Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/2163

Title

Narratives and culture : the role of stories in self-creation

Author(s)

Gare, Arran

Abstract

The postmodern condition is characterized not only by suspicion of meta-narratives, but by a depreciation of all narratives. Before WWII, Walter Benjamin noted that information was displacing stories. Since then narratives have steadily lost status and, more recently, have even been attacked. There is now a crisis of narrative in novels, while in film, narrative is being subordinated to images. Literary theorists have reinforced this crisis by "deconstructing" discourses to undermine their cognitive claims. More significantly, history has been in a crisis for some time, with both historians and philosophers questioning the relation between narrative coherence and life as it is lived.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. School of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Source

Telos, no. 121 (Winter 2002), pp. 80-100

Publication year

2002

Keyword(s)

Narration (Rhetoric);  Culture;  History;  Semiotics

Publisher

Telos Press

ISSN

0090-6514

Publisher URL

http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2002/122/80

Peer reviewed