Narrative Construction Research Articles

The memory of the deportation of kalmyks of “generation 1.5”: narrative construction

The memory of the deportation of the Kalmyks as a traumatic event is not homogeneous. Women and men, expelled as teenagers or adults, or Kalmyk children born as “spetspereselency”, had different experiences of eviction and survival and remember these years in different ways. The oral stories I have collected show the memory of the community through personal narratives, revealing variety of personal strategies and resistance. In this publication, I would like to show, using the example of one interview, the features of social memory about the deportation of the Kalmyks and the specifics of the narrative about this “generation 1.5”. The main research task was to analyze the plots, images, assessments that form the narrative about the deportation of the Kalmyks from the “children of Siberia”. Other objectives of the publication: to find out how the language of trauma works in the narrative about the deportation of the Kalmyks, to show the possibilities of commentary as a scholarly genre. The article consists of three parts: an introduction, fragments of the text of a spontaneous interview and comments on them. The study used the method of discursive analysis and generational theory. The field material is presented in the form of a transcribed text of an interview recorded by the author in 2006. The discursive strategies of the narrative speak of its positive nature.

Introduction: futures of literary studies

ABSTRACT What if it is not actual methodological debate but the consequences of framing a facet of differences between current literary critical positions as a large-scale method war that stand in the way of what ought to be the common goal of our discipline, namely to articulate the possible and indeed necessary futures of literary studies? This essay argues that the notion of a new method wars in literary studies should be understood as a narrative about literary studies whose rise and function must be analysed before the backdrop of a moment when the discipline itself is in crisis, a narrative construction of the reality of contemporary literary studies that gives rise to very real consequences. To analyse the new method wars as a narrative construction means to ask how, why, and to what end we tell this story about ourselves and to probe its effects in the context of a general crisis of our discipline. The narrative of the method wars at worst perpetuates those experiences and views of our discipline that add to already existing toxic conditions in a discipline defined by rampant precarity. In this essay and throughout this special issue, we seek to resist the pull of warfare: the easy pull of denouncing, discrediting, misrepresenting, and otherwise doing injustice to the critical positions that we and our contributors may reject. At the same time, it is not to accept the ease and banality of the middle ground in the face of genuine theoretical convictions. Our questions, we think, remain acute: How do we think about the future of literary studies in the funerary climate that has engendered the belief that we need to fight our internal wars for survival? How might (must?) our understanding of what literary criticism is and does change? How do we formulate possible futures for literary studies while grappling with the significant problems that our present poses? In this essay and in this issue, we stage hopeful interventions that seek to contribute to the effort to explore the futures of literary studies by way of and conceived as a collective endeavour. Together, we advance a call for better, more useful, more active, more networked, and, yes, even for abandoned versions of the always multiple and joyously contradictory discipline we call literary studies.

Narrative construction of professional identities of teachers in Norway in the works of G. Søreide

Narrative construction of professional identities of teachers in Norway in the works of G. Søreide

Commemorating the past, shaping the future: the jubilee and centenary celebrations of the Stockton and Darlington Railway

This paper examines how and why communities connected to the railways celebrated anniversaries of important moments in the industry’s history. It focuses on the jubilee (1875) and centenary (1925) anniversary celebrations of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (established 1825) by railway companies, workers and local communities. While these anniversaries were used to symbolically affirm a continuity in railway history, they occurred under different organisational conditions – 1875, during the heyday of multiple smaller companies and 1925, during the consolidated control of the amalgamated ‘Big Four’. A comparative study of these commemorative events reveals continuities and changes in the construction of railway history, and corporate and community identities. To demonstrate this, the analysis will focus on narrative construction, temporal interplay between the past, present and future, and the role of agency. Conveyed through a series of commemorative ‘components’ (Papadakis, 2003), these elements converge to establish the shape and function of the events, and highlight the motivations of different groups for celebrating the past, how commemorative narratives were developed for select audiences, and what vehicles were used to carry said narratives. These core narratives concertinaed elements of the industry’s past, present and future, and were deployed to validate cultural values, draw together communities and consolidate political or economic loyalties. Overall, the paper will demonstrate how and why different stakeholders create and foster commemorative cultures, and critique and measure the efficacy of the forms and functions of this performative engagement with railway history.

