Narrative Of Redemption Research Articles

Race, religion, and coloniality: ex-Muslim “coming-out” narratives in France

In the past few years, a number of individuals have begun using YouTube as a platform to document their transition from being Muslim to being ex-Muslims. This article examines the “coming-out” narratives of self-described ex-Muslims in France. Generally speaking, two main types of videos exist: narratives of transition from Islam to atheism and narratives of religious conversion from Islam to Christianity. There are few differences between these two main types. Both narrative types are inherently political, intersecting significantly with broader Islamophobic and secularist-nationalist discourses in France. Drawing on a thematic analysis of several YouTube videos, within the relevant historical and sociopolitical contexts of France, this article argues that public declarations of apostasy from Islam in France (as narratives of salvation embracing the promise of modernity, while critiquing the supposedly inherent backwardness of Islam) are engaged in a particular mode of subjectivation that cannot be understood outside of the ontological afterlives of colonialism.

Sacrificing and Saving the Lamb: Betrayal, Guilt, and Redemption in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003) tells the first-person narrative of a traumatized protagonist who tries to atone for his past sins and transgressions through committing acts of atonement and compassion. As Amir tells his story to the reader, he also uses storytelling as an act of healing one’s psyche and as a means of liberating himself from the “karma” of guilt. By the end of the novel, Amir comes to terms with his troubled past, can live a relatively more peaceful life, and starts a journey of rediscovering his fellow Afghani community in the United States whom he begins to cherish as his identity reference group. This article uses a methodological approach based on thematic analysis (TA) to analyze the narrative texture of the story. TA is more focused on what is said rather than how it is said that is often a concern for discourse analysis or conversation analysis. Using TA, this article investigates how the protagonist comes to have a compelling sense of remorse that forces him to seek redemption. Told against the background of the devastated country of Afghanistan ravaged by wars and violence, The Kite Runner is a powerful narrative of personal guilt, redemption, and reconciliation with one’s community in a foreign land

Damned if you do, damned if you don't: How formerly incarcerated men navigate the labor market with prison credentials*

AbstractAlthough employment is central to successful reentry, formerly incarcerated people struggle to find work because of criminal stigma, poor education, and sparse work histories. Prison credentials are proposed as one solution to alleviate these challenges by signaling criminal desistance and employability. Evidence regarding their efficacy, however, is inconsistent. In this article, I develop a novel explanation—the prison credential dilemma—highlighting the numerous and contradictory ways employers may interpret prison credentials as positive and negative signals. Drawing on 50 qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated men in Franklin County, Ohio, I examine how the prison credential dilemma and the uncertainty it produces shape their job search strategies and pathways to employment. I find that participants concealed or obscured institutional affiliations of prison credentials on job applications to signal employability rather than their criminal records. In job interviews, however, prison credentials were used to divert conversations away from their criminal record toward skills and criminal desistance via the use of redemptive narratives. Participants also attempted to acquire credentials outside of prison and/or pursued temporary, precarious jobs, aspiring for such physically strenuous and poorly paid work to materialize into stable employment. This study has implications for prison programming as well as policies and practices aiming to improve reentry outcomes.

GO FIGURE: FREDRIC JAMESON ON WALTER BENJAMIN

ABSTRACTFredric Jameson's new book, The Benjamin Files, gives him an opportunity to revisit a figure he initially discussed more than fifty years ago. At that time, he lamented what he saw as Walter Benjamin's melancholic resignation at the failure of his redemptive hopes; now, he wants to affirm the future‐oriented implications of Benjamin's work as coming from a “time‐traveler from some messianic future.” Focusing on theological strains in Benjamin's thinking, Jameson takes seriously Benjamin's Adamic view of a lost “language as such,” his nostalgia for a world of cosmic correspondences, and his adoption of the idea of apocatastasis—the redemption of all souls in the Final Judgment—and tries to integrate them with his historical materialist reading of history. That reading, Jameson avers, depends on a unified notion of history as a meaningful narrative, which, to be sure, is not equivalent to complacent notions of progress. But how one can reconcile Benjamin's advocacy of disrupting narratives of any kind and his spatialization of our relation to the past through synchronic “dialectical images” with a faith in a totalizing narrative of redemption is not clear. Jameson tacitly admits the difficulty when he falls back on Alain Badiou's notion of “fidelity to the event” and Erich Auerbach's ideas about figural iteration, which depend on a faith that past interruptions in conventional historical narratives, even failed attempts at revolution, foretell their completion in the future. As a result, it is hard not to be skeptical that the wind of world history is, despite all indications to the contrary, blowing us toward the restoration of cosmic harmonies, an Adamic “language as such,” and the universal salvation called apocatastasis.

