The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible 0190649364, 9780190649364

Citation preview

The Ethics of Storytelling

ii

Explorations in Narrative Psychology Mark Freeman Series Editor Books in the Series Speaking of Violence Sara Cobb Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life Molly Andrews Narratives of Positive Aging: Seaside Stories Amia Lieblich Beyond the Archive: Memory, Narrative, and the Autobiographical Process Jens Brockmeier The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life: Tales from the Coffee Shop William L. Randall Rethinking Thought: Inside the Minds of Creative Scientists and Artists Laura Otis Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience Edited by Brian Schiff, A. Elizabeth McKim, and Sylvie Patron Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust Roger Frie A New Narrative for Psychology Brian Schiff Decolonizing Psychology: Globalization, Social Justice, and Indian Youth Identities Sunil Bhatia Entangled Narratives: Collaborative Storytelling and the Re-​Imagining of Dementia Lars- ​Christer Hydén The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible Hanna Meretoja

The Ethics of Storytelling Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible

Hanna Meretoja

1

iv

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Meretoja, Hanna, 1977– author. Title: The Ethics of storytelling : narrative hermeneutics, history, and the possible / Hanna Meretoja. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. | Series: Explorations in narrative psychology | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017028106 | ISBN 9780190649364 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Storytelling. | Narration (Rhetoric)—Moral and ethical aspects. | Narration (Rhetoric)—Psychological aspects. | Narration (Rhetoric)—Social aspects. | Self-perception in literature. | Social perception in literature. | Awareness in literature. | Imagination in literature. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology. | PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body. | LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory. Classification: LCC PN56.S7357 M47 2017 | DDC 808/.036—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017028106 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

To Alma and Eliel, my beloved storytelling animals

vi

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix 1 . Introduction: Toward an Ethics of Storytelling  1 2. Narrative Hermeneutics  43 3. Storytelling and Ethics  89 4. The Uses and Abuses of Narrative for Life: Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau  149 5. Narrative Ethics of Implication: Günter Grass and Historical Imagination  179 6. Narrative Dynamics, Perspective-​Taking, and Engagement: Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes  217 7. Transforming the Narrative In-​Between: Dialogic Storytelling and David Grossman  255 8. Conclusion: Struggles over the Possible  299 References  309 Index  333

vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One of the guiding ideas of this book is that people and narratives become who and what they are in dialogue with other people and their stories. This is true of this book as well. It has taken shape in a conversation with innumerable people whose stories, thoughts, affection, and support have made its writing possible. I can here name only some of those to whom I am most indebted. The relationship between storytelling and ethics has occupied my mind for such a long time that it is difficult to say when exactly I began work on this book. I  was reflecting on these issues already when writing my previous book, The Narrative Turn in Fiction and Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and while finishing it, I felt compelled to develop a more systematic and more broadly interdisciplinary account of narrative hermeneutics and a hermeneutic narrative ethics. This book seeks to provide such a systematic account of the project of narrative hermeneutics that I have begun in my earlier work and to zoom in on its ethical implications. The feedback I  received on my first book has helped me enormously to give shape to this book. I owe a special gratitude to my colleagues who have read and provided insightful comments on parts of the manuscript:  Eneken Laanes, Erin McGlothlin, Frans Svensson, Henrik Skov Nielsen, Marco Caracciolo, Maria Mäkelä, Robert Eaglestone, and my colleagues at the Department of Comparative Literature (University of Turku), in particular Aino Mäkikalli, Jouni Teittinen, Kaisa Ilmonen, Liisa Steinby, Lotta Kähkönen, Tiina Käkelä-​Puumala, and Tintti Klapuri. I wrote a first draft of the Grass chapter (Chapter  5) in the spring of 2011 as part of the Academy of Finland research project Literature and Time: Time and Agency in Modern Literature (led by Liisa Steinby); the feedback from that research group informs my analyses of temporality in this book. Members of the research project The Ethics of Storytelling and the Experience of History in Contemporary Literature and Visual Arts (Emil Aaltonen Foundation), which I had the honor to lead

x

in 2013–​2016, Kaisa Kaakinen, Ilona Hongisto, Mia Hannula, and Riitta Jytilä, have commented on earlier drafts of several chapters of the book, and the group has provided a stimulating environment for developing this project. While writing this book, I  have had the pleasure to work at both the University of Turku and the University of Tampere with wonderful colleagues with whom I established in 2014 the interdisciplinary research center Narrare:  Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies (Tampere) and in 2015 SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory (Turku). These research communities have provided a supportive environment for my work. In the latter, Maarit Leskelä-​Kärki and Päivi Kosonen have been particularly inspiring partners of dialogue. I owe a huge debt to my brilliant students at both Tampere and Turku. A special thanks to Eevastiina Kinnunen, who has gone through the manuscript with exceptional care and thoroughness. Conversations with and feedback from my colleagues around the world have contributed to this book in numerous ways: I want to thank, in particular, Molly Andrews, Aleida Assmann, Mieke Bal, Sunil Bhatia, Heidi Bostic, Cassandra Falke, Rita Felski, Roger Frie, Jane Hiddleston, Matti Hyvärinen, Teemu Ikonen, Stefan Iversen, Kuisma Korhonen, Liesbeth Korthals Altes, Markku Lehtimäki, Jakob Lothe, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Julia Nitz, Sakari Ollitervo, Ann Phoenix, Merja Polvinen, Ann Rigney, Michael Rothberg, Hannu Salmi, Brian Schiff, Max Silverman, Howard Sklar, Anneke Sools, Maria Tamboukou, Pekka Tammi, Shane Weller, and Benjamin Wihstutz. Audiences at numerous conferences and symposia over the years have also provided valuable feedback. In particular, I want to express my gratitude for invitations to present my research at Royal Holloway (University of London, March 2013), The American University of Paris (where I was a visiting professor in 2013–​2014), and The Centre for Narrative Research (University of East London, December 2015), to give a keynote at the Narrative Matters conference in Victoria (June 2016), and to speak at The Future of Literary Studies conference (Oslo, June 2016). I am grateful to Matthew James and Avril Tynan for their insightful, nuanced, and patient linguistic advice. It has been a joy to work with Abby Gross and Courtney McCarroll of Oxford University Press; their professionalism, reliability, and support have made the whole publication process a most enjoyable experience. I also appreciate the helpful comments provided by several anonymous readers. I am so happy that Bracha L. Ettinger gave me the permission to use her beautiful picture (Eurydice no. 35) as the cover of this book. I am deeply grateful to all of my friends whose stories have intersected with mine, shaping my modes of thought, perception, and affect in

[ x ] Acknowledgments

innumerable ways. I feel particularly privileged for the in-​depth dialogue I have been able to engage in with kindred philosophical souls over the years on the topics of this book. A few of them have been so important for this project that I want to thank them for giving me much more than just valuable comments and encouragement. Jens Brockmeier, my fellow narrative hermeneuticist, has commented on a large part of the manuscript with great insight, generosity, and perceptiveness, from the broad interdisciplinary perspective that is singular to him. I want to thank Anna Reading for her warm friendship and stimulating discussions; she gave me the most detailed comments on the Introduction that I have ever received—​in my favorite spot on the pier of our summer house. I am immensely grateful to Mark Freeman for supporting this project from early on, for his willingness to include it in his inspiring series, and for generous and thoughtful comments at various stages of the project. I want to thank Andreea Ritivoi for just being there and making me feel, by speaking the same philosophical language, that what I do may actually speak to someone out there. I am inexpressibly thankful to Colin Davis for his unique friendship, affection, and unwavering support—​for helping me become more than I would have been able to without him. My heartfelt thanks to my parents and siblings for all their love and support. My deepest gratitude goes to the person with whom I have shared both my intellectual and non-​intellectual life for more than 23  years. Valtteri Viljanen has set an example for me with his courage, perseverance, and sense of humor. This book has benefited enormously from his philosophical perceptiveness and passion, and it is through our daily narrative dialogue that I  have become the thinker, writer, and person I  am. Alma and Eliel have taught me the power of narrative imagination: from them I have learned that with enough imagination, almost anything is possible. Ultimately, it is their love, patience, encouragement, and wisdom that has made this book possible. I gratefully acknowledge the permission from publishers to draw on the following earlier publications, although most of the material I have used from them has been heavily revised and reworked. In Chapters 2 and 7, I have integrated passages from “For Interpretation” (Storyworlds 8 [2]‌, 2016, pp. 97–​117). The discussion of Nussbaum in Chapter 3 owes something to my chapter “A Sense of History—​A Sense of the Possible: Nussbaum and Hermeneutics on the Ethical Potential of Literature” in Values of Literature (edited by Hanna Meretoja, Saija Isomaa, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, and Kristina Malmio, Brill Rodopi, 2015, pp. 25–​46), its discussion of the possible contains passages from “Exploring the Possible: Philosophical Reflection,

Acknowledgments  [ xi ]

xi

Historical Imagination, and Narrative Agency” (Narrative Works 6, 2016, pp. 92–​107), and its section on the non-​subsumptive mode of understanding draws on “From Appropriation to Dialogic Exploration: A Non-​ Subsumptive Model of Storytelling” in Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Power of Narrative (edited by Hanna Meretoja and Colin Davis, Routledge, 2018). Some key ideas of the chapter are presented in a very condensed form in “Narrative Hermeneutics and the Ethical Potential of Literature” in The Future of Literary Studies (edited by Jakob Lothe, Novus Press, 2017, pp. 147–159). Chapter 4 grew from “On the Use and Abuse of Narrative for Life: Toward an Ethics of Storytelling,” which appeared in Narrative and Life: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Life (edited by Brian Schiff, Sylvie Patron, and A. Elizabeth McKim, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 75–​97). Chapter 5 contains, in a modified form, passages from “An Inquiry into Historical Experience and Its Narration: The Case of Günter Grass” (Spiel: Siegener Periodicum for International Empiricist Literary Scholarship special issue, “Towards a Historiographical Narratology,” edited by Julia Nitz and Sandra Harbart Petrulionis, 30 [1], 2011, pp. 51–​72). An earlier version of Chapter 6 was published as “History, Fiction and the Possible: Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes” (Orbis Litterarum 81 [5], 2016, pp. 371–​404).

[ xii ] Acknowledgments

The Ethics of Storytelling

xvi

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Toward an Ethics of Storytelling

T

hat stories are indispensable for human existence is an idea that reaches back at least to One Thousand and One Nights: as Scheherazade’s fascinating tales delay and ultimately prevent her murder by King Shahryar, storytelling becomes, quite literally, an art of survival. At the same time, entanglement in narratives has notoriously raised suspicion. In the Western imagination, Don Quixote and Emma Bovary epitomize the dangers of reading too many stories, and the crisis of European humanism, in the wake of two world wars and the Holocaust, thoroughly problematized the imposition of narrative order on history and our experience of the world. The protagonist of Jean-​Paul Sartre’s La Nausée (1938, Nausea) encapsulates this sensibility:  “you have to choose:  to live or to recount” (1965, p. 61).1 Over the past few decades, discourse surrounding the ethical significance of narrative for human existence has gained unprecedented urgency and intensity. As the debate on the ethics of storytelling has become one of the liveliest in interdisciplinary narrative studies, positions have also become increasingly polarized:  as theorists of narrative argue “for” or “against” narrativity, the quarrel tends to be whether narratives are “good” or “bad” for us.2 As part of the “narrative turn,” the idea that stories are not only indispensable but also inherently beneficial for us has become hugely popular.3 A wide range of thinkers have come to share Paul Ricoeur’s view that only “a life narrated” can be “a life examined” and hence worth living (1991b, p.  435). Many contemporary novelists seem to agree:  while Paul Auster

2

asserts that “stories are the fundamental food for the soul” (Irwin & Auster, 2013, p. 46), Jeanette Winterson’s narrator compares storytelling to light-​ housekeeping and presents “stories going out over the waves, as markers and guides and comfort and warning” (2004, p.  41). Yet the strong narrativist position has provoked a fierce counter-​reaction. One of the most outspoken representatives of the “against narrativity” movement, Galen Strawson, argues provocatively, “the more you recall, retell, narrate yourself, the further you risk moving away from accurate self-​understanding, from the truth of your being” (2004, p. 447). Against the backdrop of this polarized debate, there is a need for a theoretical-​analytical framework that allows us to explore the ethical complexity of the roles that narratives play in our lives. In this book, I set out to develop such a framework—​one that acknowledges both the ethical potential and the risks of storytelling. My starting point is that a nuanced analysis of the uses and abuses of narrative for life is possible only when we are sensitive to the ways in which narratives as practices of sense-​making are embedded in social, cultural, and historical worlds. We are always already entangled in webs of narratives. They are integral to the world that precedes us, and they make it possible for us to develop into subjects who are capable of narrating their experiences, sharing them with others, and telling their own versions of the stories they have inherited. Each cultural and historical world functions as a space of possibilities that encourages certain modes of experience, thought, and action, and discourages or disallows others, and stories play a constitutive role in establishing the limits of these worlds—​both enabling experience and delimiting it. This book aims to develop an approach that invites analyzing both how narratives enlarge the dialogic spaces of possibilities in which we act, think, and reimagine the world together with others, and how they restrain or impoverish these spaces. Precisely this, I argue, is a crucial but generally overlooked dimension of the ethics of storytelling: narratives both expand and diminish our sense of the possible. I  call my approach a narrative hermeneutics because it treats narratives as culturally mediated practices of (re)interpreting experience, and I will explore its ethical implications.4 It aims to provide a philosophically rigorous, historically sensitive, and analytically subtle approach to the ethical stakes of the debate on the narrative dimension of human existence. On the basis of narrative hermeneutics, I propose a hermeneutic narrative ethics, which acknowledges that narrative practices can be oppressive, empowering, or both, and provides resources for analyzing the different dimensions of the ethical potential and dangers of storytelling.

[ 2 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Narrative hermeneutics emphasizes that interpretation does not concern only our engagement with texts; it characterizes our whole being in the world and is the basic structure of experience, narrative, and memory. When we go through meaningful experiences, weave them into stories, and remember them in a certain light and from a certain perspective, we engage in interpretative processes of sense-​making. It is as “self-​interpreting animals” (Taylor, 1985) that we narrate our experiences and fashion our lives. Narratives are interpretative practices through which we make sense of our lives, and these meaning-​making practices are ethically charged. As Ricoeur puts it, narratives are “never ethically neutral” (1992, p. 140), and storytelling can function as “a provocation to be and to act differently” (1988, p. 249). I will explore the ethical potential of storytelling with particular attention to that of narrative fiction. While it has long been taken for granted that literature is beneficial for us, this is no longer necessarily the case. Against the backdrop of the current crisis of the humanities, many philosophers, psychologists, and literary scholars have defended the value of narrative fiction by drawing attention to its cognitive and ethical significance for our development as human beings, moral agents, and democratic citizens, particularly insofar as it boosts our capacity for empathetic perspective-​taking. Martha Nussbaum describes such a capacity in terms of narrative imagination, which she sees as a major counterforce to the antidemocratic tendencies in the contemporary world: [Narrative imagination] means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have. (2010, pp. 95–​96)

Cognitive scientists have recently sought to provide empirical support for such views by arguing that narrative fiction is more “transformative” than nonfiction (Djikic et al., 2009) and has a stronger impact on our “social perception and moral self-​concept” (Hakemulder, 2000). David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano’s (2013) widely reported study asserts that the affective and cognitive skills involved in understanding that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one’s own—​what cognitive scientists call “theory of mind”—​are improved by reading literary fiction compared with reading nonfiction, popular fiction, or nothing at all.5 The researchers not only claim that after short-​term exposure to fiction, people do better on tests that measure empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, but also suggest that in addition to temporary enhancement

Introduction 

[ 3 ]

4

of these skills, long-​term effects could be achieved by regular engagement with literature. Recently, Kidd and Castano (2016) have reached the same conclusion through a different method, but other researchers have failed to reproduce their results (Panero et al., 2016). Irrespective of the short-​term effects of reading fiction, it is far from evident how long-​term effects could be measured in reliable ways. To me it seems far more plausible to argue that literature cultivates our ability to perceive the world from multiple perspectives, or at least increases our awareness of and sensitivity to such multiplicity—​what I call perspective-​ awareness and perspective-​sensitivity—​than to argue that literature makes us ethical in the sense of causing us to engage in moral action. As many critics have observed, there is a significant difference between embracing the perspectives of others—​or imagining what one might do in hypothetical scenarios—​and actually carrying out concrete actions in the real world. Suzanne Keen, for example, argues that “the very fictionality of novels predisposes readers to empathize with characters,” because “fictional worlds provide safe zones for readers’ feeling empathy without experiencing a resultant demand on real-​world action” (2007, p. 4). Indeed, there is ample evidence that reading fiction is no guarantee of ethical action. As George Steiner famously reminds us, the Holocaust seriously undermined the long unquestioned belief in the “humanizing force” of literature: “We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning” (1967, p. 15). However, perspective-​awareness may be a necessary condition for moral agency, even if it is not a sufficient condition. Several moral philosophers have argued that imagination is indispensable not only for our cognitive and emotional development, but also for our ethical development and agency.6 As moral agents we are capable of initiating new processes in the world, and in making decisions and embarking on actions we must imagine the myriad potential consequences of these actions—​how they might affect others and change the world we co-​inhabit. Without such a power of imagination, our existence as acting subjects would be truncated. A sense of the possible—​a sense of how things could be otherwise—​is integral to moral agency and to the ethical imagination of individuals and communities. It has transformative potential. I will explore the capacity of narratives to expand our sense of the possible in relation to five additional aspects of the ethical potential of storytelling: narrative’s contribution to personal and cultural self-​understanding; narrative as a non-​subsumptive mode of encountering alterity; storytelling as a way of shaping the narrative in-​between; narrative as cultivating our

[ 4 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

perspective-​awareness and capacity for perspective-​taking; and narrative as a form of ethical inquiry. On the basis of these six aspects of what narratives can do to us, ethically speaking, I propose a schematic map for exploring and evaluating, in a differentiated manner, the ethical potential and problems of different storytelling practices. As a literary scholar, I mainly test the model on literary narratives, but it is meant to be usable for the ethical analysis of any narratives. In reflecting on the sense of the possible, what interests me are real, genuine possibilities, in contrast to merely logical possibilities.7 As Gary Saul Morson writes, “the temporal world consists not just of actualities and impossibilities but also of a third, in-​between category: real, though unactualized, possibilities” (1998, p. 602). These real possibilities often go unacknowledged in actual worlds, and they are linked to our power to imagine the “what-​ifs” and alternative courses of events that could make the world utterly different. While many kinds of narratives can stimulate our capacity to think beyond—​and resist—​the actual, this task is particularly important for literature and other arts. As Jacques Rancière puts it, aesthetic acts can function “as configurations of experience that create new modes of sense perception” (2013, p. 3). In Gilles Deleuze’s terms, storytelling has power to add to the real, for example by contributing to the invention of new subjectivities and “a people to come” (2005, pp. 208, 264).8 Through the exploration of human possibilities, narrative fiction opens up new perspectives on history, the everyday, and the yet-​to-​be. We engage with fictional narratives as whole, embodied human beings with our own desires and anxieties, values and beliefs, memories and fantasies. What is at stake is not just an escape to the realm of the unreal but an exploration of the possible. Through reading, we encounter what Ricoeur (1991a, p. 88) calls imaginative variations of ourselves that allow us to explore—​as individuals and communities—​who we are in relation to who we could be. Such exploration cultivates our understanding of where we come from, where we are now, and where we could go. This, in turn, affects who we in fact are.

TOWARD A NARRATIVE HERMENEUTICS

Hermeneutics refers to theoretical reflection on interpretation. It originates in the study of sacred and legal texts and in its modern form (at the turn of the nineteenth century) came to signify theoretical reflection on interpretation and understanding. In the early twentieth century, in Martin Heidegger’s and Hans-​Georg Gadamer’s work, hermeneutics went through an “ontological turn”:  while nineteenth-​century hermeneutics

Introduction 

[ 5 ]

6

focused on interpretation and understanding as the methodological basis of the humanities, in Sein und Zeit (1927, Being and Time) Heidegger analyzed understanding as the human mode of being in the world. This shift expanded the scope of hermeneutics to concern human existence in general. As Gadamer puts it, Heidegger placed hermeneutics in the center of his analysis of existence in showing that interpretation is not an isolated activity of human beings but the basic structure of our experience of life. We are always taking something as something. That is the primordial givenness of our world orientation, and we cannot reduce it to anything simpler or more immediate. (1984, p. 58)

After the existential-​ontological turn of hermeneutics, interpretation came to refer to the sense-​making process that structures our engagement with the world. As Gadamer (1993a, p.  339) acknowledges, this turn is indebted to Friedrich Nietzsche, who launched the antipositivistic tradition, according to which there is nothing more basic than interpretation: all that is “given” (das Gegebene) to us is itself a result of interpretation. Nietzsche famously argued that “facts is [sic] precisely what there is not, only interpretations” (1968, p.  267). That interpretation is primordial—​ irreducible to anything more elementary—​is the most fundamental tenet of philosophical hermeneutics. In Heidegger’s terms, our mode of being in the world has an interpretative “as-​structure” (1996, p. 140); the “hermeneutic understanding-​something-​as-​something [das hermeneutische Etwas-​als-​etwas-​Verstehen]” (Gadamer, 1993a, p. 339) is the structure of all experience. Narrative hermeneutics is motivated by the view that theoretical reflection on interpretation deserves a more central place in contemporary narrative studies and critical theory. Instead of assuming that we all know what interpretation means, we need more reflection on different conceptions, levels, and practices of interpretation. As Rita Felski observes, hermeneutics has received surprisingly little serious consideration in critical theory over the past few decades: “Given the surge of interest in questions of reading—​close and distant, deep and surface—​the neglect of the hermeneutic tradition in Anglo-​American literary theory is little short of scandalous” (2015, p. 33). This is largely due to a common misunderstanding, particularly in poststructuralistically oriented humanities and social sciences: the concept of interpretation is often taken to imply seeking a hidden “ultimate meaning” that waits to be discovered in the depths of the object of interpretation (pp. 32–​33).9 Such suspicion toward interpretation has animated French poststructuralism and has exerted its influence in the

[ 6 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Anglo-​American world through the reception of French thought—​an early example being Susan Sontag’s influential attack “Against Interpretation” (1964). Felski (2015, p.  33) proposes a rebranding of hermeneutics, starting with the recognition that hermeneutics does not imply a commitment to any particular conception of interpretation; rather, it is simply the pursuit of theorizing interpretation, within which many rival understandings of interpretation can flourish and debate, and hence should be seen as a “resource to be reimagined rather than an idol to be destroyed” (p.  34). Such a project of reimagining is precisely what I intend to do in this book. An important starting point for this project is the acknowledgment that interpretation is fundamental not only to our engagement with texts, but to our whole being in the world, and that narratives mediate and condition our interpretative engagements with the world and other people. Within narrative studies, narratology in particular has sought to distance itself from interpretation, which it has associated with unscientificity and subjectivity. As Liesbeth Korthals Altes puts it, “scientificity has often been considered to come proportionally to one’s distancing from interpretation, and from hermeneutics more generally”; this tendency has been coupled with narratology’s “lack of systematic interest in the social dimensions and, hence, the diversity of interpretive processes” (2014, p. 19). However, as the most lucid narratologists, like Korthals Altes (2014) and Jonathan Culler (1988, p. 279), recognize, interpretation is a key element of all narrative analysis, even of the most descriptive. I suggest that we should go one step further and acknowledge that interpretation is something that we always already do, not only when we interpret texts, in order to be able to rethink the relationship between different levels of interpretation. Narrative hermeneutics approaches narrative as a culturally mediated interpretative practice that makes someone’s experiences in a particular situation intelligible by drawing meaningful connections between them. It explores narrative as an activity of organizing experiences that has bearing on our sense of who we are and who we could be. This may sound simple, but these basic premises are far from self-​evident. For example, the classical narratological tradition shaped by the legacy of French structuralism deliberately omitted notions of experience and the experiencing subject and instead conceptualized narrative in terms of a (quasi-​causal) representation of a series of events. Today, Monika Fludernik’s (1996, p. 12) view that experientiality—​which she defines as the “quasi-​mimetic evocation of ‘real-​life experience’ ”—​is the key feature of narrative has become one of the widely shared premises of cognitively oriented “postclassical narratology.”10 Yet contemporary narratologists mostly rely on a conception of experience

Introduction 

[ 7 ]

8

that is rarely thematized but seems to be very different from a hermeneutic one. Their notion is usually closer to the empiricist-​positivistic belief in “raw experience” than to the hermeneutic conception of experience as mediated and interpretatively structured. In cognitive narratology, “experiencing” is a universal cognitive frame (Fludernik, 1996), and it tends to be linked to the ahistorical assumption that experience is something quite unproblematic, immediately given here and now. This ahistorical conception of experience is generally coupled with a narrow conception of history: history is seen as something that happens elsewhere—​where the great political leaders meet and wars are fought—​ rather than right here, in our everyday lives. In Fludernik’s definition, for example, the “historical” refers to such historically “significant” events as wars, the American moon landing, and the fall of the Berlin wall (2010, pp.  43, 46).11 She suggests that soldiers in the battlefield have “historical experience” that can be characterized as “raw experience” (pp. 41–​43), whereas those who follow the war on television have only “mediated” historical experience, as if the experience of those engaged in ordinary everyday activities were not historical: In order to become “historical” experience (rather than mere experience of things happening to impinge on one), events or processes need to be cognized as either significant (which will cause them to be experienced as historic even though they are only just evolving) or as past. (p. 46)

What is problematic in this narrow conception is that it ignores the historicity of everyday life in which apparently nothing much happens. Who gets to decide, and how, what counts as “significant”?12 It can be legitimately argued that the personal, subjective, and everyday are highly significant and just as historically constituted as the events of narrowly conceived political history. It is rarely acknowledged in narrative studies that history is not something external to us but constitutive of all experience.13 Despite the widespread use of the concept of experience in narrative studies, it is wildly under-​theorized, and its temporal complexity tends to be downplayed.14 Most approaches to narrative, developed by a range of thinkers from Hayden White (1981) to Strawson (2004) and several cognitive narratologists, rely on a hierarchical dichotomy between living and telling, based on the assumption that there is pure or raw experience on which narrative retrospectively imposes order. Narrative then easily appears as a projection of false order, or as a distortion of the original experiences or events. Narrative hermeneutics, in contrast, questions the dichotomy

[ 8 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

between living and telling by stressing that experience is continuously mediated. Its key insight is that cultural webs of narratives affect the way in which we experience things in the first place. In narrative psychology, there is a line of thought that recognizes this mediatedness, or what Jerome Bruner calls the mimetic “two-​way affair”:  “Narrative imitates life, life imitates narrative” (1987, p.  13). Bruner acknowledges that our lives are a product of imagination in the sense that they are available only through a process of recounting, which is not a “recital of something univocally given,” but “an interpretive feat” (p. 13). Hence, “life is not ‘how it was’ but how it is interpreted and reinterpreted, told and retold” (p. 31). One of Bruner’s great insights is that the cultural “stock of canonical life narratives” affects how we tell our lives against what we perceive as “possible lives”: these cultural narrative models have the “power to structure perceptual experience, to organize memory, to segment and purpose-​build the very ‘events’ of a life” (p. 15). Drawing on Bruner, much of narrative research in the social sciences emphasizes what Ann Phoenix characaterizes as the need to “give equal importance to individual and to social processes” and to pay attention to how “canonical narratives provide insights into the ways in which narrators use culture in doing narratives” (2013, pp. 74–​75). Bruner’s thinking is indebted to the hermeneutic tradition of thought, but he rarely refers to it, and the connections remain largely implicit; this is even truer of contemporary narrative psychology and narrative social sciences. One of the aims of this book is to explicate the relevance of hermeneutics for today’s interdisciplinary narrative studies.15 Perspectivism—​the recognition that we always interpret the world from a particular perspective—​is integral to narrative hermeneutics. It considers different disciplines, for example, as practices of interpreting the world from different perspectives and of posing different types of questions to reality. These interpretative perspectives are primary in relation to any propositional statements:  it is a key tenet of hermeneutics that “every statement has to be seen as a response to a question and that the only way to understand a statement is to get hold of the question to which the statement is an answer” (Gadamer, 1981, p. 106). Hence, a certain way of asking questions is more fundamental to a discipline than the propositional claims it makes: chemistry and media studies, for example, approach the world from different perspectives and ask it different types of questions. As Alexander Nehamas (1985) argues, Nietzschean perspectivism and the primordiality of interpretation implies that literary interpretation is a relevant model for understanding not only texts but also lives. Just as

Introduction 

[ 9 ]

01

we can interpret literary texts “equally well in vastly different and deeply incompatible ways,” the same is true of human lives (p. 3), but this does not mean that all interpretations are equally good; rather, it is to acknowledge that knowledge is never absolute and all interpretations take place from a particular perspective.16 As Gadamer puts it, “[i]‌nterpretation is always on the way. . . . [T]he word interpretation points to the finitude of human being and the finitude of human knowing” (2001, p. 105). This endlessness is linked to the unfinalizable nature of interpretation:  “the key hypothesis of hermeneutic philosophy is that interpretation is an open process that no single vision can conclude” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 33). Interpretations are never exhaustive, and our interpretative relationship with the world involves ongoing engagement with its nonsemantic, material aspects.17 That narrative is seen as a cultural interpretative practice (rather than only as a structure, like in classical and much of postclassical narratology) means that it is perceived as a social activity, process, and interaction: something we do together with others and through which we take part in shaping social reality. My interest in narrative hermeneutics is animated by the conviction that we should move beyond linking interpretation to the idea of unveiling deep meanings; we should see interpretation as an endless activity of (re)orientation, engagement, and sense-​making, which is thoroughly worldly, both in the sense of being embedded in a social and historical world and in the sense of participating in performatively constituting that world. Narrative is about understanding in the Gadamerian sense of “understanding oneself in the world,” which entails comprehending one’s possibilities of acting and experiencing (Gadamer, 1993b, p. 345). For Gadamer, our interpretative engagement with the world is profoundly historical and situated. However, the level of abstraction of his philosophy is such that he says little about the specific ways in which our being in the world is situated, as multiple axes of differentiation—​such as those of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and age—​intersect in particular historical and cultural contexts to produce lived experience.18 Yet philosophical hermeneutics and approaches that emphasize the gendered, ethnicized, and classed nature of our social existence are far from incompatible; indeed, the importance of these modes of situatedness is implied in the emphasis of philosophical hermeneutics on the historicity of our being in the world—​on the way all actions and understandings are anchored in a particular historical situation, conditioned by the social system that imputes identity categories on people.19 In philosophical hermeneutics, however, too much remains implicit. In my view, hermeneutics should be developed in a direction that is more articulate about power relations, specific modes of situatedness, and the unequal distribution of agency and vulnerability.20

[ 10 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

In articulating the performative dimension of narrative interpretations and their intertwinement with relations of power, I propose a narrative hermeneutics that synthesizes aspects of philosophical hermeneutics, on one hand, and of Nietzschean-​Bakhtinian-Foucauldian hermeneutics, on the other. It aspires to function as a theoretical-​analytical framework for exploring narratives as interpretative practices that exist in relations of dialogue and struggle in the world, not merely in some textual universe. The Nietzschean-​hermeneutic approach acknowledges that interpretative practices not only represent the world, but take part in performatively shaping it. This framework invites reflection on who gets to decide which stories get told and how, and what worldly effects these ethically charged storytelling practices have.

NARRATIVE, AGENCY, AND ETHICS

From the perspective of narrative hermeneutics, cultural models of narrative sense-​making condition—​but do not straightforwardly determine—​ our lives, identities, and modes of experience. Narrative hermeneutics envisages the relationship between narrative sense-​making models and the individual subjects who interpret them as fundamentally dialogical in the sense that while the subjects become who they are in relation to the cultural models, these models only exist through being interpreted. As Jens Brockmeier puts it, cultural meanings “signal a range of options, of possibilities for action” (2009, p. 222). He builds on Klaus Holzkamp’s idea of how our relationship to cultural meanings is a “ ‘possibility’ relationship [‘Möglichkeits’-​Beziehung]” (1983, p.  236). The idea that cultural webs of meanings do not determine our actions or who we become but rather indicate possibilities for action suggests that we can, to some extent, detach ourselves from them (Brockmeier, 2009, p. 222)—​or at least some aspects of them. Reinterpretations can resist and challenge culturally prevalent narrative models, although such challenging is considerably more difficult for precarious subjects than for those in privileged positions of power. The notion of narrative agency designates how, as Catriona Mackenzie puts it, “to be a person is to exercise narrative capacities for self-​ interpretation,” which bring about “the integration of the self over time,” and that such “[n]‌arrative integration is dynamic, provisional and open to change and revision” (2008, pp.  11–​12). I  would like to emphasize, however, that the narrative dimension of agency is not only at play in processes of self-​interpretation but is more broadly a constitutive aspect of moral agency as we constantly participate, through our actions and inactions,

Introduction 

[ 11 ]

21

in narrative practices that perpetuate and challenge social structures. The concept of narrative agency is useful in signaling that culturally mediated narrative (self-​)interpretations take part in constituting us as subjects capable of action, while simultaneously recognizing that as agents of narrative interpretation we are both constituting and constituted. Narrative agency can be amplified or diminished, and agentic power is unevenly distributed across the globe. There are crucial differences in the ways in which narratives as cultural interpretative practices affect us and our narrative agency. Often narratives are so integral to one’s way of life that one is largely unaware of them, and in fact it is impossible to become aware of all the narrative webs in which we are entangled. Narratives can become dangerous weapons for political ideologies when they are not presented as narratives but as neutral, perspectiveless statements of how things are. This insight fueled the attack on storytelling after the Second World War. Importantly, however, this attack was directed not against narrative per se but against a particular conception and function of narrative, namely, against narratives that present themselves as the discourse of truth.21 Such narratives function according to what Roland Barthes (1957, pp. 251–​252) described as the logic of myth: they present what is historical and human-​made as if it were natural and inevitable. Narratives function in different ways: sometimes they perpetuate problematic stereotypical sense-​making practices; at other times they encourage critical reflection on dominant cultural narrative practices and self-​reflexively question the kind of naturalizing tendency that the postwar thinkers criticized. I suggest that instead of a singular and definitive logic of narrative, there are different logics of narrative. In particular, an important distinction can be made between naturalizing narratives, which hide their own mediating and interpretative role, and self-​reflexive narratives, which openly present themselves as narratives, that is, as selective, perspectival interpretations that can always be contested and told otherwise. Self-​reflexive narratives overtly raise the possibility of reinterpretation and invite the recipient to participate in the dialogic process. I will argue that naturalizing and self-​reflexive narrative strategies are intimately linked to ethically distinct logics manifested by subsumptive and non-​subsumptive narrative practices: while some (typically naturalizing) narratives seek to subsume the particular under the general, others (typically self-​reflexive ones) destabilize such appropriative aspirations and display a non-subsumptive logic by foregrounding the temporal process of encountering the singularity of the narrated experiences. This book develops an alternative to the subsumption model of narrative understanding and argues that the ethical potential of storytelling depends on the

[ 12 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

possibility of non-​subsumptive understanding, in which singular experiences are not subsumed under what we already know, but shape and transform our understanding. Ethics explores different ways of responding to the question of how we should live. This involves reflection on how our values and commitments affect how we live, act, respond, and express who we are and what we value and care about as we try to make sense of our place in the world, including our responsibilities and goals. The question of how to live is intimately linked to the question of who we are. Culturally mediated narrative practices are inseparable from how we understand ourselves as moral agents and communities. Socially and culturally oriented approaches to ethics have criticized the dominant moral theories, such as Kantian and utilitarian approaches, for relying on an individualist, atomistic conception of subjectivity and neglecting how we become moral agents in social frameworks that allow us to express and define who we are through actions and responses that are intelligible within a moral community.22 Approaches that acknowledge how moral life is thoroughly entwined with other aspects of social life have been developed by a range of thinkers, including Gadamer (1997, orig. 1960), Emmanuel Levinas (1980, orig. 1961), Stanley Cavell (1979), Alasdair MacIntyre (1984), Charles Taylor (1989), Richard Rorty (1989), Nussbaum (1990), Ricoeur (1992), Margaret Urban Walker (2007), and Hilde Lindemann (2014). Hermeneutic narrative ethics explores the ethical potential and risks of narratives as culturally mediated interpretative practices. It is interested in the ethical issues that pertain both to our relation to others and to our sense of self. In continental ethics, the tradition inspired by Levinas focuses on the relation to the Other,23 while the tradition that draws on Nietzsche’s and Michel Foucault’s work places the emphasis on the cultivation of one’s own ethos and style of existence—​what Foucault calls “the aesthetics of existence” and the “elaboration of one’s own life as a personal work of art” (1996, p. 451). The latter tradition is relevant to a consideration of how in narrating our lives we shape them into something akin to works of art.24 We become selves, however, only in relation to others, and it is this interplay between an ethics of self-​realization and a relational, other-​oriented ethics that I attempt to unearth through an approach that emphasizes the dialogical character of narrative identity, (inter)subjectivity, and agency. This involves showing that a sense of history cultivates our sense of the possible in ways that are ethically crucial for our capacity to imagine different possibilities of relationality. The performative understanding of narrative implies that because storytelling produces and shapes reality, we have

Introduction 

[ 13 ]

41

a responsibility as storytellers and should reflect on the intersubjective implications of our storytelling activities. My approach to ethics has four main dimensions: reflective-​analytic, transcendental, evaluative, and explorative. I reflect on, and analyze, the ways in which the ethical potential and dangers of narrative have been understood; I examine tacit ontological and normative assumptions underpinning different conceptions of narrative, and I unearth the conditions of possibility for moral agency and ethically sustainable narrative understanding; I provide evaluative tools for differentiating between ethically beneficial and problematic narrative practices; and I engage in exploring what kinds of ethical potential storytelling might have, how it could be realized, and how different narrative practices implicate us. While approaches that are sensitive to the social dimension of ethics tend to focus on how morality develops in and shapes communities, I will explore particularly the transformative potential of literary narratives in their power to not only manifest social morality, but also open up ways of going beyond it. Drawing on Deleuze, Jill Bennett formulates a similar idea in terms of a difference between morality and ethics: An ethics is enabled and invigorated by the capacity for transformation. . . . A morality on the other hand, operates within the bounds of a given set of conventions, within which social and political problems must be resolved. (2005, p. 15)25

The ethos that animates my approach to ethics is that richer awareness of how narrative webs constitute the ethical universe in which we orient ourselves—​a universe that functions as a space of possibilities—​has power to strengthen our ethically charged narrative agency and to expand our sense of the possible. Literature can contribute to such awareness by functioning as a form of ethical inquiry that reflects on the ethical complexity of the narrative webs in which we are entangled.

