Narrative Truth Research Articles

Dal "vuoto" al "vuoto fertile"

In the twentieth century, Existentialism brings about a radical change in the history of thought. According to such approach the most crucial issue is not the search for Truth, but rather what each individual wants to do with one’s own existence. With Husserl, Existentialism becomes Phenomenology, the theory of intentional perception according to which each organism, through perception, gives structure and meaning to the world. This perspective supports a dynamic way of being and makes space for the “I” and the “You”, thus knowledge becomes intersubjective. Constructivism is consistent with existentialism as it introduces the concept of narrative truth rather than absolute truth. Narrative truth emerges in a space that in the Gestalt tradition is called void, in this instance, fertile void. This void is where things happen,where they can develop. Thus, avoiding the void interrupts the continuous and natural process of existence. Considering void a hardly definable, subjective experience, the idea of the current research arises from the desire to identify a common phenomenology to the experience of the fertile void. In this study shall use the method of phenomenological analysis to describe such experience. The group shall meet t o reflect upon the way inwhich the fertile void is experienced how the perception of self and of the environment changes, and upon the experience of contact when void is felt and sensed. shall be organized systematically in order to build a methodological tool for a common conceptualization of the experience of the “fertile void”.

Cows, Charcoal, and Cocaine: Al-Shabaab’s Criminal Activities in the Horn of Africa

Contrary to historical terrorism scholarship, terrorist groups can strategically diversify into a variety of criminal activities without losing their core ideology or support among the civilian population. This pattern is demonstrated by the evolutionary arc of al-Shabaab, which grew from a small subset of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union to the most violent political actor in the Horn of Africa, able to conduct terrorist attacks as far afield as Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. Al-Shabaab has been highly successful in creating a narrative of truth and justice provision while simultaneously exploiting the Somali population and engaging in criminal activity. For the group, criminal activity and crime networks serve two primary purposes: as a funding mechanism and as an avenue for recruitment. Using ethnographic fieldwork and process tracing, I find that the group’s criminal activities throughout the Horn of Africa have made the group significantly more resilient to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns, extending both its lifespan and operational capability.

“That lie of state”: Andrew Marvell, the Earl of Arlington, and Restoration newswriting

ABSTRACT Archival evidence reveals how literary conventions shaped Restoration newswriting. These conventions were developed through an ongoing exchange between news, poetry and drama. Identifying this interaction in practice provides an opportunity to recognise Marvell’s interrogation of the intertextual features of newswriting in his “Painter” satires. As an example, I demonstrate how the persona constructed around General Monck to explain the Restoration – of prudent, self-enclosed ratiocination – was consolidated between news and literature. Using unique archival materials, I map how this literary construction governed Secretary Arlington’s revisions to a manuscript draft of the news pamphlet A True Narrative (1666). In his narrative of the same battle in the Third Advice satire Marvell also made recourse to this formula. While he sought to interrogate the Monck persona, it was not rejected but repurposed as an antidote to administrative malpractice. Placing Marvell’s satire in this new context reveals a more nuanced engagement with state newswriting.

Does Truth Matter? Introduction to Papers by Jody Davies, Shlomit Gadot, and Donnel Stern

Each of these three essays touches on the universal meaning and relevance of truth. Yet all are dealing with the relational truths that survive and hold us after the 2016 election amounted to a loss of certain assumed truths of everyday life.Donnel Stern asks, If relational truth is constructed, dialogical, multiple, how does this belief survive when we find ourselves outraged, by what seem like cavalier untruths—lies, some kind of runaway, twittered, subjective truth? He argues that a credible, measurable, objectivity about certain truths indeed survives perfectly well within our overall relational worldview.Shlomit Gadot adds that truth, relational truth, does and can exist most stably in our essential recognition of the multiplicity of (often relationally shaped) premises, frameworks, perspectives on truth. What “matters” when truth becomes threatened with serious shattering (here in a clash with love) is that she begins with an effort at genuine openness to the truth of the other.Jody Davies implies that relational truth at virtually in all levels is embedded with the trauma narrative of truth, its meanings, and motivated hiding as we know it clinically. Truth survives its subjective shattering by recognizing that within the sociopolitical realm, we are being abused and traumatized by political authority and an abusive father.The complexity of relational truth may involve creatively grieving certain certainties about truth that we may have experienced as lost. Truth in these three essays may lie in our overall effort to be equal to the full complexity of that loss and, paradoxically, to become expanded and more deeply connected through that experience.

Happy birthday, Reviews of Modern Physics!

Happy birthday, <i>Reviews of Modern Physics</i>!

Theatre and Narrative: the Example of Contemporary Monologic Plays

Recent decades have seen a real vogue for solitary speeches in theatre (monologues or soliloquies) spoken by a character speaking and telling stories, alone on stage. These long verbal streams throw into question the main principles of dramatic plays (unity of the plot, ordered and completed progression of the actions, chronological development and explicit causality of sequencing). In the first instance, I will show how these texts are indeed true narratives since the fable, similar in this respect to fictional works, is no longer limited to a temporal development that is strictly chronological. In the second instance, I will show that the solitude of the character is not necessarily anti-dramatic because these monologues are highly polyphonic, bringing many different characters into play. This is a sign of a process that has been under way for several years, bringing theatre closer to the novel.

