Narrative Fragments Research Articles

Metafictional Narrative Experimentation in Rabih Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope

ABSTRACT This paper examines the metafictional narrative experimentations in Rabih Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope (2021). It underscores the experimentations of narrative discourse and its relation in exposing the dilemmas, pains and sorrows of refugees who are displaced and settle in a Greek refugee camp in Lesbos. The refugee camp has become a spatial location for memorizing traumatic scenes and remembering war-related psychological wounds. Rabih Alameddine is a Lebanese-American diasporic novelist, and an Anglophone Arab writer. In The Wrong End of the Telescope, Alameddine unveils the dilemmas, disorientations, traumatic disorders, severe anxieties, and the depression of displaced refugees. Moreover, Alameddine defies the conventional technique of narration and entails diversions, contours, detours, and digressions. He experiments with the literary parameters and techniques to create a centrifuge of humanistic and socio-political spaces. Moreover, there are fragmented narratives and overlapping, blurring spatial and temporal boundaries. Thus, Alameddine plays with the imagination of the readers and sweeps over places through various spaces of displaced characters’ tragic stories. The Wrong End of the Telescope vividly represents traumas and memories associated with refugees witnessing life-threatening events accompanied by fear, helplessness, and horror. They experience repetitive violent memories, monstrous flashbacks, and nightmares of living through wars, the loss of loved ones, and the displacement from their homeland.

Sensemaking in organizational storytelling: From linear storytelling to antenarrative

Storytelling can be considered good professional practice for organizational communication as it resonates with stakeholder audiences and contributes to the process of sensemaking. This paper challenges two key assumptions that underpin storytelling in an organizational context. The first assumption is that clarity is the goal of storytelling and therefore linear modes of organizational storytelling should be used to reduce complexity to achieve clarity of understanding of organizational messages. The second assumption is that organizational storytelling consists only of the stories an organization tells about itself, and multiple understandings or ‘mixed messages’ are ‘noise’. This paper will argue that the storytelling concept antenarrative – or narrative fragments that can form emergent storytelling episodes – will expand the parameters of sensemaking in organizational storytelling. Furthermore, listening to emergent storytelling episodes can provide insights into prospective sensemaking, which has implications for organizational storytelling practices in our digital age. Putting antenarrative alongside concepts such as ‘listening’ and ‘engagement’ helps to improve organizational storytelling to work toward more effective organizational communication practice and respond to the challenges of complexity in storytelling, entanglements of the porous organization, and digital disruption.

The Postmodern Individual in J.M. Coetzee’s Novels: Exploring Issues of Identity, Representation, Intertextuality, and the Self

This paper explores the postmodern elements in J.M. Coetzee’s novels, focusing on his treatment of themes such as representation, intertextuality, fragmentation, and ambiguity. Through a close examination of works like Foe, Waiting for the Barbarians, and In the Heart of the Country, the study demonstrates how Coetzee disrupts conventional narrative structures and challenges traditional ideas of truth and reality. The analysis delves into how Coetzee’s novels reflect the postmodern rejection of a singular truth, emphasizing the plurality of perspectives and interpretations. The paper also highlights Coetzee’s use of fragmented narratives to depict the instability of identity and meaning in a chaotic world. Furthermore, it explores Coetzee’s conscious deployment of intertextuality, where his works engage with and reinterpret previous literary texts, reinforcing the postmodern view that no text is entirely original. The paper ultimately argues that Coetzee’s fiction exemplifies postmodern techniques, inviting readers to actively engage in constructing meaning and questioning established narratives.

Immersive storytelling experiences: a design methodology

ABSTRACT This paper synthesizes the findings from The Last Play, The Fall of R’Thea and Sticklebacks, three immersive storytelling experiences developed by the author and his collaborators over a span of four years. We define ‘immersive storytelling’ as a time-limited, location-based experience that invites audiences into a fragmented narrative across multiple mediums. Engaging various senses and requiring active participation, the experience adapts to individual choices and uses technology as a tool to expand the narrative spaces. Through this paper, we provide insights into our creative approaches, methodologies, and the lessons learned during the development and production phases and propose an immersive design methodology aimed at guiding future research and practice in crafting immersive experiences.