THE ACTUAL AND THE POSSIBLE

Ever since Aristotle famously argued that history narrates what has happened and literature what “might happen, i.e. what is possible” (1984, p. 4979), the Western tradition has drawn on a dichotomy between the actual and the possible when conceptualizing the relationship between fiction and history. I suggest, however, that this conceptual dichotomy has led to a dismissal of how a sense of the possible is integral to who we

[ 14 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

are and how it constitutes an important aspect of intersubjective reality in every actual world. This dichotomy may hinder our understanding of how literature provides interpretations of actual (past and present) worlds through its own literary means and how it can enrich and expand our sense of real worlds as spaces of possibilities. Narrative hermeneutics addresses these issues as a framework in which history and fiction are seen as complementary practices of narrative interpretation. Most theorists of fiction share Gottlob Frege’s (2008, orig. 1892) view that fiction lacks truth value and is hence not, as Dorrit Cohn puts it, “subject to judgments of truth and falsity” (1999, p.  15). Given that the language of fiction is performative in that it creates the world it refers to precisely by referring to it (p. 13), Lubomír Doležel (2010, pp. 41–​42) claims that historical research constructs possible worlds that function as models of actual worlds, whereas fiction constructs possible worlds that contain fictional elements and therefore cannot function as models of any actual world: “A possible world in which counterparts of historical persons cohabit, interact, and communicate with fictional persons is not a historical world” (p. 36). By characterizing fiction as “nonreferential,” theorists of fiction stress that it does not—​or does not have to—​refer to the actual world. For example, Cohn defines fiction as “nonreferential narrative” (1999, p.  9) and argues that a fictional world “remains to its end severed from the actual world” (p. 13). Similarly, Henrik Skov Nielsen, James Phelan, and Richard Walsh suggest that discourse construed as fictional invites us to assume “that it is not making referential claims” (2015, p.  68). However, they importantly draw attention to the need to acknowledge the “seemingly paradoxical double quality of some uses of fictionality”: “it is not meant to be understood as true and yet is meant to shape our beliefs about the actual world” (p. 68). They thereby acknowledge that even though fiction belongs to the realm of the possible, it can still affect our conceptions of what is “actual, factual, and real” (p. 71), but they do not further explicate how we should understand the relationship between these two realms. The way in which the relationship between the actual and the possible is conceptualized depends on one’s assumptions concerning the basic nature of reality and history. These assumptions, however, generally remain highly implicit, largely because they are frequently considered to be self-​ evident, even when in reality they are far from it. A theory of fictionality necessarily implies a theory of factuality. The dominant theory of factuality that relies on the conceptual opposition between the actual and the possible is based on the ontological assumption that the actual and the real refer to what can be objectively observed: to actions, events, and facts that

Introduction 

[ 15 ]

61

can be verified with observations or documents. But what if reality—​past and present—​does not consist merely of actions, events, and facts? Does human reality not also consist in such invisible phenomena as patterns of experience, affect, and meaning-​giving? Engagement with these aspects of reality arguably requires imagination. From such a perspective, cultural history has challenged “historical realism,” according to which history is composed of observable actions; it emphasizes that the past world is also constituted by thoughts, feelings, and representations—​by what is invisible and perishable—​and suggests that it is crucial for the study of the past world to map past possibilities (Salmi, 2011, pp.  173–​174; Wyschogrod, 1998). In this task, the historian needs not only documentation of what we can know for certain about that world, but also the capacity to imagine (Corbin, 2002, p. 9; Salmi, 2011, pp. 176–​177). I suggest that both fictional and nonfictional narratives can contribute to our sense of how to live in a historical world (including our own) is to live in a particular space of possibilities in which it is possible to experience, perceive, think, feel, do, and imagine certain things, and difficult or impossible to experience, perceive, think, feel, do, and imagine other things. This view of historical worlds emerges from the tradition of thought developed by Heidegger (1996), Gadamer (1997), Reinhart Koselleck (2004), Foucault (1966), and Rancière (2013). Heidegger (1977b) argues that every age has an underlying metaphysic with certain presuppositions about what is real and possible; Foucault (1966) describes such a metaphysic as the historical a priori that defines the limits of intelligibility in a particular age, and subjectivity as a process of taking up subject positions “within a more or less open field of possibilities” in which the “exercise of power” is “a management of possibilities” (2000, p. 341). Koselleck’s (2004) concept of “space of experience” (Erfahrungsraum) refers to how the present world is shaped by frameworks of meaning, an important aspect of which is how it understands the past; “horizon of expectation” (Erwartungshorizont), in turn, refers to the way in which we orient ourselves to the future and imagine the yet-​to-​be. Narrative practices shape both the space of experience and the horizon of expectation, as well as their shifting relationship. Neither the space of experience nor the horizon of expectation of a particular world, however, is as homogenous as Koselleck makes them sound. As Rancière acknowledges, each age includes the “co-​presence of heterogeneous temporalities” (2013, p. 26). A historical world always consists in a multitude of historical worlds. Moral agents are socially situated, they position themselves differently within a social world, and their sense of the possible differs from one another. This plurality and heterogeneity

[ 16 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

are implicit in my use of the notions of the historical world and the sense of the possible. For example, in the contemporary world, acute historical consciousness exists side by side with complete dismissal of how history mediates the present. And within societies, across this shared planet, vulnerability, agency, and possibilities are unequally distributed (Butler 2004, 2009). Ricoeur argues that fiction can function as a “detector of possibilities buried in the actual past” (1988, pp. 191–​192): “What ‘might have been’—​ the possible in Aristotle’s terms—​includes both the potentialities of the ‘real’ past and the ‘unreal’ possibilities of pure fiction” (p. 192). Although Cohn (1999, p. 9) claims to share her definition of fiction as “nonreferential narrative” with Ricoeur, in the three volumes of Time and Narrative (Temps et récit, 1983–​1985) Ricoeur moves on from this simplified starting point to a complex reflection on how thinking based on referentiality is insufficient for understanding the relationship between fiction and reality. Fiction opens up the world in a certain way, and at the same time participates in transforming it: it is both disclosive and transformative. Hence, the “critique of the naive concept of ‘reality’ applied to the pastness of the past calls for a systematic critique of the no less naive concept of ‘unreality’ applied to the projections of fiction”; fiction is “undividedly revealing and transforming” (1988, p. 158). Ricoeurian mimesis can be characterized as a process that is simultaneously performative and interpretative and therefore cannot be captured by the conceptual dichotomy between finding and inventing: “Here we reach the point where discovering and inventing are indistinguishable, the point, therefore, where the notion of reference no longer works” (p. 158). In a similar vein, Bruner argues that while the sciences create hypotheses and possible worlds that fit them, the humanities and the arts create possible worlds that give expression to “possible alternative personal perspectives” (1986, p. 54). Creating hypotheses of human possibilities in a past world is an interpretative task that is in principle endless, and historians, novelists, and philosophers can make equally legitimate contributions by their own means: “For the object of understanding human events is to sense the alternativeness of human possibility. And so there will be no end of interpretations of Charlemagne’s ascendance (or Jeanne d’Arc’s fall or Cromwell’s rise and fall)—​and not only by historians, but by novelists, poets, playwrights, and even philosophers” (p. 53). I endeavor to further elaborate on this interpretative dynamic through a narrative hermeneutics, according to which the actual and the possible constantly interpenetrate one another in both fiction and nonfiction and in the different modes of engagement they invite.

Introduction 

[ 17 ]

81

NARRATIVE UNCONSCIOUS AND NARRATIVE IMAGINATION

In this book, I  explore how storytelling practices shape our sense of the range of possibilities that are open to us. This involves two key aspects: an understanding of the unconscious narrative imaginaries that underpin cultural worlds, and a sense of how it is possible to go beyond the dominant imaginaries to imagine and grasp new possibilities of being, thinking, and experiencing. Hence, I argue that the relationship between narrative unconscious and narrative imagination is crucial in shaping our sense of the possible. Freeman uses the notion of narrative unconscious in reference to “those culturally rooted aspects of one’s history that have not yet become part of one’s story” but are “operative in our ongoing engagement with the world” (2010, pp. 105, 120). I will suggest, however, that the narrative unconscious affects us in many problematic ways, and we need to not only integrate it into our self-​understanding, but also engage with it critically. The concept is useful in signaling that we are largely unaware of the cultural narrative webs and narrative traditions that regulate how we narrate the past, understand our possibilities in the present, and orient ourselves to the future. The stories we tell are never entirely our own. As the hermeneutic psychoanalyst Roger Frie puts it, “the narrative and hermeneutical traditions challenge the view of the unconscious as an individual container of experience, separate from the social and cultural surround”; he refers to the unconscious to draw attention to how “we are embedded in narratives whose meanings remain beyond our reflective grasp” (2016, p. 121).26 Another approach that acknowledges how cultural narratives shape our self-​interpretations is “narrative therapy,” inspired by Michael White and David Epston’s (1990) work. As Martin Payne (2006, p. 21) articulates, it reflects on how culturally dominant narrative models can be a source of distress if our experiences do not conform: Language . . . influences . . . our interpretations of what happens to us by providing both ready-​made meanings and “canonical stories”—​ready-​made stereotypical narratives into which we try to fit and story our lives. These canonical narratives (achieving success in work, finding a permanent partner, being a parent, living in gender-​appropriate ways and so on) are frequently a source of distress and loss of identity when our lives fail to correspond to them.

Narrative therapy is based on the idea that when we become aware of the culturally available stories that lead us to narrate our experiences in certain ways, we are no longer so tightly bound to them and can envisage

[ 18 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

alternatives. When significant aspects of the experiences of persons seeking therapy contradict dominant narratives, therapy aims to identify or generate “alternative stories that enable them to perform new meanings, bringing with them desired possibilities—​new meanings that persons will experience as more helpful, satisfying, and open-​ended” (White & Epston, 1990, p. 15). As Julia Vassilieva puts it, narrative therapy is “fundamentally concerned with using narrative for liberation,” both “from the oppressive effects of power” and from “the tyranny of problems and predicaments that people face” (2016, pp. 180–​181). I use the notion of narrative unconscious to signal that the cultural mechanisms that regulate how we narrate our experiences and share them with others affect us largely unconsciously. We can never be totally aware of this unconscious layer, but we can become partly conscious of it, particularly by developing our awareness of the historical processes that have shaped the narrative traditions in which we are entangled. Such awareness can have emancipatory power because in the unconscious form, narrative models are easily reified so that they conceal their nature as human interpretations; they present themselves as if mirroring the natural order of things, and in this reified form, they cannot be subjected to critical discussion.27 In this book, I explore narratives that not only draw on the narrative unconscious, but also thematize it and help us become aware of the ways in which we rely on culturally mediated narrative models of sense-​making, thereby allowing us to establish critical distance from these received models and to expand our narrative imagination. Fredric Jameson opens his influential book The Political Unconscious (1981) with the words, “Always historicize!” (p. 9); I would like to suggest that literary narratives can themselves use strategies of historicizing and thereby contribute to our ability to historicize. The concept of narrative imagination has been used by a range of thinkers, but in the wake of Nussbaum’s (1997, 2010) influential thinking, it is most often used with reference to the capacity to imagine the experience of people different from oneself—​a capacity that pervades all aspects of our lives. Drawing on John Dewey’s (1916) discussion of the relevance of art for life, Nussbaum argues that instead of teaching that “imagination is pertinent only in the domain of the unreal or imaginary,” children need to “see an imaginative dimension in all their interactions, and to see works of art as just one domain in which imagination is cultivated” (2010, p. 103). Nussbaum focuses mainly on empathetic identification with literary characters, often almost as if they were real people, and downplays our engagement with different narrative forms. Her ahistorical approach also lacks a sense of how, in reading fiction, we engage with fictional worlds from

Introduction 

[ 19 ]

02

the horizon of our own world. In critical dialogue with Nussbaum’s work, I propose rethinking narrative perspective-​taking in such a way that entails both emotional engagement and the possibility of critical distance. I articulate a model in which perspective-​taking does not imply the dissolution of one’s own, historically constituted interpretative horizon, but rather a dialogue that allows one to become aware of one’s preconceptions and alternatives to them. I aim to show that not only empathetic feeling with disadvantaged characters, but also imaginative engagement with ambiguous or problematic perspectives, can be ethically valuable. My work links up with that of Ricoeur (1988, 1991a), Brockmeier (2009, 2015), Freeman (2010), and Molly Andrews (2014) on the connection between narrative and imagination. They all understand narrative imagination in wider terms than Nussbaum and emphasize its temporal multidirectionality: it involves a “dialectical shuttling back and forth” (Freeman, 2010, p. 66), as we reinterpret the past from the perspective of the present and project ourselves into the future. Andrews describes imagination as a “social faculty” at work when “we think about our lives as they have been lived, and as they might be led” (2014, pp.  7, 10). Brockmeier analyzes how “narrative imagination is pivotal in probing and extending real and fictive scenarios of agency” (2009, p. 215). He acknowledges both that imagination is not a faculty separate from our everyday lives—​“most of our practical actions are enmeshed with acts of imagination”—​and that it is a creative, often tentative and playful, “pathway to the construction of new meanings” (p.  227). I  focus particularly on how narrative fiction contributes to our narrative imagination by cultivating our sense of the possible—​our capacity to imagine beyond what appears to be self-​evident in the present. Narrative unconscious and narrative imagination are two sides of what can be called the narrative imaginary. Cornelius Castoriadis (1975) uses the notion of “social imaginary” to show how society and social institutions are founded on basic assumptions about our being in the world, and Rosi Braidotti links it to a dynamic conception of subjectivity as “a term in a process, which is co-​extensive with both power and the resistance to it” and of narrativity as “a crucial binding force,” as a “collective, politically-​ invested process of sharing in and contributing to the making of myths, operational fictions, significant figurations of the kind of subjects we are in the process of becoming” (2002, pp. 21–​22). Taylor’s “social imaginary” refers to the “common understanding which makes possible common practices, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy” (2007, p. 172). Michèle Le Doeuff’s (1990) analysis of “philosophical imaginary” disentangles how social power affects philosophical thinking. These notions of the imaginary

[ 20 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

articulate how cultural meaning-​systems have the power to shape not only our beliefs and values, but social reality in general. The narrative imaginary of any given society is mainly unconscious, but it also includes the ways in which individuals and communities actively engage with, reinterpret, and reimagine their myths, stories, and imageries. I will explore the ethical potential of the narrative imaginary in terms of the concepts of dialogicality and the narrative in-​between, which foreground the relationality of our existence as narrative agents.28 Narrative unconscious and narrative imagination are also constitutive aspects of narrative identity, and all three are based on processes of (re)interpretation. Our narrative identity—​our narratively mediated sense of who we are and who we could become—​is importantly shaped by telling stories of our lives in relation to the narrative webs and traditions in which we are entangled. We engage in a dialogue with these traditions mostly unconsciously—​through automatized interpretative processes—​but sometimes in a highly conscious way. I suggest that there is a continuum from narrative identity based on received narrative models of sense-​making to narrative identity based on self-​aware narrative imagination that creatively or subversively reinterprets these models.

BEYOND THE PERPETRATOR–​V ICTIM DICHOTOMY

In order to adequately take into account the complexity of the ethical issues of storytelling, it is important to appreciate the inseparability of the ethical dimension of narratives from the concrete situations they narrate and in which they are used and abused. The singularity of ethical situations is one major reason why literature provides a fertile “laboratory for thought experiments” (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 148): by creating literary worlds in which moral agents act in concrete situations in relation to others, narrative fiction can explore the ethical complexities of the impact narratives have on our lives in richer terms than abstract moral philosophy. After three theoretical chapters (Chapters 1–​3), I shall develop my argumentation in relation to contemporary literary and autobiographical narratives that deal directly or indirectly with the traumatic legacy of the Second World War, which plays a pivotal role in contemporary narrative imaginary on a global scale. The Holocaust has become so central to our ethical imagination that it is difficult to think about the ethics of storytelling without considering how Nazism showed the terrifying power of storytelling to build a narrative of “us” and “them” and to exclude the latter from humanity. Why

Introduction 

[ 21 ]

2

is it that Karl Ove Knausgård ends his autobiographical series Min kamp (2009–​2011, My Struggle) with a long treatise of Hitler and Nazi Germany? Because he realized that he cannot think through who he is without coming to terms with that legacy. This is a sentiment widely shared by the children of European humanism from the immediate postwar years to the present: we cannot understand who we are without responding, in one way or another, to the question of how it is possible that European humanism could lead to Auschwitz, or at least could not stop it from happening. This question has grown even more urgent during the period I have been finalizing this book, as the new president of the United States, Donald Trump, has started his term by putting in practice alarming policies that enforce his extremist nationalist narrative of “America first.” Many commentators draw parallels to the rise of fascism in Europe of the 1930s; others warn against such comparisons. I agree with those who see comparison as inevitable, but emphasize that it should be sensitive to both continuities and discontinuities, similarities and differences. As Michael Rothberg (2017) puts it, in our moment, comparison is needed in the name of both “political mobilization (e.g. anti-​fascism)” and “historical understanding,” which are different but “feed into and off of each other.” The legacy of Auschwitz structures my ethical universe—​and European “moral topography” (Muschg, 1997)—​in ways that may not apply to people with different cultural backgrounds, but we should not think of discourses on different historical traumas in competitive terms (Rothberg, 2009), and rather than positing some kind of hierarchy of suffering, I  use contemporary narrative engagements with the Second World War as a touchstone for exploring theoretical issues that, I hope, others can elaborate on in relation to different kinds of material. While most of the fictional and literary-​critical work on the Holocaust focuses on the perspectives of the victims, contemporary literary Holocaust studies is increasingly acknowledging the importance of also engaging with the perspectives of the perpetrators.29 I aim to both contribute to the ongoing discussion on the ethics of such engagement and analyze how the selected narratives unsettle the perpetrator–​victim dichotomy. In Die Mittagsfrau (2007, The Blind Side of the Heart), the German novelist Julia Franck (b. 1970) tells the imaginary life story of her half-​Jewish grandmother, who abandoned her seven-​ year-​ old son (Julia Franck’s father) at a railway station after surviving the Second World War and Nazi persecution. The novel emerged from the need to imagine how it was possible that anyone could do something so incomprehensible.30 Günter Grass’s (1927–​2015) semi-​fictional autobiography Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006, Peeling the Onion) tells the story of a young Nazi who served in the

[ 22 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Waffen-​SS, was taken to an American re-​education camp, and became an artist. Grass delves deep into the ethical issues of remembering and forgetting, reflecting on how it was possible that he did what he did as a teenager, and in what sense it was he who did those things. In Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones), the French-​American novelist Jonathan Littell (b. 1967) sets out to imagine what it might have been like if he had been born in the historical world of Nazi-​occupied Europe, what he might have done, and who he might have become (Uni & Littell, 2008). When the Israeli writer David Grossman’s (b. 1954) son was doing his military service in the Israeli army, in the middle of the Israel-​Palestine conflict, he wrote a novel, To the End of the Land (2010, Isha Borachat Mi’bsora, 2008), that deals with the agony of a mother who takes her son to the army at the start of a military operation against the Palestinians.31 After his own son, Uri, died during his military service, Grossman wrote Falling Out of Time (2015, Nofel mi-​huts la-​zeman, 2011), a narrative that deals with the grief, loss, and guilt of parents who have lost a child—​as so many have in the Middle East and other conflict zones. All the preceding narratives can be linked to the phenomenon of perpetrator fiction or complicity fiction, but at the same time they show the inadequacy of the perpetrator–​victim dichotomy in making sense of the ways in which we are implicated in violent histories. Rothberg (2014) importantly draws attention to how the victim–​perpetrator imaginary “tends to polarize and purify the relationship between victims and perpetrators, evacuate the field of other crucial subject positions, and model violence on a small-​ scale, decontextualized scene”; he suggests that the concepts of implication and implicated subjects “help us better capture the conditions of possibility of violence” and asks us “to think how we are enmeshed in histories and actualities beyond our apparent and immediate reach, how we help produce history through impersonal participation rather than direct perpetration.” In thinking about this implicatedness, it is important to acknowledge, as Judith Butler puts it, that “we each have the power to destroy and to be destroyed, and that we are bound to one another in this power and this precariousness” (2009, p. 43). The narratives I have chosen for analysis make palpable the dynamics of implication. They not only complicate our narrative imagination dominated by the dichotomy between Nazi perpetrators and Jewish victims, but also raise broader questions of the ways in which the narrative webs in which we are entangled are also webs of violence—​webs of meaning that enable and perpetuate structural violence in society. They unearth the cultural condition of weaving narrative identities in the contemporary post-​Holocaust world, and they explore how the traumatic legacy of the Second World War

Introduction 

[ 23 ]

42

implicates us. They suggest that instead of simply demonizing the Nazis as the evil other, it is important to try to understand what made possible a historical world in which ordinary people took part in industrial mass murder. Although these narratives are written from positions of privilege—​mainly by European white men—​their authors also belong to minorities: Franck, Littell, and Grossman have a Jewish background; Grass was a refugee of Kashubian descent.32 The three male authors have first-​hand experience of war (Littell from humanitarian missions across the world). I have chosen these works because they are particularly ethically complex and compelling narratives that invite reflection on the ethically charged roles that narratives play in our lives. These narratives display metanarrativity in reflecting on their own process of narrating and in exploring the significance of narratives for human existence.33 Therefore, they provide a fertile ground for exploring the immersive and self-​reflexive dimensions of narrative dynamics. They invite a mode of perspective-​taking characterized by an interplay between experiential participation and a distanced reflection fueled by an awareness of the constructedness of the narrative. Cognitively oriented narrative theorists rarely acknowledge that engagement with fictional worlds can be at the same time immersive and self-​reflexive; they tend to conceptualize literary engagement in terms of an experience of being immersed in, or transported to, a fictional world, an experience allegedly interrupted by textual self-​reflexivity (Walton, 1990; Gerrig, 1998; Ryan 2003). In dialogue with the selected narratives, I develop a conceptual framework for analyzing the kind of engagement with historical experience—​of war and trauma in particular—​that is both self-​reflexive and invites immersion and emotional participation so as to produce a sense of implication. Each of these literary works has a personal, autobiographical aspect, but they also have broader cultural relevance. The traumatic legacy of the Second World War and the Holocaust has shaped Western cultural memory like no other cultural trauma and has also affected narrative imaginary on a global scale—​a phenomenon that has been discussed in relation to the concepts of “cosmopolitan memory” (Levy & Sznaider, 2006; Beck, 2014), “multidirectional memory” (Rothberg, 2009), “transcultural memory” (Erll, 2011), “mnemonic imagination” (Keithley & Pickering, 2012), “palimpsestic memory” (Silverman, 2013), and “transnational memory” (De Cesari & Rigney, 2014), all of which attempt to draw attention to the intersecting histories of violence and to the entanglement of the discourses around them.34 The legacy of the Second World War, in its various post-​Holocaust, post-​ colonial, and post-​communist forms, is fundamental to our sense of who

[ 24 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

we are in the present historical world. Divergent ways of interpreting this legacy inform different perspectives on the present age of terror and current political ruptures, such as the wars in Ukraine and Syria, the refugee crisis, debates that revolve around the future of the European project after the vote of the British to leave the European Union (“Brexit”), and the global concern about the threat to democracy and human rights presented by the Trump administration. In these troubled times—​as the tensions between Russia and the West have reactivated Cold War mentalities, discourses, and narrative practices, wars in the Middle East and Africa have forced millions of people to leave their homes and seek refuge, and nationalist extremism and xenophobic populism are rising across the Western world—​it is particularly urgent to understand different narrative imaginaries and the experiential realities that they reflect, produce, and shape. That history is written from the perspective of the victors has led many theorists who work on the ethics of remembering to argue that we have an obligation to write history that follows “the plot of suffering rather than that of power and glory” (Ricoeur, 1991b, p. 464). Currently, however, the increasing acknowledgment of the ethical importance of imagining not only the perspectives of victims, but also those of perpetrators and implicated subjects, shifts attention to the conditions of possibility for good and evil and to how their possibility within us is linked to the social world in which we become who we are. Precisely this type of reflection lies at the heart of the narratives analyzed in this book. They self-​reflexively deal with how the author, narrator, and/​or protagonist engages in a process of narrative imagination, conditioned by a culturally shaped narrative unconscious, and reflect on the ethical issues involved. The narratives thematize acts of storytelling, link them to broader cultural mechanisms, and bring to light both how storytelling can perpetuate dominant social power structures (to the point of playing a pivotal role in orchestrating industrial mass murder) and how it can be an empowering means of resistance that opens an avenue to addressing the incomprehensible.

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT

This book draws on, brings together, and contributes to the following, partly overlapping fields: (1) narrative ethics, (2) literary narrative studies and ethical criticism, (3) philosophy of narrative, (4) narrative psychology, and (5)  cultural memory studies. Narrative hermeneutics is an approach that intersects and engages with all of these fields. By bringing them into dialogue, I aim to shed new light on the multifaceted narrative dimension

Introduction 

[ 25 ]

62

of human existence and its ethical complexities. I hope this produces cross-​ fertilization and intensification of some of the exchanges taking place between these five areas of inquiry.

Narrative Ethics

First, narrative ethics is in itself an interdisciplinary area of research, most commonly understood either as a subfield of narrative studies or as a particular approach to ethics. It comprises a vast array of different, partly overlapping discussions, the common denominator of which is the view that narratives “do moral work” and are integral to “the moral life” (Lindemann, 2001, p. 36). Narrative approaches to ethics are mostly forms of contextual, situated ethics that emphasize the social embeddedness of moral agency. They focus on how stories “help to define and structure our moral universe” and how, in storytelling, “we both create and reveal who we think we are as moral agents and as persons” (Gotlib, 2015). These approaches explore the “interlacing of moral vocabularies and practices with other historically and culturally embedded beliefs and social practices” (Walker, 2007, p. 62). Narrative ethics challenges abstract, universalizing, top-​down, and principlist ethical theories (such as deontology and utilitarianism), which tend to view the moral agent “as an autonomous, rational actor, deliberating out of a calculus of utility or duty,” a “disembodied and decontextualized ideal decision-​maker,” unburdened by “the messy contextuality of an actual lived life” (Gotlib, 2015). Many narrative approaches to ethics (including those developed by Hannah Arendt, Taylor, MacIntyre, Ricoeur, Walker, Lindemann) emphasize the links between narrative, identity, and ethics, and understand morality to be a fundamentally interpersonal and dialogical practice. Narrative practices not only are entwined with ethics as an activity of reflecting on different ways of dealing with the question of how we should live but also shape our ethically charged intersubjective reality and who we are as moral agents. Nussbaum (1990, 1997, 2010)  and Richard Rorty (1989) are philosophers who place narrative fiction at the center of their narrative ethics. They suggest that fiction cultivates our moral sensibility, our capacity for empathy and solidarity, and our powers of self-​invention. Nussbaum argues that for some ethically relevant views on human life, “a literary narrative of a certain sort is the only type of text that can state them fully and fittingly, without contradiction” (1990, p.  7).35 Rorty maintains that “detailed descriptions of particular varieties of pain and humiliation (in,

[ 26 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

e.g., novels or ethnographies), rather than philosophical or religious treatises, were the modern intellectual’s principal contributions to moral progress” (1989, p. 192). Within narrative ethics developed in literary narrative studies, in contrast, the emphasis has been less on the relevance of narrative fiction to moral life and more on how integral ethical issues are to the production and reception of narrative fiction. As Jeremy Hawthorn and Jakob Lothe put it, authors make ethical decisions when they choose their topics and design the literary devices through which they deal with them; characters make ethical decisions in the fictive world; and readers make ethical decisions in responding to the narrative: ethical issues are not a supplement to “be added on once processes of writing, reading, or criticism have been completed . . . because there is no narrative that is free of ethical issues, no reading, viewing, or listening to a narrative that does not require some ethical sensitivity and the exercise of moral discrimination on the part of reader, viewer or listener” (2013, pp. 5–​6). The literary narratologist James Phelan (2014) distinguishes between four subfields of narrative ethics: “(1) the ethics of the told; (2) the ethics of the telling; (3) the ethics of writing/​producing; and (4) the ethics of reading/​reception.” Although Phelan’s distinction can be useful as a heuristic tool, I see the ethics of the told and the ethics of the telling as inseparable, in the same way as form and content are inseparable and interdependent. The way in which a narrative is told crucially affects what is being told as well as its ethical underpinnings. While according to Phelan (2014) “the ethics of the telling” focuses on “text-​internal matters” that concern the situation of “the narrator(s) in relation to the characters and to the narratee(s),” I want to stress that the author’s, narrator’s, and reader’s engagement in the narrative process take place in worldly contexts, and, hence, the ethics of storytelling—​in all its dimensions—​is a thoroughly worldly affair. Storytelling is ethically loaded precisely because it is a way of making sense of our being in the world, and narrative fiction is a particular form of such storytelling—​one that has specific ethical potential in engaging us through its own literary means. With the notion of the ethics of storytelling, I refer to an exploration of a range of ethical issues that arise in connection to the phenomenon of storytelling. The central issue in this book is the ethical significance of storytelling for human existence. Other relevant questions include the following: How do ontological assumptions affect the ways in which one answers this question and understands the relationship between living and telling? What are the key aspects of the ethical potential and dangers of storytelling, and how are they addressed within different literary narratives? How

Introduction 

[ 27 ]

82

does the interplay between form and content bear on literature as a mode of ethical inquiry and on our engagement with ethically challenging narratives? How is the dimension of the possible linked to the ethical relevance of storytelling? Although Phelan (2014) is critical of “reading for the moral message,” which “has as its goal extracting a neatly packaged lesson from the ethics of the told,” the focus of the rhetorical-​narratological tradition on strategies of persuasion (by the author) and judgment (by the reader) often seems to be linked to the assumption that human beings are rational, self-​ conscious subjects who basically already know what is right and wrong and engage in acts of persuasion and judgment from their established value positions.36 This assumption generally underpins “humanist ethics,” as opposed to “poststructuralist ethics,” the former being more influential in narratology.37 While I draw on certain aspects of both traditions, I also wish to move beyond them. The starting point of my hermeneutic approach is that meanings take shape as we engage in a dialogue with texts from the horizon of our own sociocultural world, and narratives exist in dialogic relations to cultural meaning-​systems. The way in which a narrative signifies cannot be reduced to how it communicates the intentions and values of the author; authors and readers are embedded in sociocultural webs of meaning of which they are only partly conscious and which they perpetuate and challenge through their interpretative actions. While scholarship that draws on humanist ethics often analyzes the ethics of a certain text in terms of a pre-​given set of values, I aim to contribute to the line of narrative ethics that foregrounds the relevance of literature as a form of ethical inquiry in its own right. Literature does not merely illustrate or communicate pre-​ given ideas and values—​as a form of “moral guidance” or “moral education,” as Wayne C. Booth has it (1988, p. 211)—​but functions as a medium of thought and imagination in which ethical questions are explored in their complexity and messiness, often offering radically new perspectives on them but no definitive answers.

Literary Narrative Studies and Ethical Criticism

The hermeneutic ethos implies a commitment to the view that we can learn something from literature—​that it can be a source of knowledge and understanding. This position is far from self-​evident. It is essential to Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics that literary interpretation means engaging in a dialogue with the literary text and letting it transform

[ 28 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

us, and that literature is a mode of cultural self-​understanding. This way of thinking, however, appeared rather outdated for quite some time, as literary studies were dominated by forms of critical reading that placed more emphasis on how readers deconstruct texts and analyze them as symptoms of social power structures than on what the readers might learn from them. Recently, however, the situation has changed remarkably. My work links up with such recent contributions as Felski’s Uses of Literature (2008) and The Limits of Critique (2015), Colin Davis’s Critical Excess (2010), Marielle Macé’s Façons de lire, manières d’être (2011), and Cassandra Falke’s The Phenomenology of Love and Reading (2016), which articulate, from different perspectives, dissatisfaction with the critical tradition that emphasizes the poststructuralist aspiration to dismantle the text and lay bare its underlying power structures. They argue for a dialogic engagement with literature that moves beyond deconstruction toward a new kind of hermeneutics, one that emphasizes the value of the ability to be open to the text, to learn from it, to be affected and transformed by it. Davis develops a “hermeneutics of overreading,” which “does not quite correspond to either the recollection of meaning or the exercise of suspicion” and is “motivated by a fierce commitment to the singularity of the work of art and to its potential to transform our ways of thinking” (2010, pp. 180–​181). Macé (2011) explores how literature compels us to reinvent ourselves by giving our existence new form and style. Falke (2016) develops an analogy between engagement with literature and the capacity to love: at the heart of both are attention, empathy, and a willingness to be overwhelmed. Felski articulates an expanded understanding of “use,” one that “allows us to engage the worldly aspects of literature in a way that is respectful rather than reductive, dialogic rather than high-​handed” (2008, p.  7). She calls for going beyond a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (2015, p. 9): “Rather than looking behind the text—​for its hidden causes, determining conditions, and noxious motives—​we might place ourselves in front of the text, reflecting on what it unfurls, calls forth, makes possible” (p. 12). These studies are examples of a welcome shift toward a conception of literature that has a close affinity with the one developed by philosophical hermeneutics, even if this affinity is rarely explicated. I hope to contribute to this development and articulate its link to hermeneutics, while at the same time moving hermeneutics in a direction of fleshing out its affective, performative, critical, and ethical aspects that have so far remained underdeveloped. I propose narrative hermeneutics as a path beyond the dominant approaches of ethical criticism. These include, first, the humanist, neo-​ Aristotelian strand described earlier, including the Nussbaumian approach

Introduction 

[ 29 ]

03

and rhetorical narratology, which perceive literature in terms of teaching or communicating moral values. Second, they include poststructuralist and deconstructive ethical criticism, which generally succeeds better in giving due weight to the radicalness of literature but often problematically mystifies literature as something radically “Other” that evades interpretation and thereby detaches it from our everyday processes of understanding the world, our lives, and those of others. Cultural studies forms the third major strand of ethical criticism. While much of this tradition is relevant for my approach, it often risks reducing literature to symptoms of practices of power and tends to appreciate inadequately the specificity of literature and the inextricable intertwinement of literary form and content.38 I agree with Felski that we need an “alternative to either strong claims for literary otherness or the whittling down of texts to the bare bones of political and ideological function” and we should acknowledge that “our engagements with texts are extraordinarily varied, complex, and often unpredictable in kind” (2008, pp. 7–​8). I propose to contribute to this project by developing narrative hermeneutics as a philosophically and text-​ analytically rigorous approach that cultivates an ethos of dialogue and avoids mystifying literature. By focusing on thematic analysis, the dynamics of reading, and the interplay between form and content, I aim to show how literature can be a source of ethical insight in exploring the relationship between narrative and human existence.

Philosophy of Narrative

This book also contributes to philosophy of narrative or narrative philosophy, by which I  mean philosophical work that reflects on the nature of narrative, its relevance for human existence, and the philosophical assumptions and commitments underlying different conceptions of narrative.39 My work has been motivated by the conviction that in the current phase of narrative studies, with its increasing interdisciplinarity and expanding scope, what is particularly needed is reflection on the philosophical presuppositions of different traditions of theorizing narrative. While I have previously explored the philosophical underpinnings of different conceptions of narrative in narrative theory and fiction (Meretoja, 2014a, 2014b), the current book focuses on different aspects of the ethical potential and risks of storytelling and analyzes the philosophical assumptions underlying various normative positions on narrative and its relation to life. At the same

[ 30 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

time, I continue to develop narrative hermeneutics as a philosophically rigorous and historically sensitive approach that provides an alternative to problematic hierarchical models of experience and narrative. I have insisted that not only are there no ethically neutral narratives, there are no ontologically or epistemologically neutral ones either (Meretoja, 2014b, p.  219). Narratives always rest on some (mostly tacit) presuppositions about the nature of the real and of knowledge—​or at least suggest certain perspectives on these issues. Unlike some philosophers, most notably Strawson (2004), I  do not believe that the ethical and the ontological can be strictly separated when discussing the relationship between life and narrative. What we take to be “real” affects our stance on the ethical value of storytelling. Research that makes these assumptions explicit can be linked to the Foucauldian tradition of “historical ontology of ourselves,” in which “the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them” (Foucault, 1984, pp. 49–​50). My work can be seen as historicized transcendental inquiry that unearths the unspoken philosophical presuppositions that undergird different ways of seeing the relationship between narrative and experience, the possible and the actual, and the imaginative and the historical. This ties in with Ian Hacking’s (2004) and Jeff Sugarman’s (2013) (Foucault-​ inspired) historical ontology, which explores how things—​concepts, kinds of people, institutions, psychological conditions—​ come into being historically, as well as with Butler’s “relational social ontology,” which scrutinizes the conditions of “grievability” and of “the struggle for non-​violence” (2009, pp.  171, 184). Rancière’s work continues the Foucauldian tradition of historical transcendental philosophy by exploring the “conditions immanent in a particular system of thought, a particular system of expression” (2013, p. 50) and acknowledges that historically constituted regimes of perception are not homogenous spaces of possibility that would exclude one another or abolish earlier regimes:  “At a given point in time, several regimes coexist and intermingle” (p. 50). I propose that the exploration of the conditions of possibility of experience, agency, and narrative identity is not the exclusive enterprise of philosophers, but one to which literature also contributes.40 Literature lays out the world as a condition of possibility for the characters to act, feel, experience, and think, and it can provide us with new insights into the implicit assumptions that underpin different historical and cultural worlds as spaces of possibility.

Introduction 

[ 31 ]

23

Narrative Psychology

This book explores key issues of narrative psychology, such as how cultural narratives shape our sense of who we are and who we could be in relation to others and to our personal and cultural pasts. It articulates the relevance of the hermeneutic tradition to the inquiry into how lives are storied and the ethical stakes of such storying, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of narrative identity and ethical identity in relation to our sense of the possible. My work ties in with those efforts in contemporary narrative psychology—​such as Freeman’s (2014b, 2016) work on the priority of the other and Andrews’s (2014) research on the social dimension of narrative imagination—​that shift attention from self-​focused models to relational, dialogical, and other-​focused approaches.41 Such a shift foregrounds the way in which ethics is central to psychology—​not only to moral psychology, but also to psychology more broadly, and to narrative psychology in particular. The worldly and historically mediated character of our narrative engagements is neglected in many branches of psychology that focus on individual lives and cognitive processes. Yet all individual experience is made possible and is conditioned by a certain historical world. By showing the relevance of historical imagination to our (personal and cultural) narrative identities, my aim is to contribute to historicizing the study of the roles of narratives in our lives. Both psychological and literary narrative studies have been dominated by an individual-​centered and ahistorical perspective when considering the nature of experience, and they would benefit from a richer sense of history. My book maps onto the hermeneutically oriented strand of contemporary narrative psychology that emphasizes the worldly dimension of experience and the ways in which individual lives are embedded in social, cultural, and historical worlds—​a strand in which the “capacities and dispositions of the mind traditionally defined in mentalist and individualist terms have been re-​described with respect to the narrative fabric of meaning that underlies them and binds them into a wider social and cultural world” (Brockmeier, 2015, p. 126).42 In dialogue with the work of narrative psychologists such as Bruner (1986, 1990, 1991), Brockmeier (2013, 2015), Freeman (1993, 2010, 2013), Andrews (2014), Frie (2016), and Brian Schiff (2017), as well as with theoretical work on narrative therapy,43 I propose to contribute to developing narrative hermeneutics as a framework for exploring the ethical significance of narratives in our lives. Moreover, my project aims to show how insights from literary studies can contribute to our understanding of the issues of narrative psychology that revolve around how we story our lives and construct narrative

[ 32 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

identities.44 In this endeavor, I also discuss work in the field of cognitive psychology, the psychology of reading, and cognitive narratology, particularly insofar as it deals with empathy and the ethical value of literature.45 In discussing concepts such as imaginative resistance, engagement, and perspective-​taking, I aim to bring into dialogue cognitive psychology, hermeneutically oriented narrative psychology, and literary narrative theory.