When Novels Were Books

When Novels Were Books

Narratives of prevention and redemption in opioid overdose obituaries

Obituaries of people who died from an opioid overdose represent a new territory for understanding cultural narratives of the US opioid epidemic. Drawing on textual analysis of 30 opioid overdose...

Narratives of Stroke Survivors: Between Trauma and Redemption

This study’s aim was to explore how stroke survivors cope with their stroke and its consequences. While the concept of chronic illness dominates the stroke -recovery literature, for some, their stroke is part of an ongoing life story. Bury conceptualized chronic illness as a major disruptive experience, specifically for rheumatoid arthritis patients. The interviews in this article focused on how individuals reconstructed their lives post-injury/stroke. This article seeks to investigate whether stroke survivors also construct their stroke as a biographic disruption. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 33 stroke survivors. It was found that stroke survivors choose hope more than they do grief, often contrary to their physician’s evaluation. Moreover, while the story of the onset was always sad, they chose to turn their backs on the victim role and being sick, and found ways to live with it. For them, it appears that the stroke is part of an ongoing life story more than it is a “biographical disruption.” Most of them were narratives of redemption, rather than contamination. My conclusion is that stroke survivors can choose how to construct a stroke’s onset as well as its consequences.

Self-Othering and Redemptive Narratives in Literature and the Arts

Abstract: In spite of the increased interconnectedness of today’s world, brought about by globalization and, more recently, by the digital reconfiguration of our lives due to Covid-19, humankind is still - and paradoxically so - grappling with the legacy of colonial sovereignty. Stigmatization of Otherness has become a fad and labels are stitched with burning needles while we are being swept toward the edge of the whirling falls. New forms of intolerance are looming in the darkest corners of our seemingly civilized world and the door to the outer rings of this mental maze seems to have been boarded up, just like those of the shops during the pandemic. While pointing to the threats of Othering all that is unfamiliar to us, the present paper aims to articulate the strength that resides in the rhetorical portrayal of Otherness by some of the most prominent UK-based writers and artists today, whose stories can move even the most biased of ‘readers’. Literature and the arts, I believe, are our last glimmer of hope, and redemption can only be attained through truth and the ancient Greeks’ ideal of beautiful goodness (‘kalokagathia’). Keywords: storytelling, self-othering, contemporary art & literature, UK, identity crisis, intercultural sensitivity.

Protecting Whiteness: Counter-Terrorism, and British Identity in the BBC’s Bodyguard

This article uses Bodyguard to trace the ways that whiteness is represented in counter-terrorism TV and so draw the links between whiteness, counter-terrorism and culture. It argues that Bodyguard offers a redemptive narrative for British whiteness that recuperates and rearticulates a British white identity after/through the War on Terror. As such it belongs to a later genre of counter-terrorism TV shows that move on from, but nonetheless still propagate, the discursive foundations of the ongoing War on Terror. This reading of Bodyguard is itself important, as popular culture is a site where much of the British population made and continues to make sense of their relationship to the UK during the War on Terror, forging often unspoken ideas about whiteness. It affords the opportunity to draw out the connections between whiteness and counter-terrorism, connections that need further scholarly attention to fully understand the complex relationships between security and race.

Delving into the Magdalene’s vase

In the art of medieval and early modern Europe, Mary Magdalene can be identified by the vase she holds. Other iconographic studies of Mary Magdalene mention her ointment jar, but while images may be brought before the reader, the vase is generally mentioned as the object that permits the author to name the figure and little more. This article intends to tap the rich meanings and connotations of the vase beyond simple visual signifier in studying it – in form and materials and function – through an anthropological lens. It will do so in examining a corpus of Italian images, at the forefront of Magdalenian iconography since the invention of the “indigenous icon,” as defined by Hans Belting, and the effects of Franciscan patronage that so invested this saint with their particular strain of piety. We will see that the inventiveness of Italian artists, particularly as applied to the alabastron, continues from the 1270 panel of Guido da Siena through to the early modern era with Titian’s 1535 Pitti Magdalene. After this period, with the Counter-Reformation’s more formulaic directives, the vase seems to have lost some of its density of meaning. For the period considered, the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, the results will demonstrate an intimate connection with her conversion, her femaleness, and her role in the narrative of redemption.

