TELLING TIMES: HISTORY, EMPLOTMENT, AND TRUTH (original) (raw)
Related papers
Time, Narrative, and History (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), by David Carr
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 1988
Consequent upon his outstanding account of Husserl's views on temporality and history (Phenomenology and the Problem of History, Northwestern, 1974), David Carr has now given us his own reflections upon historical existence and narrative meaning. Recent discussions of narrative by authors like Hayden White, Louis Mink, and Paul Ricoeur have examined principally the relation between literary and historical texts. Carr views this discussion as important but abstract because restricted to the formal level of textual discourse. Marshalling the descriptions of temporality and historicity worked out by Husserl, Dilthey, and Heidegger, Carr defends the thesis that pre-theoretical and pre-thematic human experience, action, and life themselve~ exhibit a narrative configuration. Narrative is the tissue of life itself, not a form of reflection that distorts our living in order to organize it for cognitive or aesthetic purposes. Among those who, like himself, construe human life as story, Carr names literary critic Barbara Hardy, historian Peter Munz, a "renegade phenomenologist" Wilhelm Schapp, as well as Alasdair Macintyre and Frederick Olafson. Time, Narrative, and History unfolds in six chapters after the Introduction, and is followed by a useful Index. The book proceeds from an examination of the narrative configuration of individual experience, action, and life, which culminates in a very fine chapter on 'The Self and the Coherence of Life," to rewrite what is learned at the individual level on to group and community actions and projects. Moving from description of the retentive-protentive character of short-term passive experiences like listening to a melody and the means-ends character of short-term actions like serving in tennis, Carr quickly establishes the temporal configuration of everyday experience and action. But what does this have to do with its narrative configuration? Without a great deal of preparation, Carr says that a literary narrative is marked by temporal closure with a beginning, middle, and end, by temporal sequence, and by the intersecting temporal perspectives of author, characters, and reader. Here one could wish for a fuller discussion of narrative structure in a wider range of fiction. Carr does refer to Kafka's The Trial (85), and he does display in individual experience and action a pleasingly broad range of the temporal closures and sequences typical of narrative: departure and arrival, departure and return, means and end, suspension and resolution, problem and solution (49). Throughout, Carr stresses the "preeminently practical character of narrative structure" (70): these configurations are found originally in our experiences and actions, not only at the level of reflective attention where Alfred Schutz, for example, exclusively located them (37-38). Narrative configuration occurs in two registers, that of experience as it is undergone or action as it is performed and that of reflectively "taking stock" or Besinnung (91). What about the third feature Carr attributes to narrative, the requirement that there be authorship, characters, and audience? Here Carr's discussion is at its most original and valuable. I know of no other theorist who has faced this
Narratives: Time, Memory and Authorship
In this paper I compare and contrast two approaches that have been taken to narrative inquiry: realism and interpretivism. According to realists narratives are a means to reconstruct a past that is certain and knowable. To contrast, interpretivists see narrative inquiry as a chance to study the complex set of interactions that take place as narratives are formed. Here the concern is not with establishing the accuracy of narratives as they correspond to a world that is “real”, but there is importance given to the meanings that narratives have to people. Both approaches examine time, memory and the issue of authorship/co-construction. In this paper, by comparing and contrasting two paradigms, I am able to illustrate how questions of time, memory and authorship vary.
This essay is for introductory classes. It includes discussions of the time of viewing and of narrative forms in art.
Only 'Time' will 'Tell': Influence of temporality on the interpretation of narrative discourses
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021
The notion of language has been broadly understood in different ways with respect to existing literatures revolving around form, meaning, sound & context. Although overtly these understandings do try to integrate with the functionality of a complex organic system, they glaringly lack reference to the basis for its realization, i.e., time. Approaches to problematize the understanding of language have overlooked the issue of time. Temporality introduces a distinct fuzziness in qualitative and abstract expressions beyond just the action or the state. It is also evident in the context of names in a diachronic sense. A systematic exploration of this gap can lead us to a time-oriented understanding of the faculty of language.
Letting Go of Narrative History: The Linearity of Time and the Art of Recounting the Past
This paper argues that we can let go of the conception of narrative history, not because we know history to be something else entirely, but because the conception too often leads to needless confusion about the methodological basics of historical research among both history students and professional historians themselves. One may view history simply as knowledge of the past and as an ongoing discussion between historians (and other interested parties) over the best account of any given past phenomenon. Given that we politically disagree on where exactly history has brought us, the safest epistemological position for a practicing historian is that the past is just as messy as our own present in which we attempt to find political solutions for a better future. Rather than clinging to any inherently narrative character of history, or of historical representation, the practicing historian may well concentrate on explaining the meaning of a given phenomenon in the past and its possible historical significance for the present, and at least attempt to distinguish between these two.
The narrated present What does ‘now’ mean in the 21st century and can it continue to exist? I am proposing exploring the concept of the ‘now’ through the point of confluence of space and time, an interval that is a single isolated moment, the present, that pertains to the individual yet relates to a collective whole. It is both physical and mental. The past cannot be erased, either physically or as a perpetuated myth. Its palimpsest remains as an often unseen entity. Thus the space of the present can only be understood through the past. However, in the 21st century, a global present exists as oppose to the traditional spatially-confined ‘now’. There is a collapse of conventional time states due to globalisation, created by what Marc Augé would call the condition of the supermodern, an overabundance. (There are some disputes over whether globalisation is a modern day phenomena, notably Wallerstein). This excess contributes to a present, a now that is a continuous flow of information whereby knowledge is accessed readily rather than gained through empiricism. Thus it is my contention that the ‘now’ of the 21st century could be seen as less of an isolated moment more as a continuity of the past that flows seamlessly into the future, the present superseded by differing time states that relate to the world as a whole rather than to the single isolated moment. This has ramifications, for example, whose history is it now? This exploration however, will not ignore the site that inspired the discussion and the peculiarities of the particular island as a small, singular place. To fully understand this position, I will reference Henri Lefebvre who says that space cannot be understood without reference to its function which places the island and its histories in context. The Narrated Present will therefore look at ‘now’ as an ephemeral position that encompasses both space and time with locational insight.
Time Structure in the Story: Gérard Genette, 'Narrative Discourse' (Narrative Theory, 3)
'Narrative Theory' is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. The third section deals with the narrative articulation of time, taking as a guideline Gérard Genette's theory in 'Narrative Discourse', modified as required. Outline: 1. The Generation of Story Time. 2. Fabula time. 3. Story time: order. 4. Story time: duration. 4. Story time: Aspect. 6. Time and status of the narrating. Keywords: Narrative, Narratology, Representation, Time, Narrative time, Narrative structure, Gérard Genette,