Cultural Memory Studies

This book also connects with recent work in cultural history that proposes to examine history from the perspective of the possible (Wyschogrod, 1998; Koselleck, 2004; Salmi, 2011) and explores ways in which narrative fiction contributes to cultural memory. I share with contemporary cultural memory studies an interest in the dynamics of collective remembering as a process of making sense of the past from the horizon of the present.46 To use Rothberg’s (2009) term, memory is multidirectional: it is directed to both the past and the future, and it brings together different moments of time into new constellations. Memory work is something we do in the present; like narrative, it is an interpretative activity. Instead of simple retrieval of what is stored in our minds, it is a present activity that is entwined with a narrative process of meaning-​making.47 Drawing on Richard Terdiman’s view of memory as the past “made present” (1993, p. 7), theorists of cultural memory, such as Rothberg (2009) and Max Silverman (2013), emphasize the processuality and productivity of memory. Rothberg argues that the “notion of a ‘making present’ has two important corollaries: first, that memory is a contemporary phenomenon, something that, while concerned with the past, happens in the present; and second, that memory is a form of work, working through, labor, or action” (2009, pp. 3–​4). Silverman’s “poetics of memory” follows suit by suggesting that the activation of an “elsewhere through memory, which converts the blandness of the everyday into something beyond ‘common sense,’ is a performative and transformative act in the present” (2013, p. 23). Like narrative and experience, memory is necessarily selective and interpretative—​and it always includes forgetting. Memory presents versions of the past, never the whole truth, and it allows us to extend the present space of experience by drawing on the possibilities “buried in the actual past” (Ricoeur, 1988, p. 192). “Postmemory,” the memory of a past that one has not personally lived but that is mediated transgenerationally through cultural imagery, makes the “imaginative investment” of memory particularly salient (Hirsch, 2012, p. 5), but it is also the case that all remembering

Introduction 

[ 33 ]

43

is mediated and involves an interpretative-​imaginative aspect. Imagination is what creatively transforms “memory into a resource for thinking about the transactions between past, present and future” (Keithley & Pickering, 2012, p. 1). In addition to the intertwinement of remembering and imagining, key issues of this book include the links between cultural memory, narrative identity, and processes of autobiographical storytelling, as all of the discussed literary texts contain an autobiographical dimension (even if indirectly).48 While the past is always recalled and reconstructed in the present, this poietic process of reinterpreting the past is part and parcel of the process in which our narrative identities—​our storied sense of who we are—​ are constructed and negotiated. Remembering is not only oriented to the past; by telling stories, we take part not just in creating a version of the past, but also in shaping the intersubjective world that we co-​inhabit and in refiguring the ways in which we—​as individuals and communities—​orient ourselves to the future. In dialogue with the notions of vulnerability and implication, I will explore how this future-​oriented narrative dimension of our existence involves our being implicated in histories of violence as well as in histories of resistance and solidarity, marked by unequal distribution of vulnerability.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

After this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 expands upon narrative hermeneutics as a framework for exploring the ethical complexities of the relationship between life and narrative and discusses the interconnections between the ethical and ontological assumptions underlying different conceptions of narrative. It delineates a broad Nietzschean-​hermeneutic conception of interpretation and focuses on its three interlaced advantages in theorizing narrative, experience, and subjectivity. It allows us (1) to understand how narrative relates to experience without seeing their relationship as dichotomous or identifying them with each other; (2) to articulate how life does not form one coherent narrative but is instead a process of constant narrative reinterpretation; and (3)  to understand the relationship between narrative webs and the individual subjects entangled in them as profoundly dialogical. Chapter 3 explores the ethical implications of the hermeneutic approach to narrative. I  propose a framework for analyzing and evaluating narrative practices from an ethical perspective by differentiating between six aspects of their ethical potential. (1) I argue that the power of narratives

[ 34 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

to cultivate and expand our sense of the possible is ethically crucial. In relation to this key point, I suggest that narratives can (2) contribute to personal and cultural self-​understanding; (3)  provide an ethical mode of understanding other lives and experiences non-​subsumptively in their singularity; (4)  create, challenge, and transform narrative in-​betweens; (5)  develop our perspective-​awareness and our capacity for perspective-​ taking; and (6) function as a mode of ethical inquiry. Nothing in narratives, however, guarantees that they have ethical effects, and often, in fact, the opposite happens. The chapter elucidates how the hermeneutic approach allows us to go beyond the dichotomous question of whether narratives are good or bad for us and to appreciate the ethical complexity of narratives in our lives. In Chapter 4, I move on to testing the theoretical framework of hermeneutic narrative ethics by using it as a lens through which to analyze the uses and abuses of narrative for life in Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau (2007, The Blind Side of the Heart). I focus on how the novel explores storytelling as a mode of sharing one’s life with others and lays bare the conditions of possibility for moral agency—​showing its fragility. By addressing the transgenerational culture of silence that leads to the repetition of harmful emotional-​behavioral patterns, Franck’s novel demonstrates how history implicates us, pervading even the most intimate aspects of our lives, and attests to the necessity of storytelling for survival. I explore how narrative practices expand and diminish the space of possibilities in which moral agents act and suffer, and how narrative in-​betweens both bind people together, through dialogic narrative imagination, and engender exclusion that can amount to annihilation. The chapter delineates a continuum from being able to tell our own stories to narrative identities violently imposed on us. It argues that moral agency requires a minimum narrative sense of oneself as a being worthy and capable of goodness, and that the ethical evaluation of narrative practices must be contextual—​sensitive to how they function in specific sociohistorical situations. Chapter 5 problematizes the prevalent way of conceptualizing the relationship between fiction and history in terms of the actual and the possible, and argues that both fictional and autobiographical narratives have the potential to cultivate our sense of history as a sense of the possible. It examines four different aspects of their capacity to contribute to historical imagination by analyzing (1) how Günter Grass’s Hundejahre (1963, Dog Years) and his autobiography Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006, Peeling the Onion) depict Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities; (2) how they self-​ reflexively examine—​against idealist and determinist conceptions—​the way history consists in concrete actions and inactions; (3) how they explore

Introduction 

[ 35 ]

63

the ways our narrative interpretations of the past shape our orientation to the present; and (4) how they address the duty to remember—​and to engage with the conditions of possibility for atrocity—​through a future-​ oriented narrative ethics of implication. In relation to the paradoxical status of autobiographical narratives—​which are expected to be “truthful,” although autobiographical memory is necessarily selective, interpretative, and unable to convey an exhaustive account of a lived life—​and to Marya Schechtman’s philosophy of the narrative self, the chapter analyzes how in autobiographical narration, too, we have access to the past only via narrative imagination, and discusses the ethics of engaging with aspects of the past that one cannot identify with. Chapter  6 expands the discussion of how the interplay between form and content is crucial to the ethics of storytelling by analyzing Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones), one of the most famous perpetrator novels, which has fueled heated controversy over the contribution of literature to the understanding of the Holocaust. The chapter discusses imaginative resistance, difficult empathy, and identification in relation to readerly engagement and perspective-​taking. It shows how the interplay between immersiveness and critical distance can produce a narrative dynamic that allows the reader to engage emotionally—​but without uncritically adopting the protagonist’s perspective—​with an ethically problematic life-​world. It analyzes how the novel performatively shows, through the breakdown of narrative mastery, that no exhaustive comprehension is possible. In relation to different logics of narrative, the chapter articulates the ethical significance of self-​reflexive narrative form and relates the hermeneutic notion of docta ignorantia—​knowing that one does not know—​to the novel’s way of dealing with the conditions of possibility of the Holocaust and with the limits of narrative understanding. Chapter 7 explores the ethical potential of dialogic storytelling and the non-​subsumptive model of narrative understanding—​a model that foregrounds the temporal process of engaging with the singular events and experiences that the narrative deals with—​in relation to David Grossman’s To the End of the Land (2010, Isha Borachat Mi’bsora, 2008) and Falling Out of Time (2015, Nofel mi-​huts la-​zeman, 2011). It argues that Grossman’s narratives not only thematize the ethical potential of narrative interaction; in them, dialogic storytelling structures the entire narrative in dialogue with the literary tradition of exploring storytelling as an art of survival. The analysis shows how storytelling animated by an ethos of dialogue—​involving receptivity, responsivity, and openness—​functions as a mode of non-​ subsumptive understanding and how subsumptive narrative practices, examined against the backdrop of the Israel-​Palestine conflict, reinforce

[ 36 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

harmful cultural stereotyping. In relation to theories of the dialogical self and Bracha L. Ettinger’s and Butler’s work on trans-​subjectivity and vulnerability, the chapter contributes to an ethics of relationality that articulates the primacy of the dialogic space with respect to individual subjects, our implicatedness in violent histories, our fundamental dependency on one another, as beings both capable of inflicting and destructible by violence, and the potential of dialogic storytelling to create a trans-​subjective narrative in-​between that makes possible new modes of experience, identities, and transformative, agency-​enhancing encounter-​events. Drawing together the main lines of argumentation developed in the book, Chapter 8 (Conclusion) synthesizes the hermeneutic ethics of storytelling as a framework that provides theoretical and analytical resources for studying both oppressive and empowering narrative practices and the uses and abuses of narrative in specific cultural contexts. It summarizes narrative hermeneutics as an approach that is attentive to how practices of storytelling expand and diminish our sense of the possible and explores narrative fiction as an inquiry into the ethics of being implicated in histories of violence, silence, and dialogue. The Conclusion sums up how the narratives examined in the book bring us to the limits of storytelling and reviews how they attest to the ethical potential of storytelling in the six senses articulated in the book, in ways that nuance the theoretical framework. It articulates a fierce commitment to non-​ subsumptive narrative practices animated by an ethos of dialogue. The organization and progression of this book aims to enact the hermeneutic idea of a dialogue between the theoretical framework and the analyzed material. The literary narratives explored in the latter part of the book are meant not just to illuminate and concretize, but also to test and challenge the theoretical framework that is set up in the first part of the book. Some theoretically minded readers may want to read only the first three chapters, and that is fine. Acknowledging this, however, I also want to signal that my aim in the latter part of the book is to show how narrative fiction is relevant not only for literary scholars, but to a wide range of approaches on the relationship between life and narrative—​across disciplines including psychology, philosophy, cultural history, and the social sciences—​not only as illustrative material, but as a form of inquiry that deals with issues central to these disciplines. As for the theoretical framework constructed in the next two chapters, it is meant to serve a wide range of disciplines, and not just the study of literature or narratives that bear a link to the Holocaust, perpetration, or the experience of war and catastrophe. I have to leave it to others, however, to test this framework in relation to other kinds of material. Let us now embark on the journey toward an ethics of storytelling that articulates how narratives expand and diminish our worlds.

Introduction 

[ 37 ]

83

NOTES 1. “[I]‌l faut choisir: vivre ou raconter” (Sartre, 1978, pp. 61–​62). 2. Probably the most influential manifestos “against narrativity” are by Sartwell (2000) and Strawson (2004); the “for narrativity” group is diverse, and ranges from MacIntyre (1984), Taylor (1989), and Ricoeur (1988, 1992) to contemporary narrative psychology and narrative therapy. 3. On how the narrative turn consists in several turns, see Hyvärinen (2008); on the relationship between the narrative turn in fiction and theory, see Meretoja (2014b). 4. On narrative hermeneutics, see Brockmeier & Meretoja (2014); Meretoja (2014a, 2014b); Brockmeier (2015); Freeman (2015); and the special issue of Storyworlds (Brockmeier [ed.], 2016). 5. Several philosophers have convincingly argued that it is problematic to conceptualize social cognition in terms of “theory of mind” (see, e.g., Gallagher & Hutto, 2008; Zahavi, 2014). They argue that rather than see mental states as “theoretical entities that we attribute to others on the basis of a folkpsychological theory of mind” (Zahavi, 2014, p. 100), social cognition is a practical ability that we learn through dynamic interaction with our social environment; Gallagher and Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis argues that “repeated encounters with narratives of a distinctive kind is the normal route through which children acquire an understanding of the forms and norms that enable them to make sense of actions in terms of reasons” (2008, p. 17). Discussion of this hypothesis is beyond the scope of this book, but suffice it to say that this hypothesis—​and more broadly the philosophical movement often referred to as “enactivism”—​is based on insights that bear a remarkable similarity to arguments advanced by the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics much earlier; on the hermeneutic approach to narratives as part of our practical (phronetic) engagement with the world and our dialogic relationality, see Chapters 2 and 3. 6. See, e.g., Nussbaum (1997, p. 90; 2010); Carroll (2000, p. 362); Goldie (2012, pp. 76–97). Carroll (2000, p. 367) suggests that fictional explorations can enrich the scope of our capacity to imagine alternative possible scenarios and particular situations in ways that cultivate “our powers of moral judgment.” 7. Heidegger argues that “our words möglich [possible] and Möglichkeit [possibility], under the dominance of ‘logic’ and ‘metaphysics,’ are thought solely in contrast to ‘actuality’ . . . When I speak of the ‘quiet power of the possible’ I do not mean the possible of a merely represented possibilitas” (1993, p. 220). As Macdonald shows, possibility has primacy over actuality in Heidegger’s and Adorno’s thinking, and it encompasses not only “obvious possibilities” but also the possibilities “that actuality does not acknowledge” (2011, p. 49). On Ernst Bloch’s distinction between theoretical and real possibilities, in relation to the not-​yet, see Bloch (1996); Levy (1997); Levitas (2010, p. 102). 8. On Deleuze’s conception of fabulation (translated as “story-​telling”), see also Bogue, 1999; Hongisto, 2018, pp. 190–​192. The real possibilities that The Ethics of Storytelling explores have an affinity with Deleuze’s (2005, pp. 150–​152) view of possibilities that are not mere logical possibilities. 9. On how this prejudice is linked to the idea of “interpretation-​as-​excavation,” i.e., interpretation as “an act of digging down to arrive at a repressed or otherwise obscured reality,” see Felski (2015, pp. 53, 58).

[ 38 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

10. See, e.g., Herman (2007, p. 11). 11. Fludernik distinguishes between two ways of applying the notion of historical experience: “On the one hand, one can speak of our present-​day experiencing of the Afghan War or, in history, of the Elizabethans’ experience of the war in Ireland. . . . Type two of historical experience, which I would like to call past historical experience, corresponds to our present-​day experience of historicity when encountering representations of historical subjects and/​or periods” (2010, pp. 42–​43). She adds that because mostly people experience “historically relevant figurations . . . through the media, i.e. indirectly,” one may want to create a third category for “direct physical experience of processes and events such as raw experience,” exemplified by soldiers’ experience of war (p. 42). Underlying this view is the empiricist-​positivistic assumption that experience of events is immediately given, raw, and not historical, except in the special cases when it concerns “historical events” such as war. 12. On how the memorialization of the past is dominated by a male perspective that privileges heroism in violent contexts (such as wars) at the expense of nonviolent struggles, see Reading & Katriel (2015). 13. This applies to rhetorical narratology, too, although it acknowledges that experience has different layers (intellectual, emotive, ethical, aesthetic). It focuses on how authorial strategies and textual phenomena affect these layers of the reading experience (Phelan, 2007, p. xiii), but it tends to take the concept of experience largely for granted and to neglect its worldly, historically, and socially mediated nature. 14. For example, Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory has no entry for experience, only a very short entry on experientiality, in which Fludernik (2005, p. 155) cites her own work. 15. Ever since Bruner (1986, 1990; see also Sarbin [ed.], 1986), narrative psychologists have referred to hermeneutic thinkers, to Ricoeur in particular, but they rarely articulate or engage in depth with the philosophical underpinnings and theoretical complexities of the hermeneutic tradition. 16. This view entails “relativism” only in the sense that all statements are relative to their underlying approach to reality, not in the sense that they would all be equally valid (their validity is assessed intersubjectively). The relativism debate, however, is beyond the scope of this book. 17. Gumbrecht (2004) posits a dichotomy between hermeneutic approaches that, in his view, seek to reduce everything to meaning and non-​hermeneutic approaches that rehabilitate “what meaning cannot convey” (as his subtitle has it). Unlike he suggests, however, hermeneutics does not imply a neglect of the material, real world, and, in fact, Gumbrecht acknowledges the way in which Gadamer suggests “a greater acknowledgment of the nonsemantic, that is, material components of literary texts” (p. 64). 18. This is more or less the definition of intersectionality put forward by Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix: “We regard the concept of ‘intersectionality’ as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple [axes] of differentiation—​economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential—​intersect in historically specific contexts” (2004, p. 76). 19. A hermeneutic approach could also be used to analyze how non-​human agents orient themselves in the world and interpret it in different ways. Birds, dogs, and humans all engage in interpretative sense-​making activities. The focus of this book is on human narrative practices, but I see no theoretical reason why one

Introduction 

[ 39 ]

04

could not develop a hermeneutic approach to the interpretative engagements of non-​human actors. Herman (2016) uses narrative hermeneutics to develop a “trans-​species hermeneutics.” 20. Hermeneutics that moves in this direction is often called “critical hermeneutics”; see Kögler (1999); Pappas & Cowling (2003); Vasterling (2003); Ritivoi (2006); Mootz & Taylor (2011); Roberge (2011); Meretoja (2014b). On the unequal distribution of vulnerability, see Butler (2004, 2009). 21. For a more detailed discussion of the postwar crisis of storytelling, see Meretoja (2014b, 53–​118). 22. Kantians and utilitarians are primarily concerned with trying to formulate a plausible criterion of right conduct (i.e., a criterion specifying the property or properties in virtue of which all right conduct is right). Strictly speaking, that endeavor leaves open the question of how we should go about our lives to behave in ways that exhibit the relevant property or properties (to behave rightly), and it does not necessarily rule out the possibility that reading literature may be one of the relevant ways to learn how to live well. I thank Frans Svensson for this observation. 23. In the poststructuralist tradition inspired by Levinas’s work, the other is usually spelled with a capital, but because it can contribute to mystifying the other, I refrain from using the capital. 24. This parallel underlies, for example, the work of William L. Randall and A. Elizabeth McKim (2008) on the poetics of our lives. See also Randall (2015); McAdams (2015). 25. Along these lines, I follow the convention of referring with morality to prescriptive, collectively shared moral norms, values, and principles that regulate conduct in communities and with ethics to critical reflection on different approaches to ethical issues (concerning issues of right and wrong, justice, and the good life). 26. Frie’s (2016) approach is similar to the cultural psychologist Katherine Ewing’s conceptualization of the unconscious as “the implicit”; his analytical practice is “concerned with how our emotional lives are guided by interpersonally generated” narrative frameworks that are mainly “outside our awareness” (pp. 120–​121). 27. For a discussion of such reification of cultural narratives, see Berger & Luckmann (1987, pp. 106–​108, 192); Habermas (1984, pp. 47–​51); Meretoja (2014b, pp. 181–​182, 207–​208). 28. I will deal with dialogicality particularly in Chapters 2, 4, and 7; the concept of “narrative in-​between” will be introduced in Chapter 3. 29. On the ethics of engaging with perpetrators, see Adams (2013); Sanyal (2015); McGlothlin (2016); Pettitt (2016). 30. On the autobiographical background of the novel, see Geu (2007); Meretoja & Franck (2010). 31. I read Franck’s, Grass’s, and Littell’s work in the original (German and French) but Grossman in English translation. While reading in the original must remain an insurmountable ideal for a literary scholar, I consider Grossman so important from the perspective of my approach that I want to include him at the risk of the failure to do full justice to his work. 32. To be precise, Grossman, as a Jew, is not part of a minority in Israel, but he is a descendant of Polish Jews, and has grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust, knowing that he must write “about what would have happened to me had I been

[ 40 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

over there as a victim, and as one of the murderers” (2007). He deals most directly with the Holocaust and perpetration in See Under: Love (1989, ‘Ayen ‘erekh: ahavah, 1986), but I will focus here on his less studied, more recent books. 33. “Metanarrativity” is usually taken to refer to narration in which narrators reflect on their process of narration (see Neumann & Nünning, 2012), but as I argue in Meretoja (2014b, p. 3) there are grounds to understand it “in a wider sense to characterize narratives that make narrative their theme and deal with the significance of narratives for human existence in general (for how we understand ourselves, others, the world, history).” 34. For relevant discussion, see also Huyssen (2003); Hirsch (2012). 35. I find problematic Nussbaum’s expression “without contradiction,” for various reasons. I will discuss my disagreements with Nussbaum in more detail in Chapter 3; here it suffices to say that what fascinates me in literature is precisely the way it can deal with ethical issues in their full complexity, which often means engaging with them in all their contradictions. 36. In Phelan’s (2014) definition, narrative ethics is concerned with the following question: “How should one think, judge, and act—​as author, narrator, character, or audience—​for the greater good?” This definition seems to imply that there is some kind of shared understanding of “the greater good.” Nevertheless, there is a clear affinity between rhetorical narrative studies and narrative hermeneutics in terms of their mutual interest in processes of narrative engagement, narrative interpretation, and narrative dynamics. 37. On this distinction, see Phelan (2014). While he situates Newton’s (1995) narrative ethics in the “humanist ethics” camp, I would consider Newton’s Levinasian approach closer to poststructuralist ethics. I am sympathetic with many of Newton’s aspirations, but at times his approach appears to me somewhat too schematically Levinasian. 38. On these main strands of ethical criticism, see Meretoja & Lyytikäinen (2015, pp. 8–​9) and Meretoja & Davis (2018). 39. Key figures of hermeneutically oriented philosophical approaches to narrative include Ricoeur (1984, 1985, 1988) and Taylor (1989); contributions in the tradition of analytic philosophy include Nussbaum (1990); Carroll (2000); Velleman (2003); Strawson (2004); Currie (2010); Goldie (2012). 40. Arguably, professional philosophers have no monopoly on ethical inquiry either; they also draw on their life experience and produce socially situated reflections on the life forms that they are familiar with (for a discussion, see Lindemann, 2014, p. xi). 41. See also Gilligan (1982); Hermans (2001); Gergen (2009); Hermans & Hermans-​ Konopka (2012); Bertau et al. (2012); Hermans & Gieser (2014); Goodman & Freeman (2015); Vassilieva (2016). 42. The way in which socially, culturally, and historically constituted narrative discourses condition subjectivity and identity is of course acknowledged in much of narrative research in social sciences and in socioculturally oriented psychology (see, e.g., Andrews et al. [eds.], 2013; Phoenix, 2013; Bhatia, 2007; Kirschner & Martin [eds.], 2010; Frie, 2016; Schiff, 2017). 43. Like narrative hermeneutics, narrative therapy literature emphasizes how our moral agency develops in social contexts and how we tell and retell our personal life stories in dialogic relations with cultural narratives (see White and Epston, 1990; Payne, 2006; Vassilieva, 2016).

Introduction 

[ 41 ]

24

44. Work at the intersections of narrative psychology and literary studies include White & Epston (1990); Hermans (2001); Eakin (2004); Randall & McKim (2008); Randall (2015); Holler & Klepper (eds.) (2013); Brockmeier (2015). 45. Discussions relevant from this perspective include Hakemulder (2000); Oatley (2011); Polvinen (2012); Caracciolo (2013); V. Nünning (2015); A. Nünning (2015); Leake (2014); McGlothlin (2016). 46. On the “dynamics of cultural memory,” see Rigney (2012, pp. 17–​19). 47. For a thorough discussion of such a conception of memory, from the perspective of narrative psychology, see Brockmeier (2015). 48. See, e.g., Eakin (2004); Saunders (2010); Assmann (2013); Holler & Klepper (ed.) (2013); Brockmeier (2015).

[ 42 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

CHAPTER 2

Narrative Hermeneutics

T

o elaborate a narrative hermeneutics is to argue that interpretation is a key concept in understanding narrative, experience, subjectivity, memory, and their interrelations. Such a venture may seem questionable or old-​fashioned to some. Susan Sontag famously argued in her 1964 essay “Against Interpretation” that interpretation has become “the revenge of the intellect upon art” (1966, p. 7) and concluded, “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art” (p. 14). Sontag briefly acknowledges that the concept of interpretation also has a wider meaning, but only to signal that her interest is narrowly defined: Of course, I don’t mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain “rules” of interpretation. Directed to art, interpretation means plucking a set of elements (the X, the Y, the Z, and so forth) from the whole work. The task of interpretation is virtually one of translation. The interpreter says, Look, don’t you see that X is really—​or, really means—​A? (Sontag, 1966, p. 5, emphasis added)

But if we take seriously the broader Nietzschean conception of interpretation, does it really have no implications for our understanding of what it means to interpret art? I  believe it has wide-​ranging ramifications for how we understand both engagement with art and the nature of narrative, experience, memory, subjectivity, and human reality in general. While the latter part of this book engages with literary narratives, the focus of this

4

chapter is on the theoretical question of how to conceptualize narrative and its relation to experience and life in terms of the notion of interpretation. The starting point of the hermeneutic approach is that interpretation is something that we do all the time, whether we like it or not. We always orient ourselves to the world in a certain way, and in so doing we interpret and bestow meaning on it. According to this broad conception, interpretation is mostly not what Sontag described in the preceding as a “conscious act of the mind,” but rather part of the automatized interpretative practices that largely escape our awareness. The interpretative practice at the center of this book is narrative interpretation, which is explored in relation to other interpretative practices, such as those of experiencing, remembering, and imagining. By approaching narrative as an interpretative practice, I emphasize that it is not only an object of interpretation: narrative itself is a mode of interpretation. We engage in narrative interpretation both when we narrativize our experiences and when we engage with the narratives that surround us. When we read narrative fiction or watch a film, we always already engage in pre-​ reflective narrative interpretation. If we stop to think, talk, or write about it, we interpret in a more conscious and explicit way. It is important to reflect on the interrelations between these different interpretative practices. In what follows, I will first discuss the broad Nietzschean-​hermeneutic conception of interpretation in general terms and place it in the field of narrative studies. I will then focus on three interconnected advantages of privileging such a conception of interpretation in theorizing narrative, experience, and subjectivity. First, it allows us to understand that experience and narrative are neither the same nor opposed to each other, but rather form an interpretative continuum. Second, this conception provides a framework for articulating how life does not form one coherent narrative, but is instead a process of constant narrative reinterpretation. Third, it allows us to conceptualize in a non-​reductive way the relationship between narrative webs and the individual subjects entangled in them: the relationship between subjects of experience and cultural narratives is dialogical and entwined with practices of power.

INTERPRETATION: A NIETZSCHEAN-​H ERMENEUTIC APPROACH

A key insight of twentieth-​century phenomenological hermeneutics is that all experience is interpretative. There is no such thing as raw or pure sense perception. As the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (2006, p. 250) argued, the structure of “something as something” (etwas als etwas) is the basic structure of experience: we always orient ourselves to the world in a

[ 44 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

particular way and experience things from a certain interpretative horizon.1 In Gadamer’s words, experience, even simple sense perception, interprets reality by structuring and giving it shape and hence “always includes meaning” (1997, p. 92): “We are interpreting in seeing, hearing, receiving” (1984, p.  59). As Heidegger articulates, meaning-​giving is primordial to our being in the world: “ ‘Initially’ we never hear noises and complexes of sound, but the creaking wagon, the motorcycle” (1996, p. 153). That experience involves the dimension of meaning, however, does not mean that meanings could ever exhaust our material, embodied experiences; experience is always more than meaning. For example, the experiences of being lost or of the meaninglessness of life involve an embodied and affective orientation to the world shaped through the meaning-​structures of “lostness” and “meaninglessness,” and at the same time integral to these experiences is what evades one’s grasp and resists sense-​making. The hermeneutic approach emphasizes that the objectifying natural scientific gaze that sees the world as measurable spatiotemporal objects is secondary with respect to the pre-​reflective way in which we orient ourselves to the world, structured by a practical understanding that renders it intelligible. We encounter things in the world not as geometrical shapes and abstract qualities, but “as a table, a door, a car, a bridge”: “Any simple prepredicative seeing of what is at hand is in itself already understanding and interpretative” (Heidegger, 1996, p. 140). Germane to such interpretative understanding as our embodied way of being in the world is understanding our possibilities: we do not primarily perceive the bridge as a geometrical object, but rather as what makes it possible for us to cross the river. In this sense, all understanding includes an aspect of self-​understanding: “it is true in every case that a person who understands, understands himself [sich versteht], projecting himself upon his possibilities” (Gadamer, 1997, p. 260). The “as-​structure” of a door or a bridge conveys simple, uncontroversial interpretations of the world. Examples of more complex, narrative interpretations that not only affect people’s self-​understanding and possibilities in the world, but also create interpretative conflicts, include contemporary narratives of terrorism, migration, and refugees that the media tells and circulates in constructing the current “migrant crisis.”2 The interpretative structure of experience implies that it is always mediated. As Ricoeur (1991a, p. 15) puts it, hermeneutics is a philosophy of permanent mediatedness, which emphasizes that “there is no self-​ understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts”: A hermeneutical philosophy is a philosophy that accepts all the demands of this long detour and that gives up the dream of a total mediation, at the end of which

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 45 ]

64

reflection would once again amount to intellectual intuition in the transparence to itself of an absolute subject. (p. 18)3

We may think that we experience the here and now with immediacy, but in fact many factors, including our earlier experiences, expectations, and cultural world, affect how we orient ourselves to our present situation and interpret the new experiences we go through. There is no pure experience that occurs as if in a vacuum. Nevertheless, our life history and cultural heritage do not inevitably determine how we interpret the new situation. We are capable of experiencing something that is genuinely new: something that shakes us, transforms us, and forces us to abandon our old beliefs. The capacity to be affected in such a way is central to what it is to be human. The possibility of and openness to being affected by the other—​whether an artwork or another person—​and becoming something else with the other are crucial for moral agency. Interpretation is a process of (re)orientation to the world, a mode of sense-​ making, engagement, and attachment, in which the cognitive and the affective are irreducibly intertwined. With its stress on understanding, the hermeneutic tradition may seem to pay inadequate attention to the affective and embodied aspects of our engagement with the world. To some extent, such a critique is based on a dismissal of how the hermeneutic notion of understanding is considerably wider than a narrowly cognitive one. In philosophical hermeneutics, subjectivity and agency involve the whole embodied, emotionally engaged self. Nevertheless, it could theorize more explicitly the affective dimension of understanding. Scholars like Macé (2011) and Felski (2015) have contributed to this effort by emphasizing that interpretation and affect should not be opposed. Affective hermeneutics articulates this connection.4 However, although such hermeneutic scholars as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur did not use the vocabulary of contemporary affect theory, affectivity is arguably an important aspect of their conception of understanding as our mode of being in the world. As Felski acknowledges, the Heideggerian being in the world is characterized by “care” (Sorge) and “mood” (Stimmung), which “ ‘sets the tone’ for our engagement with the world, causing it to appear before us in a given light” and is “a prerequisite for any form of interaction or engagement” because there can be “no moodless or mood-​free apprehension of phenomena” (2015, p. 20). Felski observes that interpretation “constitutes one powerful mode of attachment” (p. 175) and that not just our beliefs, but also our attachments and moods, are transformed through interpretative processes: It is an axiom of hermeneutics that we cannot help projecting our preexisting beliefs onto the literary work, which are modified in the light of the words we

[ 46 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

encounter. This hermeneutic circle, however, includes not just beliefs but also moods, perceptions, sensibilities, attunements: not only do we bring feelings to a text, but we may in turn be brought to feel differently by a text. (p. 178)

Felski writes this with reference to literary interpretation, but the structure of the hermeneutic circle applies to our being in the world in general as an affective, embodied process. While we encounter new situations from the horizon of our historically constituted pre-​understanding, new experiences shed fresh light on our past experiences. They can challenge and transform our pre-​understanding and our sense of who we are. Our life histories attune us to orient ourselves to the world in a certain mood, and our affective sensibility and understanding of the world are changed through the new experiences we go through. This circle of (re)orientation is a process of sense-​making and world-​making, engagement and becoming; it is not just a cognitive operation in which we try to construct mental representations of the world around us.5 Interpretation is never merely “reproductive,” but always also a “productive activity” (Gadamer, 1997, p. 296). Instead of being mere representations, narratives have a performative character that is intertwined with practices of power. As interpretations of the world, narrative practices have real-​world effects. This is precisely what their (per)formative and productive character means:  they take part in constructing, shaping, and transforming human reality. This performativity is integral to—​though not always explicitly articulated in—​ hermeneutics in the broad sense that reaches from Nietzsche and Mikhail Bakhtin to Ricoeur and Felski and apprehends understanding as our way of being in the world as embodied and enfleshed subjects in the temporal process of becoming. For Gadamer, too, ours is a “being that is becoming” (1997, p. 312), but his hermeneutics pays little attention to the concrete ways in which the temporal, productive activity of everyday interpretative practices is embedded in social worlds and their power relations. In the Nietzschean-​Foucauldian tradition, in contrast, the perception of human beings as interpretative animals is inseparable from the perception of them as constellations of forces, as agents with the capacity for affecting and being affected in a social world constituted through practices of power. I suggest that weaving together aspects of philosophical, Bakhtinian, and Nietzschean-​Foucauldian hermeneutics provides a productive framework for narrative hermeneutics, which explores narratives as culturally mediated and socially embedded interpretative practices that have a productive, dialogical, and (per)formative dimension.6 Narrative interpretations are social acts of bestowing meaning on experiences and events, and they participate in shaping the world. They have real, material effects: they

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 47 ]

84

perpetuate, challenge, and modify the ways in which we perceive our possibilities and act in the world. While all ways of orienting ourselves to the world—​our perceptions, experiences, memories, attachments, actions, fantasies—​have an interpretative structure, not all interpretations are narrative interpretations. Constitutive of narrative is the logic of relatedness, of meaningful connections, and of perspectival interpretation. When we engage in narrative interpretation, we interpret experiences from a certain perspective and in so doing relate them to one another in time and forge meaningful connections between them. This does not mean that these experiences then form a seamless continuity. Interpreting experiences as being disconnected is also a way of relating them to one another in time. I understand narrative in a broad sense that does not count unity, coherence, continuity, or closure among its necessary requirements.7 I propose conceptualizing narrative as a culturally mediated practice of sense-​making that involves the activities of interpreting and presenting someone’s experiences in a specific situation to someone from a certain perspective or perspectives as part of a meaningful, connected account, and which has a dialogical and a productive, performative dimension and is relevant for the understanding of human possibilities (past, present, and/​or future). Let me unpack this dense formulation. First of all, narrative does not merely report what happened; it provides an interpretation of how the events are or were experienced by someone in a particular situation. In the case of first-​person narratives, the central subject typically engages in interpreting his or her experiences, both at the time of experiencing them and at the time of narrating them, whereas in third-​person narratives a separate narrator (or narrative instance) interprets someone else’s (such as the protagonist’s) experiences. Both the subject of the experiences and the narrator (which may or may not coincide) interpret the events and experiences from a particular perspective. This perspective can pretend to be objective, neutral, or omniscient, but it is nevertheless a particular perspective that shapes the interpreter’s evaluative and affective engagement with the narrated experiences.8 The concept of narrative is used with reference to both the activity of storytelling and the product of such an activity. First, narrative as an activity and practice of sense-​making involves two aspects: the activity of interpreting and the activity of presenting a narrative account. Narrative as an interpretative activity is mediated by cultural models of narrative sense-​ making that are often described as “cultural narratives,” “scripts,” or “schemas.” This interpretative activity is frequently intertwined with the process of experiencing because cultural narratives as interpretative models affect

[ 48 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

how we experience things in the first place. Narrative as an activity of presenting a narrative to someone in a certain situation is a form of social interaction. Usually narratives are presented to an audience, but sometimes to oneself as part of an internal dialogue; even in the latter case, storytelling takes place in social webs of meaning. Second, narrative as an account communicated to someone is an artifact with a material dimension rooted in a particular medium, such as words or visual images. As an account, narrative is typically the outcome of the activity of interpreting and narrating experiences, and can, in turn, affect and mediate later experiences. When I want to emphasize the artifactual aspect of narrative, I will speak of a narrative or a narrative account; when emphasizing the activity aspect, I will use processual terms like storytelling, narrating, narrative interpretation, narrative interaction, or narrative sense-​making, depending on which aspect of this activity I am focusing on. Narrative presents the narrated experiences as part of a meaningful, connected account. Through emplotment, it renders experiences and actions intelligible and can function “as a form of explanation that tells us why an event happened, or why a character has behaved in a certain way” (Ritivoi, 2009, p.  33). As J.  David Velleman argues, the explanatory force of narrative does not have to depend on causally explaining the narrated events; it can be based on its “power to initiate and resolve an emotional cadence,” allowing the audience to assimilate the events to “familiar patterns of how things feel” (2003, pp. 18–​19). I would like to emphasize, however, that the cognitive and affective aspects of the process through which narrative renders intelligibility to the narrated events and experiences are typically intertwined, and, as we will see, not all narratives present the narrated events and experiences as fully intelligible or encourage simple assimilation to pregiven cognitive or emotional patterns. In fact, as I  will argue in Chapter  3 by developing a non-​subsumptive model of narrative understanding, precisely when simple assimilation is not an adequate response—​when the narrative unsettles our cognitive and affective categories—​something ethically valuable can happen. The connected account can be fragmented and can foreground disconnection, but even so, it places the experiences in a certain relation to one another (even a relation of disconnection is a relation) and in this sense forms a connected account. In my view, forging meaningful connections (in the broad sense) is essential to the evaluative activity of narrating, but unity and coherence are not. Compelling narratives often explore possible lives in ways that challenge our certainties, including illusions of coherence and unity.

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 49 ]

05

That narratives have a dialogical dimension means that they always take shape in relation to other culturally mediated narrative models of sense-​ making, which they implicitly or explicitly draw and comment on, modify, and challenge. They are performative in their ability to create and shape intersubjective reality. They perpetuate and transform social structures, including structures of violence and unequal distribution of vulnerability and privilege. Through our entanglement in narrative webs, we are implicated in these social structures, which our actions as narrative agents perpetuate, shape, or question. Finally, narratives are relevant for the understanding of human possibilities in several ways. The action and experience narrated in a narrative imply a certain understanding of what is possible for subjects of action and experience in a particular world: narratives provide different subject positions, and in narrative worlds, agents seize certain possibilities that are open to them and dismiss others. By exploring these possibilities, narratives can provide us with new perspectives on our own world and on how we orient ourselves to our present and future possibilities. While historical narratives typically focus on past possibilities and future fictions on future possibilities, the intertwinement of the past, present, and future—​in different forms—​is germane to all narratives. Narratives frequently evoke a sense that things could have happened differently. Morson calls sideshadowing this sense of “something else,” as a narrative casts a shadow “from the other possibilities”: “Along with the event, we see its alternatives; with each present, another possible present. Sideshadows conjure the ghostly presence of might-​have-​beens or might-​bes. In this way, the hypothetical shows through the actual” (1998, pp. 601–​602). Narrative hermeneutics stresses that narratives are inevitably ethically and politically charged. By providing certain evaluative, affectively colored perspectives to the world and by forging meaningful connections between experiences, they engage in a world-​constituting activity that has a political and ethical dimension. Narrative practices, however, do not merely open up possibilities, they also close down possibilities. The latter typically happens, for example, when cultural narratives perpetuate stereotypical notions of what is possible for a person of a particular social status, gender, age, ethnicity, and so on. Here it should be noted that rather than in terms of interpretation, narrative is usually conceptualized in terms of representation. According to the standard narratological definition, “narrative is the representation of an event or a series of events” (Abbott, 2008, p. 13). Many narratologists also highlight that causality and chronology are interconnected in narrative

[ 50 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

representations. Barthes famously argued that a key characteristic of narrative logic is the systematic application of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this): Everything suggests, indeed, that the mainspring of narrative is precisely the confusion of consecution and consequence, what comes after being read in narrative as what is caused by; in which case narrative would be a systematic application of the logical fallacy denounced by Scholasticism in the formula post hoc, ergo propter hoc—​a good motto for Destiny. . . . (1982a, p. 94)

According to Marie-​Laure Ryan’s definition, for example, in narrative the “sequence of events must form a unified causal chain and lead to closure” (2007, p.  29), and in Gregory Currie’s terms, narratives represent “sustained temporal-​causal relations between particulars” (2010, p.  27).9 The notion of representation suggests that narrative represents a narrative order that preexists its telling. As H. Porter Abbott puts it, narrative is a representation because it conveys “a story that at least seems to pre-​exist the vehicle of conveyance” (2008, p. 15), even if the story ultimately only exists through being narrated. Many narrative theorists and novelists find narrative inherently suspicious precisely insofar as it pretends to mirror a meaningful chronological-​ causal order that can be found in the world, when in reality such order is merely a human projection. An entire array of postwar intellectuals, from Sartre to the nouveaux romanciers, argued that what happens in the world is fundamentally non-​narrative, so that there is something profoundly false and dishonest in our tendency to retrospectively force events into narratives. Such postwar thinkers as Barthes and Levinas rejected narrative, regarding it as an ethically questionable mode of appropriation. For Barthes, narrative presents historical phenomena as if they were natural and necessary and hence speaks the language of “Destiny” (1982a, p. 94). Levinas considers otherness “unnarratable,” “indescribable in the literal sense of the term, unconvertible into a history”; in narratives, the essences of beings are “fixed, assembled in a tale” (1991, pp. 42, 166).10 What most antinarrativist positions share, their differences notwithstanding, is the view that there is a basic discrepancy between the real and a narrative representation of the real. This binary opposition looks problematic, however, if we acknowledge that human reality is always already constituted through human interpretations and that narrative interpretations play an important role in this process of constitution. Cultural webs of narratives mediate the ways in which we interpret the world, ourselves, and other people, that is, how we move in the hermeneutic circle that

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 51 ]

25

structures our experience of being in the world. These webs also perpetuate certain ways of structuring society and legitimize unequal distribution of possibilities by strategies of naturalization. To appreciate the world-​constituting, formative dimension of storytelling practices, it is important to acknowledge that they shape not only our cognitive understanding of the world, but also our affective orientations and our sense of the possible. They mold our range of possible affects, experiences, perceptions, thoughts, actions, attachments, and relationships. If we acknowledge that our being in the world is mediated through narrative interpretations of what human existence is about, literary narratives can be seen to play a crucial role in shaping these interpretations and hence our ways of being in the world with others. When narratives are seen as interpretations of the real, they are not opposed to what is actual, factual, and real: both fictive and nonfictive narratives take part in shaping our view of what is actual, factual, and real. My interest in the possible ties in with the work of narrative scholars like Ricoeur, Bruner, Brockmeier, and Andrews. For Ricoeur, to understand a literary narrative is “not to find a lifeless sense that is contained therein, but to unfold the possibility of being indicated by the text” (1991a, p. 66). In a similar spirit, for Bruner narrating is being “in the subjunctive mode,” “trafficking in human possibilities rather than in settled certainties” (1986, p. 26). Brockmeier articulates the role of narrative imagination in envisioning our options for acting: [N]‌ arrative imagination enables us to probe the reach and range of our options—​in Bruner’s words, their alternativeness—​both in everyday and literary discourse and thought. . . . If meanings are options for acting, then narrative appears to be the most advanced practice by which we envision, scrutinize, and try out these options. . . . We all continuously sort out real and fictive, contrasting and competing versions of actions, or inactions; we play them through and reflect on them, imagine possible and impossible scenarios and speculate about their implications. (2015, pp. 120–​122)

Andrews explores similar ground by drawing on the Sartrean theory of imagination, which takes as its starting point “our ability to see things not only as they are, but as they are not” and the insight that the “not-​real might also be the not-​yet-​real” (2014, pp. 5–​6). As she puts it, imagination “extends from the ‘real,’ the world as we know it, to the world of the possible” (p. 10). From a hermeneutic perspective, narrative imagination is also a hermeneutic imagination: it provides us with hermeneutic resources for (re)interpreting our experiences and those of others.11

[ 52 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The concept of narrative imagination importantly invites reflection on the futurity of narrative thinking: narratives are not only about perpetuating what is, but also about imagining what could be. As Ricoeur puts it, “the retrospective character of narration is closely linked to the prospective horizon of the future” (1991b, pp. 467–​468). Futurity is crucial to the process of narrative reflection, which, as Freeman observes, concerns the values and ethical ideals toward which we strive: Rather than thinking of narrative mainly in terms of its orientation to the past, I have tried to suggest that it bears upon the future as well: the process of rewriting the self is at one and the same time a process of articulating the self-​to-​be, or the self that ought to be. (2014a, p. 14)

Some narrative theorists (e.g., MacIntyre, 1984) characterize the future-​ oriented aspect of narratives in terms of teleology, but as there is no telos, goal, or end that would be pregiven in any determinate form to direct our lives, I suggest that it makes more sense to think of the futurity of our everyday narrative sense-​making practices in terms of an endless explorative search—​for meaning, for direction, for what makes life worth living, for the form and style that we want our lives to have—​and an ever-​shifting (re)orientation to the future, shaped by certain provisional goals, aims, attachments, and values that are continually refigured in the very process of the search, which is always directed simultaneously at the past, present, and future. This is a perspective that tends to be absent from representational accounts of narrative. While they frequently suggest that narratives represent events as part of a chronological-​causal chain that reverts “freedom into necessity” (Levinas, 1998, p. 138) and give events an air of “destiny” (Barthes, 1982a, p. 94), the hermeneutic approach acknowledges that narratives can make visible the openness and indeterminacy of the moment of action. In this spirit, Brockmeier refers to “narrative’s specific sensitivity for the openness and unpredictability of human affairs” (2015, p. 120). The hermeneutic approach also has a close affinity with Hannah Arendt’s idea of the human condition as being characterized by our capacity to act and thereby to bring to the world something new and unpredictable: To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin . . . , to set something into motion (which is the original meaning of the Latin agere). . . . It is in the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. (1998, pp. 177–​178)12

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 53 ]

45

From an Arendtian perspective, we can say that narratives pervade the speech and action through which we “insert ourselves into the human world” to reveal our “unique distinctness” (p.  176). They are part of the texture of the intersubjective reality that we co-​inhabit. This texture both delimits us and makes our agency possible. It is woven together with the fabric of the narrative in-​between that both binds us together and separates us (see Chapter 3).

