Ethics of storytelling

history, power, otherness

pp. 177-214

in: Hanna Meretoja, The narrative turn in fiction and theory, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

While in theoretical debates narrativists frequently embrace the view that stories are fundamentally good for us, in narrative fiction the depiction of storytelling as indispensable for human existence is often coupled with the sense that our entanglement in narratives is an ethically complex and ambivalent phenomenon. In this chapter, I discuss the current debate on the ethical significance of narrative for human existence, which too often centres on the dichotomous question of whether it is "good' or "bad' that we interpret our experiences in narrative terms. In this chapter, I problematize this dichotomy by suggesting that narratives can have emancipatory and ethical potential, but they provide no guarantee that identities are ethically sustainable. I shall show how Tournier's novels bring out both the violent and the ethical potential of narrative and throw light on the ethical challenges involved in the construction of narrative identity.