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- Convenors:
-
Helmut Groschwitz
(Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities)
Petr Janeček (Charles University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Narratives
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
"Breaking narratives" can be read as both a strategy and a process. Narratives can trigger irritation and change, be "broken" and deconstructed. What exactly happens at this moment, when the possibility of something different opens up, when something new emerges but has yet to take shape?
Long Abstract:
"Breaking narratives" can be read in two ways: as a strategy and a process. Narratives can cause irritation and initiate change - Narratives also can be "broken", deconstructed or appropriated. But what exactly happens at this moment of disconcert/irritation, when the possibility of something different opens up, when things are emerging, but have yet to take shape?
This panel explores the communicative means and contents involved in these processes, as well as the different aspects of "broken" and genre-breaking narratives and storytelling. We invite papers dealing with (but not limited to) the strategies and social consequences of speaking and hearing marginal, liminal, subaltern, and subversive narratives, the poetics and politics arising from intertextual gaps created by unexpected and genre-breaking storytelling, as well as the effects of media logic in enabling and restricting what is possible to say in public. We also welcome papers examining the use of narratives and storytelling as important strategies in areas as diverse as medicine, education, heritage, advertisement, and politics, especially the motivations and arguments used as foundation and support for storytelling, including questions on what narratives can do, what problems they can help solve, and what kind of subjects they are intended to produce.
The Narrative Cultures Working Group warmly welcomes proposals from young scholars/early career researchers, too!
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
For some 30 years there has been a vibrant storyteller movement in Sweden. This paper delves into the motivations and arguments used as foundation and support, including questions on what narratives can do, what problems they can be a remedy for, and subject positions produced.
Paper long abstract:
For some 30 years there has been a vibrant storyteller movement in Sweden. Narratives and storytelling are claimed as important strategies in contemporary society, in areas diverse as medicine, education, heritage, advertisement, and politics. Professional storytellers establish themselves as consultants, and a variety of handbooks aimed at niche audiences are published. Local history, personal experiences, canonical narratives, fictionalized role models and developmental schemes are re/shaped, re/contextualized, re/mediatized in order to raise and allocate attention to new or marginalized fields and objects, from new and old audiences alike. Sometimes folklore scholarship is invoked as support, sometimes storytelling is a new concept. This paper aims to delve into the motivations and arguments that are used as foundation and support for storytelling as a contemporary field of specialization, including questions on what narratives can do, what lacks and problems they can be a remedy for, and who the intended and/or imagined audiences are. Of special interest are the overlaps, contradictions, and conceptual ambiguities that occur when different perspectives and discourses meet, and the strategies developed to handle them.
Paper short abstract:
The contribution tries to approach the processes of shaping narratives of mystery, stories about anomalous experiences, phenomena considered paranormal or supernatural, asking about their position in relation to discourses of knowledge and experience, as well as their struggles for legitimation
Paper long abstract:
UFOs, ghosts, haunted houses, possessions, cryptozoology... Stories about anomalous experiences, phenomena considered paranormal or supernatural, or "mysterious things" have existed and still exist in all times and cultures. The proposed paper focuses on the concept and “narratives of mystery”. These narratives try to bring together what is called "border phenomena" (Grenzphänomene): that is, phenomena of contradictory nature, between the daily and the exceptional. “Narratives of mystery” break, on the one hand, everyday life and socially legitimized models of experience and knowledge. For these models “mystery” appears as marginal, subaltern, and even as subversive discourse. But, on the other, these narratives are part of the collective imaginaries and popular cultures. In this way, the narratives about mystery are situated in a liminal space between accepted and not accepted, known and unknown, normality and exceptionality.
Which stories are told from the "world of mystery"? What characteristics do “narratives of mystery” have? What do they say about the established orders? Who say and who listen to them? Who condemns these narratives? The contribution tries to approach the processes of shaping narratives of mystery, asking about their position in relation to other discourses of knowledge and experience, as well as their struggles for legitimation
Paper short abstract:
The paper interprets the most influential hoaxes, fake news, conspiracy theories, contemporary legends and rumours which appeared in connection with both “waves” of coronavirus Covid-19 in ideologically divided vernacular discourse of the Czech Republic during spring and autumn of 2020.