EXPERIENCE AND NARRATIVE: THE INTERPRETATIVE CONTINUUM

In contemporary narrative studies, experience has become a central concept. While in classical narratology the standard definition of narrative was a representation of a series of events, today narrative is commonly understood as a “sequential and retrospective representation of experience” (García Landa, 2008, p.  422, emphasis added; see also Fludernik, 1996). This view is coupled with the widely shared assumption that there is a basic hierarchy between experience and narrative:  we first have experiences, and only retrospectively narrate them. Some narrative theorists, however, argue that there is no such opposition, and that experience itself has a narrative structure. The position of narrative hermeneutics that I  embrace problematizes both of these positions and argues that while living and telling are entangled, they should not be equated; instead, they exist in a tensional but reciprocal relationship that is best understood in terms of an interpretative continuum. Let us first look at the hierarchical models. The most common position in narrative studies is to understand the relationship between living and telling in terms of a hierarchy between experience, which always comes first, and narrative, which we produce later as we look back at our experiences and organize them into a narrative representation. In this model, experience is primary, narrative secondary. Narrative is what is projected onto the pure, raw, disconnected experiences. Variations of this model dominate narrative studies across disciplines. According to the narratological dogma, it is an inherent characteristic of narrative that it must always come afterward, as living and telling cannot take place simultaneously. Cohn encapsulates this position as follows: “Life tells us that we cannot tell it while we live it or live it while we tell it. Live now, tell later” (1999, p. 96). And she is not alone: “Common sense tells us that events may be narrated only after they happen” (Rimmon-​Kenan, 2002, p. 92). Cohn proceeds to discuss a “deviant form” of simultaneous

[ 54 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

first-​person narration in which the narrating self becomes identical to the experiencing self, but she argues that through such narration, fiction breaks with real-​world modes of experience and speech: “Its innovation . . . is to emancipate first-​person fictional narration from the dictates of formal mimetics, granting it . . . the license to tell a story in an idiom that corresponds to no manner of real-​world, natural discourse” (1999, pp. 104–​105). A similar hierarchical model underlies Strawson’s (2004) approach, which focuses on refuting two “narrativist” theses.13 First, the “psychological Narrativity thesis” is allegedly “a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience,” which argues that “human beings typically see or live or experience their lives as a narrative or story of some sort” (p. 428). Second, the “ethical Narrativity thesis” is a normative claim which asserts that “experiencing or conceiving one’s life as a narrative is a good thing . . . essential to a well-​lived life” (p. 428). Strawson first argues that there are important differences in how people experience their existence in time:  while “Diachronics” consider the self “as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future,” “Episodics” have little or no sense of having a self that “persists over a long stretch of time” (p.  430). He argues that “the fundamentals of temporal temperament are genetically determined,” and defends the tolerant view that neither “time-​style” should be seen as “an essentially inferior form of human life” (p. 431). This argument rests on a form of biological determinism: allegedly, our genes determine our “time-​style” and we should just accept our condition as a Diachronic or Episodic. However, Strawson then proceeds to argue that the tendency of the Diachronics to engage in telling stories about their lives is problematic and that “the best lives almost never involve this kind of self-​telling” (p. 437). He characterizes the psychological Narrativity thesis as purely descriptive, and wants to keep the descriptive and the normative strictly separate, but in fact they are firmly intertwined in his argumentation, as his ontological commitments—​his views on what really exists—​lead him to strong normative arguments on how we should understand the relationship between experience and narrative. Here we can see a conceptual slippage from the descriptive claim that there are different temporal temperaments to the normative claim that narrative self-​reflection is inherently harmful: The aspiration to explicit Narrative self-​articulation is natural for some . . . but in others it is highly unnatural and ruinous. My guess is that it almost always does more harm than good—​that the Narrative tendency to look for story or narrative coherence in one’s life is, in general, a gross hindrance to self-​understanding: to a  .  .  .  real sense  .  .  .  of one’s nature. It’s well known that telling and retelling

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 55 ]

65

one’s past leads to changes, smoothings, enhancements, shifts away from the facts. . . . It turns out to be an inevitable consequence of the mechanics of the neurophysiological process of laying down memories that every studied conscious recall of past events brings an alteration. The implication is plain: the more you recall, retell, narrate yourself, the further you risk moving away from accurate self-​understanding, from the truth of your being. (p. 447, emphasis added)

This normative claim relies on Strawson’s tacit commitment to the ontological assumption that what really exists is “unmediated” experience here and now, and in order to be true to our “nature,” we should “alter” that “raw experience” as little as possible. Strawson seems to take experience to be something that we simply undergo when something in the world impinges on us. For him, experience does not involve any active agency or interpretation. In fact, he claims that if we engage in processes of sense-​making or even simple recollection, we bring about problematic “alterations” to the original experience. This normative claim rests on strong metaphysical beliefs about which he is more explicit elsewhere: Strawson (1999a, p. 7) presents himself as a “realistic materialist” who believes that the self is a thing that ultimately exists only during an “uninterrupted or hiatus-​free period of consciousness” (p. 21) so that a duration of “up to three seconds” is “the normal duration of human selves” (1999b, p. 111).14 He calls this the “Pearl view, because it suggests that many mental selves exist, one at a time and one after another, like pearls on a string,” in the life of a human being (1999a, p. 20). Marya Schechtman comments that this view presents selves as implausibly “tidy and distinct”:  “we find frequently that feelings and identifications we thought long gone reemerge” and “it is not always obvious what is really no longer part of the self and what is” (2007, pp. 177–​178). I would emphasize, however, that Strawson dismisses a more fundamental mediatedness of experience. Our experiences are layered so that our past experiences mediate the present ones, in ways that mostly escape our awareness. The “alteration” that Strawson considers so problematic looks much less questionable if we acknowledge that both sociocultural webs of narratives and our own life history always already mediate our experience, and that human existence is a fundamentally temporal process of constant alteration in which the self is constituted through a socially embedded process of reinterpreting experiences.15 Why should we assume that the self exists in disconnected moments of experience, rather than through the temporal process of relating these experiences to one another? Here we can see how the way in which one approaches the ethical question concerning the value of narrative for human existence is crucially

[ 56 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

affected by one’s ontological assumptions concerning the nature of experience and what one considers to be real in general. Those arguing for and against narrativity have very different tacit presuppositions concerning these ontological questions. Most thinkers who emphasize the ethical questionability of narrative see the relationship between experience and narrative as one of imposition—​of imposing order on something that inherently lacks it. They tend to see life as a temporal process, flow, or flux on which narrative imposes order, meaning, and structure, and they regard this imposition as problematic on both ontological and ethical grounds. This applies to even someone like Hayden White, who moves swiftly from the ontological assertion that the logic of reality is non-​narrative to the normative claim that “[r]‌eal events should simply be; . . . they should not pose as the tellers of a narrative” (1981, p. 4).16 Underlying most criticism “against narrativity” is the idea that the world is given to us in raw, unmediated experience and that—​by imposing order—​narratives falsify and distort our experience of the world. Such arguments usually depend in one way or another on the problematic empiricist-​positivistic assumption of “pure experience,” immediately given here and now, that is, on the “myth of the given” (Sellars, 1963, pp. 127–​ 196). Critics of narrativity typically believe that there are raw, disconnected units of experience that are more real than experiences that are narratively interpreted or remembered.17 The hermeneutic approach problematizes precisely this assumption underlying hierarchical conceptions of narrative and experience: the assumption of pure, unmediated experiences that are retrospectively narrated. In contrast, it emphasizes that experience is always already both temporally and culturally/​historically mediated. The fundamental temporality of experience entails that the horizons of the past and future always already impregnate the present. There is no isolated experience in the present; all experience is structured and organized in relation to past experiences, expectations, and hopes that shape one’s orientation to the future. Husserl’s studies on the temporality of experience show that even simple sense perception is constituted “synthetically,” by holding together, as part of the present, the “just passed” (retention) and the moment to come (protention) (1991, p.  49). Heidegger (1996), Gadamer (1997), and Ricoeur (1984, 1988) develop Husserl’s view of the temporality of experience by showing how the horizon of the present is constituted by the historical and sociocultural traditions that condition what we see and experience. Integral to these are the cultural narrative webs that mediate our ways of interpreting our experiences and ascribing meaning to them. The crucial point is that narratives as cultural interpretative practices shape the way we experience things in the first place. It is

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 57 ]

85

therefore untrue that narratives always come afterward. Surprisingly few narrative theorists acknowledge this, but there are exceptions: Brockmeier, for example, recognizes that instead of starting with pure experience, we start with “a number of stories, or fragments or traces of stories because we are born into, grow up, and live in the midst of a world of narratives that . . . for the most part are not our own” (2015, p. 181); Randall asserts that it is “only through my story that I experience events in the first place” (2015, p. 41); and Frie explores, drawing on Ludwig Binswanger’s hermeneutic psychology, how we exist in narrative frameworks or “world-​designs (or world horizons) that shape our experience” but “remain outside of our reflective awareness” (2016, p. 129).18 That experience is historically mediated means that it always takes place within a particular historical world that functions as a space of experience and sets certain limits to what is experienceable, doable, and sayable in that world. The narrative webs in which we are entangled, including their ways of interpreting and narrating the past, shape our space of experience in the present. To take an example of the mediatedness of experience, let us consider the current refugee crisis. We see images of refugees on television; some of us have encountered asylum seekers in our local community; some of us have first-​hand experience of forced migration and many of us of voluntary migration. Our experience of refugees is culturally, historically, and socially mediated. Looking at a refugee either on television or face to face is not a brute sense perception here and now: our life histories, including our earlier experiences of refugees, of other people in need, and of migrants, our own cultural situation, culturally available refugee narratives, and socially prevalent modes of talking about refugees affect our perception. The perception—​seeing someone “as a refugee”—​is already an interpretation, which includes meaning-​giving and an affective orientation, ranging from an empathetic perception of another person as a fellow human being in need to an anxiety-​ridden or hateful perception of him or her as a potential threat. It involves a certain orientation to the perceived phenomenon, and the cultural webs of narratives in which we are entangled—​from narratives of terrorism and nationalism to narratives of solidarity—​shape our orientation to and our affective engagement with what we perceive. Hierarchical models of narrative and experience tend to dismiss how profoundly narratives mediate our experience of being in the world with others. Generally, theorists who take seriously the ontological significance of narrative for human existence consider the dichotomous question of whether we “live” or “tell” narratives to be problematic:  living and telling are constantly entangled in complex ways and mutually condition one

[ 58 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

another. Even if narration is a matter of organizing and shaping experiences into meaningfully connected accounts, this does not mean that narratives necessarily falsify experience or are somehow external or secondary with respect to it. If experience itself involves interpretation and sense-​ making, one should not posit an opposition between living and telling by arguing that only the latter involves interpretation. From this starting point, narrative hermeneutics emphasizes the ways in which living and telling mutually impregnate one another:  there is no “pure experience,” untainted by the structure of interpretation, and we continuously reinterpret our experiences by renarrating them. In Bruner’s words, “life is not ‘how it was’ but how it is interpreted and reinterpreted, told and retold” (1987, p. 31). David Carr makes a similar point: The actions and sufferings of life can be viewed as a process of telling ourselves stories, listening to those stories, and acting them out or living them through. . . . Sometimes we must change the story to accommodate the events, sometimes we change the events, by acting, to accommodate the story. It is not the case . . . that we first live and act and then afterward, seated around the fire as it were, tell about what we have done. . . . (1991, p. 61)

The hermeneutic approach emphasizes that the strict narratological separation of the “experiencing self” and the “narrating self” is an abstraction that risks obscuring their complex mutual entwinement. For example, as we go through new experiences in the present, these experiences are mediated through our narrative interpretations of our past experiences; we have access to our past experiencing and narrating self only from the perspective of our present experiencing and narrating self; and the experiences that narrating selves go through in the present—​also through the very process of narrating to which others respond in divergent ways—​ affect the ways in which they narratively reinterpret the experiences of their past selves. Narrative (re)interpretation is integral to the process of living our lives. Humans have arguably always narrated their lives in the midst of living them, but the current age of digital storytelling has given the phenomenon of simultaneous storytelling a whole new dimension: for millions of people, posting social media updates is part and parcel of their everyday stream of experience, and the new storytelling technologies affect their modes of experience. While the empiricist-​ positivistic conception of experience has dominated both mainstream psychology and narratology, narrative psychology and hermeneutically oriented narrative studies have emphasized the

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 59 ]

06

narratively mediated nature of experience—​the way in which, as Freeman puts it, “narrative is woven into the very fabric of experience” (2013, p.  55).19 However, within hermeneutic approaches that acknowledge the existential-​ontological significance of narrative for identity and subjectivity, there are crucial differences in how exactly this ontological significance is conceived. When it comes to how narrative is seen in relation to experience, the extreme position is that all human experience has a narrative structure. Carr, for example, asserts that “no elements enter our experience . . . unstoried or unnarrativized” (1991, p. 68), Mark Johnson writes about the “narrative structure of our experience” (1993, p. 177), and Randall and McKim argue that “[e]‌xperience itself, above all our experience of time, possesses a fundamentally narrative quality” (2008, p.  9). While I  share their concern that narrative should not be seen as a matter of imposing order on disorder, I  consider the view that “there is nothing below this narrative structure, at least nothing that is experienceable by us or comprehensible in experiential terms” (Carr, 1991, p. 66) to be too strong and reductionist. The position that equates narrative and experience conflates narrative with the temporality of experience, and thus robs the concept of narrative of its specificity. That all experience has an interpretative structure does not mean that all experience has a narrative structure. If we look at a painting of a tree, for example, our experience has an interpretative as-​structure—​we interpret what we see as a painting of a tree—​and it is informed by the cultural narrative webs that make us attach certain meanings to paintings of trees, but the experience of viewing the painting is not in itself a narrative. We can provide a description of our experience, or we can give a narrative account of it, but this makes the experience itself neither a description nor a narrative. Some narrative scholars suggest that all experiences that can be narrativized are “narrative experiences.” Brockmeier, for example, refers with “narrative experiences” to “conscious and complex experiences that grow out of, and are part of, lived and reflected human reality” (2015, p. 105). To my mind, this definition is too broad. I consider it important to distinguish between experiences in which narratives as models of sense-​making or as an interpretative activity play a constitutive role and those in which they do not but which can nevertheless be retrospectively narrativized in the sense of being interpreted through narrative frameworks. Watching a narratively structured news report on the refugee crisis would be an example of the former, whereas the latter might include certain experiences of listening to music or dancing. Ultimately, there is no experience that could not be narrativized from some perspective—​one can, for

[ 60 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

example, tell a narrative of how one experienced something inexpressible that evades narrative understanding—​ even if narrativization is often problematic and fails to capture the particularity of the experience. Hence, if we count “narrativizable” experiences in the class of narrative experiences, all experiences would be narrative experiences, and the distinction between experience and narrative collapses. Due to these problems, instead of using the notion of narrative experience, I emphasize the way in which experiences are to varying degrees narratively mediated and structured through the activity of narrative interpretation. In thinking about the relationship between narrative and experience, we should acknowledge the two sides of narrative mentioned earlier. While narrative as an interpretative activity, mediated by cultural models of narrative sense-​making, is often inextricably intertwined with the process of experiencing, narrative as an account communicated to someone is typically a retrospective interpretation of experiences (which can then shape later experiences). Only if we think of narratives as interpretations of experience, instead of equating them with experience per se, can we compare different interpretations of the same events, evaluate their validity, and propose alternative interpretations. This becomes impossible if narrative is simply identified with experience. In order to preserve the specificity of the concepts of experience and narrative and to be attentive to their tensional relationship, it is important to acknowledge that even if all experience has an interpretative structure and even if narrative interpretation of experience is a crucial aspect of our being in the world, this does not make all experience narrative. Narrative studies would benefit from a clear alternative to approaches that either equate narrative and experience or place them in opposition. I propose that such an alternative is offered by a narrative hermeneutics that foregrounds the interpretative structure of both experience and narrative. It allows us to understand the relationship between experience and narrative in terms of a continuum, rather than as an opposition. It is an interpretative continuum that reaches from the basic interpretative structure of sense perception to more complex forms of interpretation, such as narrative (re)interpretations. When we acknowledge that experience itself has an interpretative structure, narrative interpretations can be conceptualized as interpretations of interpretations—​hence in terms of a double hermeneutic. Anthony Giddens (1976, pp. 146, 158) and Jürgen Habermas (1984) have argued that the social sciences have, in comparison to the natural sciences, “a double hermeneutic task” (p. 110) because they interpret interpretations, an object domain that is already symbolically structured. What I am suggesting is that narrative also has such a double hermeneutic

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 61 ]

26

structure—​it interprets interpretations—​although the human sciences engage in more conscious, self-​reflexive interpretation than, for example, cultural narratives that circulate in the media. Narratives are second-​order interpretations that weave together experiences by showing how they are related and by creating meaningful connections between them. When we (re)interpret our everyday experiences, identities, and life plans in light of cultural (literary, historical, visual, etc.) narratives, this process manifests the dynamics of a triple hermeneutic. These three levels of interpretation are parallel to Ricoeur’s (1984) three levels of mimesis. Mimesis I refers to the pre-​figurative and pre-​narrative quality of everyday interpretations of action. Mimesis II signals the configurative character of literary and historical narratives. Mimesis III is the level of refiguration in which the encounter between the world of the reader and the world of the text leads readers to reinterpret their experiences.20 I would add, however, that the triple hermeneutic dynamic is at play not only when we reinterpret our experiences in light of literary and other cultural narratives, but also in any literary, psychological, philosophical, or social scientific interpretation of narratives. In a different form, it also characterizes the way in which narratives themselves function as interpretations of other narratives. In other words, it is inherent to the logic of dialogical intertextuality—​or internarrativity.21 The three levels of interpretation in the dynamics of the triple hermeneutics should not be understood as temporally distinct. Although we can analytically distinguish between them, they are at play simultaneously, since cultural narrative webs always already mediate our experience. These three levels of interpretation form a hermeneutic circle in which experience and cultural narratives reciprocally feed into one another. I propose that narrative hermeneutics based on the triple hermeneutic can articulate how narrative and interpretation are intertwined, why they are not the same thing, and how we are constituted in a dialogic relation to culturally mediated narrative models through which we reinterpret our experiences. According to this approach, the reciprocal movement of reinterpreting cultural narratives in concrete life situations and reinterpreting experiences in the light of cultural narrative models is constitutive of what Bakhtin characterizes as the “dialogic fabric of human life” (1984, p. 293).

LIFE AND NARRATIVE: LIVING AS A PROCESS OF REINTERPRETATION

Hermeneutic approaches acknowledge the existential-​ontological significance of narrative—​the importance of narrative for who we are—​but

[ 62 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

within these approaches there are decisive differences in how exactly this significance is understood when it comes to the relation of narrative to life as a whole. While some theorists suggest that the entire life of an individual takes on the form of a single narrative or narrative quest, such views are not unproblematic. I propose that narrative hermeneutics should steer clear of such a position and actively acknowledge the ways in which life does not form a single, coherent narrative and, what is more, how normative models of coherence can be potentially harmful, oppressive, or limiting. Many hermeneutically oriented theorists of narrative and identity are strong narrativists both in the sense of assuming that narrative automatically make our lives more ethical and in taking narrative coherence and unity as self-​evident ideals.22 For example, according to Taylor, “we must inescapably understand our lives in narrative form, as a ‘quest’ ” (1989, p. 52). He presents this model as if it were a given, the inevitable and “inescapable” result of how things simply are: We want our lives to have meaning, or weight, or substance, or to grow towards some fulness. . . . But this means our whole lives. If necessary, we want the future to “redeem” the past, to make it part of a life story which has sense or purpose, to take it up in a meaningful unity. . . . [T]‌here is something like an a priori unity of a human life through its whole extent. . . . [T]his means that we understand ourselves inescapably in narrative. (pp. 50–​51)

A similar position is embraced by MacIntyre, who argues that we must see our life in terms of a narrative unity in order to take responsibility for our actions. For him, the “unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest” (1984, p. 219).23 MacIntyre understands human actions as “enacted narratives” (p. 211) and writes about “living out” a single story that reaches from birth to death: “I am what I may justifiably be taken by others to be in the course of living out a story that runs from my birth to my death” (p. 217). This vocabulary of enacted narratives and living out stories risks blurring the conceptual differentiation between experience/​action and narrative; it suggests not only that action is an enacted narrative, but that a life in its entirety forms one coherent narrative. Does not life provide material for a countless number of narratives, rather than forming a single narrative? Instead of saying that our lives are enacted narratives, I would say that our lives are narratively mediated. They do not follow the plot of one narrative, but are much messier. We are entangled in a culturally and historically constituted web of narratives, in relation to which we make sense of our possibilities. One of the main advantages of thinking of life as a narratively mediated interpretative process

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 63 ]

46

is precisely that it does not imply that the whole life should be seen as enacting a single narrative or aspiring toward one. I argue for a narrative hermeneutics that acknowledges both that we are constituted through a continuous process of reinterpretation and that this process rarely—​if ever—​leads to a single life story. It is a position that emphasizes the processuality and performativity of narrative interpretation and the existential significance of storytelling, without assuming that life consists of one coherent story. It suggests that a process of narrative interpretation is integral to who we are, but that this process is endless and open-​ended as we continuously reinterpret and renarrate our past experiences from the perspective of the present, in relation to the new experiences we go through and to our divergent interlocutors in shifting storytelling contexts. This interpretative process can consist of contradictory narrative fragments, and it can involve radical ruptures and disconnectedness. It is a dynamic interplay of countless story fragments that form ever new constellations. These fragments engage in relations of contest, conflict, and dialogue, and are subject to endless revisions. Rather than forming a single coherent narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, they open up a range of possible ways of narrating the interrelations between the past, present, and future. Certain fragments can be foregrounded and expanded upon in one situation, other fragments in another. This is a selective interpretative activity that always takes place from the horizon of the present.24 Here I draw on Ricoeur but also part ways with him. I share his view that a continuous process of reinterpretation lies at the heart of narrative identity, which is “not a stable and seamless identity” and “continues to make and unmake itself” (1988, pp. 248–​249). However, although he acknowledges that discordance is integral to life stories, I have reservations about the way in which he nevertheless tends to privilege, in many passages, the coherence and concordance of “our own story,” to which he frequently refers in the singular: [W]‌e do not cease to re-​interpret the narrative identity that constitutes us in the light of stories handed down to us by our culture. . . . In this way we learn to become the narrator of our own story without completely becoming the author of our life. (1991b, p. 437, emphasis added)

I also want to stress that a narrative sense of self does not entail that “one must be disposed to apprehend or think of oneself and one’s life as fitting the form of some recognized narrative genre” (Strawson, 2004, p. 442). This definition of what Strawson calls a Narrative type of person is so extraordinary that I doubt whether anyone would see him-​or herself

[ 64 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

as fitting that category; at least I  do not know anyone who would think that his or her whole life is a romance or parody. What most people do, in contrast, is to interpret their experiences situationally in light of a range of culturally available narrative genres. If they fall ill, for example, they are likely to draw on the cultural repertoire of illness narratives as they struggle to make sense of their experience of malady.25 But more often than not, illness is only one part of their life and does not cast their entire life in a single genre. I suggest that narrative identity is best understood as a non-​essentialist approach to subjectivity, which emphasizes that we exist in a state of constant becoming through a temporal process of reinterpretation. Arendt was among the first to articulate, in The Human Condition (1958), the idea that we answer the question of “who” in narrative terms: “Who somebody is or was we can know only by knowing the story of which he is himself the hero—​his biography, in other words” (Arendt, 1998, p. 186). In the 1980s and 1990s, largely in response to the “death of the subject” debate, narrative identity came to be perceived, as Ricoeur puts it, as a way of acknowledging that “subjectivity is neither an incoherent succession of occurrences nor an immutable substance incapable of becoming” (1991b, p. 437). It is a way of rethinking subjectivity as dynamic, mutable, non-​essentialist, relational, and interactional. Ricoeur (1992) distinguishes between identity as sameness (idem) and identity as selfhood (ipse)—​a distinction between the what and the who, or between the subject as a noun and the subject understood in terms of action. As Heidegger and Arendt already acknowledged, the latter—​the subject of action and experience—​cannot be thought of in substantialist or essentialist terms because selfhood refers to the singularity of the who that only exists through the process of constant reinterpretation. For Ricoeur, identity is a temporal process of refiguration in which what he calls “identifications-​with” play a pivotal role: To a large extent, in fact, the identity of a person or a community is made up of these identifications with values, norms, ideals, models, and heroes, in which the person or the community recognizes itself. Recognizing oneself in contributes to recognizing oneself by. (1992, p. 121)

Narrative identity is a process that largely develops through identifications-​ with, and we identify not only with people, but also with literary and other artworks. In this notion of narrative identity, “narrative” should be understood less as a noun than as a verb-​like adjective that refers precisely to the temporal, interactional process of narrative reinterpretation that is

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 65 ]

6

constitutive of identity. As “self-​ interpreting animals” (Taylor, 1985), we are beings whose self-​interpretations are constitutive of who we are, and the narrative webs in which we are entangled crucially affect our self-​ interpretations. Identity means essentially an orientation:  a sense of self that is linked to a sense of where one has come from, where one is now, and where one is going. It hence entails the ability to orient oneself in moral space: To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary. . . . To understand our predicament in terms of finding or losing orientation in moral space is to take the space which our frameworks seek to define as ontologically basic. (Taylor, 1989, pp. 28–​29)

Taylor complements the spatial metaphor with the recognition that we are temporal beings, always “changing and becoming,” and thus we can have a sense of who we are only by having “a notion of how we have become, and of where we are going” (p.  47). In other words, we can make sense of who we are only through “narrative understanding, that I understand my present action in the form of an ‘and then’: there was A (what I am), and then I do B (what I project to become)” (p. 47). Such narrative understanding is constituted through affective attachments and identifications with other people, artworks, cultural narratives across media, and aspects of the past, including both personal and broader cultural past.26 Through identifications-​with, we make these things, people, and aspects of the past our own—​integral to our sense of who we are. Narrative identity is interactional and linked to narrative agency; it is something we do in the present in social webs of narratives, rather than a result of what we can remember about our past. In his thorough critique of the traditional Lockean way of conceptualizing identity in terms of autobiographical memory (the view that we are what we can remember about our lives), Brockmeier emphasizes the nature of identity as “always emergent gestalt, its character as an ongoing undertaking, an interminable poetic work”:  it is “an inherently unstable and protean project, constantly synthesizing past and present, memories and their interpretation, recollection and imagination” (2015, p. 187). In psychology, the prevalent tendency to link narrative to coherence and integration draws support from the “long tradition that perceives the task of successful self-​work to be attaining an integrated ego identity around a stable center or core” (Raggatt, 2006, p. 16). The emphasis has been on the

[ 66 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

need to integrate lives into “self-​defining life narratives” (McAdams, 2006, p.  332). Even if studies suggest, as Peter Raggatt puts it, that individuals “derive happiness and a sense of purpose from the experience of integrating past, present, and future into synergistic wholes,” I agree that it is problematic to set such experiences as a norm and to disallow “multiplicity, conflict, and even contradiction in the structure of the self, including the storied self” (pp. 16–​17). The notion of narrative identity, however, in no way presupposes the assumption of a stable core self or any normative idea of the good life. In my view, narrative hermeneutics should not commit itself to the idea of a single life story—​either as an ontological assumption or as an ethical ideal. Instead, it should acknowledge that narrative identity construction is an ongoing, dynamic, temporal, unfinalizable process that continues throughout our lives and that takes shape in social, interactional contexts, in a dialogue with cultural models of sense-​making. I propose that integral to such a notion of narrative identity is a sense of one’s possibilities. The sense of the possible sets certain limits to one’s world, and it shapes one’s sense of self, but it is so multifaceted that one cannot encompass it in a single life narrative. It is inherently situational: our possibilities are always possibilities within a particular situation, and our sense of them keeps shifting. It is linked to alternative visions of the directions in which one’s life could develop: to reflection on “roads taken and not taken” (Morson, 1994, p. 139). At the heart of narrative identity is a sense of possible lives into which one’s life could evolve. In this way, the sense of the possible links together the notions of narrative identity and possible selves. When Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius (1986) introduced the notion of “possible selves” to the psychology of the self, they emphasized how possible selves “function as incentives for future behavior (i.e., they are selves to be approached or avoided)” and how “they provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self” (p.  954). While they see possible selves as “the cognitive manifestation of enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears, and threats” (p. 954), I would like to emphasize that possible selves are not only cognitive, but also have a strong existential-​ethical dimension: they provide visions of what kind of life one could and would like to live. As Anneke Sools articulates, possible selves can be seen to consist of “three partly overlapping and intertwined sets of selves:  the selves we deem probable, the selves we deem believable, and the ones we deem desired or feared”: “What we consider as probable and believable influences what we experience and can articulate as desirable: Vice versa, what we can imagine as desirable affects what we perceive to be probable and believable”

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 67 ]

86

(Sools, 2016). These three selves, in turn, depend on how one weaves together one’s past, present, and future. Thinking of narrative identity in terms of the sense of the possible alerts us to the openness of life—​to the way in which every life can develop in different directions depending on how it is narrated and what kinds of futures one projects. Identity is always open to renarration, which implies redirection and reorientation in terms of one’s affective identifications. Such a conception of narrative identity should be distinguished from self-​ constitution and self-​authorship positions that claim that we essentially constitute, write, or author our lives. It is one thing to say that who we are is not separate from how we interpret our experiences, and quite another to say that we basically decide who we are. That we are constituted by our self-​interpretations does not mean that we are nothing but our self-​ interpretations. (When X is constitutive of Y, it implies that Y would not be Y without X, but it does not imply that Y is nothing but X.) There are material and intersubjective limits to our self-​constitution (we cannot interpret ourselves to be in excellent health if we are suffering from cancer, and who we are is also constituted by how others see us), and even in our self-​interpretations we are not self-​transparent: our self-​interpretative habits can repeat interpretative patterns that are culturally ingrained in us and that elude our awareness. When Strawson (2015) attacks the idea of narrative self-​constitution, or the “narrativist thesis” according to which “all human life is, in some sense, life-​writing” (p. 295), he is arguing against the idea that we are authors of our own lives. His own view is that “one’s life is simply one’s life, something whose actual course is part of the history of the universe and 100 per cent non-​fictional” (p. 289). He argues that instead of “making” ourselves, we can at most “discover” who we are (Strawson, 2012). In my view, however, precisely such a conceptual opposition between invention and discovery is problematic. The process of narrative self-​interpretation through which we are constituted implies neither finding nor imposing narrative order. As Ricoeur puts it, this process can be seen as a “constructive activity” without regarding it as a matter of “imposing” order on disorder (1991b, pp. 436, 468). It is a matter of articulating meaningful connections from an interpretative horizon shaped by our present situation. The idea that identity is something objectively given, waiting there to be discovered, is an essentialist position that contradicts the (hermeneutic) view of human existence as radically temporal. It is not as if those who narrativize their experiences engage in “invention” or “fictionalization,” while others simply adhere to “brute facts.” This dichotomy guides Strawson’s thinking here:

[ 68 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

if one is Narrative one will also have a tendency to engage unconsciously in invention, fiction of some sort—​ falsification, confabulation, revisionism—​ when it comes to one’s apprehension of one’s own life. . . . I have no doubt that almost all human Narrativity is compromised by revision. . . . (2004, p. 443)

Dubbing almost all reinterpretation of past experiences as “revisionist” entails blindness to the process of reinterpretation that is an inevitable dimension of our temporal existence. If virtually all interpretation is seen as revisionist, there is no way of distinguishing between, say, blatant self-​ deception and the kind of reinterpretation that we do all the time as we reinterpret the past in relation to new experiences we go through in the present. However, the intersubjective dimension of narrative identity—​ that we cannot compose our life narratives at will—​should be acknowledged more thoroughly than it has been by proponents of the self-​constitution thesis. (I will address this issue in connection to dialogicality in the next section and in Chapter 7.) Narrative hermeneutics considers subjects of experience as active agents who engage in sense-​ making, but this does not entail seeing them as “authors” of their lives. The authorship thesis should be seen in the context of a long tradition of thought, harking back to early German Romanticism, that draws a parallel between how novelists and other artists create works of art and how ordinary people shape their lives. A central ambition of the Romantics was to overcome the division between genius and common people and to propose that everyone has the potential to be the creator and artist of one’s own life: “All human beings are artists,” writes Schleiermacher (1843–​1864, pp. 253–​254).27 This Romantic idea was radicalized by Nietzsche (2003, pp. 163, 189), who valorized those “who create themselves” and “ ‘give style’ to one’s character” instead of following preexisting forms, norms, and models: “we, however, want to be poets of our lives, starting with the smallest and most commonplace details” (p. 170). Early twentieth-​century avant-​garde artists shared the Nietzschean-​Romantic ambition to overcome the abyss between life and art. For Guillaume Apollinaire, for example, the challenge of the poets is to harbor the capacity of human beings to create themselves constantly anew through a “perpetual renewal of ourselves, that eternal creation, that endless rebirth by which we live” (1982, p. 13). In the early 1980s, Foucault developed his post-​Nietzschean “aesthetics of existence”:  “From the idea that the self is not given to us, I  think that there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art” (1983, p. 237). Foucault arrived at the notion of elaborating “one’s own life as a personal work of art” through his studies into how

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 69 ]

07

morality was understood in ancient Greece: in contrast to the Christian way of perceiving morality in terms of moral codes, rules, and laws, the Greeks valued “knowing how to govern one’s own life in order to give it the most beautiful form possible” (1996, p. 458). Foucault, however, reprehends the ambition of the Greeks to make their personal style of existence common to everyone, by elevating it to an exemplary status. For his contemporaries, he envisages a “search for styles of existence as different as possible from each other” (p. 473). In recent years, narrative scholars across disciplines have elaborated on versions of the idea that we are both narrators and authors of our lives. Daniel Dennett argues that we author our lives by trying to “make all of our material cohere into a single good story”: “And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional character at the center of that autobiography is one’s self” (1992, p. 114).28 Dan P. McAdams makes a similar claim in his “life-​story theory of identity,” arguing that “identity is a life story” (2003, p. 187): I cannot understand who I am if my life forms no narrative for me, if I am unable to see my own life as an intelligible story that makes sense to me now and would make sense if I were to tell it to you tomorrow. More than anything else, stories give us our identities. (2006, p. 76)

McAdams asserts that American adults are “the real authors of their own stories” (2006, p. 296), and, in his latest book, he elaborates the idea that “every human life is a work of art” (2015, p.  1). Similarly, Randall and McKim develop the thesis that we are novelists of our lives: for them, our lives are “narratives-​in-​the-​making that (and this is key) we are composing and comprehending from within:  narratives of which we are simultaneously author and narrator, character and reader” (2008, p. 6). While acknowledging the limits of the metaphor of the novel, they use it because they believe that we are “the principal architects” (p. 16) of our lives, like a novelist is the architect of the novel—​for them, whatever difference there may be between a life and a novel, it is “one of degree and not of kind” (p. 41). In contrast, Arendt, among the first to develop explicitly the idea of narrative identity, clearly distinguished it from the authorship thesis: Although everybody started his life by inserting himself into the human world through action and speech, nobody is the author or producer of his own life story. In other words, the stories, the results of action and speech, reveal an agent, but this agent is not an author or producer. Somebody began it and is

[ 70 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

its subject in the twofold sense of the word, namely, its actor and sufferer, but nobody is its author. (1998, p. 184)

What Arendt is emphasizing here is that we have very limited power to “design” the world in which our lives unfold or to “invent” the events of our lives—​so limited that there are no grounds for a sustained analogy between living a life and the freedom of a novelist to invent and design the story of characters. It is important to acknowledge that we are not only actors, but also sufferers: “Because the actor always moves among and in relation to other acting beings, he is never merely a ‘doer’ but always and at the same time a sufferer” (p. 190). I would add that some are structurally predisposed to suffer more than others: vulnerability and agency are unequally distributed across the globe and within societies. Yet we are not merely actors and sufferers either, in the sense that we are not actors in a play authored by someone else. Our lives have no single author, and unlike fictional characters whose fate is determined by the author, we have a certain autonomy: we take part in planning our lives and in affecting its course, even if our plans are rarely fully fulfilled and we have only limited power to shape the course of our lives. I agree with MacIntyre and Kate McLean (2015) that we can be (at most) co-​authors of our lives: what the agent is able to do and say intelligibly as an actor is deeply affected by the fact that we are never more (and sometimes less) than the co-​authors of our own narratives. . . . We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not of our making. (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 213)

It is important to acknowledge that co-​authorship is linked to narrative agency and comes in degrees:  we can have more or less power to affect the course of our lives. It is part of global injustice that co-​authorship is extremely unequally distributed. While those who are born into utter poverty have very little co-​authorship, those born into privileged conditions generally have a chance to become co-​authors of their lives in a much stronger sense. The situation of privileged subjects, in turn, is complicated by the fact that they are also implicated subjects:  their heightened narrative agency and their range of possibilities come at the expense of the agency and possibilities of the underprivileged. The narrative webs into which we are born regulate the kind of co-​ authorship that we practice. MacIntyre acknowledges that learning stories and, through them, the roles that are available for us is integral to the process of socialization:  “We enter human society  .  .  .  with one or more

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 71 ]

27

imputed characters—​roles into which we have been drafted. . . . Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words” (1984, p. 216). MacIntyre, however, does not analyze how cultural narrative scripts can limit and oppress us, or how learning to distance ourselves from them and finding ways of crafting our own (counter)stories can help us gain more co-​authorship in our lives. Nor does he comment on the limits of such co-​authorship established by the uneven distribution of possibilities. MacIntyre’s argument (presented against Louis Mink [1970] and Hayden White [1981]) that stories “are lived before they are told” (1984, p. 212) has become a widely shared position in narrative psychology.29 Although it is true that actions and experiences are often first lived and later narrated, I would not say that stories are first lived. A story refers to the sequence of actions, experiences, or events that are narrated in a narrative account; hence, strictly speaking, they only become a story once they have been narrated, that is, selected, presented from a certain perspective, and placed in a sequence with other experiences to which they are shown to be in a meaningful relation so that the narrative forms a connected account. A narrative account is a perspectival interpretation based on selection, and it is told by someone to someone on some occasion. As Ruthellen Josselson and Brent Hopkins put it, people “don’t ‘have’ stories of their lives; they create them for the circumstance in which the story will be told” (2015, p. 226). This does not mean that the story would always have to be told in words. A narrative can be simply thought through, as when I weave in my mind a narrative account of what happened to me last night, before telling it to my friend.30 It can be presented in the form of visual narration or performed (as in a theater piece). Some theorists of performativity argue that life itself has a performative dimension comparable to a stage performance. Erving Goffman (1959) famously developed this dramaturgical metaphor in suggesting that the self is performed in social interaction and is constituted through social performances that we stage in order to affect other people’s views of ourselves in different social situations. It is now commonly acknowledged that the construction of identity, gender, and social reality more generally have a performative dimension; that narrative performativity is an important aspect of our lives does not mean, however, that our whole lives would be “enacted narratives.” We can perform narratives in the sense of playing certain roles in different social situations, aiming at a certain narrative sequence and (consciously or unconsciously) following cultural narrative scripts or models. But arguably we are always more than the roles we play, and we have considerably less control over how others perceive our life stories than authors

[ 72 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

of fictional stories. While a fictional narrative is shaped by a particular perspective, a life can be perceived and narrated from a multitude of perspectives, and it makes no sense to ask whether it is “really” a first-​person or a third-​person narrative: for the protagonist it is a first-​person narrative, but others take part in co-​telling the protagonist’s life story through second-​ and third-​person narration. Moreover, even if we acknowledge that we stage performances to others on a daily basis (not only in social media, but also in everyday face-​to-​face social interactions), our lives are still only partly “staged.” The participants of the reality television show Big Brother literally live “on stage” for a period of their lives, and they perform a narrative to the audience in a stronger sense than those who are living their lives hidden from television cameras. However, no one’s whole life forms such a staged performance.31 It is one thing to acknowledge that our lives have a performative dimension and another to claim that our whole lives are nothing but performances. In acting we project a future, we act toward a possible future, and our actions are guided by certain goals and values, but what ultimately happens is highly unpredictable as we have only limited power to affect the course of events. There is a huge—​not just quantitative but qualitative—​difference between acting out a pre-​written or pre-​designed narrative and living a life. Only the former follows the prior design of authors or script-​writers. Hence, instead of being narratives, lives are, first, narratively conditioned (as cultural narratives mediate our actions, experiences, and choices) and, second, material for narratives, turned into narratives through acts of narrative interpretation. MacIntyre argues that actions are intelligible only as “an episode in a possible history” (1984, p. 216), but one action can be understood in numerous ways depending on what kind of narrative it is placed in. The shape that the process of narrative interpretation takes depends on the situations in which we tell stories and to whom we tell them. Every life story can be told in innumerable ways. In narratively interpreting our actions, we must take into account the interpretations of others. Adriana Cavarero articulates how we need the stories of others because we cannot know the beginning of our own story: “The beginning of the narratable self and the beginning of her story are always a tale told by others” (2000, p. 39). This perspective should be enlarged through attention to the broader way in which we need the stories of others in order to relate our own interpretations to their interpretations. This is implicit in Cavarero’s emphasis on the relationality of our existence:  “At once exposable and narratable, the existent always constitutes herself in relation to an other” (p. 40). We cannot compose a life narrative for ourselves at will: we have to take into account the stories told by

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 73 ]

47

other people—​their versions of what happened and how they experienced the events. If there is such a thing as a truth about a life, it is always a product of intersubjective dialogue. No one has a monopoly to such a truth, whether it concerns one’s own or someone else’s life.