A. N. Radishchev as an "archaist and innovator": linguopoetic and linguostylistic features of the great book (to the 275th anniversary of the birth)

The article considers the most important linguopoetic and linguostylistic characteristics of A. N. Radishchev’s "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow". The research also focuses on the precedent phenomena in the text of the book, its connections with the European artistic tradition, and influence on the Russian literary language evolution, as well as on particular genres of Russian literature. The text is examined against the background of the dominant literary canons of sentimentalism at the time of its writing; the author creatively mastered some of these canons. Radishchev developed his individual style which synthesised three main linguistic elements: emotional-sensual, civic rhetorical, and common colloquial. Each of them is characterised by a certain set of linguistic means that are compositionally anchored in the text. The figurative devices of classicistic poetics, tropeic expressiveness, refined linguistic expressions borrowed from Western literature, and vocabulary new for the late 18th century form the compositional parts characteristic of the journey as a distinct literary genre. A. N. Radishchev uses Slavicisms, archaic morphological forms and obsolete syntactic constructions, neologisms based on Church Slavonic patterns to create high civic pathos and embody freedom-loving ideas. Low colloquial speech, folk phraseology, folklore inserts, aphorisms, and mixtures of styles shape the author’s narrative fragments and reflections related to specific life situations.

The “mythologies” of women at work, interrupted: feminist origins antenarratives from Harvard Business Review and Western University’s The Quarterly, Part I

Purpose The author aims to walk beside the singular privileged class of White women’s suffrage feminist origin story to (re)construct plausible feminist fragmented threads as antenarratives in the context of business management education. To accomplish this (re)assembling of threads, the author examined two North American business trade publications created and used within two business schools, Harvard University’s Harvard Business Review (HBR), established in 1922, and Western University’s The Quarterly Review of Commerce (The Quarterly), established in 1933. Design/methodology/approach The author carefully reviewed almost 4,000 articles from HBR and The Quarterly, focusing on 308 articles that addressed the experiences of complex women. With this subset of collected articles, the author highlighted overlooked details, accidents and errors, generating interest and curiosity about the emergence of these fragmented and paradoxical origins that align with Foucault's histories of errors. By grouping these narrative fragments into themes and conducting a critical discourse analysis that incorporated influences from the external environment, the author reconstructed plural feminist origins antenarratives. Findings The themes discovered, including women as consumers, explicit working women concerns, women as authors/coauthors, diversity and social justice initiatives, and women in higher education/training, are not merely descriptive observations. They are the building blocks for identifying and analyzing the power relations circulating among feminist origins antenarratives within management education circles. These antenarratives include shedding light on women working in capitalist contexts, the educational needs of business women, and men and naming (but not breaking) the “mythologies” of women at work. These findings are transformative to the understanding of plural feminist origins. Originality/value The uniqueness of this work lies in its threefold contributions: moving away from the notion of a singular feminist origin story and instead embracing the complexity of multiple, paradoxical and incomplete origins; shedding light on the spectrum of power relations – ranging from productive to oppressive – that shaped the experiences of women in two management educational circles during the first half of the 20th century; and introducing the concept of inflection points, which underscores the fluidity of knowledge.

Trauma, Guilt, and Narrative: An Analysis of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars and Family of Liars

The present article examines E. Lockhart’s novels We Were Liars (2014) and the prequel Family of Liars (2022); it employs the notions of “trauma” and the “sense of guilt” and draws upon the view that narration can be a therapeutic tool. Accordingly, the article argues that the narratives which Cadence in We Were Liars and Carrie in Family of Liars form out of flashbacks as well as imaginary conversations and events help them deal with trauma and guilt respectively. It is argued that Cadence overcomes the traumatic memory of accidentally causing the death of the Liars through the fragmented narrative she constructs, and Carrie’s shaped narrative helps her deal with the internalized sense of guilt she develops on account of murdering Pfeff. At the beginning of their narratives, both Cadence and Carrie are burdened with grief, repressing their tragic memories; however, through the gradual development of the narratives they form, they eventually take responsibility for causing the death of their victims. In fact, Cadence and Carrie manage to cope with grief by shaping narratives in which they ensure that they are forgiven, and their victims are in peace after passing, asserting at the end of their narratives that they can endure such pain. Therefore, the present article posits that the shaped narratives in Lockhart’s selected novels function as an outlet, as the narratives help give Cadence and Carrie new perspectives on the tragic incidents and enable them to move on with their lives.