Form versus Catastrophe in the Old English Christ III

Medieval authors of literature on Doomsday faced a structural challenge of their own making: their audiences knew too much about the coming end of days to be as terror-stricken as they should. This difficulty was compounded by the comic structure of the Christian salvation narrative, which looked forward to Christ's return as—technically speaking—its catastrophe, when all the confusion and unhappiness of the universal plot would be unravelled and total clarity would reign. The author of the Old English Doomsday poem called Christ III, however, devised an ingenious strategy to restore its audience to a state of wholesome uncertainty. By destabilizing the predictable flow of Old English meter with an unusually varied and challenging range of hypermetric verses, the poet of Christ III used metrical form to undermine the confidence of audiences in their powers of prediction—and in so doing, restored suspense to the experience of Doomsday.

Saving Innocence

In this essay I explore salvation narratives in abortion and adoption dialogues, including the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, to highlight the complex ways such stories function to divert attention from state regulation of families in support of a white supremacist, patriarchal agenda for the nation. I argue that these stories emphasizing salvation function as a way of hiding intersections of racism, misogyny, and homophobia driving this conservative social vision. Drawing on interdisciplinary narrative analysis, I consider laws and policies as stories about how society should function. In a "color-blind" legal system race cannot be an explicit consideration, yet exploring family laws in relation to each other, in a larger context of sociopolitical meaning, helps us see the ways in which all these social narratives function together as what Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham calls the "metalanguage of race."

Crafting Emotions: The valence of time in narratives about the future of Europe in the Council of Europe (1949)

How are emotional narratives used to mobilise support for or opposition against policy ideas about the institutional set-up of European integration? This article systematically examines the first General Debate of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe in 1949, which featured as a laboratory for the rise and demise of various blueprints for European integration. This article makes a threefold contribution. First, it introduces a narrative approach that combines the valence of emotions with their temporal dimension. Second, it demonstrates how these emotionally charged narratives of hope, redemption, fear and sacrifice provide the affective glue of an emerging (transnational) emotional community that cuts through nationality and political colour. Third, taking a historical approach this article points at the need to historicise the role of emotions in European integration.

Judas Iscariot: Between Betrayer and Betrayed: On Igal Mossinsohn’s Novel, Judas

This article attempts to explore the role of betrayer and betrayal as a literary, political, and critical position in Israeli author Yigal Mossinsohn's (1917–94) novel Judas (1962). Mossinsohn situates Judas Iscariot at the heart of the Jewish national project and presents him not as a betrayer but as an obedient man ordered by his commander to turn Jesus in as a means of changing the balance of political power in occupied Canaan. The presentation of the Christian betrayal narrative in the framework of a plot revolving around political intrigue associated with the aspiration for autonomous Jewish sovereignty enables a reading of Mossinsohn's novel as an exploration of the meanings and ramifications of betrayal against the context of the Israeli political and ideological reality in which it was written. Mossinsohn's novel fosters an unresolvable tension between the desire to present an active and effective model of political betrayal and its failure—the failure to burrow an escape route out of what this article refers to as "the Israeli industry of saints." This industry renders betrayal an inherent part of a prescribed Zionist redemption narrative. In the novel, the failure of betrayal is rooted in the fact that it does not have a world-changing effect and does not constitute a point of departure for the imagining of alternative forms of political and social relations. Therefore, what may seem in Mossinsohn's novel to be a necessary position of betrayal, which harshly criticizes the political underpinnings of Israeli sovereignty, is eventually replaced by a less treacherous impasse into which the betrayer is sucked against his will.

Mock meat, masculinity, and redemption narratives: vegan men’s negotiations and performances of gender and eating

ABSTRACT Veganism’s visibility has soared in recent years. Contemporary veganism has built a trident approach of outreach that emphasises health benefits, ethical concerns about animals, and environmentally sustainable consumption. With this growth, there have been opportunities for influencer-activists to profit from positioning themselves as movement leaders. This is often connected with thin, white, wealthy women and the wellness industry, but there is also a changing ‘meatless masculinity’ within vegan influencer-activist spaces. Hegemonic ideals of masculinity around physical strength and virility are being hyper-individualised to ‘sell’ veganism through embodied and cultural performances of ‘redemption narratives’ by vegan influencer-activist men. However, in interviews with vegan men in Britain, their relation to these meatless masculinities was found to be in tension with hegemonic masculinity. Interviewees instead related their veganism to an ungoverning of masculine bodily ideals. Veganism was revealed in the interviews as entangled with men representing themselves as part of a progressive masculinity that engages with feminist ideas, even if they are sometimes misunderstood. In this paper, I explore the prevalence and purpose of these masculinity narratives online through social media examples, before exploring a contradictory growth in the re-thinking and rejection of hegemonic masculinity within the vegan constituency through interviews. I conclude that while vegan masculinities offer the potential for men to be a little less governed by gendered norms there remains a need for vegans to more fully embrace a feminist and intersectional veganism that is not dominated by whiteness and masculinist ideals.