NARRATIVE WEBS AND SUBJECTS OF EXPERIENCE: A DIALOGICS

A crucial aspect of the narrative hermeneutics developed here is a dialogical conception of narrative and subjectivity. It emphasizes that cultural webs of narratives only exist through individual interpretations, and individual subjects are constituted in relation to cultural narrative webs. This is a two-​way reciprocal relationship. Acknowledging this dialogical reciprocity allows us to avoid reification of social systems and to account for both the agency and the socially conditioned nature of subjectivity. I will here focus on dialogics from an ontological perspective, analyzing the structurally dialogical constitution of subjectivity; in the following chapters (particularly in Chapters 3 and 7), I will discuss dialogicality from an ethical perspective, as a form of relationality animated by an ethos of dialogue. Individual lives are always already embedded in sociocultural and historical worlds. Our subjectivity is from the beginning relational: we become who we are through a dialogue with our significant others, and this dialogue takes place in broader social frameworks. Several hermeneutically oriented literary and cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers share this view and emphasize the “fundamentally dialogical character” of human existence (Taylor, 1991, p. 33). One of the first thinkers to develop an explicit account of the dialogical structure of subjectivity was the literary theorist Bakhtin, the father of “dialogism,” whose thinking is closely linked to philosophical hermeneutics: Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life. . . . He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium. (1984, p. 293)32

A dialogical approach to narrative identity emphasizes that our actions and identities are never entirely our own.33 We live in a social world in which all meanings—​including those of our actions and identities—​are intersubjectively negotiated and are not determined by any single individual. We are entangled in systems of meaning that precede us and shape

[ 74 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

our experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Taylor articulates this idea by arguing that we become who we are in “webs of interlocution”: we become selves in “an ongoing conversation” with those around us (1989, pp. 35–​ 36). Seyla Benhabib (1999, 2002) emphasizes the role of narratives in these webs and uses the terms “webs of interlocution” and “webs of narrative” interchangeably: We are born into webs of interlocution or into webs of narrative—​from the familial and gender narratives to the linguistic one to the macronarrative of one’s collective identity. We become who we are by learning to be a conversation partner in these narratives. (1999, p. 344)

According to the dialogical conception of subjectivity and identity that emerges from this line of thought, narrative identity, agency, and subjectivity take shape in a dialogic relation to cultural webs of narratives. At play here is a multifaceted dynamic, which can be analyzed in a differentiated manner by distinguishing between three levels of dialogical subjectivity, aspects of which include narrative agency and narrative identity. First, we are constituted through dialogic interaction with others. Second, this interaction makes us internalize subject positions and voices so that an internal dialogue between different voices becomes a crucial aspect of our becoming subjects. Third, we are constituted through a dialogue with cultural narrative models of sense-​making. These three levels are interdependent, but we can differentiate between them for analytical purposes. Let us take the first and start with the observation that both in childhood and throughout our lives we engage in narrative sense-​making that is essentially collaborative and dialogical, a process of co-​telling and co-​ construction.34 As McLean (2015) puts it, identity must be constructed, and it is always constructed with others:  identities are co-​authored. She emphasizes that the need for identity, “like hunger and thirst, is part of our survival instinct and thus a powerful compeller of human behavior”; it underlies “many of the conflicts in the world, from simple road rage to outright war” (pp. 2–​3). The dialogic process of social interaction is a temporal process, and it has a developmental aspect. From the earliest infancy, our subjectivity begins to develop through dialogic relationships with our caregivers. This includes developing skills that we need to construct a narrative identity. Children begin to tell stories about their lives early in development, and parents scaffold their emerging narrative skills, thereby reinforcing their child’s temporal sense of self (Fivush, Haden & Reese, 2006; McLean &

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 75 ]

67

Mansfield, 2012). Narrative identity emerges in adolescence and is rooted in the earlier development of narrative competence: The social practice of sharing stories provides opportunities to articulate one’s own feelings and thoughts about events, as well as opportunities for another person to validate, challenge, or help to construct that story. A robust area of research has shown that parents scaffold their children’s early narrative development by helping children to organize and interpret past events by elaborating on those events with their children and by supporting the child’s point of view via confirming the child’s contributions to the conversation. (McLean & Mansfield, 2012, pp. 436–​437)

The narrative competence that the child acquires is not merely a cognitive competence; a complex set of interdependent factors are involved, including aspects of affectivity, tone, and mood. Our early experiences of attachment have the power to set a narrative “tone” for our future constructions of narrative identity (McAdams, 2006, p. 217). As Lindemann analyzes, it is in “endorsing, testing, refining, discarding, and adding stories, and then acting on the basis of that ongoing narrative work” that families participate in constructing and maintaining their children’s narrative identities, as well as helping them to develop into moral agents (2014, pp. 85, 89–​93). In addition to the developmental perspective, an interactional and performative perspective is important for understanding the dialogical constitution of subjectivity. Drawing on Goffman’s (1959) idea of the self as performed in social interaction, contemporary conceptualizations of narrative as performance of identity emphasize that identity is an ongoing process of performing for others in social situations. As Catherine K. Riessman puts it, “one can’t be a ‘self’ by oneself, identities must be accomplished in ‘shows’ that persuade” (2003, p.  7). Social actors stage performances of selves that they or others perceive as desirable in given social situations, and these performances have a narrative dimension. Emily Heavey emphasizes that storytelling is always “an embodied process”:  processes of telling stories are “performative exchanges between the interlocutors, and exchanges which draw on their lived, embodied experiences” (2015, p. 430–​431). Lindemann, in turn, observes that performances of narrative identity are largely habitual and involve actors, scripts—​socially shared narratives that “govern conduct in specific situations” and show how we are expected to act and can expect others to respond—​and an audience, which in everyday narrative interaction consists of co-​actors who respond to the identity performed to them, for example by reinforcing or challenging it (2014, p. 98).

[ 76 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Narrative identities are negotiated in dialogic interaction not only with persons, but also with different kinds of others, including literary works. Philosophical hermeneutics uses the dialogical model to emphasize that works of art are not objects, but subject-​like “partners in dialogue” (Gadamer, 1997, pp. 358–​361): they have power to disclose the world in a certain way, and entering in a dialogue with them requires that we do not merely appropriate them with our own theoretical-​conceptual tools, but expose ourselves to them and engage with them from a position shaped by our own experiences, values, and beliefs. Felski, drawing on Bruno Latour’s (2005) actor-​network theory, explicates the approach to agency in which the actor is “not a solitary self-​governing subject who summons up actions and orchestrates events”: “Rather, actors only become actors via their relations with other phenomena, as mediators and translators linked in extended constellations of cause and effect” (Felski, 2015, p. 164). Literary works are actors that “ ‘make available’ certain options of moving through them,” possibilities that are “taken up in wildly varying ways by empirical readers” (p. 165). Aligning myself with this broad conception of agency, I am interested in the ways in which dialogues with literary narratives can expand our repertoire of possible selves, modes of experience, and visions of a fulfilling life. In Chapter 3, I will analyze in more detail the ethical potential of dialogic encounters with literary narratives for the cultivation of self-​understanding. Second, that we are dialogically constituted refers not only to our dialogic exchange with concrete others; the process of socialization also involves the internalization of different voices and subject positions. We engage in a constant dialogue between different voices and perspectives within ourselves. It is in this sense that Gadamer writes about the “dialogical structure of thinking” (2001, p. 57). In the spirit of an affective hermeneutics, it should be acknowledged that this structure applies not only to thinking, but also to our affective orientations and attachments. Psychologists who have brought Bakhtin to a psychological context, most influentially Hubert J. M. Hermans (2001, 2015; see also Hermans et  al., 1992; Raggatt, 2006), draw on his views on the dialogic nature of human existence and on the polyphonic novel as a narrative in which different voices enter into a dialogue without any one voice dominating the others: [W]‌e conceptualize the self in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I positions in an imaginal landscape. . . . The I fluctuates among different and even opposed positions. The I has the capacity to imaginatively

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 77 ]

87

endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between positions can be established. (Hermans et al., 1992, p. 28)

The polyphonic character of the dialogical self makes salient the multiplicity inherent in narrative subjectivity and links it to our capacity to perceive the world from multiple perspectives. Instead of a monologue, a life story is, according to Raggatt, “really more like a conversation of narrators, or perhaps a war of historians in your head,” and we should pay attention not only to the diachronic, but also to the synchronic aspects of this dialogue (2006, p. 16). By using positioning theory, psychologists and social scientists have emphasized that “dialogical relationships take place between positioned interlocutors” (Hermans, 2015, p. 280), not only between different selves, but also within one and the same self. An important part of a child’s development is “positioning, repositioning, and contrapositioning itself to the world of social relationships,” which includes learning to “reverse positions” and “take the perspective of others” (p. 280). Positioning theory has been used to theorize the self not “as a stable and continuous point of consciousness but as a product of dialogical relations in a field or landscape of I-​positions” as it interacts with others in the world via a repertoire of “internalized voices” that embody these I-​positions (Raggatt, 2006, p. 18). These affectively charged voices are frequently in conflict; unlike most mainstream psychological theories, positioning theory acknowledges that “conflict and opposition may be a normal part of our subjectivity” (p. 19). These internalized voices can be our constructions of the voices of concrete others, such as our parents, teachers, or friends, or of a “generalized other,” or they can be voices linked to subject positions that we have constructed for ourselves, such as “me as a daughter” or “me as a student.” Our sense of different subject positions is essential to our capacity to perceive the world from different perspectives. According to Hermans, Harry Kempen, and Rens Van Loom, the “dialogical self can be seen as a multiplicity of I positions or as possible selves” (1992, p. 30). They argue against the “culturally based shrinking and centralization of the self”—​the ideal of one central core self that dominates the other I-​positions and reduces “the possibility of dialogue that for its full development requires a high degree of openness for the exchange and modification of perspectives” (p. 30)—​and suggest that while “possible selves (e.g., what one would like to be or may be afraid of becoming) are assumed to constitute part of a multifaceted self-​concept with one centralized I position,” the “dialogical self has the character of a decentralized, polyphonic narrative with a multiplicity of I positions” (p. 30).35

[ 78 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

I agree that the emphasis on dialogue functions against centralized models of subjectivity, but I  see no reason why the notion of “possible selves” should imply the dominance of one central self. In a similar vein to Ricoeur’s idea of the “imaginative variations” of the self (1992, p. 148) that can give the reader an “enlarged self” (1991a, 88), possible selves can indicate different possibilities of thinking, acting, and experiencing, and how different possibilities are open to us in divergent social situations. The cultivation of narrative imagination—​through literature, for example, and in a dialogue with others—​can be seen as a way of expanding the repertoire of subject positions that are available to us through the prevalent narrative imaginary. I suggest extending the notion of internal dialogue to encompass the dialogue between different possible selves that our narrative imagination produces. It is also important to acknowledge that in practice the different internalized voices or subject positions are not clear-​cut or fixed but dynamic, constantly shifting, merging into one another, and they take shape through both conscious and unconscious interpretative processes. This dynamic would merit more attention in positioning theory, which currently uses metaphors—​most importantly that of “the self as a society of I-​positions” (Hermans, 2015, p. 291)—​that seem to assume the existence of relatively separate and stable I-​positions. Third, we become who we are in dialogue with cultural systems of meaning, including culturally mediated models of narrative sense-​making. This third aspect is not separate from the other two: it pervades them because our interaction with others and the subject positions that we internalize are socioculturally mediated. We can abstract this third level from the other two for analytical purposes, but in reality it only exists through the social and cultural interactive processes in which cultural models of sense-​making are interpreted and internalized. That cultural systems of meaning are dialogically constituted is a perspective that has not been prevalent in psychology, critical theory, social sciences, or philosophy (other than hermeneutic philosophy). It is linked to a particular conception of the sociocultural sphere, including language and other social practices. Dialogic thinkers like Gadamer and Bakhtin emphasize that language is intrinsically dialogic: it exists first and foremost contextually and situationally in the form of a conversation embedded in a sociohistorical world: Each utterance is filled with echoes and reverberations of other utterances to which it is related by the communality of the sphere of speech

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 79 ]

08

communication. . . . With meaning I give answers to questions. Anything that does not answer a question is devoid of sense for us. (Bakhtin, 1986, pp. 91, 145)

Since language lives in and through discourse embedded in social contexts, every word comes to us “from another context, permeated with the interpretations of others” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 202). While structuralists believed that language exists primarily in the form of a language system (langue), for philosophical hermeneutics language only exists through “the conversation that we ourselves are” (Gadamer, 1997, p. 378), that is, through the intersubjective, temporal process of being used. It exists in the dialogic interaction between individual embodied, situated subjects with divergent “socio-​linguistic points of view” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 273). The use of the language system can never be mechanical. In “applying” language to particular situations, we necessarily engage in interpretation. Language and individual subjects are interdependent: the subjects become who they are in and through language, and language exists through individual subjects’ continuous interpretative processes. The same applies to narrative webs: they only exist via individual interpretations. It is part of “the dialogical structure of all understanding” (Gadamer, 2001, p.  57) that general models of sense-​making are interpreted in particular historical situations, and these interpretations, in turn, participate in shaping the meaning of the general models. This is a “non-​subsumptive” model of language, the ethical implications of which I will discuss in Chapter 3. The hermeneutic insight that social structures only exist through the temporal process of being interpreted has emancipatory significance. As Manfred Frank puts it, “[p]‌recisely this is the fundamental idea of hermeneutics, namely, that symbolic orders, as opposed to natural laws, are founded in interpretations; hence  .  .  .  they can be transformed and transgressed by new projections of meaning” (1989, p. 6).36 In other words, hermeneutics acknowledges the role of individual subjects in reinterpreting—​and potentially transforming—​cultural systems of meaning. Narrative models of sense-​making cannot determine how we use them to make sense of our experiences. Our relation to them is a possibility relationship, and there is always scope for alternative, creative reinterpretations. Because they only exist through interpretative practices, narrative models of sense-​making can be questioned and changed, even if in practice this may be difficult, particularly in the case of naturalizing narratives that appear as inevitable, camouflaging themselves as a simple reflection of the order of things. The process of (re)interpreting narrative webs is mostly unconscious, and it is inextricably linked to dynamics of power. Benhabib acknowledges that “we do not choose the webs in whose nets we are initially caught or

[ 80 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

select those with whom we wish to converse” (1999, p. 344), but she suggests that our agency consists in our capacity to weave a unique “life story” (p. 344) within these webs. Without subscribing to the idea of a single “life story,” I share her view that we are not mere effects of cultural narrative webs. However, we should also acknowledge the role of power dynamics with regard not just to the narrative webs, but also to the constitutive role that power relationships play when it comes to the subject who exercises narrative agency by following and interpreting certain narrative models. Amy Allen makes an important point in arguing that although Benhabib “offers a rich and subtle account of the self” (2008, p. 162), she is not sufficiently alert to how power not only structures the options we have in constructing our life stories, but also constitutes the subject who chooses between and negotiates various narratives: “After all, is not the I who asks ‘(how) ought I identify with this or that gender narrative,’ insofar as it is embodied and concrete, already gendered?” (p. 165). As Butler puts it, “my narrative begins in media res, when many things have already taken place to make me and my story possible in language” (2005, p. 39). And even when we are able to practice narrative agency in relation to our identities, life choices, and values, we are implicated in narrative webs that perpetuate structures of violence that most of us can only change, at best, in a very limited way. This does not mean, however, that the subject is a mere effect of power structures. As Foucault articulates, power is not only constraining but also productive, and it enables agency. This Foucauldian perspective allows us to acknowledge that the dialogic dynamic in which we are constituted is a process of subjectification in two senses: it makes us internalize social power structures and become governed from within, and it makes possible our becoming subjects and agents capable of acting in the world. While poststructuralist theories often downplay agency and individualist-​humanist theories power and social embeddedness, a Foucauldian-​ hermeneutic approach allows rethinking narrative subjectivity in nuanced terms that give due attention to both agency and social embeddedness.37 Poststructuralist theories often prefer to talk about repetition as the mechanism through which social practices and structures are perpetuated, but this notion—​by avoiding any reference to human subjectivity or agency—​fails to explain why repetition is “never merely mechanical” (Butler, 1997, p. 16).38 The advantage of hermeneutic terminology is that it makes explicit, through the key notions of (re)interpretation and dialogue, the subject’s role as an agent of (re)interpretation, and it therefore captures how, in speech acts, we not only reiterate but also (potentially creatively) reinterpret linguistic and social—​including narrative—​practices.39

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 81 ]

28

Therefore, it allows us to conceptualize the relationship between individual subjects and sociocultural structures without reifying them. Because the sociocultural systems of meaning, including narrative webs, cannot determine how they will be interpreted, and all interpretation takes place in different sociohistorical situations, ultimately all understanding is characterized by the structure of “always-​understanding-​differently” (“Immer-​ anders-​Verstehen,” Gadamer, 1993a, p. 8). In a similar vein, Bakhtin asserts that all understanding is “reinterpretation, in a new context” (1986, p. 161). According to the performative conception, narrative interpretation always takes part, through a dialogue of interpretations, in shaping reality. Often the dialogue takes the form of a dispute or conflict. The struggle for power is essentially a struggle of interpretations, in which narratives play a crucial role. The individuals and communities whose versions of the world are accepted as valid—​the ones whose stories win over people’s hearts and minds—​have power, including the power to affect what is perceived as true and false, right and wrong. Not only politicians, historians, and novelists participate in this dialogue and dispute of interpretations; we do so in our everyday lives, in our most mundane choices, and through our mostly unconscious participation in cultural sense-​making practices. The dialogue with cultural narrative models is largely automatized: culturally dominant narratives affect us through our narrative unconscious. Here the unconscious is not understood as a container of repressed thoughts (as in classical psychoanalytic thought) but as dynamic, changing, intersubjectively constituted, and narratively mediated.40 The narrative unconscious exists through a process of unconscious interpretation. Without being aware of it, we interpret and reiterate the cultural models of sense-​making ingrained in our narrative unconscious, and there is an element of contingency and unpredictability in how they become (re)interpreted and reproduced in different situations. The narrative unconscious does not predetermine our actions in any automatic way. The narrative unconscious has both a sociocultural and an individual dimension. They interpenetrate one another, but we can distinguish between them for analytical purposes. The sociocultural unconscious consists in the culturally prevalent narrative models that shape the way people make sense of their experiences without being aware of it. It is the basis of the narrative imaginary of societies and communities. Through the sociocultural narrative unconscious, we are implicated in narrative mechanisms that perpetuate and legitimate oppressive social systems. The individual narrative unconscious is shaped by our earliest attachments, the internalized narrative models by which we live, models that tell us what is desirable and appalling, admirable and shameful, “normal” and “abnormal.” The

[ 82 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

individual aspect also includes the level of felt, embodied experiences that are mediated culturally and through earlier life history, but without this mediation reaching the level of consciousness. The individual narrative unconscious can perpetuate harmful—​even traumatizing and paralyzing—​ emotional patterns that we unknowingly repeat. It is important for the dialogical conception of subjectivity and narrative to acknowledge the normativity—​and hence the potential for oppression—​ inherent in cultural narratives. They present us with cultural ideals and norms and suggest that while certain things are possible, likely, desirable, or acceptable for us—​given our gender, race, class, age, looks—​others are impossible, unlikely, undesirable, or inacceptable. Narrative identities are ascribed to us on the basis of our visual appearance and social status. These ascribed identities do not automatically determine who we are: it is crucial how we respond to the labels imposed on us.41 The need to engage with the ascribed identities, however, shows that narrative identity is not simply a matter of autonomous, self-​sufficient self-​interpretation. It is a dialogical, often highly anguished and conflicted process that involves both self-​interpretation and engagement with the identities into which we have been “interpellated” as well as with those that we have “self-​fashioned.”42 It is often painful not to conform to “cultural categories and popular story templates”: “We often anticipate a narrative for ourselves based on what society declares is possible for us, and we can derive great satisfaction when we fulfill these narratives and feel crushing disappointment when we do not” (Josselson & Hopkins, 2015, p. 223). This is one major reason why the struggle to expand the repertoire of socially available narratives—​and hence our sense of possible selves—​matters. We are unaware of the narrative unconscious that regulates our narrative interpretations, but we can become partly aware of it, and when that happens, elements of the narrative unconscious can become an active part of our narrative imagination. We can then critically evaluate which aspects of our narrative unconscious we want to preserve and cherish and which aspects we want to question and challenge. Becoming aware of our narrative unconscious can be an avenue for breaking free from some of its delimiting aspects and cultivating a richer narrative imagination, but we should also acknowledge the following qualifications: it is generally easier for subjects in privileged positions to engage in critical self-​reflection; even when we resolutely engage in such reflection, it is not always sufficient in freeing us from our deep-​seated affective attachments, habits, and anxieties; and even when we succeed in self-​transformation, it does not stop us from being implicated in broader problematic narrative webs that we may object to but from which we continue to benefit (such as those that maintain First World privilege).43

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 83 ]

48

IN MEDIAS RES: THE STRUGGLE OF INTERPRETATIONS

In this chapter, I have outlined some of the key aspects of narrative hermeneutics, particularly by focusing on the relationship of narrative to experience and life, as well as on the dialogic relationship between narrative interpretation and cultural narrative webs. Not only do narrative and experience have an interpretative structure, but so do memory and imagination; I zoomed in on the relationship between experience and narrative in a discussion that will form the basis for my later reflections on remembering, imagining, and different practices of dialogue. The focus here was on three advantages of privileging the hermeneutic-​ Nietzschean conception of interpretation: it allows us to conceptualize the relationship between experience and narrative in terms of an interpretative continuum; it provides a framework for seeing life as a process of constant narrative reinterpretation; and it enables us to see the relationship between subjects of experience and cultural narratives as dialogical and entwined with practices of power. In addition to these three advantages, a fourth major advantage of this kind of narrative hermeneutics is that it allows us to move beyond the dichotomous question of whether narratives are good or bad for us and to appreciate the ethical complexity of narratives in our lives. This will be the topic of the next chapter. In this chapter we have seen that ontological assumptions affect the position that theorists take on the ethical significance of storytelling. Arguments on the inherent ethical harmfulness of narrative rely on (mostly tacit) ontological presuppositions about unmediated raw experience that is allegedly falsified by its retrospective narrative interpretation. Acknowledging the cultural, historical, and narrative mediatedness of experience problematizes such views, but does not imply that narratives should be seen as automatically good for us. I find problematic not only the antinarrativist belief in the ethical questionability of narratives, but also the strong narrativist contention that storytelling is inherently beneficial for us. The dialogical, performative, and culture-​oriented approach of narrative hermeneutics allows us to shift attention from the argument over whether narrative sense-​making is harmful or beneficial to the complex dynamic in which storytelling has potential for both good and evil. According to narrative hermeneutics, to interpret one’s life is to interpret it in medias res, in the middle of the process of living it, and in the middle of engaging in a dialogue with other people’s interpretations. Much of this interpretative activity takes the shape of dialogic storytelling. One of the key ideas of narrative hermeneutics is that in ethically evaluating

[ 84 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

different narrative practices it is crucial to acknowledge their interpretative character:  that every version of a story is a different interpretation, and that these interpretations and the dialogue and struggle between them take place in social contexts. Conceptualizing narratives as practices of interpretation, enmeshed with other socially and historically situated dialogical practices, allows us to see how it is an inherent feature of every narrative that it can be told in different ways, and how our condition as storytelling animals is one of always being in the middle of a dialogue and struggle of interpretations. Ultimately, this dialogue is the very dialogue in which the ethical life of society unfolds.

NOTES 1. On the notion of “etwas als etwas,” see also Heidegger (1996, pp. 58, 139) and Gadamer (1997, p. 90). 2. Already the choice of words indicates an interpretation. For example, the British media predominantly now refers to the “migrant crisis” instead of the “refugee crisis” (which was in 2015 the dominant term). This discursive shift signals a linking of the refugee crisis to broader issues of migration that the media construes as a “migrant problem”: the “crisis” is no longer linked to the desperate situation of the refugees, but signifies the crisis of Great Britain facing a “swarm” of non-​British people. While the “refugee crisis” was a potentially more empathetic term (a refugee is a person in need, someone to whom we have a responsibility), the “migrant crisis” portrays migrants as a threat and treats as one group people—​Syrian asylum seekers, Polish workforce, radicalized Muslims—​who in fact have very little in common. Particularly in the tabloids the discourse on the “migrant crisis” was from early on blended with the antimigration discourse that formed the foundation of the Leave campaign of the British EU referendum. 3. Here Ricoeur distances hermeneutics from the Hegelian idea of total mediation, a distancing that is elemental to philosophical hermeneutics in general (see Gadamer, 1997, pp. 353–​361). 4. Felski uses the notion of affective hermeneutics (2015, p. 178); I see my own narrative hermeneutics as aligned with this project. 5. While in classical hermeneutics the hermeneutic circle signified the methodological principle according to which we should interpret the parts of a text in relation to the whole and the whole in relation to the parts and move in the circle to deepen and enrich our view of both, Schleiermacher (1977) argued that the same applies to the psychological understanding of lives: we should interpret a particular thought or episode in the context of the whole life and vice versa. On the hermeneutic circle in twentieth-​century hermeneutics, see Heidegger (1996, pp. 143–​144); Gadamer (1997, pp. 266–​269); Ricoeur (1984, pp. 72, 76). 6. On the productivity of narratives in a Foucauldian approach to narratives, see Tamboukou (2013). Representational approaches appear less problematic, however, if we understand representation as a mode of reconfiguration,

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 85 ]

68

recontextualization, and reinterpretation, rather than in terms of mirroring or reproducing a preexisting order. 7. Many critics of narrative have in mind a much narrower conception. When Strawson (2004), for example, attacks narrativity, he assumes that narrative attributes a “developmental and hence temporal unity or coherence to the things to which it is standardly applied—​lives, parts of lives, pieces of writing” (p. 439). Others use the notion of coherence in a much looser sense to define narrative. Goldie (2012), for example, seems to mean by coherence simply some way of “holding together” the narrated events: narrative “must be about one thing happening after another, and the notion of coherence is concerned with how these things happening one after another hold together in some way” (p. 14). 8. As Goldie (2012) puts it, in narrative “the evaluation and emotional response themselves infuse the narrative, shaping and colouring it” (p. 11). They are ingrained in the author’s, narrator’s, and reader’s narrative process. 9. See also Cohn (1999, p. 12); Herman (2006, p. 32). 10. Levinas acknowledges the possibility of language to “exceed the limits of what is thought” as it “overflows the theme it states, the ‘all together,’ the ‘everything included’ of the said” (1991, pp. 169–​170), but he links this possibility to poetic rather than narrative discourse. On Levinas’s relationship to narrative and literature, see Davis (1996, p. 92, and 2018, pp. 148–​162); Meretoja (2014b, p. 88). 11. On “hermeneutic imagination,” see also Gadamer (2000, pp. 16–​17). 12. See also Ricoeur’s (1991a, pp. 208–​222) analysis of “initiative,” which “has its seat in the flesh,” in the “system of possibilities of the flesh” (p. 215). 13. Strawson’s article has become strikingly influential among analytical philosophers who work on narrative. Currie, for example, writes that some people “may think that some act of narrative production is a condition for the flourishing, or perhaps even for the existence, of that life. Galen Strawson has shown, I think, that this is not true” (2010, p. 24). In narrative psychology and literary studies, in contrast, Strawson has received fierce criticism (see, e.g., Eakin, 2006; Battersby, 2006; Ritivoi, 2009). For philosophical refutations of his position, see Schechtman (2007); Mackenzie (2008). 14. Schechtman observes that in “Against Narrativity,” Strawson does not explicitly take up the issue of the relationship between ontological and phenomenological conceptions of the self; she suggests that he must be thinking about the phenomenological self as he discusses “how we do and should experience ourselves” (2007, p. 174). I would argue, however, that the force of the “should” in Strawson’s argument comes largely from his (tacit) ontological conviction about the true nature of the self. 15. As Ritivoi asserts, the “absence of the social domain” is remarkable in Strawson’s thinking: he fails to acknowledge that whether “an individual is more likely to perceive herself episodically or diachronically” is “influenced by social pressures, demands, and expectations” (2009, p. 30). 16. On the intertwinement of the ontological and ethical dimension of the question concerning the relationship between narrative and human existence, see also Meretoja (2014a, 2014b). 17. Freeman makes a similar point: “For those theorists who see memory and narrative as inevitable sources of distortion and falsification, the truth is limited to that which exists in the immediate, ostensibly unvarnished, moment” (2015, p. 239).

[ 86 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

18. This perspective is also implicit in the Brunerian approach to how culturally dominant “canonical narratives” affect experience. 19. See Brockmeier & Meretoja (2014); Meretoja (2014b); Bruner (1987); Kerby (1991, pp. 42–​43); Freeman (1993, pp. 108–​111, and 2013). 20. On my model of the “triple hermeneutic” and its relation to Ricoeur’s three levels of mimesis, see also Meretoja (2014a). 21. On dialogical intertextuality, see Meretoja (2014b, pp. 131–​137); on internarrativity, see Meretoja (2018, pp. 110–​118). 22. On strong narrativism, see Meretoja (2014b, pp. 198, 207). 23. The idea(l) of the unity of the life narrative also underpins the life myth theory of McAdams (1993). 24. Both the Nietzschean and the hermeneutic traditions emphasize that the interpretative process takes place from the horizon of the present. See, e.g., Nietzsche (1999b, p. 77) and Gadamer (1997, pp. 296–​297). 25. Frank (1995) groups cultural illness narratives in the three broad categories of restitution narratives, chaos narratives, and quest narratives. See also Hyvärinen (2015, pp. 187–​189). 26. Schechtman (2007) analyzes how our narrative constitution as selves involves making certain parts of our past our own through affective identification, but she does not consider other forms of affective identification that shape our identities. I will discuss identification in more detail in Chapters 3, 5, and 6. 27. “Alle Menschen sind Künstler.” 28. Schechtman follows suit: “we constitute ourselves as persons by forming a narrative self-​conception according to which we experience and organize our lives” (2007, p. 162; 1996). She elaborates on her earlier narrative self-​ constitution thesis by emphasizing that it involves “no requirement that an identity-​constituting narrative have a unifying theme, or represent a quest or have a well-​defined plot arc that fits a distinct literary genera” (2007, p. 163) and by distinguishing between the narrative constitution of personhood and of a sense of self. 29. Randall & McKim, for example, write about a “lived story” (2008, p. 71); see also Dwivedi & Gardner (1997, p. 21); Johnson (1993, p. 177). 30. Many narrative theorists argue that a narrative must always be told to someone, but Goldie (2012, pp. 3–​6) argues convincingly that it need only be thought through (or told to oneself). 31. Goffman already acknowledged the limitations of the dramaturgical metaphor: “the part one individual plays is tailored to the parts played by the others present, and yet these others also constitute the audience” (1959, preface). 32. For a similar dialogical position, see Gadamer (1997, pp. 369–​379; 2001, pp. 54–​57). 33. Bakhtinian approaches to psychology (see Shotter & Billig, 1998, pp. 22–​23) and poststructuralist approaches to narrative (see Davis, 2004, p. 150) share this insight. 34. On co-​telling, see Ochs & Capps (2001); Schiff (2017). 35. I use the (Foucault-​influenced) concept of subject position precisely because the sociocultural approach is infused into this concept. In Chapter 7, I discuss in more detail the need to give more weight to the sociohistorically conditioned nature of the dialogical self.

N a r r at i v e H e r m e n e u t i c s  

[ 87 ]

8

36. As Gadamer articulates, the same applies to any application of rules: “there is no doubt that the recipient of an order must perform a definite creative act in understanding its meaning” (1997, p. 334). 37. The productive aspect of power is not widely acknowledged by mainstream psychology, but it is integral to many socioculturally oriented approaches to narrative (e.g., Tamboukou, 2013). 38. On the relationship between the dialectical and the dialogical in Bakhtin’s thought, see Bakhtin (1981, p. 278; 1986, p. 147); Meretoja (2014b, pp. 167–​ 170, 239n18). My use of “dialogical” implies no consensus on the matter of the dialogue. 39. For a similar position, see Benhabib (1999). For a more detailed discussion of the exchange between Benhabib and Butler, see Meretoja (2014b, pp. 170–​171). 40. See the discussion in Chapter 1, and Josselson & Hopkins (2015, p. 225). 41. As Sugarman puts it in his discussion of historical ontology, the “kinds of persons we are told we are, told to be, treated as, by which we recognize ourselves, with which we identify, against which we compare ourselves, and so forth, have a constitutive influence” (2013, p. 84). 42. On the tension between these two, see Kirschner (2015, p. 303); on interpellation, see Althusser (2014, pp. 189–​196, 264–​269). 43. The limits of critical self-​reflection could be illustrated, for example, by a case in which a white woman fights consciously and resolutely against racism but nevertheless cannot help being afraid when she encounters a black man on a quiet, dark street.

[ 88 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

CHAPTER 3

Storytelling and Ethics

T

his chapter explores the ethical implications of the hermeneutic approach to narrative and delineates a framework for analyzing different aspects of the ethical potential and dangers of storytelling. In the previous chapter we saw that those who agree on the ontological significance of narrative for human existence mostly also stress the ethical potential of storytelling, but different theorists foreground different aspects of this potential. Arguments commonly presented on the ethical benefits of narrative can be roughly grouped in the following categories: narrative is the key to a self-​examined, responsible life; narrative makes possible an ethical relationship to the other; narrative is a means of sharing experiences in ways that contribute to a sense of connection and community; narrative develops our capacity for empathetic perspective-​taking; and narrative is a form of moral education or cultivates our moral powers. In this chapter, I  will discuss these arguments in the context of a hermeneutic narrative ethics. In all five groups of arguments, I find valuable insights, but also a need to qualify them in order to avoid a problematic idealization of narrative. I will develop here a hermeneutic narrative ethics that provides a schematic map for differentiating between six aspects of the ethical potential and problems of different storytelling practices. (1) I propose that a pivotal but neglected aspect of the ethical potential of narratives is their power to cultivate our sense of the possible: I argue that narrative form in itself does not make narratives either good or bad, and what is ethically crucial is whether and how they expand or diminish our sense of the possible. After outlining this idea, I will use it as a vantage point to discuss the five other types of ethical potential, which will also further elucidate different aspects

09

of the sense of the possible. I argue that narratives can (2) contribute to personal and cultural self-​understanding; (3)  provide an ethical mode of understanding other lives and experiences “non-​subsumptively” in their singularity; (4) establish, challenge, and transform narrative in-​betweens; (5)  develop our perspective-​awareness and our capacity for perspective-​ taking; and (6) function as a mode of ethical inquiry. I emphasize, however, that it is not inherent to narrative that any of these kinds of ethical potential would be automatically realized. Narratives can and often do have the opposite effect. The map of six types of ethical potentials and risks is meant to provide heuristic analytical tools and criteria for evaluating different narrative practices. In all six cases, we face a differentiating continuum—​not a binary—​on which narrative practices can be placed.