Arturo Alessandri Palma y la teatralidad de lo politico durante su segundo gobierno: La estatua de Manuel Bulnes y el Barrio Civico (Santiago de Chile, 1937)

This article analyzes the inauguration of the equestrian statue of Manuel Bulnes, organized by the second government of Arturo Alessandri Palma, in the core of the Civic Quarter. Through a discursive and sociopolitical analysis, we propose that the ceremony around the event had an evident intention of political legitimization: both of his government, and of the liberal order established by the 1925 Constitution. Also, the arguments to place the monument in the Civic Quarter relate to a major project that aimed to bring the nation to public space and identify the chilean population with that imaginary. With regard to the construction of the official narrative surrounding the ceremony, we argue that the historian Guillermo Feliú Cruz was primarily responsible.

Navigating the Paradox of Promise through the Construction of Meaningful Career Narratives

Navigating the Paradox of Promise through the Construction of Meaningful Career Narratives

Re-Cognizing Harassment with the Arts

Absent mechanisms of restorative justice, victims of sexual harassment, particularly those within the LGBT+ community that are already frequent targets of relational aggression, are unlikely to either report or reckon with the consequences of inappropriate workplace behaviors and discrimination. Written from the perspective of a masculinized bisexual whose encounter with a pervasive culture of sexual harassment and psychological abuse provoked suicidal ideation, this paper employs the artistic practices of illustration as a means of first re-cognizing and recognizing phenomena, a Ricœurean construct of narrative and a palimpsest of multivocal text and images to evoke the lived experience of harassment and an analytic layer to invoke the phenomenon. By drawing, writing, and thinking through the phenomenon, the marriage of artistic and phenomenological approaches allows both researcher and reader to confront the ‘painful truths’ that otherwise resist easy analysis.

Du témoignage à la narration : vivre après, vivre avec ? À propos d’écrits et textes de victimes et de leurs proches

IntroductionThis is an original research, the authors having not found in the specialized literature this kind of approach. The authors raise several questions related to the writings, testimonies, and autofictions published by the victims of attacks: Why tell yourself? What are the motivations that push a writer, an essayist, an anonymous person to tell the story of his life or a segment of his life? What triggers this need, this desire? Who are the recipients of these messages? MethodologyAnalysis of victims’ texts (written by direct or indirect victims or their relatives) according to several parameters, including chronological succession – sometimes meticulous – events, the narration of personal experiences at distances sometimes very variable of the situations that inspire them. AnalysisThis is a network analysis according to the method of comparative clinical epistemology which shows that: the literary structure and construction chosen by the authors are very varied, as are the literary genres mastered or sketched to which they belong. The roles of these texts and the functions to which the construction of such narratives responds differ according to the victims; we often find a remote function, a step back from a moment in his life that affects his future. Compared to the reader, the function of testimony and sharing does not seem a sufficient explanation while the need to make each disappeared live in the collective memory often appears to the victim as a necessity. The Narratology and Ricoeur's studies on identity and self-constitution have emphasized the richness of the notion of narrative unity of life while taking into account the difficulties it raises. ConclusionThe writings of victims account for an individual experience at different moments of the evolution of trauma and sequelae; the moment of transition to writing, near or at a distance of the attack is variable, as is the evolution of posttraumatic stress; as for the sequelae it is often appreciated differently by the victim, his entourage and professionals.