Paper long abstract:
Czech society became polarized along lines of the so-called Café/Pub Split, the imagined divide between the pro-Western liberal urbanites and the nationalist conservative-leftist inhabitants of the rural areas at least since 2015. Back then, mass media coverage of "European refugee crisis" changed dynamics of vernacular public discussions of the Czech society; imagined cultural threat posed by refugees seemed to be one of the most crucial issues dividing the society. In 2020, new, even more popular topic emerged: global pandemics of coronavirus Covid-19. Unlike 2015, societal response to this issue became much more complicated. Ideological borders between the Café and the Pub seemed to partly dissolve, partly rearrange, and – most importantly – both “groups” started to share several identical narrative themes and motifs. Based on folkloristic fieldwork consisting of oral interviews as well as ethnography of the Czech Internet, supplemented by media content analysis, the paper tries to interpret main texts and argumentation strategies shared by both “sides” of this ideological divide. The paper analyses the most influential hoaxes, fake news and conspiracy theories which reinterpreted older folk stereotypes, and also orally-transmitted contemporary legends and rumours which appeared in connection with both “waves” of coronavirus Covid-19 in the Czech Republic during spring and autumn of 2020 .
Paper short abstract:
This paper focus on: a) the dynamic of narration and the narrative craft, which is turning nowadays into a profession in the city, and which is breaking the narrative norms of the past; b) the changes in the content of the imaginary narrations; c) the way narration as a normal procedure becomes work
Paper long abstract:
Most people have linked the narration of tales with the notion of pleasure within a familiar environment, such as one’s family. But what is happening when, in the modern urban environment, this activity becomes a profession (professional narrators) and, what is more, when this narration serves the interests of cultural industries, such as for instance the narrations taking place in shopping malls or coffee shops?
This paper, which is based entirely on field research, shall focus on the following points: a) the dynamic of narration and the narrative craft, which is turning nowadays into a profession in the city, and which is breaking the narrative norms of the past; b) the changes in the content of the imaginary narrations. While in the past people wished to listen to optimistic messages, today’s audience, in coffee shops or multi-purpose facilities, seems to be attracted by a series of scary and unpleasant narrations, such as horror stories, urban legends and conspiracy theories; c) the way narration as a normal procedure becomes work with specific strategies in order to stimulate the interest of the client.
Lastly, all the above changes shall be linked, on the one hand, with the commercialisation of this “old craft”, i.e. narration, and, on the other hand, with the blind allegiance to the globalised narrative patterns of stories, which are usually encountered on the Internet and are then spread to the entire society, thus transforming the content of the narration process itself.
Paper short abstract:
Modernization affected how healing authorities were narrated. Belief narratives about vernacular healers adapted concepts of medicine in resisting theory-based healing that was promoted by the newspaper narratives. This paper examines the use of narratives as strategies in medicine and healing.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses the discourses on Swedish-language vernacular magical healing in Ostrobothnia, Finland, at the turn of the 20th century. In the same medical market, both vernacular healers and physicians attracted patients with different healing schemas. Whereas traditional healers based their healing on traditional knowledge of where the illnesses came from and how they could be healed, physicians who were just arriving to the local medical market based their knowledge on theory-based medicine. In the local vernacular narratives about famous healers they were associated with sin and were gossiped of making a deal with the Devil. Nevertheless, the vernacular narratives portray these healers as more efficient in healing than physicians. Newspapers of the time, however, promoted narratives of healing that described these “quacks” as less efficient than academically-trained physicians or even lethal with their healing.
These diverse narratives of healing and medicine represent a breaking point in the local history when traditional healing methods and authorities were giving room in the medical market for emerging theory-based healing brought by the modernization process. Narratives about magical healers aiding the physicians communicate resistance towards previously unknown kind of healing whereas newspapers articles, communicating elite discussion on healing, narrated a restrictive voice on medical authority. This papers surveys these conflicting, yet intertextual and genre-breaking narratives, with discourse analysis. It offers a new insight on vernacular healing models of the rural Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia as well as an unique case study of narrated medical market that is going through a fundamental change.