Genres of Departure: Forced Migrants’ Family Separation and Personal Narratives

The absence of family members is often inseparable from the phenomenon of forced migration. This article examines how forced migrants make experiences of family separation bearable and meaningful through personal narratives. Following narrative theory and methodology, we understand that people organise their experiences and memories of past incidents predominantly in the form of stories. Narratives also play a crucial role in managing emotions. Earlier literature emphasises that there is no uniform refugee experience or story, but telling a story may help in reconstructing identities and coping with losses. Our data set consists of interviews with 55 forced migrants living in Finland who have experienced family separation. Our narrative analysis reveals that forced migrants make sense of their lives by telling three types of stories: fractured tragedies, salvation narratives and absurd stories. These genres provide different ways of presenting one’s experiences and oneself as an actor. At the same time, each genre limits what can be considered appropriate within a given story. As our study shows, forced migrants may use different types of narratives very creatively to make their hardships more manageable. And stories may enable breaking free from oppressions.

Folklore and Conspiracy Theories of a COVID Dissenter: The Life and Sermons of Father Sergii (Romanov)

The religious studies scholar Bruce Lincoln famously defined myth as “ideology in narrative form” that “naturalizes and legitimizes” social taxonomies. Over two decades, Father Sergii (Romanov), a convicted murderer who turned toreligion while in prison, has used myth to shape his public persona, legitimize his spiritual leadership, cultivate the loyalty of his followers, and articulate a vision of holy Russia that seeks to reconcile the Soviet and imperial pasts. Weaving his personal biography into a narrative of national redemption from the sin of regicide, he has helped construct and lead a complex of monasteries. Drawing on a variety of narratives that emphasize Russian exceptionalism, Sergii and his admirers present the cleric as a divinely appointed emissary to lead their nation to spiritual greatness. Je conspiracy theories that support this worldview have also encouraged Sergii to denounce both secular and ecclesiastical authorities and to reject public health measures designed to stem the coronavirus pandemic. Despite his revolt against his bishop, Sergii remained in control of his convent until his dramatic arrest on 29 December 2020. Jis article analyzes some of Sergii’s mostsignificant narratives, traces their origins, and weighs their social implications.

A mestizo cosmographer in the New Kingdom of Granada: astronomy and chronology in Sánchez de Cozar Guanientá’s Tratado (c.1696)

ABSTRACT This article interprets a recently recovered manuscript, Tratado de astronomía y la reformaçión del tiempo, composed by Antonio Sánchez in New Granada c.1696, in the context of the Spanish and Renaissance cosmographies. Sánchez’s Tratado proposes a spherical astronomy, in which celestial bodies – including comets — move in orbs containing pyramidal knots that explain the changing speed observed in the motion of planets. From this astronomy and following the peninsular style of repertorios, Sánchez derives two major conclusions: the corrected length of the solar year and a revised birth date of Jesus. Taking as center of reference Vélez, where Sánchez was based, these claims led to conclusions in domains ranging from calendric astronomy to eschatology, including the incorporation of the indigenous peoples into salvation narrative and a demonstration of the arrangement of the celestial orbs at the Last Judgment. Sánchez’s Tratado constitutes an expansion of the Spanish mathematical cosmography that sheds light on the production of knowledge in the Spanish-American world and, at the same time, provides elements to reassess our understanding of the global circulation of Renaissance and early modern ideas.

“A Program of Complete Disorder”

This essay examines the scholarship of revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon and the debate surrounding his conception of decolonization and “new humanism.” Across a multitude of fields, Black and cultural studies among them, Fanon has been heralded as an iconic thinker who offers us a path toward an alternative humanity. Working against the grain of this popular form of Fanonism, I suggest that there is a Black iconoclasm—a deep desire to unsettle the very rendering of a systematic path toward decolonization—that pervades Fanonian thought. Accordingly, the essay examines and unsettles various forms of Fanonism by suggesting that their teleological narratives of redemption ultimately end up serving anti-Fanonian pursuits. Through an extended meditation on Fanon’s claim that decolonization is “a program of complete disorder,” I explore what it might mean to embrace a Black iconoclastic approach to Fanon and the pursuit of Black liberation.

On shaping expectations of "new normals" for living in a post-COVID-19 world.

I begin with my impressions of a narrative of redemption that is caught up in the formation of new environmental, social, and political aspirations for the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. I then reflect on, first, pre-pandemic scholarship on “biosecurity” and, second, taking up a variation of the syndemic approach to understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. I end by arguing that we should not expect to live with “new normals” for living in a post-COVID-19 world that leaves intact “old normals” that have historically contributed to the rise of anthropogenic environmental harms and inegalitarian social arrangements in the world today.