National archives, national memory? How national archives describe themselves and their mission

There is a widespread notion that archives, especially national archival institutions, represent the nation’s memory. Historically, archives have played an important role for history writing, thereby contributing to the construction of national master narratives and the strengthening of national identities. What the association between archives and memory actually means is however debated in archival literature. Taking the discussion on the relation between archives and memory as a starting point, this study examines how national archives in today’s world present themselves to the public. The source material consists of mission statements collected from 138 webpages and 18 Facebook accounts all over the world. The first research question concerns the connection between mission statements and a national master narrative, the second asks where references to national memory and national identity are most pronounced, and the third asks whether self-images of national archives can be connected to historical experiences. The analysis shows that mission statements contain many allusions to history and heritage, while references to memory and identity are less widespread than expected. Some variations between continents, and between different groups of countries are identified, although relatively small. A possible explanation is that national archives are engaged in quite a lot of international cooperation, for instance in the International Council on Archives and UNESCO. Thus, they are likely to be as much influenced by each other as by the political environment in their own countries.

Weaving a story: Narrative formation over prolonged time scales engages social cognition and frontoparietal networks.

Forming narratives is of key importance to human experience, enabling one to render large amounts of information into relatively compacted stories for future retrieval, giving meaning to otherwise fragmented occurrences. The neural mechanisms that underlie coherent narrative construction of causally connected information over prolonged temporal periods are yet unclear. Participants in this fMRI study observed consecutive scenes from a full-length movie either in their original order, enabling causal inferences over time, or in reverse order, impeding a key component of coherent narratives-causal inference. In between scenes, we presented short periods of blank screens for examining post-encoding processing effects. Using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) followed by seed-base correlation analysis, we hypothesized that networks involved in online monitoring of incoming information on the one hand, and offline processing of previous occurrences on the other would differ between the groups. We found that despite the exposure to the same scenes, the chronological-order condition exhibited enhanced functional connectivity in frontoparietal regions associated with information integration and working memory. The reverse-order condition yielded offline, post-scene coactivation of neural networks involved in social cognition and particularly theory of mind and action comprehension. These findings shed light on offline processes of narrative construction efforts, highlighting the role of social cognition networks in seeking for narrative coherence.

Contemporary Latvian Design in Symbiosis with Local Handicraft Tradition

AbstractThe contemporary musealization of Latvian design objects or the inclusion of high-quality examples in the Latvian National Museum Holdings began in 2005. Established three years later in 2008, the Latvian Design of the Year Award has since then attracted attention to this field, prompting further theoretical discourse. The publicly available narrative on 21st century Latvian design often points out the strong influence of local crafts and ethnic cultural heritage. An important impetus in contemporary, ethnically conscious design is the culture of the Song and Dance Celebration, within which the outfits of festival participants are created. This article identifies the application of traditional Latvian crafts in the works of Latvian artists and designers, visualizing the ideas and forms of ethnic identity. The analysis focuses on the general context of Latvian design: institutions supported by the Ministry of Culture, the Latvian Design of the Year Award and FOLD, the digital magazine of creative industries. Sources used include opinion articles and the public messages of companies. To facilitate theoretical understanding of the topic, it was important to take into account the theory of national identity and the museum narrative as well as the history of European design, especially at the turn of the 20th/21st centuries. It should be noted that the history of applied art and design in Latvia during the 20th century is still in the research stage. A historical insight into the construction of the Latvian traditional craft narrative, which began at the end of the 19th century, is also provided so as to promote greater comprehension of Latvian design. Essentially, it is a narrative of national identity, deliberately constructed through the craft practices, raw materials and compositional techniques characteristic of peasant culture.