‘ZOUFAN’ AS A ‘TREE HOLE’ FOR ONLINE SHARING OF DEPRESSION: PARTICIPATION PATTERNS, DOMINANT TOPICS AND LINGUISTIC FEATURES

The concept of ‘tree hole’ in social media has provided a disinhibited space for depressed individuals to communicate their depressive feelings, emotions and experiences freely. Its proliferation underscores an increasing need for such online spaces. However, their operational mechanisms, content dynamics, and implications for mental health remain under-explored, especially in the Mainland Chinese context. This study describes and interprets what is going on under ‘Zoufan’, the largest ‘tree hole’ on Weibo in China, by analyzing the patterns of online community engagement concerning discussions on depression. In an overarching project, a total of 67,614 comments under the last farewell post of ‘Zoufan’ were collected and compiled for an overview of the user’s participation patterns. This paper draws upon a set of data manually coded on the selected topics and a fine-grained analysis of linguistic features. The findings indicate a limited interest among selected users in interacting with others, with most of the content focusing on their adverse emotional states and the difficulties they face within interpersonal relationships. Moreover, the expressions contain a strong sense of negation and inhibition, often conveyed through fragmented narratives. The implications of this study help stakeholders, especially family members, educators, and mental health workers, to better understand the mental health outcomes of participation in online depression sharing. This, in turn, facilitates a more nuanced approach to addressing depression both online and in real-life interventions.

PARALLELISM AND ITS IMPACT ON NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN “TRANSATLANTIC” BY COLUM MCCANN

This article analyzes the stylistic techniques employed by Colum McCann in his novel “TransAtlantic” to convey themes of loss, reconciliation, and the personal impacts of historical events. By focusing on parallelism, epizeuxis, and fragmented narrative, the study examines how these devices deepen the narrative and engage the reader.

Narrative Capacity.

What develops in adulthood? More specifically, what develops in adult analysis, not just in terms of thwarted childhood capacities, not just through accrued experience, but even more fundamentally in terms of abilities or structures not possible until the present moment? In this paper, I posit narrative capacity-the capacity to organize conflictual aspects of self and other in a temporary causal-motivational sequence-as a core feature of what develops in the clinical encounter between the analyst and adult patient. It develops, as I demonstrate, through play with narrative fragments, contrasts, and integrations in the analytic field. I present a clinical process note to show how these elements texture and problematize one another. A successful analysis leads not to any one life story but to the more basic ability to weave and unweave our stories.

AI Based IT Training System

Retaining learner engagement is a major challenge in online learning environments, which is even more intensified with learning spaces increasingly built by combining resources from multiple independent sources. Narrative-centric learning experience has been found to improve learner engagement by several researchers. Towards this end, we propose an AI-based approach that generates auxiliary learning content called narrative fragments which are interspersed into the learning pathways to create interactive learning narratives. The proposed approach consists of the automatic generation of two types of narrative fragments– overviews of the learning pathway segments and reflection quizzes or formative assessments from learning resources in any format including open educational resources. The pipeline for the generation of the narrative fragments consists of various components based on different semantic models and a natural language generation (NLG) component based on a pre- trained language model GPT-2 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2). Automation enables the generation of narrative fragments on the fly whenever there are changes in the learning pathway due to the need for reiteration of concepts, pre-requisite knowledge acquisition, etc., enabling adaptability in the learning pathways. The proposed approach is domain agnostic which makes it easily adaptable to different domains. The NLG model is evaluated using ROUGE scores against several baselines. Automatically generated narrative fragments are evaluated by human evaluators. We obtained encouraging results in both cases

Listening to young people’s voices: Attempts at developing context- and participant-sensitive approaches

This article explores the methodological impact of sharpening researchers’ listening skills as part of the development of more context- and participant-sensitive approaches to research. The starting point is an analysis of structured app interviews with young people at a multicultural festival. Through the research process, we became increasingly aware of forms of communication we were prone to overlook, such as the here-and-now engagement of the participants, their carnivalesque expressions and associative and fragmented narration. Listening more openly required a reflexive extension of the data analysis and gave us unexpected glimpses into the life world and identity formation of young people.

