. Both the theoretical and practical halves of __Shaped by Stories __have clarity and eloquence." --_Robert D. Denham, Fishwick Professor of English, Emeritus, Roanoke College_. (shrink)

_Telling Stories to Change the World_ is a powerful collection of essays about community-based and interest-based projects where storytelling is used as a strategy for speaking out for justice. Contributors from locations across the globe—including Uganda, Darfur, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, New Orleans, and Chicago—describe grassroots projects in which communities use narrative as a way of exploring what a more just society might look like and what civic engagement means. These compelling accounts of resistance, hope, and vision showcase the (...) power of the storytelling form to generate critique and collective action. Together, these projects demonstrate the contemporary power of stories to stimulate engagement, active citizenship, the pride of identity, and the humility of human connectedness. (shrink)

Both the itihāsa-s of the Mahābhārata and the Platonic philosophical ‘epode’ are often used to persuade in conditions where emotion threatens to incapacitate the person for argumentative discourse. Narrative reason has its own conditions of success and failure, opening up a discursive arena in which all kinds of utterances are welcome. Emphasizing the psychagogic function of the ‘once-upon-a-time’ reason, it is worth asking who the real protagonist of the story is and whether the story has a duty or a (...) dharma of its own to fulfill. Dharma and all the dilemmas it brings along with it constitute one of the fundamental problems that make up the whole Mahābhārata. In this essay I wonder about the dharma of the Mahābhārata itself—a literary work which gives itself the name ‘triumph’ (jaya)—and the cultural mission it fulfills in the lives of those who hear it, read it, study it, and share it with others. (shrink)

Death and futility are among a cluster of themes that closely track discussions of life’s meaning. Moreover, futility is thought to supervene on naturalistic meta-narratives because of how they will end. While the nature of naturalistic meta-narrative endings is part of the explanation for concluding that such meta-narratives are cosmically or deeply futile, this explanation is truncated. I argue that the reason the nature of the ending is thought to be normatively important is first anchored in the fact that (...) narrative ending qua ending is thought to be normatively important. Indeed, I think futility is often thought to characterize naturalistic meta-narratives because a narrative’s ending has significant proleptic power to elicit a wide range of broadly normative human responses on, possibly, emotional, aesthetic, and moral levels towards the narrative as a whole. (shrink)

As a powerful tool in the production of knowledge, comparing plays a crucial part in the sciences and the humanities. This volume explores the relationship between comparing and narrating in epistemic practices and clarifies the ways in which narratives enable or impede practices of comparing. It takes into account related activities, such as measuring and classifying, modeling, establishing norms and categories, as well as organizing and popularizing knowledge, to analyze the ambivalent relationship between narratives, scientific explanation, and understanding. The contributions (...) bring out the epistemic role of narratives, and elucidate how narratives are connected to comparisons and scientific explanations."--Publisher description. (shrink)

The birth of our daughter nearly 5 years ago went very well. But in a new city, with some experience on our side and access to a homelike natural birth center connected to a major area hospital, we thought it would be all the better when our son was born. We hadn’t dreamed that the detection of a benign arrhythmia in the baby’s heart would cascade into a situation that would not only undermine our entire birth plan, but force unwanted (...) treatment and threats of abandonment. In this commentary, our intention is to illustrate the way in which narratives, and the commonalities between the stories shared by other authors in this issue and our own, can give profound depth and new insights into the things that happen to us. (shrink)

The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives of science-led agricultural transformations portray that period in glorifying terms—entailing pressing national imperatives, (...) unprecedented achievements, and heroic individuals or organizations. These “epic narratives” draw on the past to produce meaning and empower the actors that deploy them. Epic narratives are reproduced over time and perpetuate a conviction about the heroic power of science and technology in agricultural development. By crafting history and cultivating a sense of scientific nationalism, exceptionalism, and heritage, these epic narratives sustain power-knowledge relations in agricultural science and technology, which are underpinned by a hegemonic modernization paradigm. Unravelling the processes of assemblage and reproduction of epic narratives helps us make sense of how science and technology actors draw on their subjective representations of the past to assert their position in the field at present. This includes making claims about their credentials to envision and deliver sustainable solutions for agriculture into the future. (shrink)

Engaging in self-narrative is often touted as a powerful antidote to the bad effects of illness. However, there are various examples of what may broadly be termed “aversion” to illness narrative. I group these into three kinds: aversion to certain types of illness narrative; aversion to illness narrative as a whole; and aversion to illness narrative as an essentially therapeutic endeavor. These aversions can throw into doubt the advantages claimed for the illness narrator, including the (...) key benefits of repair to the damage illness does to identity and life-trajectory. Underlying these alleged benefits are two key presuppositions: that it is the whole of one’s life that is narratively unified, and that one’s identity is inextricably bound up with narrative. By letting go of these assumptions, illness narrative advocates can respond to the challenges of narrative aversions. (shrink)