The Red River’s Mid-Island: Sketching an Alternative Narrative History of Hanoi’s Identity

ABSTRACT The ‘mid-island’ is the folk name given to a peripheral piece of land in the Red River at the heart of Hanoi, Vietnam. This essay surveys this place’s representations in contemporary cinema, literature, television, and photography. Through these meaning-making practices, the mid-island becomes a narrative construction, revealing an alternative history of Hanoi's identity with many unknown or marginalised aspects. It has become a place where many layers of meaning are piled up, sometimes conflicting: it is both a check-in site where many activities of Hanoian youth culture take place and a refuge for those marginalised, who cannot find anywhere else in the city to survive. It is both a ground for Hanoi men to perform their masculinity and a private space for a Hanoian child to find the remaining mysteries of the city. Currently, the city’s government is promoting a plan of transforming the mid-island into an ecological-cultural park. To do so without paying attention to the narrative meanings of the landscape, however, could lead to the loss of memories of the place and even become an act of violence against the most vulnerable communities, human and not-human, of the city.

Cinematic collage as an ethical response to the abject: Sang-mi Choo’s The Children Gone to Poland

ABSTRACT In The Children Gone to Poland (2018), Sang-mi Choo employs different narrative styles not to faithfully present public history on North Korean orphans who were moved to Poland during the Korean War but to rewrite different groups of subjects who underwent painful experiences during the Cold War, such as North Korean war orphans, the Polish teachers who cared for them, and a North Korean refugee who risked her life during the 1990s. To create their dialogic engagement, Choo uses her personal experience and weaves them into her cinematic narrative. Her filmic endeavour, however, is often conflicting as her audiences encounter a non-linear story world in terms of editing. In addition, she experiments with her filmmaking by having a porous nexus among images capturing disparate spaces and times. Audiences become defamiliarized from the film narrative as historical truth and are instead aware of it as a careful construction creating a dialogic space. To explicate Choo’s cinematic project, this article employs the philosophical concept of gesture elaborated by Giorgio Agamben. Choo’s construction of an unconventional film narrative is an ethical response to the miserable subjects who still have painful memories and urgently seek to be heard.

‘Put South Africans First’: Making Sense of an Emerging South African Xenophobic (Online) Community

With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa, a shift has taken place in the organisation of xenophobia as xenophobic activism has adapted to the pandemic and increasingly moved ‘online’. While a large scholarship on the various aspects of ‘offline’ xenophobia in contemporary South Africa has been produced, the recent intensification of online xenophobic activism during the pandemic remains an under-researched topic. The present study sets out to challenge this lack of attention given to online xenophobia in South Africa by conducting a 15-month digital ethnography of an emerging South African xenophobic (online) community, the so-called ‘Put South Africans First’ movement. Aiming to understand the narrative construction of social reality in this group, data gained from the Put South Africans First Facebook page were triangulated with interviews conducted with the leadership of the Put South Africans First movement. Two narratives that are constitutive for this group will be analysed: the story of the ‘harmfulness of Pan-Africanism’ and the conspiracy of a ‘modern-day slavery’. Drawing on a perspective that emphasises the entanglement between the emotional, the narrative and the digital in contemporary forms of xenophobia, the article exposes the working of these two key narratives. The narrative of the ‘harmfulness of Pan-Africanism’ draws on the recycling of colonial stereotypes, the affect of disgust, and on the technique of reappropriating and weaponising history. In contrast, the narrative of ‘modern-day slavery’ is fuelled by a belief in replacement conspiracies and a dystopic longing into the future, where future generations of South African children have become enslaved by ‘foreigners’. The article concludes by pointing out some of the specifics of the South African case in relation to xenophobic mobilisations in other parts of the world.

ОБУЧЕНИЕ ИНОЯЗЫЧНОМУ НАРРАТИВУ НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ НОВОСТНЫХ СООБЩЕНИЙ НАУЧНО-ПУБЛИЦИСТИЧЕСКОГО ЖАНРА