Dutch speakers take referent predictability into account, irrespective of addressee presence

Language comprehension involves continuously making predictions about what will be mentioned next. If speakers take these predictions into account, one would expect that they try to be extra clear (e.g., by saying “the girl with the big earrings”) when they are going to say something less predictable. Conversely, speakers do not need to be as clear when the listener already expects the thing that they are about to mention, and can therefore suffice with a pronoun such as she. Previous research testing this hypothesis has found mixed results, with some studies finding that the referent’s predictability in discourse affects pronoun use and others finding that it does not. One explanation might be that speakers are more likely to take predictability into account when there is a co-present addressee who is predicting the next referent. To test this possibility, I conducted a language production experiment in which participants produced spoken continuations of narrative fragments. The fragments were accompanied by pictures that made clear how the story continued. Half of the participants performed the task without anyone else being present, while the other half told the stories to another person, who had to pick out the correct picture. Referent predictability was varied by manipulating the coherence relation in the narrative context. In addition, I calculated a surprisal score for each character in each narrative, as a more direct measure of its predictability. The results showed that with higher predictability, speakers were indeed more likely to use a pronoun than a definite NP to refer to the target character in their continuations. However, it did not matter whether the speaker was telling the stories to a co-present addressee or not. The results are discussed in light of accounts that distinguish between taking the perspective of a specific and that of a hypothetical listener.

The Illusion of Truth in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost

Michael Ondaatje's Anil’s Ghost, a literary masterpiece, focuses on the distortion of truth. Set against the backdrop of civil unrest in Sri Lanka, the novel follows forensic anthropologist Anil Tissera as she exposes the complexities of revealing truth in a world rife with political and personal turmoil. This research abstract delves into the multifaceted layers of reality distortion portrayed in Ondaatje's work .At its core; the novel questions the notion of objective reality. Ondaatje masterfully employs fragmented narratives, shifting perspectives, and unreliable memories to diminish the lines between truth and fiction. Through Anil's investigation into the skeletal remains of victims of political violence, Ondaatje exposes the subjective nature of memory and the inherent biases that shape our understanding of past events. Moreover, the novel explores the psychological toll of living in a reality distorted by trauma and political oppression. Characters like Anil and Sarath, haunted by their pasts, grapple with the existential question of whether it is possible to reconcile personal truth with the external realities imposed upon them. Ondaatje's lyrical prose evokes a sense of disorientation, mirroring the characters' internal struggles as they confront the elusive nature of reality. Furthermore, the novel examines how power dynamics influence the construction of reality. Ondaatje exposes the ways in which those in positions of authority manipulate narratives to serve their own agendas, perpetuating falsehoods and suppressing marginalized voices in the process. Through Anil's quest for justice, the novel underscores the importance of bearing witness to the silenced truths obscured by those in power. The novel serves as a profound exploration of the distortion of reality in the face of political upheaval and personal trauma.

Regionalism as anti-colonialism: imaginaries of area in South East Asian omnibus film and database art

ABSTRACT This article responds to debates about the complicity or outdatedness of regionalism in Area Studies by analyzing creative works by local artists that reimagine South East Asia as ‘area’: Ho Tzu Nyen’s interactive database The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (CDOSEA) (2012–present); and two omnibus films – the Asian Film Archive’s Fragment (2015) and the former Luang Prabang Film Festival’s Mekong 2030 (2020), which feature acclaimed South East Asian filmmakers such as Lav Diaz, U-Wei Haji Saari, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and Tan Chui Mui. Diverging from Caroline Ha Thuc’s earlier South East Asia Research article by revisiting vernacular concepts of sovereignty and collectivity such as mandala and zomia in subaltern historical and anthropological writings, it examines how these works highlight the commonality of motifs of ecology, performance, mobility and spirituality. While the digital artwork CDOSEA algorithmically rearranges constellations of images, words and sounds commonly associated with the region, the omnibus films Mekong 2030 and Fragment combine diverse, fragmentary narratives from different locations within a single anthology. Transforming ‘area’ from an object of neocolonial knowledge production to a source of autonomous collective agency, the article explores how these works visualize a provisional community defined by its plurality, fluidity and inclusiveness.