A SENSE OF THE POSSIBLE

Robert Musil uses the notion of a “sense of possibility” (Möglichkeitssinn) in his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930–​1943, The Man Without Qualities). The narrator asserts that a person who possesses a sense of possibility does not say: “Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen. He uses his imagination and says: Here such and such might, should or ought to happen. And if he is told that something is the way it is, then he thinks: Well, it could probably just as easily be some other way” (1965, p. 12).1 Such “possibilitarians” live within “the subjunctive mood”; their sense of the possible is not the opposite of a sense of reality, but “a sense of possible reality” that involves sensitivity to the possibilities that lie within reality and the ability to awaken them (pp. 12–​13; Musil, 1974, pp. 16–​17). Key to the sense of possibility is the ability to see alternatives to what is presented to us as self-​evident and inevitable. While Musil’s narrator suggests that people can be divided into possibilitarians and ordinary people, I believe that we all have a sense of the possible and that there are conditions that expand and diminish it. One of the central claims of this book is that storytelling has ethical potential in its capacity to expand our sense of the possible. This view is linked to the performative approach, according to which narratives do not merely represent reality, but take part in shaping it. The intersubjective world they perpetuate and transform is a space of possibilities in which certain modes of experience, thought, perception, and affect are encouraged, while others are discouraged or rendered impossible. As part of the narrative unconscious, culturally mediated narrative models of sense-​making

[ 90 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

shape what we unconsciously experience to be possible or impossible. Cultural narratives in different media can reinforce the narrative unconscious, or they can play with it and challenge it. Literary narratives draw on the narrative unconscious, but frequently they also venture beyond it, aspiring to enrich our narrative imagination by encouraging us to imagine alternative possibilities of co-​inhabiting the world. The relationship between the narrative unconscious and the narrative imagination shapes our sense of the possible. There is a continuum from blind perpetuation of the narrative unconscious—​in which the narrative unconscious completely dominates the narrative imagination—​to an active, explorative narrative imagination that is characterized by critical self-​reflection, ethical inquiry, and a creative exploration of new modes of being, thinking, and experiencing. At the end of blind perpetuation, narrative understanding typically functions appropriatively—​by subsuming new situations under what is already known—​whereas at the explorative end, narrative understanding functions non-​subsumptively and dialogically, in the mode of a hermeneutic circle whereby encountering new situations changes one’s preconceptions and narrative models of sense-​ making. The latter, explorative mode is characterized by an openness to the unknown and a willingness to imagine other possible ways of living, feeling, and thinking. Hence it has power to expand the sense of the possible. Self-​aware narrative imagination that critically engages with the cultural narrative unconscious nourishes the process of actively constructing one’s own narrative identity instead of remaining entrapped in an identity imposed on oneself from without. Social conditions can foster or impede such active narrative agency: they can empower or paralyze. The ontological, epistemological, ethical, and social are integral, interconnected aspects of the sense of the possible. Let me briefly elucidate this in relation to Miranda Fricker’s (2007) theory of epistemic injustice, which highlights the link between epistemology and ethics. Fricker distinguishes between two forms of distinctively epistemic injustice in which a wrong is done “to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower”: Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word; hermeneutical injustice occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences. (p. 1)

The notion of hermeneutic injustice alerts us to the way in which the interpretative resources available to us place subjects of experience in unequal positions in terms of what kinds of—​and whose—​experiences are ones for which

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 91 ]

29

there is a culturally available rich language for expression, communication, articulation, and recognition. Fricker uses sexual harassment as an example. Before the concept became culturally available, women who experienced what is now known as sexual harassment were often unable to tell anyone what they had experienced, or even understand for themselves what had happened. There are inadequate social resources for understanding certain experiences, and the subjects of those experiences are likely to suffer from hermeneutic injustice. This injustice is predominantly structural: the experiences of members of certain groups are ill understood without it being the fault of anyone in particular or the result of someone’s lack of good will. Fricker shows how relations of power can constrain not only the ability of the majority to understand the experience of socially marginalized individuals, but also the ability of these individuals to “understand their own experience” (p. 147). From the perspective of Fricker’s theory, narrative practices appear unethical insofar as they reinforce and perpetuate social prejudices and stereotypes that are a source of hermeneutic injustice, and ethical insofar as they promote hermeneutic justice by increasing the richness and complexity of our hermeneutic resources, providing tools for understanding the experiences of others and vocabularies for articulating the experiences of socially disadvantaged people. From the perspective of narrative hermeneutics, however, Fricker’s otherwise insightful theory of epistemic injustice is ultimately too narrow in its underlying conception of epistemology and ethics because it leaves out the ontological-​existential dimension of this problematic. What Fricker calls “epistemic injustice” is not only epistemic. It has a strong existential-​ontological dimension: it concerns our very existence and modes of being, our identities and possibilities. It is not only about conveying information and knowledge, not only an exchange of epistemic goods, but a negotiation of styles of existence—​and, at its most extreme, a struggle over the right to exist (as for the Jews in Nazi Germany, or gay people in contemporary Russia). Cultural narrative models of sense-​making are an important part of this negotiation. There are socially available narratives for expressing, communicating, and articulating certain experiences, and underdeveloped resources for expressing, communicating, and articulating others. The social world and its narrative imaginary shape not only what is possible for its inhabitants to know and how they interpret the world, but also what experiences they go through and what and who they can become. In addition to the wrong done to certain groups and individuals in that their experiences are ill understood, the ethical dimension of this dynamic also concerns how certain ways of being and experiencing are privileged and encouraged, while others are discouraged or disallowed.

[ 92 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Thus, I  argue that crucial to the ethical potential of narratives is not only their capacity to enrich the hermeneutic resources available for us in understanding our own experiences and those of others, but also their power to expand the possibilities open to us. These two are linked, as it is difficult to experience things that we cannot name, express, or recognize, so new vocabularies and modes of expression can also open up new possibilities of experience, thought, and action. Precisely through enriching our hermeneutic resources, storytelling practices also open up new possibilities. But even narratives that simply perpetuate dominant sense-​making practices participate in defining the sense of the possible of the inhabitants of that world. Narrative identities not only enable agency, but also diminish our possibilities, particularly when they are imposed on us and linked to the essentialist idea of fixed, stable identities to which individuals are predetermined through their ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, and so on. We also impose limitations on ourselves through our attachments to restricting narrative identities, as when a young woman is attached to the narrative of being too inexperienced, shy, or insecure to take up a position of leadership. Often such identities are shaped by the affective structure of what Lauren Berlant (2011) terms “cruel optimism,” that is, an optimistic attachment to an object of desire that in fact impedes our flourishing, as is frequently the case in fantasies of the good life. Such an affective structure shapes one’s sense of the possible when the object of attachment actively impedes the attainment of the goal that originally drew one to the object: it simultaneously creates a sense of possibility and hinders the realization of that possibility. Such affective structures are typically difficult to register, but counter-​narratives to dominant cultural narratives—​or, in Berlant’s terms, to the prevalent modes of the “ongoing work of storytelling . . . in the making and mediation of worlds” (p.  8)—​can generate awareness of such affective structures and of alternatives to them. Such awareness can help us move from narrative identities imposed on us to narratively imagining possible selves, relationships, and communities, structured by alternative affective identifications, models of cohabitation, and visions of a fulfilling life. A sense of the possible is an important aspect of ethical, narrative, and historical imagination. Rather than think of these three as separate phenomena, I  see them as interconnected dimensions of the multifaceted phenomenon of imagination. More attention could be paid to their interrelations. When moral philosophers like Nussbaum acknowledge the narrative dimension of ethical imagination, they tend to overlook its historical

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 93 ]

49

dimension, and narrative theorists have devoted little explicit attention to the ethical and historical dimensions of narrative imagination. Theorists of historical imagination, like Hayden White, are alert to how narrative practices shape the ways in which historians and non-​historians make sense of the past, but they often skirt the ethical dimension of this process. In the next chapters, I will explore particularly how the sense of the possible is linked to a sense of history, that is, how it is shaped by an understanding of what was possible in a particular historical and cultural world, and how that affects our sense of what is possible for us now and in the future. I suggest that a sense of history promotes our ability to question the ready-​made narrative identities that are imposed on us and to imagine alternative ones. Currently, narrative ethics rarely gives proper consideration to the ethical relevance of such a sense of history. Preliminarily, we can distinguish between four interconnected, ethically charged ways in which narratives contribute to our sense of the possible by cultivating our historical imagination. First, narratives can provide us with insights into what a particular historical world was/​is like as a space of possibilities in which certain things were/​are possible to think, do, and experience, and others difficult or impossible. Literary narratives, films, television series, and other fictional narratives can function as a form of alternative historiography that affords imaginative experiential access to such worlds. They can self-​reflexively explore how cultural narratives shape the space of experience in which individual experience is embedded. This process can generate awareness of the narrative unconscious of a past or present world, that is, of the cultural narrative models that condition the sense-​making practices in that world. Second, narratives can contribute to our sense of the possible by showing how history consists in everyday actions and inactions: that history is not taking place somewhere else, where the political leaders meet, but right here, where our everyday lives unfold. In Claude Simon’s words, “History is not, as the school books would like to make us think, a discontinuous series of dates, treaties and spectacular and clanking battles . . . the dim existence of an old lady is History itself, the very substance of History” (1960, pp. 30–​ 31).2 Narratives can cultivate our sense of how subjects of action are not merely historically conditioned, but also capable of new initiatives; instead of being destined to simply follow dominant cultural narratives, they are capable of shaping those narratives and creating their own. Presenting subjects in the temporal process of initiating action can show how lives unfold in historical situations that function as spaces of possibilities that enable a multitude of courses of action, leading to different futures. Narratives can help us imagine the openness of each historical present as a time of

[ 94 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

action: how the people of the past lived in an indeterminate present and made choices and decisions that shaped history, that is, how their present was not a predetermined part of a linear chain of events, but an open space in which the future was in the process of being made. By refining our sense of how history unfolds through moments in which different possibilities are open to the subjects of action, fiction can work against the reifying tendency to present history as a necessary development. Fiction can nourish our sense of the unpredictability of human actions and interactions—​or what Bruner calls the “alternativeness of human possibility” (1986, p. 53) and Bakhtin (1984, p. 61) and Morson (1994) the indeterminacy and unfinalizability of human actions. Future fictions, in turn, can evoke a sense of how the present is the past of a future present, which can heighten our awareness of how we are now in the process of making that future past and how we are seizing and ignoring possibilities that are open to us: we are encouraged to look at the present in the tense of the future anterior, as the time that will have been.3 Third, narratives can cultivate our sense of how our narrative interpretations of the past shape our space of possibilities in the present and our orientation to the future, and they can enrich our understanding of the different ways in which the past, present, and future are intertwined in divergent modes of experience and political discourse (such as those perpetuating the cultural amnesia in postwar Europe). Literary and autobiographical narratives shape cultural memory by interpreting the past from the perspective of the present, but this memory work is not merely a matter of representing and understanding the past; it also shapes how we perceive our possibilities in the present and for the future. The way in which we understand and narrate what was possible for the agents of past historical worlds affects how we understand what is and will be possible for the inhabitants of the current world. For example, as Europe is now facing the most severe refugee crisis since the Second World War, it is critical how we understand the history of the European project and how we relate the current crisis to forced migration and displacement after the Second World War. In the current Finnish public debate, those who maintain that Syrian or Iraqi asylum seekers should be deported are often reluctant to hear their stories or to remember how Sweden welcomed 100,000 Finnish refugees in September 1944, when the Lapland War broke out between Finland and Germany. Narrative fiction has the potential to contribute to our comparative imagination without positing a problematical identity between different experiences or phenomena.4 Such an aspiration can be seen as the driving impetus of a novel like Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, ging, gegangen (2015, Go, Went, Gone), which explores the encounter between

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 95 ]

69

African refugees in Berlin and a retired classics professor, who felt self-​ alienation after the fall of the Wall: the novel suggests that different experiences of self-​alienation and loss, of feeling like a stranger in one’s own life, could provide a shared starting point for understanding others, such as the refugees who have lost their old lives and have become strangers, not only in their new country, but also to themselves. Fourth, critical to the ethical dimension of remembering is the way in which it is linked to imagination and to the possibility to learn from the past in orienting ourselves to the future. While the past places obligations on us, the “duty to remember,” as Ricoeur puts it, “consists not only in having a deep concern for the past, but in transmitting the meaning of past events to the next generation” and in reflection on the ways in which “we may prevent the same events from recurring in the future” (1999, pp. 9–​ 10). Ricoeur emphasizes the possibility of telling otherwise and letting others tell their own history: “So we have here a work on memory which reverts from past to future, . . . by way of drawing out the exemplary significance of past events” (p. 9). This is a future-​oriented vision of the duty to remember as a duty to learn from the past, so as not to be paralyzed by anger and hatred caused by past injustice, but rather to be able to move forward and struggle against prevailing structures of violence. The power to explore human possibilities in all their temporal dimensions lies at the heart of narrative fiction. This power is emphasized by hermeneutic thinkers, such as Ricoeur, whose notion of “imaginative variations” refers to the ways in which literary worlds can open up possibilities of being that enlarge our “horizon of existence.”5 However, although the ethical potential of storytelling is particularly salient in literary and other artistic narratives, we should acknowledge that all narrative practices take part in shaping our sense of the possible. For example, politicians paint imaginative scenarios of possible futures and envision desirable or destructive versions of the world to come. They frequently use fictional narrative scenarios as rhetorical resources for communicating their visions. Current fictionality studies have helpfully shifted attention from genre-​ based approaches to seeing fictionality as a rhetorical mode that is not bound to the genres of fiction but refers, instead, to “intentionally signalled invention in communication,” also pervasive in non-​fictional communication.6 However, placing the emphasis on the invented character of the imagined risks reinforcing the dichotomy between the actual, factual, and real versus the possible, fictional, and unreal. Imagination plays an important part in everything we do as moral agents, from imagining the

[ 96 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

effects of our actions on other people to imagining the kinds of persons we want to develop into.7 Pitting the imagined against the actual and real impedes scrutiny of the ways in which a sense of the possible structures our ethical universe. I suggest that instead of linking the imaginative dimension of literary narratives to the status of the unreal, it is more productive to analyze the power of narrative fiction to explore possibilities of being in the world in ways that can transform our sense of the possible in the actual world. Currently the question of how the possibilities of human existence explored in fictive worlds can feed into, shape, and transform the possibilities in our real world is lamentably marginal within literary narrative studies. There are, however, also promising developments, such as Felski’s (2015) idea of reading (reminiscent of the Ricoeurian encounter between the world of the text and the world of the reader) as “coproduction between actors” and a recognition of “the text’s status as coactor: as something that makes a difference, that . . . makes things happen” (p. 12).8 Placing ourselves “in front of the text” allows us to reflect on what the text “makes possible” (p. 12).9 The ethical potential of both literary narratives and storytelling practices more broadly is linked precisely to their power to make a difference, to make something possible, to expand our sense of what we can experience, feel, and do. Unlike formalist approaches that see fiction as removed from everyday life and as inviting purely aesthetic, disinterested pleasure, and unlike cultural studies approaches that reduce literary texts to social power structures, narrative hermeneutics entails focusing on what the encounter with the narrative makes possible. From this perspective, ethically most powerful are narratives that are able to enrich our ethical imagination, amplify our moral and narrative agency, and expand our sense of the possible without diminishing the possibilities of others. This can entail, for example, widening our comprehension of the diverse ways in which people can flourish, love, and care, cultivate their creative powers, fight injustice, and celebrate difference. Often it contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms through which we are implicated in narrative webs that sustain the uneven distribution of vulnerability, agency, and possibilities. At the other end of the continuum are ethically problematic narratives that diminish the possibilities of individuals or communities, for example through naturalizing strategies that reinforce harmful cultural stereotypes or fatalistic beliefs that present lives as predestined to follow a certain, inevitable trajectory. Ethically powerful narratives often unmask the mechanisms through which such ethically problematic narratives operate.

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 97 ]

89

SELF-​U NDERSTANDING

Narrative hermeneutics suggests that narratives are integral both to how we understand ourselves and to who we are. These are not separate, because our self-​interpretations play a constitutive role in who we are. This implies that finding new ways of interpreting our lives and of narrating the stories of where we might be going entails the possibility of self-​transformation. As we saw in Chapter 2, in philosophical hermeneutics understanding is a broad concept that has a strong ontological-​existential and ethical dimension:  it encompasses all the experiential and embodied aspects of our being and acting in the world. It is integral to this view that all understanding ultimately also includes a dimension of self-​understanding, which is linked to a sense of one’s possibilities in the world (Gadamer, 1997, p. 260). Heidegger emphasizes that we understand our possibilities—​and, on the basis of them, ourselves—​not by “immanent self-​perception,” but by dwelling in the world, by being thrown (geworfen) into certain concrete possibilities (1996, p. 135). His famous example of how in “the projecting of understanding, beings are disclosed in their possibility” (p. 141) is that we understand what a hammer is insofar as we understand how it allows one to hammer. In this view, understanding is not a narrowly cognitive phenomenon but refers primarily to understanding one’s possibilities in the world. This involves a sense of being able to navigate in “moral space” (Taylor, 1989, pp. 27–​28)—​in a space of possibilities shaped by the narrative webs in which we are entangled. As we saw in Chapter 2, Taylor believes that in order to experience one’s life as worthwhile, one needs to weave “a life story” that takes up one’s whole life as “a meaningful unity” (p. 51). On the basis of similar reasoning, MacIntyre and Ricoeur suggest that narrative self-​interpretation is the condition of possibility for making sense of one’s life as a meaningful continuum for which one can take responsibility: “How, indeed, could a subject of action give an ethical character to his or her own life taken as a whole, if this life were not gathered together in some way, and how could this occur if not, precisely, in the form of a narrative?” (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 158).10 In another passage, Ricoeur identifies “a life examined, in the sense borrowed from Socrates” with “a life narrated” (1991b, p. 435), and suggests that only when we do not see our lives as a mere series of perceptions and events happening to us is it possible to posit ourselves as the responsible subjects of our lives. In such passages, he seems to imply that narrative self-​ reflection almost automatically makes lives more responsible. MacIntyre’s version of this argument is even more problematic: for him, accountability

[ 98 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

requires “the unity of a narrative embodied in a single life,” and, allegedly, “the only criteria for success or failure in a human life as a whole are the criteria of success or failure in a narrated or to-​be-​narrated quest” (1984, pp. 218–​219). However, there is abundant evidence to indicate that a strong narrative identity is no guarantee of self-​responsibility. The Nazis had an exceptionally strong narrative identity as Aryans with a special world-​historical mission, and it could be argued that their project of building their mythical identity involved a form of narrative self-​reflection—​as part of their conscious effort to build a narrative identity that would legitimize their actions. As Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann analyze, Nazism also exemplifies the way in which narrative identities become reified when they are perceived as an “inevitable fate, for which the individual may disclaim responsibility” (1987, p. 108). However, although narrative self-​reflection is not a sufficient condition for taking responsibility for one’s actions, it may be a necessary condition. It is fairly uncontroversial to suggest that narrative self-​reflection is often an avenue to richer self-​understanding, although there are philosophers—​ like Strawson (2004)—​who would deny even this. Arguably, we always already have some kind of implicit narrative understanding—​hermeneutic pre-​understanding—​of our lives in relation to those of others. For example, one thinks of oneself as the kind of person who acts in a certain way in certain social situations: our self-​narratives include elements linked to cultural narrative scripts such as those of a “devoted mother,” a “loyal friend,” a “social phobic,” and so on. Our narrative self-​understanding has direct ethical consequences:  it shapes how we act in the world. As we act, we always already interpret (mostly automatically, without being aware of it) cultural narrative models that are ingrained in our narrative unconscious and that shape how we make sense of our lives. In other words, we have always already understood in some—​better or worse—​way how the events of our lives are narratively connected or disconnected. This understanding is mainly tacit, but it undergirds our actions. As Georgia Warnke articulates from the perspective of Gadamerian hermeneutics, we are “thrown” into a “set of stories that we did not start and cannot finish, but which we must continue in one way or another,” and so we are always already involved in the “practical task” of interpreting in what kinds of stories we are entangled “so that we know how to go on” (2002, pp. 79–​80). To engage self-​reflectively with our implicit understanding of the stories that we have (largely unknowingly) woven of our lives in a dialogical relation to cultural narratives that we may be unconsciously re-​enacting is to bring to the level of consciousness what would otherwise

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 99 ]

01

affect us “behind our backs.”11 Such consciousness can amplify our narrative agency. Narrative self-​reflection has emancipatory significance insofar as it helps us engage critically with our narrative unconscious, that is, with the cultural narrative models that regulate how we understand ourselves and others. When Freeman refers with narrative unconscious to those “aspects of one’s history that remain uncharted and that, consequently, have yet to be incorporated into one’s story” (2010, p. 96), he seems to imply that such integration, through which one sees one’s own life in the context of a longer history, is a positive enlargement of “one’s story.” However, it is also important to acknowledge that it is largely through the narrative unconscious that social prejudices affect us and that we participate in perpetuating structures of violence without being aware of it (for example, through narratives that legitimize the exploitation of animals or precarious subjects, perpetuating First World privilege). Narrative self-​reflection is a means of becoming aware of problematic aspects of the narrative webs in which we are entangled. It is a matter of not just integrating such aspects of the tradition into our “story,” but also of critically engaging with them and exploring possibilities of resistance to and emancipation from them. Critical engagement with the narrative unconscious can expand our narrative imagination and help us find new modes of experience, thought, and action. There are two main forms that narrative self-​reflection can take: telling our own stories and engaging with stories told by others. First, narrative self-​reflection can take place through telling one’s own stories to others or to oneself—​for example, when we reflect on our experiences by writing them down in a diary, or by sharing them with friends over dinner or in social media. As Brockmeier puts it, we engage in “culturally offered options of autobiographical self-​explorations because we live in a world suffused with the assumption that we have to establish our autobiographical identity because we do not already know who we are” (2015, p. 192). People have always shared their experiences through storytelling, but since the beginning of the modern age, storytelling has become entwined with the task of making sense of who we are—​constructing an identity through narrative self-​reflection.12 In weaving our experiences into stories, we make sense of them by linking them together into a meaningful account, by placing them within the context of our lives, the lives of others, and broader historical and cultural developments, depending on the type of narrative self-​reflection that we engage in. As Freeman puts it, the “taking-​stock” type of recollection is a form of “narrative reflection” that performs important “developmental

[ 100 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

work” that is at the same time “ethical work, oriented toward . . . how one ought to live” (2014a, p. 16). When we make sense of our moral responses and reflect on our moral bearings—​for example, in terms of what we consider important and valuable in life—​this requires narrative self-​reflection, which entails a sense of where we are coming from and where we are heading: “as I project my life forward and endorse the existing direction or give it a new one, I project a future story” (Taylor, 1989, p. 48). As Brockmeier reminds us, the autobiographical process takes shape in our ongoing interactions with other people—​not only in moments of introspection and “taking-​stock” but through embodied “interactional narrative performances” in which the “action of telling short and often fragmented stories . . . gives space to manifold forms of social presentations and enactments of one’s identity” (2015, pp. 179, 182). However, everyday narrative interaction is both informed by and informs “larger identities,” and ultimately there is no clear line of division separating “small stories” from “big stories.”13 Most of our narrative interaction is characterized by the interplay between the two. Life-​writing and autobiographical storytelling in its various forms are not only about self-​understanding in the sense of discovering who one is; they are interpretative, performative activities that make it possible for us to become more than we are now, to increase our being, and to fulfill our potential. As Andreea Ritivoi puts it, first-​person storytelling empowers “the individual, because it affords her the ability to control her identity—​ by choosing strategically which events get recounted and how—​through the story she tells” (2009, p. 27). Telling our own story is a way of being the protagonist, the one whose voice is heard and whose experience matters. Drawing on this insight, narrative therapy treats narrative as a tool that “people utilize to formulate what is good for them in life and also to achieve a greater agentic control of their lives” (Vassilieva, 2016, p. 176). Narrative interaction is also connected to self-​esteem and the ability to value oneself. This developmental dimension of storytelling is evident in children. Research suggests that families who are more elaborative in contributing to narratively exchanging perspectives, emotional responses, and views have children with higher self-​esteem (Reese, Bird & Tripp, 2007; Bohanek et  al., 2009). Lindemann analyzes how children acquire moral agency by developing a narratively constituted “self-​ conception” that involves awareness of “what their actions say to others about who they are” (2014, pp. 92–​93): They have to become storytellers. . . . They have to try on the moral values and attitudes they are taught and come either to question them or to claim them as

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 101 ]

02 1

fully their own. They have to act out of their sense of who they are and become aware that others will identify them by how they act. (p. 93)

But this developmental perspective does not apply merely to childhood and adolescence. Throughout our lives, we develop as storytellers, in connection to our broader personal development—​including our development as participants in ethical life. It is in this temporal process that our narrative ethical identity—​our shifting narrative sense of who we are as moral agents—​takes shape. Such development can never become “completed,” because one’s sense of self is linked to understanding one’s historical world and the narrative webs in which one’s life is enmeshed. We are implicated in what is going on in the world around us, including its structures of in­equality, injustice, and violence, and narrative self-​reflection can be a means of understanding the complexity of our responsibility as implicated subjects. Such self-​reflection is also a dimension of our everyday ongoing storytelling practices in which our big stories take shape through small stories that we exchange with family and friends. Telling small stories in social media, for example, functions as a mode of social interaction that serves, among other purposes, the negotiation of our place in what is happening in the world around us, and sometimes it also happens that we understand something about ourselves when we formulate social media posts. Although I am not an active social media user, I do occasionally write Facebook posts, and on the day I heard that the vote to leave the European Union had won the UK referendum, I expressed my first reaction in the following update: “Oh England, feeling like I’ve lost a loved one.” I  was unable to make a sharp political analysis of the meaning of “Brexit,” but I felt devastated, and somehow almost betrayed. When I wrote the post, I realized how my experience of disappointment, loss, and grief was linked to my narrative sense of self. Layers of that experience brought back memories of the time I lived, as an eight-​year-​old, in England with my family for a year—​a year I have always looked back on as the most exciting, memorable, and perhaps happiest of my childhood, as the year of our great family adventure. That year, not only did a whole new world open up for me, but I became aware that “the world” was in fact made up of an infinite number of worlds. I kept in touch with the British girl who was my best friend at the time, and as a 15-​year-​old I told my parents that I was going to go and live with her family for half a year. Her parents welcomed me as their fifth child, and every morning at breakfast I looked at the map of the European Communities on their kitchen wall, the United Kingdom at the center and Finland cut off the map, hoping that one day the Finns and the British would be building a shared European community.

[ 102 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

As the shock of the referendum result hit me, and maps were to be redrawn again, I was unable to say exactly what I had lost; I could only formulate a sentimental statement about losing “England,” but what I had actually lost, I suppose, was my idea of a multicultural, welcoming country that I had experienced—​and, undoubtedly, romanticized—​during my formative years, an idea that was integral to my perception of Europe, and an idea that I lost even more irrevocably after the post-​referendum xenophobic attacks in Britain against EU citizens (including Finns). I realized how important my unarticulated sense of having a connection to Britain as part of Europe was for my narrative identity as a European, and not just as a contingent autobiographical connection, but as a connection through the common European project. That aspect of my identity made it feel vital, at the moment of the catastrophe, that social media made salient—​and contributed to—​the affective connection and sense of solidarity between people across Europe (including the British who wanted to remain in the EU) and beyond Europe (such as the United States), who were not willing to give up on the European project as a project of peace, human rights, and solidarity. Similarly, being part of the Women’s March, the worldwide anti-​Trump protest on January 21, 2017, streamed online in social media, felt like a huge source of hope—​as the beginning of a new global resistance movement—​at a time when I was struggling with anxiety and frustration over Trump’s politics, like millions of other women and men around the world.14 My point here is simply that, like all forms of life-​writing, the exchange of experiences and story fragments in social media, no matter how trivial or mundane, also involves an aspect of narrative self-​reflection in which at stake are our values, what we care for, and what we identify with—​as well as a negotiation of our implicatedness in histories in which we are entangled. Second, narrative self-​reflection and self-​transformation can take place through engagement with literary and other cultural narratives. We reflect on our lives in relation to the narratives we hear and read. The dynamic of the triple hermeneutic (discussed in Chapter 2) is at play as we reinterpret or refigure our self-​interpretations in dialogic encounters with literary and other cultural narratives. Gadamer emphasizes that it is precisely through the encounter of the other that we can become aware of our own preconceptions, and this is central to how literature and the other arts contribute to self-​understanding: Our experience of the aesthetic too is a mode of self-​understanding. Self-​ understanding always occurs through understanding something other than the

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 103 ]

0 41

self. . . . Since we meet the artwork in the world and encounter a world in the individual artwork, the work of art is not some alien universe into which we are magically transported for a time. Rather, we learn to understand ourselves in and through it. . . . (1997, p. 97)

Narrative self-​reflection based on such encounters can provide us with richer hermeneutic resources for understanding our experiences, responses, fears, and desires, as well as the narrative webs in which we are implicated. From a hermeneutic perspective, the other that we encounter in reading a literary narrative is not only a psychologically understood character with whom we would identify as with another human being. Instead, we engage with the otherness of the entire world projected by the literary text, its modes of experience, its overall vision, and the possibilities it opens up. As Ricoeur puts it, narrative fiction proposes to “the reader a vision of the world that is never ethically neutral” (1988, p. 249). Felski (2008) deals with the capacity of literature to promote self-​ understanding under the rubric of “recognition.” The cognitive and the affective are intertwined in this experience, which is shaped by gaining new perspectives on aspects of oneself: Something that may have been sensed in a vague, diffuse, or semi-​conscious way now takes on a distinct shape, is amplified, heightened, or made newly visible. In a mobile interplay of exteriority and interiority, something that exists outside of me inspires a revised or altered sense of who I am. (p. 25)

Felski considers recognition as an important form of identification, which should not be seen merely in terms of empathizing with characters: identification as recognition can take place “at the level of the text’s over-​all project.”15 Acknowledging this allows us to analyze ways in which we can identify with literary works that we admire for their narrative complexity and intellectual design, for example, even when we find their characters problematic. When philosophers and psychologists discuss the ethical significance of narrative fiction, they sometimes deal with literary characters almost as if they were real-​life people. Such an (Nussbaumian) approach seems particularly problematic in much of the experimental literature that rejects realist ideology, such as the works of Kafka, Woolf, or Beckett. In such works, the way we encounter the vision of the world proposed by the work as a whole is more important than our identification with the characters. In modernist and contemporary fiction, it is often an alienating vision that provides us with a fresh angle on our own world. It is in terms of such a vision of

[ 104 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

the world that Gadamer and Ricoeur deal with the ethical dimension of literary works. In this respect, their thinking has important points of contact with that of Jacques Derrida (1992, p. 170), who refers to the “non-​ psychological structure” of literature, noting how essential to the freedom of imagination—​which is at the core of the literary institution—​is its way of suspending the real and exploring the limits of what can be said and thought. In a similar vein, Ricoeur argues that hermeneutics “depsychologizes” literary interpretation by understanding it as a process of apprehending a “possibility of being” explored by the text (1991a, p. 66). Yet, as I argue throughout this book, the power of narrative fiction to expand our sense of the possible is also highly relevant to the psychological dimension of human existence in the broad sense, including issues such as narrative identity, agency, and imagination. Narrative hermeneutics draws attention to the power of literary narrative to disclose reality in a particular way. For Gadamer and Ricoeur, it achieves this by opening up a world of its own—​a world characterized by “the dimension of the possible” (Gadamer, 1993a, p. 478). Ricoeur (1976, p.  88; 1991b, pp.  489–​490) writes about the literary world as a possible world that sheds a particular light on our actual world. The world created by the artwork is not subordinate to the actual world, but possesses “an ‘ontological’ autonomy” (Gadamer, 1993b, p. 257). The artwork discloses things in such a way that “something new comes into existence”: it is “a thrust that overthrows everything previously given and conventional, a thrust in which a world never there before opens itself up” (Gadamer, 1994, pp. 104–​ 105). Ricoeur describes this in terms of the text’s own intentionality: [T]‌he intended meaning of the text is not essentially the presumed intention of the author, the lived experience of the writer. . . . The text seeks to place us in its meaning, that is—​according to another acceptation of the word sens—​in the same direction. So if the intention is that of the text, and if this intention is the direction that it opens for thought . . . to interpret is to follow the path of thought opened up by the text. . . . (1991a, pp. 121–​122)

Such new directions of thought—​and beyond that, new possibilities of being, experiencing, and acting—​may be triggered by the readers’ experiences of wonder, recognition, curiosity, shock, perplexity, unsettlement, enchantment, and awe, as they engage with the world proposed by the text.16 While Heidegger (1977a, pp. 26–​27) stresses that the work belongs to a certain historical world—​which it opens up and grounds—​so that the perishing of this world renders the artwork “worldless” and reduces the work to the status of a mere object, Gadamer (1993a, pp. 5–​6; 1997,

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 105 ]

06 1

p. 473) and Ricoeur (1988, p. 159) emphasize the ability of literary works to address ever new generations and how their meanings take shape in the encounters between the works’ and the readers’ worlds. Randall and McKim suggest that reading good literature makes us better readers of our own lives and allows us to imaginatively develop them into “quasi-​literary works” (2008, p. viii). Although I have reservations about this analogy (see Chapter 2), I do share their view that narrative fiction has the potential to make invaluable contributions to narrative self-​understanding. Literary narratives can amplify our narrative agency and the degree of co-​authorship we have in our lives, helping us move from being enslaved by the blind perpetuation of the dominant narrative unconscious toward greater agentic power and a richer narrative ethical identity. This contribution concerns not only our ongoing performance of identities and how narratives can provoke ethically valuable self-​transformation and self-​exploration, it also concerns cultural self-​understanding and the power of narratives to provide new hermeneutic resources for addressing our indirect and collective responsibility for what is happening in the world around us. For example, by providing alternative perspectives on the refugee crisis, Erpenbeck’s Gehen, ging, gegangen demonstrates how literature can participate in shaping cultural self-​ understanding at times of social change, as do the narratives discussed in the subsequent chapters. But it is also clear that not all narratives provide us with ethically valuable tools for self-​reflection. Excessive use of narrative in news journalism, for example, can impede understanding, rather than enhance it, by focusing on the moving stories of individuals at the expense of multi-​faceted analyses of complicated social issues. The fixation on the conventional narrative model that involves a central subject of experience and a linear plot that ends in closure may hinder the understanding of complex phenomena—​ such as climate change—​that have no single agent and/​or involve a time span that fits uneasily with traditional human-​scale, experientially-​driven storytelling. We should also acknowledge, more broadly, that not all self-​ reflection leads to ethical action or makes us better persons. There is no guarantee even that deep self-​understanding is necessarily linked to ethical action.17 One can be deeply self-​reflective and deeply immoral at the same time. In ethically evaluating narratives, we should be aware of the full spectrum from storytelling practices that impede or block personal or cultural self-​understanding to complex and nuanced narratives that enhance such self-​understanding. We can find examples of the former in women’s magazines that reinforce forms of self-​deception and self-​delusion through

[ 106 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

narratives that link certain looks to promises of happiness, “fake news” that intentionally mislead and deceive people for propagandistic purposes, or heroic nationalist narratives that perpetuate a one-​sided and harmful national mythology. Ethically complex narratives, in turn, can show the transformative potential of narrative self-​reflection when it succeeds in giving rise to moments of insight and recognition.