Political Conjuncture and Scholarly Disjunctures: Reflections on Studies of the Philippine State under Marcos

This professorial address contends that a scholarly, systematic, and impartial study of Marcos’s authoritarian rule is necessary, given the highly politicized interpretations of the past bequeathed to younger generations through textbooks and social media as well as the Philippine academic community’s general inability to analyze the defunct regime and to influence public discourse and shape public history. Social scientists must tap new sources of information, such as the Marcos Papers, to produce truthful and nuanced narratives of the past, even as they must endeavor to understand the Marcosian social fantasy and the sources of Filipino authoritarianism, which can illumine both the past and the present. KEYWORDS: MARTIAL LAW • PUBLIC HISTORY • SOCIAL FANTASY •HISTORIOGRAPHY • REVISIONISM

Should Transitional Justice Promote Forgiveness?

Over the past thirty years, transitional justice scholars have grappled with whether, and to what extent, post-conflict societies should foster forgiveness. In response to this question, this article argues that forgiveness is a legitimate goal of transitional justice, but that interpersonal forgiveness cannot be mandated by the government. It will look to the example of Guatemala to demonstrate how the recovery of narrative truth through individual and communal acts of remembrance enabled forgiveness while at the same time affirmed the need for justice. The article proceeds in two parts. First, it explores the praxis of forgiveness and the role of narrative truth and the healing of memory as constitutive elements of forgiveness. Second, it argues that Guatemala’s Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) is an illustration of this praxis. Finally, this article argues against conceptions of forgiveness that promote forgetting the past and forgoing justice.

A glass of water

In large cities, cancer management has moved to highly specialized centers that provide holistic care. Hence, freelance consultants very occasionally encounter cancer patients. Sometimes due to a variety of reasons, one may not have much to offer to a patient in terms of medical management. However, empathy and small acts of kindness can have a major impact on patients going through tough times and must be always remembered. A glass of water is a true narrative of how seemingly benign words can make a patient aloof when one least expects and how small acts of kindness can change their equation with the doctor. It reinforces the fact that the art of medicine is still the better half of the science of medicine and must be practiced at all times.

When I Met Kathy Acker

When I Met Kathy Acker

Good kid, m.A.A.d city: Kendrick Lamar's Autoethnographic Method

ABSTRACT In characterizing his second studio album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, as a “short film” Kendrick Lamar offers something of a public declaration: We, the listening audience, are not hearing another hip-hop album, just another “autobiography” or slice of one person's life, but, rather, something else; we are hearing a mixture of social, cultural, and personal narrative truth in what will be termed “autoethnography.” In doing so, Lamar offers us a new way of thinking about hip-hop as a whole, not simply as a capitalistic enterprise or as a “black news” channel but as a distinct method for collecting data and understanding the experiences and existence of black people. While autoethnography is not a new method for research, it has been underutilized in philosophy as an approach to reading “texts” of all sorts, in particular Africana texts. This article analyzes Kendrick Lamar's second album to demonstrate why autoethnography is important as both a way of understanding reality and an expression of reality and also why it is centrally important for “doing” Africana philosophy.

Is it possible to go beyond the narrative template? Russian view of the concept of an american professor. Discussion about James V. Wertsch’s article “Narrative Tools, Truth, and Fast Thinking in National Memory: A Mnemonic Standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine”

Is it possible to go beyond the narrative template? Russian view of the concept of an american professor. Discussion about James V. Wertsch’s article “Narrative Tools, Truth, and Fast Thinking in National Memory: A Mnemonic Standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine”

Narrative Tools, Truth, and Fast Thinking in National Memory: A Mnemonic Standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine

Narrative Tools, Truth, and Fast Thinking in National Memory: A Mnemonic Standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine

Narrative and "Anti-narrative" in Science: How Scientists Tell Stories, and Don't.

Narratives are common to all branches of science, not only to the humanities. Scientists tell stories about how the things we study work, develop, and evolve, and about how we come to be interested in them. Here I add a third domain (Secularity) to Gould's two "non-overlapping magisteria" of Science and Religion, and I review previous work on the parallels in elements between story-telling in literature and science. The stories of each domain have different criteria for judging them valid or useful. In science, especially historical sciences such as biology and geology, particular scientific methods and approaches both structure and test our narratives. Relying on the narrative assumptions of how certain processes, such as natural selection, are supposed to work is treacherous unless they are tested by appropriate historical patterns, such as phylogeny, and rooted in the process of natural mechanisms. The structure of scientific explanation seen in peer-reviewed papers and grant proposals obscures true narrative within a formulaic sequence of "question, methods, materials" and so on that is quite different from the classic narrative of folk-tales and novels, producing an "anti-narrative" that must be "un-learned" before it can be communicated to non-scientists. By adopting some of the techniques of classic story-telling, scientists can become more effective in making our ideas clear, educating the public, and even attracting funding.