“Ma semblable, ma soeur”: Negative Capability and Self-Fashioning in “The Quilt Maker” by Angela Carter and Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

ABSTRACT Reading fiction by Angela Carter and Olga Tokarczuk side by side is a fascinating but eerie experience: the celebrated British fabulist and the Nobel-winning Polish writer-cum-public intellectual share some indefinable quality – their oeuvres resonate. My aim in this paper is to add to the critical debate on self-fashioning in Carter and Tokarczuk by comparing how they script their lives as reflected in their fiction. The following discussion of Carter’s short story “The Quilt Maker” and Tokarczuk’s Flights points to how they portray the ambiguities involved in being a female writer. Both writers emphasize the extreme subjectivity of their projects, both script their lives as reflected in their fiction, both create their literary personas with allusions to their real biographies, and both make these personas create constellations and patchworks of narrative fragments employing negative capability to suggest – rather than – tell stories.

The Construction of A Strategic Issue: Issue Selling as A Narrative Process

For the past 30 years, the issue-selling movement has uncovered the vast repertoire of actions by which ‘sellers’ persuade a decision-maker that an issue is strategic. While these works have a rational and teleological conception of this phenomenon, implying that the strategic scope of the issue is given ex ante, other research in strategy shows that such scope is a social and discursive construction based on interactions between various actors. This article proposes a model of issue selling as an emergent narrative process. Based on a qualitative survey of 42 middle managers, using semistructured interviews, we show this process starts with a phase of incremental elaboration, in which the seller informally shares narrative fragments with a network of actors, followed by a phase of interpretation, in which the seller formally presents his or her narrative to a decision-maker, coherently articulating previously collected narrative fragments. We also show that the passage between these two phases is allowed by what we call the ‘strategic construction’ of the narrative. These results help to show that issue selling is a less solitary and rational process than previous work suggests.

Academic citizenship for a digimodern academy

In this essay, we are resituating the practices of academic citizenship within a digimodern academy. We propose that in a world of fragmented narratives surrounding higher education in America, academics should act as stewards of what ever positive higher education narratives they wish to promote and to align their academic citizenship practices accordingly. We argue that rather than having narratives imposed upon academics externally, there is power in creating and controlling our own narratives. This essay situates the academy in a digimodern context, and it explores the connection between power and narratives about higher education. This essay then examines academic citizenship in light of creating and maintaining higher education narratives and finally illustrates how it may look in practice.

UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERNISM THROUGH THE THEORIES OF LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD

This article studies the profound transformations ushered in by postmodernism in the mid-20th century, focusing on its impact on culture, truth, representation, and the traditional understanding of knowledge. Contrary to the view of postmodernism as a linear progression from modernism, we explore the perspectives of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, presenting it as a cyclical moment within the continuous innovation of high modernism. Lyotard redefines the role of postmodern artists and writers as akin to philosophers, liberated from pre-established norms and engaged in a perpetual quest fornew rules within their works. Baudrillard’s insights into the evolution of science fiction reflect a broader postmodern reevaluation of reality as fragmented and simulacral. Furthermore, we address the so-called crisis of representation identified by Lyotard, challenging the realistic epistemology that views knowledge and art as mirrors of an external reality. By examining fragmented narration in literature, we propose a more inclusive approach to representing the multifaceted nature of reality. This article contributes to the understanding of postmodernism, highlighting its significance in redefining cultural expressions and our approach to knowledge and representation.

Labor of love: Re‐membering dismembered bodies in community research

AbstractEthnographic studies are practically invasive in nature in that they intrude into people's everyday experiences. It is therefore the duty of a researcher documenting experiences of women to pay attention to these forms of violence and undertake the labor of love that seeks to re‐member women's bodies and their stories in ways that restore their dignity and contribute to healing. African feminists have encouraged us to employ research methods that are able to engage stories of trauma and survival that are not triggering, invasive and limited. Intersectional feminism offers a qualitative analytical framework that aims at identifying the interlocked layered systems of oppression that affect the marginalized in society (Yuval‐Davis (2006). Similarly, in employing fragmented narrative as a methodology, there is a realization and acknowledgment of the superficiality of linear retelling as a mode of conveying psychological damage that exposes the relationship between silence, gesture and suffering in revisiting the site of trauma.