A NON-​S UBSUMPTIVE MODE OF UNDERSTANDING OTHERS

One of the issues on which scholars fiercely disagree is whether or not narratives enable an ethical mode of understanding others. It is one of the key arguments of critics of storytelling that narrative is a violent form of appropriation. This view is particularly prevalent in the Levinasian strand of ethical criticism and in various forms of poststructuralist thought. Arendtian approaches to narrative, in contrast, suggest that precisely storytelling allows us to avoid appropriation of the other. I argue that underlying these divergent approaches are drastically different conceptions of understanding and knowledge, which can be best understood in terms of the difference between subsumptive and non-​subsumptive conceptions of (narrative) understanding. It has become a widely shared premise of contemporary narrative studies that narrative is a mode of understanding. Even etymology suggests this:  the Latin for narrating, narrare, derives from gnarus, which means “having knowledge of a thing.” Storytelling has come to be viewed as “a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change” (Herman, Jahn & Ryan, 2005, p. ix). Narrative as a sense-​making practice is based on relating something new and singular, an event or experience, to something familiar that gives it a meaningful context. This activity of relating and drawing connections is integral to storytelling as a mode of understanding. If understanding per se is ethically problematic, the same applies to narrative understanding. But is understanding always violent, as Levinasian and poststructuralist critics suggest? An affirmative answer is connected to what can be called a subsumption model of understanding. Such a model has dominated the Western history of philosophy and, essentially, it envisages understanding in terms of conceptual appropriation. For example, in the Cartesian tradition, understanding is seen as the capacity to form clear and distinct ideas, and the process of perception is not considered to alter the basic concepts, the innate ideas of the mind that regulate understanding. Immanuel Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781, Critique of Pure Reason, 1998) is also dominated by the

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 107 ]

0 8 1

idea of understanding as a process of organizing sense-​perceptions according to general, atemporal categories. Notwithstanding their differences, most conceptions of understanding see it as an event in which something singular (what is to be understood) is subsumed under a general concept, law, or model. Apparently it has gone largely unnoticed that in fact most of the poststructuralist and other “antifoundationalist” critiques of understanding also depend on the subsumption model when they argue not only that all understanding de facto lacks a solid foundation, but also that the very attempt to understand is ethically suspicious. Such a critique of understanding can be traced from Nietzsche to contemporary French philosophy. Many twentieth-​century philosophers who reject understanding as a form of conceptual appropriation owe a great debt to Nietzsche and his conception of language as inherently violent. Nietzsche argues that the violence of concepts follows from their manner of masking the differences between singular things: “Every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-​equivalent” (2001, p. 145). He uses as an example the leaves of a tree: all of them are different, but the concept of a leaf homogenizes them and makes us forget their differences. From this perspective, it makes sense that Nietzsche declares: “There is something insulting in being understood. . . . Understanding is equalizing” (1999a, p. 51).18 This Nietzschean tradition fuels twentieth-​century antinarrativism and is an important context for making sense of such statements as Claude Lanzmann’s view of the “obscenity of understanding” (1995, p.  200) or Barthes’s statement that language “is quite simply fascist” (1982b, p. 461). The most influential figure, however, in making the violence of understanding a key starting point for a new ethical sensibility was Levinas. He rejected narrative as an ethically questionable mode of appropriation that attempts to subsume the other into a coherent system of representation. Levinas (1998, pp.  138–​139) presents narrative as what turns temporal beings into fixed, frozen images “assembled in a tale” that lends an air of inevitability to the events recounted. Ultimately, his critique of narrative depends on his view of understanding as violent appropriation: In the word “comprehension” we understand the fact of taking [prendre] and of comprehending [comprendre], that is, the fact of englobing, of appropriating. There are these elements in all knowledge [savoir], all familiarity [connaissance], all comprehension; there is always the fact of making something one’s own. (1988, p. 170)

On similar grounds, Derrida suggests that language as such, due to its universality, is inherently violent: what he calls “the originary violence of

[ 108 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

language” (or arche-​violence) is the act of classifying and naming, of inscribing “the unique within the system” (1997, p. 112).19 Derrida (1978, p. 91) cites with approval Levinas’s Nietzschean assertion: “To possess, to know, to grasp are all synonyms of power.” Against the violence of language and knowledge, many postwar thinkers endeavored to develop a mode of thinking in which the experience of the unintelligible is valorized as an ethical experience that fosters openness to the unknown.20 This tradition of thought posits understanding and knowledge as its violent other, as what is to be opposed and resisted. Such critique of understanding has been valuable, particularly in drawing attention to how systems of knowledge are linked to mechanisms of power, although apparently this critique has mainly still not pervaded mainstream analytic philosophy. Velleman (2003), for example, follows the subsumption model in arguing that the explanatory force of narrative is based on how it allows us to assimilate the narrated events to familiar affective patterns—​apparently considering the assimilation completely ethically unproblematic. On the other hand, the poststructuralist critique of understanding has gone too far: it is simplistic and reductionist to reject all attempts at understanding as inherently violent.21 In fact, sometimes dismissing the possibility of ethical understanding can itself be violent in ruling out or foreclosing the possibility of genuine dialogue. I argue that insufficient attention has been paid both to how the critique of (narrative) understanding relies on the subsumption model and to the alternatives of this model. It is primarily the phenomenological-​ hermeneutic tradition that provides a valuable alternative to the subsumptive model by stressing the fundamental temporality of understanding.22 This tradition argues that the structure of a hermeneutic circle characterizes all understanding, as we always understand something new in relation to our earlier conceptions, and the new, in turn, can challenge our preconceptions. A dialectic of the general and the particular characterizes the dynamic of the hermeneutic circle. When something is understood as something, it is structured according to certain concepts, but at the same time, the event of understanding leaves a mark on these concepts and reshapes them. Understanding is successful only when the concepts are transformed so that they do justice to whatever is being understood. From a hermeneutic perspective, such events of understanding are possible because knowledge and language are not fixed, atemporal systems, but only exist in the temporal process of being used. Gadamer stresses that concepts are in a state of transformation whenever they are used: [I]‌t is obvious that speaking cannot be thought of as the combination of these acts of subsumption, through which something particular is subordinated to a

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 109 ]

0 1

general concept. A person who speaks . . . is so oriented toward the particularity of what he is perceiving that everything he says acquires a share in the particularity of the circumstances he is considering. . . . [T]he general concept meant by the word is enriched by any given perception of a thing, so that what emerges is a new, more specific word formation which does more justice to the particularity of that act of perception. (1997, pp. 428–​429)

In addition to this “constant process of concept formation” (p. 429), Gadamer writes about understanding in a more radical sense: according to him, genuine understanding only occurs through encountering the other, that is, something so unassimilable that it requires us to transform our preconceptions. He characterizes this as the negativity of understanding: we properly understand only when we realize that things are not what we thought they were (1997, pp. 353–​361). As a result of this structure of negativity, the hermeneutic non-​subsumptive model is radically opposed to the subsumption model of understanding. Instead of subsuming the singular under general concepts, in genuine understanding the singular has power to transform the general. Derrida’s thinking, for example, takes place within the subsumption model when he suggests that language eliminates all singularity of things and persons and thereby strips us of our freedom and responsibility: “By suspending my absolute singularity in speaking, I  renounce at the same time my liberty and my responsibility. Once I  speak I  am never and no longer myself, alone and unique” (1995b, p. 60). Despite his utopian dream of liberation from the violent chains of language, however, he is fully aware of its impossibility.23 From the perspective of the non-​subsumptive model, in contrast, language and the process of understanding are always already infused with the unfamiliar, strange, and other: instead of being closed, fixed vehicles of appropriation, concepts are in a process of becoming. As Gadamer puts it, “everywhere that communication happens, language not only is used but is shaped as well” (2001, p. 4). Gadamer does not adequately acknowledge, however, that there are ethically crucial differences in the extent to and ways in which concepts are transformed in the process of understanding. In order to acknowledge these differences, it is useful to distinguish, within the non-​subsumptive model, between the structural dimension of non-​subsumption in all language-​usage and a more radical sense of non-​subsumption, in which understanding is animated by a specific non-​ subsumptive ethos, linked to openness to alterity. This non-​subsumptive model alerts us to acknowledge both that language and understanding can be violent, but they are not necessarily, structurally violent, and that there

[ 110 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

is a continuum from violent, appropriative, subsumptive sense-​making practices to ones that are affirmatively dialogical and non-​subsumptive by being open to the unassimilable otherness of the encountered experiences or persons. This has important implications for storytelling as a form of understanding. Narrative hermeneutics rejects the subsumption model of narrative and provides a theoretical grounding for an ethics of storytelling that takes into account how narrative understanding in itself is neither good nor evil. It allows us to acknowledge that not all narratives produce totalizing explanations, or reinforce violent practices of appropriation: storytelling is a temporal process that has the potential to transform our conceptual frameworks, even if this potential often remains unrealized. The belief in the possibility of non-​subsumptive understanding underlies the view that storytelling can function as an ethical mode of understanding and dignifying the lives of others in their singularity (even if this link is rarely articulated). It can be seen to undergird, for example, Arendt’s contention that only storytelling allows us to acknowledge the lives of others as significant and unique without trying to appropriate them through abstract conceptual schemes. Acting in the world in relation to other people is the way we reveal our uniqueness to others; while conceptual definitions reduce the unique “who” to a “what,” Arendt suggests that a story in which the “who” is presented as acting in the world can give expression to the unique, unexchangeable “who” revealed in that action (1998, pp. 180–​ 181). Cavarero (2000, pp. 36–​45) links the desire for narrative to this idea; it is a desire to hear others tell stories of us in ways that give us a unique identity and make our lives more than mere empirical existences. Arendt and Cavarero suggest that each individual is unique in being able to give birth to the unpredictable; we are unique in our capacity to initiate something new as we act in the world in relation to others. In their account, it is precisely stories that can convey this uniqueness. The key to why they do not see narrative per se as ethically harmful is their conviction that narratives allow us to give meaning to things, events, and persons without confining them to a definition. In this respect, their conception of narrative is diametrically opposed to Levinas’s view of narrative as a violent, appropriative form of defining the essences of things and persons (1991, p.  42). According to Arendt, “storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it” (1968b, p. 105). In this view, narratives are capable of presenting the temporal, individual subject acting in the world in concrete, complex situations—​in a process of becoming—​rather than as appropriated and perceived in atemporal, conceptual, abstract terms. The idea that something is “worth telling” is also pivotal to the Arendtian

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 111 ]

2 1

conception of narrative. The notion that to have one’s story told is integral to human dignity has become a key idea in various emancipatory movements, which have insisted that such marginalized and silenced groups as women and the colonized need to have their stories told and heard.24 I do not disagree with the Arendtian view that narratives can have ethical potential in presenting subjects of action in the temporal process of acting and becoming, and in giving more reality, as it were, to lives that have been ill understood or silenced and that would otherwise vanish into oblivion. However, it is also important to acknowledge that narratives often have the opposite effect: they can be violent, oppressive, manipulative means of appropriation that legitimate structures of violence through strategies of naturalization. I suggest that in evaluating and analyzing narratives in ethical terms, it is helpful to distinguish, on a differentiating continuum, between subsumptive narrative practices that function appropriatively and reinforce cultural stereotypes by subsuming singular experiences under culturally dominant narrative scripts and non-​subsumptive narrative practices that challenge such categories of appropriation and follow the logic of dialogue and exploration. This continuum must be qualified by remembering that subsumptive narrative practices can never be subsumptive in an absolute sense because they take place in time and always include the possibility that the act of subsumption leaves a mark on and changes the categories (e.g., narrative models or scripts) that are used subsumptively. There is, however, an ethically decisive difference between narratives that aim at subsumptive appropriation and ones that are oriented toward non-​subsumptive dialogic understanding. I  use the notions of subsumptive and non-​subsumptive narrative practices as a shorthand for explicating this difference. This distinction is not meant as a binary, but as a heuristic tool that helps us place specific cases of storytelling on the continuum. Narrative practices function subsumptively when they simply reinforce problematic stereotypical sense-​making practices. Such practices tend to hinder our ability to encounter other people in their uniqueness and perpetuate the tendency to see individuals as representatives of the groups to which they belong according to gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, class, and so on. They frequently use what Fricker calls “identity power” (2007, pp. 14–​17) by reinforcing “negative identity-​prejudicial” stereotypes, which entail a “widely held disparaging association between a social group and one or more attributes, where this association embodies a generalization that displays . . . resistance to counter-​evidence owing to an ethically bad affective investment” (p. 35). Non-​subsumptive narrative practices, in contrast, problematize simplistic categorization of experiences, persons, and

[ 112 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

relationships, as well as control-​oriented appropriation of what is unfamiliar, foreign, and other. They can function as counter-​narratives that consciously challenge stereotype-​reinforcing hegemonic narrative practices. Such counter-​narratives provide us with tools to see the singularity of individual lives beyond generalizing, subsumptive narratives. To take an example from the realm of discourses of memory, there is a continuum, as Rothberg (2011) shows, from practices of comparison in which different legacies of violence (such as those of the Holocaust, slavery, and colonialism) are equated with one another, to comparisons that are sensitive to their differences. In terms of my model, equating discourses exemplify the logic of subsumption, whereas differentiating discourses function non-​subsumptively. As Rothberg shows, equation and differentiation can be combined with various political affects, on a continuum from solidarity to aggressive competition. He argues that the “memory discourses expressing a differentiated solidarity offer a greater political potential” than those following the “logic of equation” (p.  526). I  would call this greater ethical potential, though, because presumably the political potential depends on one’s political stance (apparently, Trump’s subsumptive “America first” narrative has had great political potential for the supporters of his political worldview). Although non-​subsumptive narrative practices can be linked to various political affects, particularly insofar as they are animated by a non-​ subsumptive ethos of dialogue they are likely to foster solidarity and empathy based on respect of otherness. Such practices are based on receptivity to what is other and what challenges one’s beliefs. I will discuss non-​ subsumptive dialogic storytelling and the dialogic ethos in more detail in the following chapters. As I  hope to show, our engagement with different narrative strategies is ethically relevant: while subsumptive narrative practices frequently use naturalizing strategies to mask their own nature as interpretations and manipulate the recipients by taking on an authoritative tone, the non-​subsumptive ones are more likely to include a self-​ reflexive dimension that involves reflection on their limits and fosters an ethos of openness to the unknown.25 The non-​subsumptive model has implications not only for narrative studies, but also for trauma studies, which is concerned both with the otherness of the other’s trauma and the otherness within (one’s own trauma that does not feel part of one’s life), as well as for narrative therapy. It has become a basic tenet of contemporary trauma studies that due to its structure of “inherent latency” or belatedness, “the traumatic event is not experienced as it occurs,” but returns to haunt the subject of experience

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 113 ]

4 1

through “repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the event” (Caruth, 1995, pp. 4, 8). Many thinkers, however, have questioned Cathy Caruth’s event-​centered approach to trauma and have emphasized the structural violence and everyday processes of victimization that do not involve a single traumatic event.26 The everyday experiences of millions of people in adverse conditions involve a traumatizing dimension that keeps them from flourishing. But even when traumatic experience is so terribly painful that it resists assimilation and integration into one’s narrative self-​understanding, one can legitimately ask, is it not an experience all the same? Such a traumatic experience marks a rupture; it challenges one’s previous views and identity: it is a “breach in the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world” (Caruth, 1996, p. 4). But if we say that trauma is not experienced, this seems to rest on the assumption that experience is something quite unproblematic, a point-​like event that happens here and now to a fully conscious subject of experience. In contrast, if we understand experience as something that is without clear temporal boundaries, as pervaded by both the past and the future, as something that we go through as embodied beings, as only partly accessible to consciousness, and as something that is constantly reinterpreted as it becomes part of new constellations of experience, it makes less sense to say that trauma is not experienced, or that narrative interpretation necessarily distorts traumatic experience. Poststructuralistically oriented trauma theorists not only suggest that trauma is de facto inassimilable to narrative understanding, but also that narrative form in itself is ethically problematic in its attempt to make sense of traumatic experience. This is because the act of storytelling is taken to reduce an irrevocably singular event into an account that appropriates it by giving it a general meaning or explanation. Caruth, for example, repeatedly suggests that narrating implies forgetting the singularity of the narrated event and that narrating is problematic as it subsumes the singular under the general: allegedly, it implies “forgetting of the singularity” (1996, p. 32) of experiences, events, or persons (such as the singularity of the death of the French woman’s lover in Caruth’s analysis of Duras and Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour). Caruth locates the ethical potential of storytelling in the “movement of her not knowing within the very language of her telling” (p. 37) and in “the interruption of understanding” (p. 42). Underlying Caruth’s argumentation, like that of many other critics of narrative, is the idea that storytelling is ethically problematic precisely insofar as it is a form of understanding (and that it can be ethical insofar as it disrupts understanding).

[ 114 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Traumatic experiences resist integration due to the inadequacy of our earlier understanding in the face of an unbearably painful experience. While the subsumptive model of narrative presents storytelling as a way of assimilating new experiences into a pregiven mold, a traumatic experience can be so shocking that it cannot be appropriated into pregiven narrative schemes or scripts. From the perspective of narrative hermeneutics, however, narratives function as a vehicle of genuine understanding precisely when they do not concern the comfortable subsumption of new experiences into what we already know, but rather when they involve a process that entails change (of pregiven categories, values, identity). Such change, in turn, is often painful and difficult. It is a temporal, two-​way process that involves both interpretation of new experiences and reinterpretation of one’s narrative schemes. Dealing with traumatic experiences is therefore a process of both relating them to our earlier conceptual frameworks and re-​evaluating these frameworks—​whereby our narrative understanding can be profoundly transformed. Several trauma scholars have stressed that trauma is a “self-​altering” experience of violence, injury, or harm (e.g., Gilmore, 2001, p. 6). If we take seriously the negativity that lies at the heart of the hermeneutic conception of understanding, all genuine understanding is self-​altering in some sense; traumatic experience and the process of dealing with it, however, is self-​altering in a more radical sense because it involves confronting a wounding or even paralyzing disruption of understanding. When the narrative working through of a traumatic experience is about relating a terrifying singular event to one’s previous understanding, is this action inevitably violent and ethically problematic? Making sense of a traumatic experience in narrative terms is a process of making a painful, distressing experience (partly) communicable and comprehensible by relating it to something; without some such process of relating, it would hardly be possible to think about the experience, let alone talk about it. Such a process of relating can be necessary for survival, as Dori Laub suggests: “The survivors did not only need to survive so that they could tell their stories; they also needed to tell their stories in order to survive” (1995, p. 63). The hermeneutic conception of the temporal and interpretative nature of communication implies that communication is not just about applying general meaning-​systems; rather, it is a process that can involve learning something completely new that challenges our previous conceptions and identities. It is on the possibility of such communication that therapy is based: in helping traumatized persons tell their own stories, successful therapy depends on the practice of non-​subsumptive understanding.27

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 115 ]

6 1

In the therapeutic context, it can be seen as a major ethical strength of narrative therapy that it privileges the particularity of each person’s story instead of subsumptively imposing narratives on lives. In evaluating the ethical potential of different approaches to narrative psychology, Vassilieva distinguishes between approaches that rely on “definitive pre-​outlined ethics brought from without” and those that strive to articulate “ethics from within,” as part of the “narrative processes involved in constructing the sense of identity and self” (2016, p. 181). The latter is what animates narrative therapy, which seeks to “mobilize the intrinsic potential for ‘doing ethics’ inherent in narrative itself” (p. 188) through a search “for the particular” and a commitment to “the irreducible singularity” (p. 174) of the clients’ stories, thereby helping them develop a richer understanding of “what they value in life” (p.  49).28 In working with the particularity of individual experiences and challenges, this approach uses narrative as a means to search for new perspectives on what is good and valuable in the individual life. As part of this non-​subsumptive process, narrative therapy aims at retelling the stories of unique individuals in ways that problematize culturally dominant narratives and power structures.29 This aims at amplifying their agency in ways that allow them to (partly) “re-​author” their lives and their relationships through narrative practices that function as “counter-​practices to cultural practices that are objectifying of persons and their bodies” (White & Epston, 1990, p. 75). Objectification of persons is another expression for their subsumptive, appropriative categorization. Therapeutic processes that are agency-​enhancing and dialogic in ways that do justice to the singularity of each person’s experiences can be generally evaluated to be more ethically sustainable than ones based on subsumptive appropriation. The same applies to narrative practices more broadly, in various contexts of narrative interaction and communication also beyond the therapeutic context. At their most powerful, dialogic storytelling practices animated by a non-​subsumptive ethos prompt us to look beyond our preconceptions, to be open to what we cannot control, to learn from the unfamiliar, and to engage with it with wonder, empathy, and curiosity. While at the ethically problematic end of the spectrum are monological subsumptive narrative practices that seek to create an illusion of being the only right account (thereby blocking our capacity to perceive the world from multiple perspectives), at the ethically sustanaible end are dialogical non-​subsumptive narrative practices that lay bare their own constructedness, processuality, and the movement of the telling rather than the told.

[ 116 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

THE NARRATIVE IN-​B ETWEEN

Narratives are not only a means of understanding the self and other; they also function as practices of social interaction that perpetuate, create, and transform intersubjective spaces and identities. Storytelling is a mode of interaction that makes it possible to connect with other people, share experiences, and establish new communities and modes of relationality. It creates, shapes, and perpetuates both ethically productive and problematic narrative in-​betweens. Walter Benjamin, in “The Storyteller” (“Der Erzähler,” 1936), was among the first to conceptualize storytelling in terms of exchanging experiences: “Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn” (1999, p. 84). For Benjamin, however, the rise of the modern novel is a symptom of the crisis of the art of storytelling, a crisis of the “communicability of experience” (p. 86) witnessed by the modern age—​a process he describes in terms of an increasing difficulty to share experiences, in response to the dissolution of shared worldviews rooted in traditions of oral storytelling, culminating in the aftermath of the First World War. Arendt (1998) and Cavarero (2000) draw on Benjamin’s ideas, but do not share his belief in the end of the era of storytelling; they reject the view that we could ever get rid of what they see as the basic human need and desire for stories. They suggest that storytelling is a means of creating a shared intersubjective space, a “common world” (Arendt, 1998, pp. 50–​58) that “lies between people and therefore can relate and bind them together” (p.  182); “for all its intangibility, this in-​between is no less real than the world of things we visibly have in common” (p. 183). As Olivia Guaraldo puts it, Arendt’s and Cavarero’s philosophy envisages “narrative as a relational practice, as a space building activity” (2013, p. 78). Storytelling creates a relational space—​a space of possibilities—​ that allows us to become heard and visible as subjects of speech and action. The narrative in-​between shapes what is thinkable and sayable, visible and audible, experienceable and doable within different subject positions. The affective dimension of sharing stories is crucial to their capacity to create a sense of connection and community. Sharing experiences through storytelling often allows us to make sense of them in ways that make them bearable for us; such sharing can console, comfort, and empower us. Arendt articulates how storytelling helps us bear the experience of being in the world in all its different—​both joyous and painful—​aspects:

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 117 ]

8 1

Who says what is . . . always tells a story, and in this story the particular facts lose their contingency and acquire some humanly comprehensible meaning. It is perfectly true that “all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them,” in the words of Isak Dinesen. . . . She could have added that joy and bliss, too, become bearable and meaningful for men only when they can talk about them and tell them as a story. (1968a, pp. 261–​262)

Our ancestors gathered around the fire to share their experiences; contemporary families share their stories at the dinner table (or in the sauna, in the case of Finnish families). The desire to connect through stories is also one important reason we read literature. We read not only to understand ourselves and others, but also to connect and belong—​both when we read quietly and when we read aloud, for or with others. I still read every evening to my nine-​year-​old Alma and eleven-​year-​old Eliel. The bedtime reading is not primarily a means of educating them, but a moment of shared intimacy, a sharing of stories that feed into our dialogic narrative imagination and shape our narrative in-​between, our shared stock of stories on which we draw in our everyday sense-​making activities. I recently read to them one of my own childhood favorites, Michael Ende’s Momo (1973), in which the Men in Grey steal time from adults, who then feel that they have no time for fun: the more they “save” time, the less time they have. Only the children are immune to this logic; they have all the time in the world, and their power of imagination makes them best equipped to fight against the time thieves. Ende’s narrative about time, storytelling, and the meaning of life is now inspiring Alma and Eliel in their imaginative play, and if I rush them, they ask me if I am a victim of the time thieves and volunteer to rescue me. Momo’s story has shaped our narrative in-​between, and it has become part of Alma and Eliel’s shared “mythology,” which provides them with narrative models of sense-​making and mutual reference points. Leo Tolstoy already argued that what is most distinctive of art is its way of joining individuals together: art functions as a “means of human communion” (1995, p.  40). In the contemporary world, literature and art in general have lost much of their community-​building force, but it remains true, nevertheless, that shared affectivity and the weaving of intersubjective narrative fabrics are central to art. Literature and the other arts have power not only to strengthen existing social bonds but also to envision new social formations and relationships: in Ali Smith’s words, literature “allows us not just to imagine an unreal different world but also a real different world” (2013, p. 188). This is the utopian dimension of art: the possibilities it opens up can feed into and shape reality.

[ 118 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The hermeneutic resources provided by literary narratives also enable us to develop shared vocabularies for experiences that have been ill understood or marginalized. Felski writes about a “flash of connection” that “leaps across the gap between text and reader” as an “affinity or an attunement is brought to light” (2008, p. 23). Inviting “identification-​with” is an important way in which literature creates a sense of connection. Such identifications are unpredictable—​they often refuse to follow preconceived patterns—​and they can be local, concerning a narrative fragment rather than the whole narrative. The identity labels imposed on us are unable to fully determine our responses. As Felski puts it, “the affinities we feel with fictional characters can play havoc with social classifications, as when we identify across gender, race, class, or even, in certain fictional genres, species.”30 Such identification across differences, particularly through narratives that we are not socially encouraged to identify with, is one important way in which fiction can expand our sense of the possible. Why we feel that particular literary narratives speak to us is unpredictable—​probably a combination of interest, openness, and receptivity is required for a genuine dialogic encounter to take place—​but when such encounters happen, they can lead to transformative “identifications-​with” that create new narrative in-​betweens. Oral testimonies in the sphere of political activism provide another example of the ethical and political potential of sharing experiences and connecting with others through storytelling. With the slogan “the personal is political,” second-​wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s and the wider human rights movement emphasized the importance of sharing personal stories of oppression, and consciousness-​raising groups aimed to create an intersubjective space for such sharing (Albeck, Adwan & Bar-​ On, 2002; Guaraldo, 2013). The empowering potential of storytelling is evident in such political movements, and it has proved to be a powerful tool of emancipation. Interest in this empowering potential has also shaped narrative studies: several different strands of narrative research “treat narratives as modes of resistance” to prevailing structures of power (Andrews et al. 2013, p. 4). Narrative in-​between is both something that can be created and something in which we always already find ourselves. It plays an ontological role in constituting social reality: narrative webs and practices are an inextricable part of the social fabric of all communities. Narrative practices of sense-​ making offer certain subject positions to the inhabitants of a social world, regulating how these positions are taken up and how people respond to and evaluate those who take them up. Ritivoi puts this aptly:

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 119 ]

201

The hermeneutic dimension of a story—​the interpretive nature of emplotment decisions—​implies a strategic choice of events and occurrences that are interpreted in such a fashion as to allow individuals to negotiate social life, by letting them occupy certain positions successfully, and then claim particular rights. (2009, pp. 30–​31)

Underlying narrative interactions are “master plots” that “bestow legitimacy upon beliefs, practices, institutions, and identities,” thereby functioning as “providers of meaning for the community that shares and believes in them” (p. 35). Narrative fiction, in turn, can nudge our narrative imagination in directions that unsettle culturally dominant master narratives. As Richard Kearney puts it, narrative “is what gives us a shareable world,” and this shareability is largely based on the way in which storytelling contributes to shared memory (2002, p.  3). Both narrative and memory as processes of “making absent things present” (p. 142) are already ethically charged because they imply selecting something to be worth telling or remembering, instead of something else. Telling someone’s story is a way of giving it recognition and ascribing it value: “what we consider communicable and memorable is also what we consider valuable” (p. 154). Cultural memory as an interplay of remembering and imagining takes part in constructing narrative identities in the present, and it is never just oriented to the past, but always also to the future. Neither collective narrative identities nor shared pasts are homogenous or unified:  the narrative in-​ between is constantly renegotiated, debated, and reconstituted in a dialogue between different voices and perspectives.31 It is widely acknowledged that the processes through which communities are built are inseparable from imaginative practices of storytelling. Communities are “imagined,” as Benedict Anderson (2006) famously argues in his analysis of how nationalist myth-​making shapes communities. Storytelling is ontologically constitutive of communities; they would not be what they are without the stories that bind them together. But there is nothing in this narrative process that would make it inherently ethically good. It seems to me that Arendt’s followers have not always paid heed to the fact that the Arendtian “common world,” like “every in-​between, relates and separates men at the same time” (Arendt, 1998, p. 52). Stories unite, but they also disunite; they draw lines of division between “us” and “others.”32 The founding of communities is often rooted in violent “founding events” (Ricoeur, 1999, p.  8), and collective identities are based on narratives of “we” that exclude (potentially threatening) “others.” Acknowledging the potential harmfulness of we-​narratives, Richard Rorty argues that “the

[ 120 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

force of ‘us’ is, typically, contrastive in the sense that it contrasts with a ‘they’ which is also made up of human beings—​the wrong sort of human beings” (1989, p. 190). For him, “moral progress” (p. 192) depends on our ability to expand “our sense of ‘us’ as far as we can” (p. 196), toward “greater human solidarity”—​“the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us’ ” (p. 192). That our sense of solidarity is historically constituted and malleable makes it no less real; it is something we have to nourish and consciously enlarge. We need to make a conscious effort to “create a more expansive sense of solidarity than we presently have” (p. 196). Currently, Trump’s “America first” narrative, on the one hand, and narratives in which inclusion and immigration feature as central to the idea of America, on the other, struggle to define the limits of the American “we.” Rorty, however, conceives of solidarity in terms of an empathetic identification that seems to have a subsumptive tone to it. As Ritivoi puts it, in confronting Rorty from a hermeneutic perspective, “it is important to resist positing similarity between ourselves and others if we are to maintain the possibility of understanding them” (2016, 63). We need hermeneutic attentiveness to the way in which ethical understanding begins with acknowledging difference. This was recognized already by Bakhtin (1993, p.  16) who observed that “losing myself in the other”—​the collapse of two subject positions so that “instead of two participants there would be one”—​impairs any true “answerability” and understanding of the other. The condition of genuine solidarity is the ability to refrain from taking the other as the same as oneself: it is to acknowledge commonality, while at the same time being sensitive to the differences between the I and the non-​I. Storytelling creates a sense of community in both good and bad: while it can transform communities by creating more inclusive spaces for new forms of identity and solidarity, it can also reinforce nationalist extremism that fuels collective identities based on exclusion, racism, and misogyny. The negotiation of narrative identities takes place through different discourses of narrating the past. Such negotiation becomes particularly painful when communities need to struggle to overcome ruptured cultural identities after violent events that challenge their self-​understanding as a community. Then storytelling can function as a way of working through collective traumas. The notion of cultural trauma is contested, and one needs to be cautious in drawing a parallel between individual, psychic trauma and cultural, collective trauma.33 The reference to cultural trauma is warranted, however, to signal that on a collective level, similar mechanisms of belatedness, disconnection, and disruption in communicability can take place as in the case of individual trauma. Violent events that are not properly

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 121 ]

21

addressed in public discourse can cause a wounding breach in the narrative in-​between that holds a community together. Such cultural traumas can lead to a vicious transgenerational circle of violence. A well-​known example is the way in which the Germans who fought in the Second World War were unable to talk about their traumas and so re-​enacted them in their homes, creating an atmosphere of violence and silence from which the generation of ’68 was desperate to break free.34 Ruth Wajnryb, a child of Holocaust survivors, describes the experience of growing up in a home “bathed in a silence wrought by trauma” and learning to become “literate in the grammar of silence” (2001, p. xi). She suggests that the discomfort knitted into the fabric of Holocaust narratives “derives from the interweaving of two kinds of conflicted energy: on the part of the survivor, it is the attempt to tell and the accompanying suppression of telling; on the part of the descendant, it is the wanting to know, and the accompanying fear of finding out” (p. 32). As Eviatar Zerubavel (2006, p. 50) points out, Wajnryb’s testimony encapsulates the “double wall” of silence, which Dan Bar-​On (1999, pp. 168, 209, 218) has shown to structure the dynamic between the Nazi perpetrators and their children, as well as that of the Holocaust survivors and their children. It is symptomatic of the cultural trauma of the Second World War that the experiences of both Holocaust survivors and perpetrators have been dealt with more extensively by their descendants than by the survivors and perpetrators themselves. Public German discussion was initially unable to confront the guilt and responsibility of ordinary Germans in Nazi Germany. Eventually, the situation changed, and since the 1980s there has been a proliferation of public discourse of remembrance and a boom of memory fiction. In other countries, the belatedness has been even more prominent. Finland, for example, for decades held on to a national narrative of a separate Finnish war with the Soviet Union, thereby mitigating its role as an ally of Nazi Germany. Over the past decade, several young women novelists have published important novels that re-​evaluate the Finnish national narratives of the Second World War.35 In Germany, France, and many other European countries, the Second World War was a major cultural trauma that marked a radical disruption of the European narrative in-​between. Writers and intellectuals felt that it had become impossible to continue simply identifying with the project of European humanism and with the basic tenets of Western rationalism. It became urgent to ask what it was in European culture that made possible the industrial mass murder of millions of people. One of the issues that I will address in the subsequent chapters is how narrative fiction can deal with this question in ethically complex ways that reflect on the processes

[ 122 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

of constructing and transforming narrative in-​betweens. Can it contribute to building new forms of solidarity that redirect communities toward a less violent future, through a process of learning from the past? In constructing collective identities, such as that of Europeanness, it is key to reinterpret the past, including its violent legacies, and to find ways to deal with grief, guilt, loss, and responsibility that do not paralyze, but enhance agency. That the ways in which communities narrate their past affects how they orient themselves to the present and future is particularly salient at the moment in the debates revolving around the future of the European project, as the British have voted to leave the European Union and Europe is grappling with the refugee crisis. To an important extent, the British EU referendum was a struggle between different narratives of the past and future. When the result was announced, it struck me that Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, responded by saying that due to history, Germany has a special responsibility for the European project—​for European peace and solidarity.36 In the British discourse I have failed to find similar sentiments, which leaves me wondering, is it really just the Germans who are responsible for peace and solidarity in Europe and more globally? Do we not all share that responsibility? I  live in a relatively unknown country on the margins of Europe, a country marked (due to its history) by deep suspicion toward the superpowers and their ideologies, and I would like to think that we cherish the European project as a project of learning from the past—​a coming together of countries in the hope that we cannot let history repeat itself—​but as far right extremism and populism are currently on the rise across Europe and the United States, any such sense of joint responsibility feels terrifyingly fragile everywhere, including the Nordic countries. In addition to a shared past, communities need a projected future, a vision of where they are heading, a story—​or better: a dialogue of stories—​ that guides them. In response to the British EU referendum, Jeanette Winterson (2016) draws attention to “the power of the stories we tell”: Everything starts as a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Every political movement begins as a counter-​narrative to an existing narrative. The media is mainly run by the rich and the right-​wing. They are telling their stories their way, and as Brexit shows, their narrative is working. It’s the immigrants, it’s the EU, it’s the feckless unemployed. It’s welfare, it’s climate control, it’s (what’s left) of the unions. If we’re living in a post-​facts world—​let’s have better stories.

Winterson writes that when she was “16 and living in a Mini in Accrington,” she realized that she needed to read herself “as a fiction as well as a fact”: “I thought that if I understood myself as a story I might do better, because

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 123 ]

2 4 1

if I  am the story I  can change the story. To change the way we are telling the story of our country, the story of our world, does need more than facts.” She suggests that Labour as a party, a word, and a story has become outdated and there is a need for a “narrative that unites us, not one that divides us.” To reformulate Winterson’s point, the narrative in-​between that held together the socially progressive forces no longer does the work it should; it has eroded and lost its potency. I agree that we need new stories to transform the narrative in-​between that used to bind together the forces that fight for justice and solidarity across differences. The British “leave” campaign and Trump’s presidential campaign (“America first”) were driven by narratives that succeeded in attracting masses through their appeal to the fear of otherness, blatant racism, and a strategy to discredit and denigrate anything perceived as “foreign.” As the world changes and identifications shift, different narratives struggle to shape the in-​betweens that bind people together. To a large extent, this is a struggle over how to define the limits of the “we”: we British, Americans, Europeans, we humans, we world citizens, we living beings. The narrative in-​between concerns all intersubjective spaces, ranging from the global to the most intimate. Couples, lovers, siblings, and friends create their own mythologies. Dialogic storytelling can build secret worlds that exist only for the lovers, or create trans-​subjective spaces that make it possible for souls to touch and become what they could not become without that space. All relationships involve their own narrative dynamic, and while some of them largely follow conventional narrative scripts, others develop rich, unique, highly unconventional narrative in-​betweens. Interactional approaches to narrative suggest that the interactive, connecting function of narrative practices is ultimately more fundamental to our identities than their representational function. As Brockmeier puts it, narratives can serve “less of an autobiographical function and more of an immediate function of social interaction and communication, of connecting” (2015, p. 203). In discussing narrative practices of couples where one partner suffers from dementia, Brockmeier shows how they share stories and repeatedly confirm important common memories, not in order to produce knowledge about past events, but rather to hold onto and keep alive their connection and their shared world so that, in the face of illness, they can conjure up and affirm in the present “the common ground of a shared life” (p. 210), an “affective fabric of joint identity” (p. 216). But just as not all community-​building narrative in-​betweens are ethically good, not all co-​authoring of identities in relationships and families is unproblematic.

[ 124 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Lindemann acknowledges this as she analyzes how these processes can go wrong, for example when parents are unable to let go of their old stories in situations when their stories no longer work and may keep their child from growing (2014, p. 86). In ethically evaluating and analyzing different narrative practices, it is important to differentiate between practices that contribute to dialogic and inclusive trans-​subjective spaces of in-​between that expand the possibilities of those affected, and those that reinforce ethically problematic narrative in-​ betweens that perpetuate cultural stereotypes, restrictive ways of categorizing people and their experiences, and violent, oppressive mechanisms of exclusion and othering. This is, again, a differentiating continuum on which narrative practices can be placed. The challenge we face is how to expand narrative in-​betweens so as to make them more inclusive, strengthening a sense of a shared humanity—​and beyond that, a shared sentiency—​in order to bind us together across differences and to foster a sense of mutual responsibility that makes possible a shared future for humans and other sentient beings on this shared planet.37

PERSPECTIVE-​TAKING AND PERSPECTIVE-​A WARENESS

In the current age of terror and increasing polarization of world politics, the need to perceive the world from a plurality of perspectives has become as pressing as ever. Jürgen Habermas argues in an interview with Giovanna Borradori after the 9/​11 terrorist attacks that “attempts at understanding have a chance only under symmetrical conditions of mutual perspective-​ taking” (2003, p. 37). He reminds us that the ability to assume different perspectives is already built into our basic linguistic competence:  it is something that we develop as we learn the use of personal pronouns and acquire “competence in exchanging the perspectives between first and second person” (p. 37). In the real world, however, we rarely have power-​free conditions of mutual perspective-​taking, and our competence to adopt different perspectives is put to a difficult test when we encounter temporally or culturally distant worlds. For a dialogue to take place, what is decisive is the ability to imagine the world of the other as a world that, although different from one’s own, is nevertheless a human world of meaningful experience and action. The ethical and political significance of such perspective-​awareness is indisputable. It is crucial for democracy, which depends on the recognition of a plurality of perspectives, “the paradoxical plurality of unique beings” who insert themselves into the human world through speech and action

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 125 ]

261

(Arendt, 1998, p. 176). The capacity to take the perspective of others entails an ability to see them as agents capable of action that initiates new processes in the world. Perspective-​taking is a condition for successful dialogue, which presupposes acknowledging that one could be wrong because one’s views are not the absolute truth but relative to a limited perspective. That narrative fiction cultivates our capacity for empathetic perspective-​ taking is probably the most common argument presented, over the past few decades, for its ethical significance—​perhaps most influentially by Nussbaum (1997, 2010). She argues that the power of narrative fiction to foster our ability to imagine “what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself” is pivotal to its ethical value in promoting democratic citizenship (2010, pp.  95–​96). Empirical research in the psychology of reading lends some support to the argument that fictional narratives are more efficient in helping us imagine the perspective of the other than are nonfictional texts (Hakemulder, 2000; Djikic et al., 2009; Oatley, 2011) and that perspective-​taking that is “experientially driven” results in more marked changes in readers’ beliefs and self-​concepts than one that is “conceptually driven” (Kaufman & Libby, 2012). In psychological literature on perspective-​taking, it is customary to differentiate between two modes:  “imagine-​other” perspective-​taking and “imagine-​self” perspective-​taking (e.g. Stotland, 1969; Barrett-​Lennard, 1981). This distinction is pivotal in contemporary cognitive psychology: First, you can imagine how another person sees his or her situation and feels as a result (an imagine-​other perspective). Second, you can imagine how you would see the situation were you in the other person’s position and how you would feel as a result (an imagine-​self perspective). (Batson, 2009, p. 267)

Experiments have shown that participants who are asked to imagine how another person feels in a certain situation have different feelings and physiological symptoms, and different areas of their brain are activated than in the case of those asked to “put themselves in the other’s shoes” in the sense of imagining what they themselves would feel if they were in the other person’s situation.38 In philosophy, these two modes are sometimes called “self-​oriented” and “other-​oriented” perspective-​taking, but, as Amy Coplan (2011, p. 9) puts it, a failure to distinguish between these two varieties is common in discussions on perspective-​taking and empathy. Across disciplines, the process of empathetic perspective-​taking is commonly assumed to be characterized by an immediacy: it is described as a process of overcoming distance, feeling with the other by emotionally participating in his or her situation, and even more:  feeling what the other

[ 126 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

feels, mirroring his or her experience. “Equipped with mirror neurons, the human brain appears to possess a system for automatically sharing feelings,” as Keen puts it, and more complex “responses to others’ mental states layer atop this initial spontaneous sharing of feelings” or “primitive emotional contagion” (2007, pp. 4–​5). Nussbaum’s (1997, 2010) approach to putting oneself in the shoes of another also seems to assume such an immediate, emotional participation. Successful imagine-​other perspective-​taking, however, arguably involves the capacity to differentiate between oneself and the other. Research using neuroimaging suggests that imagining what someone else experiences is a distinct cognitive and affective process, which does not involve a merging of the self and the other.39 Research also indicates that without adequate knowledge of the other’s situation, we tend to project ourselves into that situation, rather than imagining it as being radically different from our own (Batson, 2009). Peter Goldie makes a similar point from a philosophical perspective by arguing that empathizing with another person involves imagining “the thoughts, feelings and emotions (what I will call the narrative) of another person” (1999, p. 409), which requires knowledge about the other person’s character and the narrative events and experiences that the empathizer enacts: “without the former, there is no possibility of centrally imagining another; and without the latter, there is nothing to enact” (p. 411). The binary between the imagine-​self and imagine-​other perspective-​ taking, however, tends to dismiss that this conceptual dichotomy cannot be absolute: we always imagine the other’s perspective from the horizon of our own social, cultural, and historical world. In imagining the other’s situation, we draw (mainly unconsciously) on our own life history and embodied memory. This is not to downplay the important difference between an other-​oriented process of imagining the other’s plight and merely trying to imagine what one would feel in such a situation; rather it is to suggest three important revisions to the current thinking on the imagine-​self versus imagine-​other perspective-​taking. First, the dichotomy is not as clear-​cut and the imagine-​other perspective not as “pure” as it is customarily taken to be, because the other’s perspective is imagined from the horizon of one’s own, through a process that is historically, culturally, and socially mediated.40 Second, awareness of this mediation and critical reflection on how one’s own situation may affect the process of imagining are ethically relevant and likely to promote successful imagine-​ other perspective-​ taking. And third, imagining the other’s perspective is closely linked to understanding. Engagement with the perspectives of others in social conditions markedly different from our own is a process in which imagining and understanding are inextricably

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 127 ]