The purpose of studying a foreign language at a technical university is to provide students with the necessary skills and methods of communication in academic discourse, ensuring the adequacy of social and professional contacts. To achieve this goal, the teaching strategy of this discipline has shifted from traditional translations of texts in the specialty to the primacy of oral speech. Revision of pedagogical priorities has led to the need in updating information and educational resources and implementation of methods aimed at developing students` communicative skills by organizing different types of speech activity. The article discusses the method of creating foreign language narratives of a scientific and journalistic genre by using the latest research news. The author develops a step-by-step algorithm with the particular focus on identifying common and specific elements in the structure of news texts. The article presents a narrative analysis of the field-specific authentic news text that includes structuring the primary source of information into basic elements: those of an abstract, localization, complication, evaluation, and denouement. The preliminary division of the media text into elements allows students to create a framework structure and a basis for reporting back on the actual news stories. The linguodidactic potential held by professionally-oriented news narrative is established. The author believes that construction of narratives can contribute to the development of students` abilities to analyze, synthesize, evaluate and reflect on information. Learning a foreign language through news narratives allows engineering students to improve their creative and communicative skills. Teaching a foreign language using media sources, which highlight scientific and technological breakthroughs, forms educational and cognitive competence of engineering and technical profile students and stimulates their research activities.

History and Archaeology: An Analysis of Narrative Construction through Multiple Sources in the Case of Muntz Metal

In the world of history and archaeology, the construction of narratives has become a multidisciplinary process that draws on a variety of sources. This paper focuses on one case study: the Muntz Metal as an example of these processes. As we explore history and archaeology in tandem, we dive into the unique narrative surrounding this material and its impact on various epochs. Muntz Metal, a copper and zinc alloy, has left a significant historical footprint, from its use in maritime vessels to applications in industry. Through archaeological research and historical interpretation, an account of how this alloy shaped key sectors of society has been developed. What makes the study of Muntz Metal particularly interesting is the diversity of sources that have been employed to reconstruct its history and impact. This paper seeks to understand the interplay between history and archaeology, highlighting how various sources, such as trade records, recovered artifacts, and historical testimony, have intertwined to form a more complete picture of the importance of Muntz Metal over time. By examining how these sources complement each other, a dynamic process of narrative construction is revealed, with each piece of information adding a layer of understanding. The study of Muntz Metal not only provides a glimpse into its evolution and application throughout history, but also serves as an exemplary case of how history and archaeology work in harmony to weave narratives

On writing about illness in Kuwait. A discussion with Shahd Al Shammari

On the occasion of the release of Shahd Al Shammari’s latest book, Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness (2022) in Kuwait, Marion Breteau went to meet the author to interview her about the experience of writing intimacy. Shahd Al Shammari, who is a professor of English literature at the Gulf University for Science and Technology of Kuwait, has already published several works of fiction and academic works in the field of disability studies and gender studies. In this interview, she discusses her latest book and the experience of autoethnographic writing from a feminist perspective. Intimacy, in Head Above Water, is thus her own: by tracing the evolution of multiple sclerosis she suffers from since the age of 18, the narrative has as its centrality the problematic of the sick body. In the hands of doctors, through medical discourses, between the four walls of hospitals, Shahd Al Shammari explores the transformations of her adolescent body, she experiences her first love stories, while taking her first steps into the academic world. The intimate, through the body, becomes the vehicle of her personal construction and her gender identity. With this book, she highlights the tension between intimacy and publicity through the act of writing. This tension is all the more acute because, in Kuwait, the act of writing can undermine local authors who, like her, write in English, a linguistic choice often perceived as a threat to the country’s cultural and linguistic identity. From then on, writing the intimate becomes a political act. It can also become a “politics of love” when expressing pain and anger is less important than raising awareness and inviting to solidarity through writing and teaching. The interview first looks at the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it has led to a rethinking of teaching and research: stripped of their research resources and classrooms, many academics have indeed had to reinvent themselves. This is the case for S. Al Shammari who took this opportunity to look at the Head Above Water project. The interview goes on to discuss the stages of the book’s narrative construction, and then its reception by the Kuwaiti public. The author discusses her choice to write in English as well as her theoretical positions, which are strongly rooted in a literary feminist perspective. Given the advocacy nature of the autoethnographic approach, it made sense for her to adopt this methodology. The interview also discusses the reception of the book in the research community. S. Al Shammari points to the scarcity of disability studies, which, as she explains, reflects a form of patriarchal academic ableism. Finally, this critique serves to highlight the role of teaching in her academic career. It is through classroom exchanges, and the practice of transmission, that what could be rage is transformed into a tool for cohesion and enlightenment, in a context where equal opportunity is impacted by gender roles and where "non-visible" disability is underestimated. Eventually, the editorial and academic fields become the receptacles of intimacy building through the very experience of putting it into words. Although the book is the restitution of a story that takes place mostly in Kuwait, it is nonetheless a shared testimony, a point of honor on which the author insists, aware of the orientalist gaze to which her work is subjected.