Narratives relate salient connected events across some time and many particular details of the agents involved in those events. Whether fictional or true, historical or current, personal or cultural, they seem to pervade human experience and, according to theorists across different philosophical traditions, can be of some help to elucidate concerns in the moral life. Thomas Aquinas himself acknowledges the existence of such things, or at least their near analogues, in various places in his corpus. But he does not offer (...) a sustained explanation of how narratives are understood in terms of his psychology. In this paper, I claim that such an account lies in his thought on the functioning of two interior senses in particular – the cogitative power (vis cogitativa) and the memorative power (vis memorativa) – which have been the subject of more sustained study only more recently. With this account of how humans generate and process such narratives, Thomistic scholars will be positioned to explain how narratives may function in human experience, especially the moral life, on Thomistic terms. (shrink)

Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is a convincing descriptive theory, and Johnson et al.'s formal model is a welcome contribution to building more precise, testable hypotheses. However, some extensions to the proposed model would make it better defined and more powerful. The suggested extensions enable the model to go beyond CNT, predicting choice outcomes and explaining affective phenomena.

Sexual violence against women is a social problem all over the world, including Nigeria. This article examines the David–Bathsheba narrative against this background, relating it to the problem of masculine abuse of power for sexual assault in Nigeria. It also attempts to find out how the church in Nigeria could use the narrative as a textual basis for responding to this problem. The article is targeted at Nigerians who abuse masculine power in this way, the women (...) who need to be aware of sex predators and the church in employing the text as a response to sexual violence. The article employs the exegetical approach in the study of 2 Samuel 11:2–4, and the descriptive method in the analysis of masculine abuse of power for sexual assault in Nigeria, and how the church could combat it. The essay finds that David used his position as a king to assault Bathsheba, which makes the narrative relevant for the present-day Nigerian context of masculine abuse of power for sexual assault. The church in Nigeria could respond to the awareness of this relevance by making the narrative a textual basis for a response to the problem of sexual violence. The church could develop a policy on violence against women which must be reflected in all its teaching instruments. The church must create healing avenues for the victims of sexual abuse. It should liaise with government agencies to ensure that relevant laws against sexual abuse are applied adequately.Contribution: The article is a contribution in Christian ethics. It likens David’s encounter with Bathsheba to masculine abuse of power for sexual assault in Nigeria. It explains how the church in Nigeria can employ the narrative as a response to this menace. (shrink)

Efforts to reorient narratives about today’s socio-economic systems along humanistic or eco-friendly lines are built on core units of culture called memes. This paper explores the memes used by progressive socio-economic initiatives to assess whether they are consistently and powerfully deployed, using the aspirational statements of 126 different initiatives, sorted into nine categories. The memes used by these initiatives demonstrate lack of consistency and lack of potentially resonant memes overall. Aspirational statements from both progressive and conservative think tanks are then (...) compared to see whether their messaging is consistently developed in their aspirational statements. Results indicate that memes associated with the neoliberal narrative are considerably more consistently used by conservative think tanks than is any coherent or consistent messaging by progressive think tanks, a finding that becomes more powerful when two- and three-word meme sets are considered. (shrink)

The hope of moving beyond formalism is one of two things that unites an otherwise diverse group of literary theorists who have begun to explore the role of desire in narrative. Peter Brooks, for example, in Reading for the Plot, says in more than one place that his interest in desire “derives from my dissatisfaction with the various formalisms that have dominated critical thinking about narrative.”3 Leo Bersani sees desire as establishing a crucial link between social and literary (...) structures. Teresa de Lauretis faults structuralist models for their inability to disclose the ways in which narrative operates, through the desire it excites and fulfills, to construct the social world as a system of sexual differences. Other names could be added, both within and outside the field of narrative theory—Nancy Armstrong, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Jessica Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, René Girard, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Peggy Kamuf, Linda Kauffman, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplance, Catharine A. McKinnon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick—for desire has become one of the master tropes of contemporary criticism. 3. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative , p. 47; hereafter abbreviated RP.4. Leo, Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature , p. 13; hereafter abbreviated FA.5. Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture , p. v; hereafter abbreviated FV. Although Bersani coauthored this book with Dutoit, for convenience I refer to it by Bersani’s name alone. This practice is justified by two considerations: first, most of the arguments about narrative, violence, and desire are elaborations of positions that Bersani has taken in earlier works; second, passages and examples in the sections with which I shall be dealing are reprinted with only minor changes from an article that Bersani published under his own name. Jay Clayton, associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Romantic Vision and the Novel and coeditor of Contemporary Literature and Contemporary Theory . He is currently completing a study of contemporary American literature and theory, Narrative Power. (shrink)