The epistemology and ontology of antinarrativism
pp. 53-85
in: , The narrative turn in fiction and theory, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
According to Galen Strawson (2004: 447), modern neuroscience has shown that remembering and recounting the past necessarily lead to its distortion and, hence, "the more you recall, retell, narrate yourself, the further you risk moving away from accurate self-understanding, from the truth of your being'. Although Strawson presents his argument as a scientific claim, it belongs to a long philosophical history. In this chapter, I explore this history by discussing the intertwinement of the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of antinarrativist postwar literature and thought, most notably the nouveau roman, in relation to existentialism, phenomenology and poststructuralism. I shall begin by briefly looking at the philosophical assumptions underlying the debate that underpins the theoretical narrative turn. I then proceed to show how the basic intellectual attitudes of the antinarrativists in this debate and in the contemporary rejection of narrative can already be found in — and understood in greater depth by analysing — the postwar crisis of storytelling and its underlying conceptions of reality, subjectivity and meaning.