PARTICIPATORY INVENTORY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF OTHER PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURAL HERITAGE: COLLABORATIVE EXPERIENCES IN SÃO RAIMUNDO NONATO - PIAUÍ

This article seeks to reflect on the potential of participatory inventories as instruments to expand the concept of heritage and promote an ecology of knowledge. For that, we present how the participatory inventory that has been developed in the municipality of São Raimundo Nonato - Pi has helped in the construction of other perspectives on the cultural heritage of the municipality, enabling the construction of collaborative narratives about them. The collected data indicate that the identification of goods with “heritage value” by our collaborators tends to be based on aspects of their family and affective trajectory, being this an element to be considered in the elaboration of policies and actions of definition, valorization and heritage protection.

ПЛОХАЯ ПАМЯТЬ ИЛИ ХОРОШАЯ ИСТОРИЯ? (О ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ М. А. ГЕРШЕНЗОНА)

A project to create Soviet historical fiction for children at the turn of the 1920s-1930s was closely connected with the tasks of creating a single historical narrative, addressed to adults and designed to present the victory of Soviet power as a natural result of all previous stages of the class struggle. Children’s literature had to be part of this narrative. One of those who participated in the production of historical works for children was the writer, translator and editor of Detgiz Mikhail Abramovich Gershenzon. The article examines his contribution to the development of the formalist idea about the impossibility of creating a holistic historical concept of the past in the literature. In Gershenzon’s works, this idea is demonstrated through the destructive power of montage as a compositional device, the subjective reassembly of events at the moment of their textual embodiment, and the rhetorical corrosion of historical narrative. At the same time, Mikhail Gershenzon was one of the first to demonstrate the limitations of using human memory as a historical source, the vulnerability of hope, by turning to the memories of eyewitnesses of historical events, to obtain reliable information “first-hand”. By linking the literary representation of oblivion with the construction of a historical narrative, Mikhail Gershenzon revised the very claim to create the only correct world history in literature for children.

Sou Bairrista: criação de vídeo-narrativas sobre e com as pessoas habitantes do Bairro Herculano

This article is based on an anthropological research, which mobilized participatory audiovisual method-ologies, including photo elicitation and participa-tory video, as strategies for the production of vid-eo-narratives, research and analysis of the social and housing context of the community of Bairro Hercu-lano, located in Porto. The participant group for this research included twenty residents, aged between 25 and 81 years old, living in the neighbourhood for over fifty years. The design of audiovisual narratives was an opportunity for the community of this neigh-bourhood to produce self-representations, and to generate space and meaning for the voices and experiences of its inhabitants, bringing their stories to other public dimensions (Hancox, 2017). The act of narrating “is also to discourse about meanings, to analyse situations. Conversely, to discourse on meanings and analyse is also a form of narrating” (Barros, 2012, p. 8). Participatory audiovisual meth-odologies enable the study and understanding of diverse places and social realities (Vailati & Godio, 2016). Therefore, the participation of the residents of Bairro Herculano, in the various stages of devel-opment of these methodologies, allowed the for-mation and aggregation of individual and collective perspectives for the construction of video narra-tives about their place and community.