Spaces In-between: Text Poems from Community Practice and Research

A commitment on the part of the academy to address social issues has increased over the past three decades, resulting in service learning courses, volunteering opportunities, and community-university partnerships. Faculty, staff, and community practitioners collaborating to lead these efforts often carry enormous responsibility and answer to often competing interests of students, community members, and universities. Using the experience of an scholar/artist/teacher in a university-community partnership founded by the first author in a racially polarized town, this article explores the potential of arts-based methods, specifically poetry and collage, to mitigate the consequence of this work. The format is a dialogue between two engaged teacher/researcher/practitioners and friends to clarify the hidden experience of the researcher with narrative truth to articulate and share not only experiences, but also lessons learned as a contribution to our fellow teacher/researcher/practitioners.

THE MASS GRAVE SCOPING PROJECT: REMEMBERING AND RECORDING MEMORIES OF SILENCED MASSACRES, A CASE IN NORTHERN UGANDA1

Abstract Drawing upon the experience of assembling a database that records events of mass killings in northern Uganda, this piece highlights impressions of ethnographic research exploring the potential use of forensic science to mitigate anxiety related to mass graves and missing persons. The existence of mass graves in communities and large numbers of missing persons is a new phenomenon to the Acholi people and one that lacks documentation. The assemblage of memory support by forensic evidence is a way to enforce true narratives of past atrocities.

‘Sound, listening and the queer art of history’

This article explores the role of the museum audioguide as a relational, sensorially driven mode of making and communicating diverse histories. It argues that the artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s use of voice, storytelling, gesture, movement, and sound helps create conditions for empathic listening, bridging the past and present and widening the spectrum of possibilities for new and diverse knowledge formations. This use of aesthetic and historical registers, the blending of fact with fiction, stresses multivalence and possibility over a singular narrative truth. The act of listening promotes a shared though subjective experience, one that challenges the exclusionary function of traditional museum displays, which turn on objective, documentary claims, while actually reflecting a hegemonic vision of the past. In this way, Nemerofsky offers a queer historical practice for how we might (re)present the diversity of past pasts.

The Slipperiness of Narrative Truth(making): The Neuroscience of Memory in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast

The Slipperiness of Narrative Truth(making): The Neuroscience of Memory in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast

Distant Voices Then and Now: The Impact of Isolation on the Courtroom Narratives of Slave Ship Captives and Asylum Seekers

Part I compares the nineteenth century cases of the Antelope and the Amistad to identify why they resulted in different outcomes despite having similar fact patterns. The Antelope concerned the fate of approximately 280 African captives discovered on a slave trade ship upon its interception by a U.S. revenue cutter. Since the slave trade in the United States was illegal at the time, the captives were transported to Savannah for trial through which their status—free or slave—would be determined. After a lengthy trial and appeals process in which Spain and Portugal laid claim to the captives, the Supreme Court determined that those captives claimed by a non-U.S. nation were slaves. The Court reasons that however “abhorrent” the slave trade was, the United States was obligated to recognize the rights of other nations to participate in it. In comparison, the Amistad concerned the fate of captives aboard a slave trade ship in which the captives committed mutiny, attempted to sail to Africa, but were captured by a U.S. vessel. The Supreme Court ordered them free despite the Spanish government’s claim that the captives were its property. Part I explores these different outcomes and argues that the absence of Antelope captives’ stories in the litigation process was partly due to the decision to isolate captives in slavery before their status was determined. In particular, it argues that this isolation affected the outcome of the Antelope by preventing captives from sharing their anecdotes and translating them to a format that would resonate with their legal counsel, the public, and judges. In contrast, the Amistad captives, while also detained, were situated close to those who could help them. They were able to transform their truths into a winning narrative for the court by understanding and leveraging the talents and expertise of counsel, and the biases of judges and the public. Part II argues that 200 years later, a similar environment of isolation suppresses the stories of another group with undetermined legal status: asylum seekers. Although slave ship captives were forced into the country with chains, while asylum seekers are driven into the country by fear, the legal status of both groups in their respective time periods was undetermined upon their arrival. Both groups deserved, by legal and moral standards, the opportunity to present the truth behind their arrival and to prove their legal status. Part II argues that the detention of asylum seekers mirrors the isolation of the Antelope captives by removing detainees from those most able to help them develop a persuasive narrative truth. Detention silences important voices, aggravates ineffective representation, damages public perception, and ultimately harms case outcomes.

Exposed: The Scandalous Story of Sex Work in Cambodia

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the recent scandal that engulfed the Cambodian anti-trafficking activist, Somaly Mam, who was accused of fabricating tales of abduction and prostitution in her memoir, Le Silence de l'innocence (2005). In my reading of Mam's memoir, I focus on the tropes of silence and voice in the narrative as well as in the context of its initial reception and eventual denunciation in order to offer some preliminary thoughts on the appeal and limitations of the testimonial narrative within the global rescue industry. I finish by examining the implications of Mam's narrative and its alleged falsehoods for the women on whose behalf she claims to speak. Rather than attempt to determine whether Mam has told the truth, I take this scandal as an occasion to explore the problem of evidentiary versus narrative truths in the literary testimony and the ways in which various truths are mobilized and silenced when the literary testimony intersects with the human rights campaign.