2 8 1

intertwined and mutually dependent upon one another. We can understand another historical mode of experience only by imagining, in as complex terms as possible, how the subject of action and experience lives in and is affected by a certain historical world, and we can engage in such imagining only when we have sufficient knowledge about that world. We need narrative imagination to acquire proper insight into historical worlds as spaces of experience, and literature has the potential to boost our imaginative understanding of how historical and social conditions are linked to different modes of experience. Perspective-​taking is mediated not only by our personal past, but also through cultural systems of sense-​making. It is easier to take the perspective of someone whose experiences are richly articulated in a language that sets our imagination alight, and considerably more difficult to take the perspective of someone whose experiences remain inexpressible. The cultivation of our perspective-​taking abilities is an important way in which narrative fiction can contribute to what Fricker calls hermeneutic justice by “generating new meanings” that reduce “the effects of hermeneutical marginalization” of underprivileged people whose experiences are ill understood (2007, p. 174).41 Literary narratives can enrich the hermeneutic resources that attune us to the perspectives of people in different social situations and positions, including socially marginalized ones (perspective-​sensitivity), and allow us to articulate such experiences, or even simply identify them as distinctive experiences defined by a perspective that we may not fully understand but that merits recognition (perspective-​awareness). The need for such recognition obviously goes beyond our species; by developing our sensitivity to how various species perceive the world, literature could make a difference to how we treat them. In order to motivate ethical action, however, perspective-​awareness is not enough. Daniel Batson (2011, p.  45) suggests that what is needed is that one values the welfare of the other in need. But how do we come to value it? Narrative imagination crucially shapes what we value. Our narratively mediated ethical identity—​our sense of who we are as moral agents—​prompts us to action and inaction in particular situations. There is no guaranteed recipe for a narrative to successfully move us to action—​it remains unpredictable because it is linked to our entire sense of who we are and how we navigate ourselves in the narratively shaped moral space that we co-​inhabit. In any case, what is needed, undoubtedly, is the ability not only to take into consideration the perspectives of others, but also to engage with these perspectives in an affectively responsive way. While some narratives move us to simply feel with the other, others may move us to the point of affecting our actions by changing our sense of who we

[ 128 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

are, who we want to be, and what we need to do in order to be that person. What happens in narrative encounters is unpredictable, but in any case the ability of narratives to engage our imaginative powers in ways that evoke our affective responses seems key to their power to transform our ethically charged sense of who we are. Aleida Assmann makes a similar point by arguing that receiving narratives about the Holocaust not just as information about events but “as a memory means that it is received in the modes of identification, ethics or empathy, fueling consequences for one’s own life, value system and actions. Receiving in this sense means actively responding to a representation of the Holocaust” (2018, p.  214). A  major ethical challenge for Holocaust narratives—​and for literary narrative more broadly—​is to find ways to expand our “circle of concern” to include the suffering of others different from ourselves. I propose that the hermeneutic tradition is helpful in reflecting on the mediation that pervades perspective-​taking. While the task of overcoming distance and empathetic merging into the other’s experience was essential to the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and Dilthey, the productive significance of distance in understanding the other’s perspective has been a central theme in philosophical hermeneutics since the early 1960s. In particular, it plays a key role in how Gadamer conceptualizes perspective-​taking and its role in cultural education.42 He approaches this issue with the concept of Bildung, which has been elemental to the German tradition of understanding cultural education ever since the late eighteenth century. For J. G. Herder and the Early German Romantics, Bildung referred to the continuous process of self-​formation and cultivation through culture that results in the ability to distance oneself from what is nearest and in a receptivity and openness to different perspectives. In Gadamer’s account, the ability to “distance oneself from oneself” in Bildung is entwined with a consciousness of the “viewpoints of possible others” (1997, p. 17). In the approach of philosophical hermeneutics, engagement with the perspectives of others does not imply the dissolution of one’s own, historically constituted interpretative horizon; rather, it entails a dialogue with other perspectives in such a way that one becomes aware of one’s preconceptions, realizing that there are other ways of seeing the world that deserve to be respected and taken seriously: [A]‌person trying to understand a text is prepared for it to tell him something. That is why a hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity. But this kind of sensitivity involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one’s self. . . . The important

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 129 ]

301

thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-​meanings. (p. 269)

Awareness of how it is always from within a certain historical situation that we encounter another mode of experience facilitates engagement with the alterity of other perspectives. That human existence is profoundly historical, however, implies that “knowledge of oneself can never be complete” (p. 302). But although we can never fully overcome the limits of our historical world, we can become partly aware of them, and such awareness allows us to partly transgress those limits. This is a two-​way relationship: awareness of one’s own historicity helps one to encounter otherness, and encounters with others allow one to become aware of one’s historicity. We always engage with other perspectives from within the horizon of our own life history, our own values, beliefs, commitments, and attachments. This mediation is often neglected in discussions on narrative immersion. In narrative fiction, different perspectives are embedded in a fictional world with which the narrative invites us to engage. The experience of being transported to or immersed in the fictional world enables us to engage with those perspectives with a different intensity—​not only cognitively, but also emotionally, as embodied beings—​than when we read nonfiction or encounter different perspectives in passing in real-​life situations, “in which both time pressure and unwillingness or laziness may effectually cancel the process before it has even begun” (V. Nünning, 2015, p. 97). The moral agency of the characters is inextricably linked to the temporal process of change they go through. Following the development of characters in particular social and historical situations makes their actions, decisions, desires, fears, and anxieties comprehensible in a way they would hardly be if we did not go through that temporal process of change with them, thereby acquiring an embodied sense of the historical world in which their lives are embedded. Readers understand who the characters are, who they become, and in what kinds of cultural power dynamics their lives are entangled only after they have lived through the embodied process in which the characters act in the world in concrete situations. However, the kind of perspective-​taking in which narrative fiction invites readers to take part is not characterized by mere emotional participation. Narrative fiction frequently gives rise to a readerly dynamic based on the interplay between emotional participation and distanced reflection fueled by an awareness of the literary constructedness of the text. Such interplay is often dismissed in cognitively oriented literary studies, which

[ 130 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

typically conceptualize engagement with fictional worlds in terms of an experience of immersion or transportation and suggest that this experience is interrupted by the self-​reflexive aspects of texts, that is, by moments of becoming aware of their fictional, constructed character.43 For example, Ryan argues that literary texts can be “either self-​reflexive or immersive, or they can alternate between these two stances,” but “they cannot offer both experiences at the same time” (2003, p.  284). I  agree with Merja Polvinen that our engagement with literary worlds can be simultaneously both “immersed and self-​aware” (2012, p. 98), and I suggest that the hermeneutic approach to perspective-​taking provides a productive conceptual framework for acknowledging this “both and.” In the novels analyzed in this book, this “both and” is linked to their self-​reflexive dimension. Their protagonists are characters who refrain from inviting straightforward identification; instead, these narratives play with focalization in ways that encourage readers to adopt an engaged yet critical perspective on the protagonists. For example, the process of engaging with the perspectives of ordinary people who took part in the events of the Holocaust can be a valuable experience in giving one a sense of what historical processes made systematic, industrialized mass murder possible. Perspective-​taking and narrative imagination are not only about feeling with or for the other, but also about imagining the processes that lead certain individuals to act in certain ways. So long as we cannot imagine the experience of the subjects who took part in the events, we tend to regard atrocities like genocides as simply incomprehensible or monstrous. By imagining the experiences of the perpetrators and bystanders, we are more likely to be able to engage in complex ethical reflection on how such events concern us, implicate us, and place ethical obligations on us, instead of thinking that what they did has nothing to do with us. Narratives differ greatly in terms of whether they actively foster perspective-​awareness, perspective-​sensitivity, and perspective-​taking—​ for example, through polyphonic and self-​reflexive narrative strategies—​or whether they mask their own perspectival organization through naturalizing narrative strategies. This is another continuum on which different narratives can be placed. In ethical terms, monological narratives that invite immediate identification through naturalizing strategies tend to be more dangerous than ones that encourage awareness of multiple perspectives and of narrative construction. Terrorist recruitment magazines, for example, employ narrative strategies that evoke straightforward identification and techniques of naturalization.44 Narratives that create awareness of different perspectives on the same phenomenon or situation are generally

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 131 ]

321

ethically more productive than ones that present only one perspective as worth considering. This model allows us to understand the affective dimension of the ethical potential of perspective-​taking in wider terms than the Nussbaumian model. Nussbaum believes that the ethically most valuable literature is one that cultivates our “capacities for love and compassion” (2010, p. 112), and she privileges literature that invites us to see the world from the perspective of those who are socially marginalized or oppressed: “information about social stigma and inequality will not convey the full understanding a democratic citizen needs without a participatory experience of the stigmatized position, which theater and literature both enable” (p. 107).45 Although Nussbaum undoubtedly draws attention to an important aspect of the ethical potential of narrative fiction, her approach is arguably too narrow. Not just empathy, but a whole range of affective responses—​from shame and anger to a sense of affection and solidarity—​can make ethically valuable contributions to our ethical imagination, and the capacity for perspective-​taking is linked to the capability to imagine and understand the horizons from which others orient themselves to the world. Furthermore, perspective-​taking in reading fiction concerns not only taking the perspectives of characters; it also pertains to engagement with the text’s overall vision. Engaging with the perspective on the world opened up by a literary narrative can widen our horizons, enrich our interpretative resources, and show new possibilities for us. In sum, we should understand perspective-​taking and the potential of narrative fiction to cultivate our perspective-​awareness and perspective-​ sensitivity in a broader sense than is generally acknowledged. What I agree on with Nussbaum, Batson, Goldie, Coplan, and many others who have made important contributions to our understanding of the topic is that other-​ oriented perspective-​taking involves an act of imagination. As I have suggested, however, we need a more nuanced understanding of this act. First, it is not a process of leaving behind one’s own values and being transported to the other’s perspective; instead, it involves putting one’s own values and commitments at play and at stake, letting them be tested and questioned but also allowing the encounter to clarify what it is in them that is worth holding onto. Second, reflection on this mediation can help us move beyond our own categories of understanding, let go of them, or modify them. Third, ethically valuable outcomes of perspective-​taking cannot be reduced to the single outcome of empathetic concern for the other. The process of imagining the world of the other as a space of possibilities that enables us to understand the other’s actions without accepting them can also be ethically valuable. The imaginative act of perspective-​taking can help us understand divergent kinds of otherness that require different ethical responses.

[ 132 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

ETHICAL INQUIRY

Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly common for philosophers to argue that narrative is central to moral agency, moral education, and moral philosophy. This is a set of interconnected discussions from which different threads of argumentation can be disentangled. Despite their overlap, we can distinguish between discussions on the general significance of narrative for moral agency and debates that focus specifically on the ethical significance of narrative fiction. Philosophers have emphasized that narrative is integral to moral agency because in deciding to embark on one course of action instead of others, we need to imagine the possible consequences of different actions. As Noël Carroll observes, moral reasoning involves “entertaining alternative courses of action” (2000, p.  362), and hence narrative imagination is a central faculty for moral agency.46 The ability to imagine how our actions would affect others in different alternative possible scenarios is linked to perspective-​taking—​to imagining how our actions would be perceived and experienced from the perspectives of others. As we make ethical decisions, we project a story that involves understanding how the past motivates the action and imagining a future to which it leads.47 Philosophers have not always paid enough heed to how, as moral agents, we need to imagine not just the immediate consequences of our actions, but also the kind of life we want to live and the person we want to be: moral agency involves an aspect of expressing, constructing, and reinterpreting one’s narrative ethical identity. As we saw earlier, theorists like Taylor, Ricoeur, and MacIntyre emphasize the link between narrative and self-​ responsibility. Today’s media environment, however, abounds with examples of the ways in which narratives can encourage ethically problematic actions. Terrorist recruitment narratives, contemporary neo-​Fascist narrative imaginary, and Trump’s “America first” narrative are all efforts to provide people with a clear-​cut narrative identity and a concomitant action-​guiding ethos and pathos. Narratives shape our identity and agency often more effectively than abstract moral theories because they do not affect us merely cognitively, but also (and often primarily) affectively. When narratives do something to us, ethically speaking, it is due to their power to move us, to elicit affective responses in us. The affective dimension of narrative is also key to its power as a form of ethical inquiry: as narratives explore the ethical complexities of a whole range of human emotional life, they are not plagued with the abstract language of moral theories. But affectivity by itself does not make narrative ethical. Precisely the power of narratives to move us

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 133 ]

341

can also be harnessed for problematic political purposes. This is painfully clear in the contemporary West, as highly emotionally charged xenophobic narratives of far-​right populists are attracting more and more supporters across Europe and the United States. The arguments on the ethical significance of narrative fiction mainly emphasize either instruction or training. Booth, for example, sees fiction as a form of “moral education” (1988, p. 211), and Nussbaum foregrounds the capacity of narrative fiction to teach “certain truths about human life” (1990, p. 5) that materialize in concrete situations. In her later work, Nussbaum (2010) has particularly focused on the pedagogical value of the right kind of narrative fiction to convey democratic moral values. Carroll’s (2000) “cultivation approach,” in turn, links the ethical value of narrative fiction to the way it cultivates our powers of moral deliberation by providing examples of moral actions in concrete situations. He argues that such “exercise enhances our ability to reflect on further moral situations, just as running through logic exercises prepares us to solve theorems we have never seen before”; allegedly, we possess “abstract moral maxims” and “abstract moral concepts, such as those pertaining to virtue and vice” and by “providing concrete examples, art can advance our understanding of how to apply them to particular cases” (2000, p. 368). Many thinkers who draw on cognitive science understand such training in terms of simulation, suggesting that reading a narrative means simulating in our minds what it would be like to experience what the narrative describes.48 According to the evolutionary cognitivists Brian Boyd (2009) and Jonathan Gottschall (2013), for example, stories are the way our mind trains for situations that demand moral action: “They simulate worlds so we can live better in this one” (2013, p. 197). The reading process, Boyd asserts, resembles “scientific advancing and testing of hypotheses” (2009, p. 387). A refined version of the cultivation approach is Joshua Landy’s “formative approach,” which argues that fiction trains and hones our mental capacities by providing “spiritual exercises” that “help us become who we are” (2012, p. 10). What troubles me in most approaches to the ethical potential of narrative fiction is the way in which they, in perceiving this contribution in terms of instruction (Booth, Nussbaum) or training (Carroll, Landy), seem to assume that we already know beforehand what is right and wrong. They argue that literature teaches us moral truths (Booth, Nussbaum), cultivates our decision-​making abilities by providing us with exercises in applying abstract moral maxims in practice (Carroll), or trains our mental abilities so that we learn ethically valuable skills, such as that of achieving “an enduring peace of mind” (Landy, 2012, p. 11). I argue that instead of conveying moral truths or rehearsing our ability to detect them, literature can

[ 134 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

function as a form of ethical inquiry in its own right. The ethical potential of narrative fiction lies more in the questions it poses and in shaping or refining our sense of the complexities of the moral space we inhabit than in the answers it proposes. To a certain extent, the discussions on the relevance of fiction for moral philosophy have moved toward acknowledging that fiction can function as ethical inquiry. In Anglo-​American analytic philosophy, literature has traditionally provided illuminating examples for moral philosophers, but over the last few decades the situation has changed so that those who take seriously the moral philosophical relevance of literature now increasingly consider literary works, as Nora Hämäläinen puts it, as “self-​standing vehicles of philosophical or moral thought” (2016, p. 20). In her account, these philosophers believe that “the writer pursues an ethical subject and lays out an argument which is brought to life through the actions and thoughts of characters,” whereby the work can be considered “an intervention in a philosophical discussion” (p. 21).49 As the formulation indicates, however, the primary interest of philosophers resides in arguments. Even when they strive to treat literature in its own terms, philosophers tend to look for arguments that make contributions to moral philosophy whereby literature is subjected to philosophical categories, dichotomies, and terms of argument. This downplays the ethical insights conveyed by non-​argumentative aspects of literary works, including their narrative dynamic, affectivity, and the interplay between their form and content. In order to flesh out my disagreement with approaches implying that we already know beforehand what is right and wrong, let me analyze more closely Nussbaum’s influential thinking on the pedagogical value of literature. Her views on literature and moral agency draw and comment on Plato’s and Aristotle’s ancient quarrel over whether literature is harmful or beneficial given how it affects our emotional side. Nussbaum shows convincingly that emotions are elemental to moral agency and rationality and provides counter-​arguments to two classical objections to emotions. According to the first objection, emotions are irrational, “blind forces that have nothing (or nothing much) to do with reasoning”; according to the second, emotions are closely linked to judgments, but those judgments are “false because they ascribe a very high value to external persons and events that are not fully controlled by the person’s virtue or rational will” (1995, p. 56): In all of these cases, the emotions picture human life as something needy and incomplete. . . . Ties to children, parents, loved ones, fellow citizens, country,

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 135 ]

361

one’s own body and health—​these are the material on which emotions work; and these ties, given the power of chance to disrupt them, make human life a vulnerable business, in which complete control is neither possible nor, given the value of these attachments for the person who has them, even desirable. (p. 57)

Nussbaum shows that the anti-​emotion position rests on the highly controversial (Socratic) normative claim that “the good person is completely self-​sufficient” (p. 57). Regarding the quarrel between Plato and Aristotle, Nussbaum is resolutely Aristotelian:  “Aristotle insists that removing the family, rather than ensuring impartial and equal concern for all citizens, will ensure that nobody cares strongly about anything” (pp. 69–​70). She argues that emotions are essential for moral agency because they “enable the agent to perceive a certain sort of worth or value” (p.  64). Self-​ sufficiency certainly makes one less vulnerable, but do we want to live that kind of life? For Nussbaum, play and literature are important for coming to terms with our vulnerability:  “Play teaches people to be capable of living with others without control; it connects the experiences of vulnerability and surprise to curiosity and wonder, rather than to crippling anxiety” (2010, p. 101). With reference to Donald Winnicott, she emphasizes how art creates a “play space” that strengthens “the personality’s emotional and imaginative resources” (p. 101). Literature cultivates our capacity to assign value to things and to care about the suffering and wishes of others, and what Aristotle said of tragedy applies to the modern novel, too: “the very form constructs compassion in readers, positioning them as people who care intensely about the sufferings and bad luck of others, and who identify with them in ways that show possibilities for themselves” (1995, p. 66). I share Nussbaum’s view that essential to the ethical potential of narrative fiction is how it invites us to engage with different ways of ascribing worth to persons and things, but her way of conceptualizing literature’s mode of “showing possibilities” for readers primarily as possibilities provided by heroes with whom we identify—​admiringly or compassionately—​ strikes me as too limited. It fails to acknowledge how fictional worlds contribute to our possibilities by enlarging the space that sets the limits for our capacities to experience, imagine, think, ascribe worth to others, and invent new modes of co-​inhabiting the world. While agreeing with Nussbaum’s critique of the norm of detachment, I have reservations about her own normativity: “in order to be stably linked to democratic values,” she argues, the education of citizens for democratic purposes needs to be linked to “a normative view about how human beings ought to relate to one another (as equals, as dignified, as having inner

[ 136 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

depth and worth),” and this requires “selectivity regarding the artworks used” (2010, p. 108). It is of course welcome that she acknowledges that not all literature makes us better persons: [W]‌e cannot deny that antidemocratic movements have known how to use the arts, music, and rhetoric in ways that contribute further to demeaning and stigmatizing certain groups and people. The imaginative component of democratic education requires careful selectivity. (p. 109)

What is disturbing in her normativity is that it seems more or less self-​ evident to her what is right and wrong, which literary works should be selected for the curriculum, and which are “defective forms of ‘literature’ ” that fail to cultivate “a healthy moral relationship to others” (p.  109). Nussbaum advocates a rather specific “normative sense of life” (1995, p. 2), largely based on Aristotelian virtue ethics. Together with her view on the empathetic identification with characters as the basis of the reading experience, it suggests that she essentially still expects literature to provide us with models to imitate, following premodern, classicist poetics, where literature was expected to have a didactic function and to illustrate generally known truths in an aesthetically pleasing form. Horace famously formulated in Ars poetica that literature should be “dulce et utile”: sweet and useful, pleasant and instructive. Classicist poetics, however, was based on a worldview very different from the modern one. It was linked to an ontology where a pregiven, divine, meaningful order can be found in the world, independent of human beings, and an integral part of which were generally known, universal truths about the good life. Crudely put, ontology and ethics were part and parcel of the same meaningful order, a system of truths that were taken to be shared by all rational beings, and it was the task of literature to teach those truths in a pleasant form. For the moderns, in contrast, there are no longer pregiven answers to what human existence is about. Literature no longer preaches a pregiven morality or vision of the good life; instead of setting examples, modern literature searches for meaning and values, exploring different ethical conceptions and modes of experience.50 As a process of exploration it can engender new insights into the fundamental questions of human existence—​such as those concerning the good life or just society—​as well as radically new ways of posing these questions. From this perspective, Nussbaum seems somewhat too eager to provide us with ready answers to fundamental existential questions. If we define at the outset what kind of people we should be, what kind of life we should live, and what kind of literature is good for us, we risk overlooking the very

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 137 ]

381

value that literature has in cultivating our narrative imagination as the free, unrestrained exploration of human possibilities. Nussbaum neglects how at the core of literary imagination is the capacity of fiction to explore the limits of what can be said and thought and what Ricoeur calls “power-​ to-​be” (1991a, p. 66), that is, to unfold, in unexpected ways, new directions for thought, action, and experience. Like Nussbaum, Derrida stresses that literature is inextricably linked to democracy. For him, however, this is because literature is an institution that is based on the “right to say everything [tout dire],” on “the unlimited right to ask any question, to suspect all dogmatism, to analyze every presupposition, even those of the ethics or the politics of responsibility” (1995a, p. 28).51 Nussbaum’s approach risks losing sight of the possibility that literature may open up new modes of thinking, experiencing, and living together that we may rule out if we only read literature that conforms to our preexisting views of the good life. Nussbaum’s approach to narrative imagination is also limited by a moral psychology that overemphasizes individual psychology at the expense of the social in making sense of ethical struggles. For her, “the real clash of civilizations” (and the battle between the good and evil) is “a clash within the individual soul, as greed and narcissism contend against respect and love” (2010, p. 143). Her critique of the current state of democracies pays curiously little attention to how narrative fiction can help us understand more profoundly the social and historical developments that shape our world, including insights into how narrative strategies of naturalization are used to uphold structures of violence and the triumph of instrumental reason—​a mode of thought that focuses on the efficient achievement of a given end, such as maximizing profit, at the expense of reflection on the aims and values that steer our actions. From the perspective of the latter type of reflection, which Max Weber called value rationality, essential to the ethical contribution of narrative fiction is its exploration of different visions of good life and just society, rather than teaching pregiven virtues. As we will see, literature can also contribute to such value rationality by inviting us to engage with worlds inhabited by unpleasant characters who are nothing like role models. Generally inadequate attention has been paid to the ethical relevance of the temporality of the process in which the reader is emotionally engaged with narratives, the worlds proposed by them, and characters’ perspectives and modes of experience in those worlds. Temporality might be seen to be implicit in Nussbaum’s emphasis on emotionally engaged “imaginative participation” (2010, p. 104) and the significance of the particular for moral

[ 138 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

agency (1990, pp. 35–​49), but temporality does not profoundly affect her conception of the ethical insights produced by narrative fiction. She seems to think that while on some level we already possess knowledge of ethical truths beforehand, literature helps us better internalize these “truths about human life” (1990, p. 5) on an emotional level by examining them in connection to concrete, particular lives. In developing the idea that temporality fundamentally shapes narrative imagination as ethical imagination, it is worth going back to Aristotle, whose ethics has been important for both Nussbaum and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer draws on the Aristotelian notion of phronesis to rethink ethics against the backdrop of the profound temporality of human existence. Aristotle (1984, pp. 3726–​3727) examines in Nicomachean Ethics the role of reason in moral agency, where he rejects the Platonic idea of the good as an empty abstraction and argues that it is necessary to explore ethics in connection with the particular nature of the human mode of being—​in Gadamer’s words, “not detached from a being that is becoming, but determined by it and determinative of it” (1997, p.  312). While for Plato ethics is an inextricable part of his metaphysics that concerns all being, Aristotle, by contrast, deals with nature and human existence as two distinct realms of reality: the first, physis, is the sphere of necessity; the latter, ethos, the sphere where things are in a state of constant becoming and could be otherwise than they are: Ethical being, as a specifically human undertaking, is distinguished from natural being because it is not simply a collection of capacities or innervating forces. Man, on the contrary, is a being who only becomes what he is and acquires his bearing by what he does, by the “how” of his actions. It is in this sense that Aristotle differentiates between the domain of ethos and that of physics. (Gadamer, 1987, p. 116)

Aristotle argued that while the object of theoretical reason (episteme) is unchangeable (eternal essences and laws), practical reason (phronesis) concerns human temporal existence, that is, what could be otherwise. Ethical action is not based on abstract knowledge of essences (of the idea of the good), but on the temporal process in which human beings learn, through their own experience, how to act in the world. Hence, instead of being defined by an abstract essence, we become who we are by the “how” of our actions (see Aristotle, 1984, pp. 3780–​3781). For Aristotle, practical reason concerns action, which always takes place in particular situations and hence cannot be captured by universal laws (pp.  3758–​3759, 3855). From this starting point, Gadamer (1997,

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 139 ]

4 0 1

pp. 313–​317) characterizes practical, ethical knowledge as the ability to see the right thing to do in a particular situation: “Only within ethical perception does the situation appear to us as a situation for our action and in the light of what is just” (1987, p. 124). Unlike theoretical knowledge, practical, phronetic knowledge cannot be taught in abstraction. It requires deliberative abilities that only life experience can cultivate, which is why the young lack “practical wisdom”: [S]‌uch wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has no experience, for it is length of time that gives experience; . . . practical wisdom is . . . concerned with the ultimate particular fact, since the thing to be done is of this nature. (Aristotle, 1984, p. 3871)

Gadamer (1997, pp.  314–​316) asserts that both techne and phronesis are forms of knowledge that require prior knowledge and the ability to apply it in practice, but while techne concerns the craftsperson’s knowledge of general essences that she applies to manufacture an object according to a model, as when she molds a piece of clay into a perfect pot, human beings cannot mold themselves into “good persons” on the basis of general knowledge about essences in this way. In ethical action, too, one requires prior understanding of what is right, good, and just, but it is unlike a technical skill that could be first learned and then applied: ethical knowledge is never pre-​given in that way (p.  317).52 Instead, ethical understanding is intertwined, from the beginning, with how we act in the world with others. As “the subject of ethical reason, of phronesis, man always finds himself in an ‘acting situation’ and he is always obliged to use ethical knowledge and apply it according to the exigencies of his concrete situation” (1987, p. 120). Ethical action takes place in concrete situations, which are all different, and the ability to act in them is not something external to our being; it is an inextricable part of our life experience and how we understand ourselves in the world (p. 119). Ultimately, phronetic knowledge is always also a form of self-​knowledge (sich-​Wissen) that manifests itself as a sense of one’s possibilities in the world (1997, p. 316). Our general ethical views acquire content only through the way they are expressed and actualized in concrete situations. This applies to all the concepts we have at our disposal in our search for ethical bearings: “These concepts are not fixed in the firmament like the stars; they are what they are only in the concrete situations in which we find ourselves” (1987, p. 122). The relationship between ethical preconceptions and the way they are interpreted in concrete situations is dialogical and moves in a hermeneutic

[ 140 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

circle. Hence, ethical insights cannot be disconnected from the process of living (as moral agents entangled in narrative webs) because there can be “no anterior certainty concerning what the good life is directed toward as a whole” (Gadamer, 1997, p. 321). As the end (what makes life good) remains permanently open, there can be no anterior, fixed knowledge of the right means to achieve it either: “in moral actions there is no prior knowledge of the right means which realize the end, and this is so because, above all else, the ends themselves are at stake and not perfectly fixed beforehand” (1987, p. 123). Thus, in ethical reasoning, we cannot strictly separate reflection concerning the right means from reflection concerning the right ends. Ethical reasoning is simultaneously aimed both at one’s overall vision of the good life and at assessing what is the right course of action in a particular situation and in what way the end appears in light of that particular action (p. 123). Narratives can contribute both to our overall visions of good lives and just societies and to our sense of the ethical complexity of particular situations. Aristotle and Gadamer deal with ethical reasoning in connection to our condition as moral agents in general, but the temporality of this process is even more salient in the case of the moderns, who have generally no unfaltering faith in a pregiven order of things and no universally shared conception of the good life. The modern novel typically presents the temporal process of becoming, in which moral agents embedded in a particular historical world go through new experiences, make them their own, and are transformed by these experiences as they search for a sense of who they are and what makes their life meaningful.53 This search is fueled by narrative imagination: by imagining where one comes from, how one’s life could unfold, and who one could become. In the modern novel, the process of ethical reflection is inextricably temporal for both characters and readers. Not only do the characters become who they are only through the temporal process of living their lives, but readers can engage in their ethical evaluation only by considering the life process that led the person to act in a certain way, and the temporal process of engaging with this process requires constant re-​evaluation. If ethical understanding is a phronetic art that cannot be taught in abstraction and that is characterized by the temporal process of experiencing and imagining concrete situations in their complexity, it is no wonder that narrative fiction—​which is emphatically about temporal processes of ethical decision-​making in complex fictional worlds—​is the art of ethical imagination. Musil saw literature as a “moral laboratory” (1983, p. 1173), and Ricoeur further develops this view by arguing that narrative fiction is “a vast laboratory in which we experiment with estimations, evaluations,

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 141 ]

421

and judgments of approval and condemnation through which narrativity serves as a propaedeutic to ethics” (1992, p. 115). In this “great laboratory of the imaginary,” ethical questions are explored through imaginative variations (p.  164). In this laboratory, however, we do not pass judgements from secure, pre-​established value positions; at its most powerful, the laboratory transforms our narratively mediated ethical identities and the moral space in which we navigate. In thinking of narrative fiction as a mode of exploration that can function as a form of ethical inquiry in its own right, we should consider the possibility that the ethical lies in the power of literary narratives to function as a form of ethical questioning that unsettles us, rather than in the affirmative moral positions or arguments they may present. The most important contribution of narrative fiction to ethical imagination takes place when the application of knowledge that we already possess is precisely not enough—​when the subsumption model of narrative understanding breaks down. The ethical potential of narratives that function as a form of ethical inquiry is linked to their capacity to expand our sense of the possible. Such narratives can sensitize us to the multitude of ways of approaching a particular ethical issue and expand the space in which we can move, intellectually and emotionally, as we deal with ethically complex issues. At the opposite—​ethically problematic—​end of the continuum are narratives that reinforce dogmatism:  narratives that diminish our possibilities and shut down discussion by declaring or implying that there is only one right model of the good life, of being in relationships, or of organizing social life. In contrast, narratives that function as a mode of ethical inquiry imaginatively and undogmatically explore different kinds of narrative identities and in-​betweens. At their most radical, such narratives can produce new insights into some of our most fundamental ethical questions, concerning how to live our lives in relation to those of others and what makes life meaningful, new ways of asking these questions, and even new ways of understanding the very meaning of the ethical.

INTERSECTING ASPECTS OF THE ETHICAL POTENTIAL OF STORYTELLING

The six aspects of the ethical potential of narratives, discussed in this chapter, are not separate from each other, and, as I have argued, an expansion of the sense of the possible is integral to all of them. Multiple interlacing threads link them to one another. To recapitulate from the perspective of the sense of the possible, storytelling can enlarge our sense of what we

[ 142 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

can do, think, feel, perceive, and experience, and how we can relate to others. We understand our possibilities through being entangled in dialogical relationships with others, and we understand others as agents who act and suffer in response to possibilities open—​or closed—​to them. The narrative in-​between shapes our ways of understanding our own possibilities, those of others, and possibilities that we have as “we”; the creation of new narrative in-​betweens entails novel intersubjective spaces in which unexpected possibilities of being, feeling, thinking, doing, and sharing open up. Taking the other’s perspective is linked to the ability to imagine the space of possibilities from which the other sees the world; by inviting us to imagine different perspectives on the world, literary narratives can show us new possibilities, including possibilities of more inclusive narratives of “us.” When we take seriously narrative fiction as a form of ethical inquiry, we can see how literary narratives can explore the limits of our ethical imagination and provide us with fresh possibilities to imagine good lives and just societies. Throughout this chapter I  have argued that narrative hermeneutics should both articulate the various aspects of the ethical potential of storytelling and acknowledge that not all storytelling is beneficial for us. In fact, most of the time, the ethical potential of narratives remains unrealized. The six aspects of the ethical potential and dangers of storytelling analyzed in this chapter hopefully provide analytic and evaluative criteria for a differentiated analysis of the ethics of particular narratives. Whether the ethical potential of storytelling will or will not be realized in particular cases can only be evaluated situationally, in context. In the next chapters I will elucidate this situationality and social embeddedness of storytelling practices in relation to fictional and autobiographical narratives. While the discussion in this chapter has focused mainly on the different aspects of the potential of storytelling, the following chapters discuss narratives that alert us to the dangers of storytelling. At the same time, they demonstrate how ethically complex, challenging narratives can expand our sense of the possible by exploring the limits of our ethical imagination. It seems to me that both the opponents and proponents of narrativity (particularly in psychology, philosophy, and literary theory) frequently pay insufficient attention to the way in which narrative practices of sense-​ making are always embedded in sociocultural, historical worlds and gain meaning only when interpreted in concrete life situations. Shifting attention in this direction allows us to see that the question of the relationship between narrative and life is always also a question of the subject’s relation to social practices and dynamics of power. Above all, as the next chapters hopefully show, the ethically crucial question is not whether narratives are

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 143 ]

41

“good” or “bad,” but rather how individuals and communities use, perpetuate, and transform cultural narrative practices to construct their identities, interpret their experiences, and engage with those of others.

NOTES 1. “Hier ist dies oder das geschehen, wird geschehen, muß geschehen; sondern er erfindet: Hier könnte, sollte oder müßte geschehn; und wenn man ihm von irgend etwas erklärt, daß es so sei, wie es sei, dann denkt er: Nun, es könnte wahrscheinlich auch anders sein” (Musil, 1974, p. 16). 2. “[L]‌’Histoire n’est pas, comme voudraient le faire croire les manuels scolaires, une série discontinue de dates, de traités et de batailles spectaculaires et cliquetantes . . . la terne existence d’une vieille dame, c’est l’Histoire elle-​même, la matière même de l’Histoire” (Simon, 1958, pp. 35–​36). 3. On how the future anterior is linked to the way in which “memory has a form that lends itself to anticipation as much as to recollection,” see Currie (2016, p. 203). I have learned a lot about the future anterior from Jouni Teittinen. 4. Drawing on how remembrance “cuts across and binds together diverse spatial, temporal, and cultural sites,” Rothberg delineates a “comparative imagination” in which “comparisons, analogies, and other multidirectional invocations are an inevitable part of the struggle for justice” (2009, pp. 11, 21, 29). 5. See Ricoeur (1984, pp. 74–​76, 80; 1988, p. 249; 1992, p. 148). 6. Zetterberg Gjerlevsen (2016). See also Nielsen, Phelan, & Walsh (2015). 7. Ricoeur discusses, from a similar perspective, imagination as the “general function of developing practical possibilities” (1991a, p. 178). 8. Both in Felski’s approach, inspired by Latour’s actor-​network theory, and in philosophical hermeneutics, the literary text is not seen as an object, but rather as having a mode of being that resembles more that of a subject-​like agent, with whom we engage in a dialogue. 9. The idea that interpretation takes place “in front of the text” is one of Ricoeur’s key metaphors: “to interpret is to explicate the type of being-​in-​the-​world unfolded in front of the text. . . . Through fiction and poetry, new possibilities of being-​in-​the-​world are opened up within everyday reality” (1991a, p. 86). 10. See also Taylor (1989, pp. 47, 52); MacIntyre (1984, pp. 204–​225). 11. On how cultural sense-​making practices that we fail to bring to the level of critical self-​reflection affect us “behind our backs,” see Gadamer (1993a, p. 247). 12. On the narrativization of identity in the Bildungsroman, see Saariluoma (2007). 13. On “small stories research,” see Georgakopoulou (2007); Bamberg & Georgakopoulou (2008). 14. The Women’s March was the largest single-​day demonstration in the US history. In Washington alone, it drew at least 500,000 participants, and worldwide participation was estimated to be around five million. 15. Felski in her talk “Identification: A Defense,” in Turku, April 2016. 16. See, for example, Heidegger (1996, p. 152); Ricoeur (1991a, p. 66). Ricoeur writes about the “shock of the possible” (1984, p. 79). 17. For a fuller discussion of how narrative self-​reflection can be linked to blindness toward one’s ethical responsibility, see Meretoja (2014b, pp. 177–​214).

[ 144 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

18. “[E]‌s ist etwas Beleidigendes darin, verstanden zu werden. . . . Comprendre c’est égaler.” 19. In addition to the first level of violence, there is institutionalized concealment of the originary violence and violence as “what is commonly called evil, war, indiscretion, rape” (Derrida, 1997, p. 112). 20. See, e.g., Lyotard (1991, p. 74); for a broader discussion, see Meretoja (2014b, pp. 86–​91). 21. From a certain perspective, the poststructuralist critique of understanding, however, can be seen to assume, implicitly and performatively, the possibility of non-​subsumptive understanding: if nonviolent understanding were not possible, what would be the point of the critique? 22. A starting point for the non-​subsumptive model can be traced further back, to Kant’s (2002, pp. 274–​276) aesthetics, in which he acknowledges that not all judgments follow the logic of subsuming the object under a known universal (as suggested in Kritik der reinen Vernunft): in addition to such “determinative judgments,” there are “reflective judgments” that involve seeking unknown universals. Kant, however, failed to consider adequately how these “universals” are constituted intersubjectively in time and how they vary across historical and cultural worlds. Arendt drew on Kant’s theory of reflective judgment in developing her own political philosophy, but failed to address the ahistorical character of his thinking. Acknowledging this, Stone-​Mediatore (2003, p. 68) proceeds to consider how a critical engagement with Kant’s theory of reflective judgment could be used in further developing an Arendtian theory of political storytelling. 23. Such a utopia also characterizes Derrida’s ethics: encountering the other nonviolently, he argues, would require that one “does not pass through the neutral element of the universal” and, instead, encounters the other without the violence of concepts, which, in turn, is impossible (1978, p. 96). 24. See, e.g., Ricoeur, 1984, p. 75; Cavarero (2000, 2005); Guaraldo (2013). 25. On my non-​subsumptive model of narrative understanding, see also Meretoja (2018). 26. Such criticism has been issued both within trauma theory (Brown, 1995; Rothberg, 2009, 2014; Craps, 2013) and from positions that argue for moving beyond it when “describing what happens to persons and populations as an effect of catastrophic impacts”; unlike much of trauma theory suggests, crisis is not exceptional “but a process embedded in the ordinary” (Berlant, 2011, pp. 9–​10). Cognitive scientists, in turn, have questioned, on the basis of empirical research, the view that trauma is inaccessible and unspeakable (see Pederson, 2014). 27. Of course, one should acknowledge that the therapeutic situation involves power structures and the danger of subsumptive appropriation (e.g., the therapist forcing the patient’s story into certain explanatory categories), but awareness of this danger is a step toward non-​subsumptive understanding, which can function as a regulative ideal for the therapeutic process. 28. See also White (2007, p. 40). Vassilieva contrasts narrative therapy with McAdams’s approach, which risks “reducing the variety of personal stories to one underlying myth” (2016, p. 174); his idea of the redemptive self as underlying American identity seems to follow the logic of subsumptive storytelling.

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 145 ]

46 1

29. See, e.g., White & Epston (1990); White (1997, 2007); Payne (2006). Similarly, Frie suggests that the aim of hermeneutic psychoanalytic practice is “to create new possibilities for knowing and relating that are generated in the formation of new narratives” (2016, pp. 129–​131). 30. Felski (2016), in her talk “Identification: A Defense.” While Felski keeps the notion of identification separate from that of identity, for me the conceptual link between these two is important, and I see the dynamics of “identification-​ with” as central to how identity as a sense of self is constituted, but instead of understanding identity in terms of sameness, I see it as a temporal process of becoming (see Chapter 2). 31. On how communities are built on shared memory, see Margalit (2002), and Rothberg (2009, p. 15). 32. Gottschall asserts that storytelling continues to “fulfill its ancient function of binding society by reinforcing a set of common values and strengthening the ties of common culture,” thereby functioning as “the grease and glue of society” (2013, pp. 137–​138), but as Randall puts it, storytelling is not just “the glue that binds us together” but, “just as often, the poison that pushes us apart” (2015, p. 3). 33. On the concept of cultural trauma, see Alexander et al. (eds.) (2004); Korhonen (2013); for criticism, see Kansteiner & Weilnböck, (2008). 34. On how the figure of the authoritarian father is seen to represent the legacy of fascism in second-​generation German literature, particularly in the so-​called Väterliteratur, see McGlothlin (2006). 35. These novels include Sofi Oksanen’s Puhdistus (2008, Purge), Katja Kettu’s Kätilö (2011, The Midwife), and Jenni Linturi’s Isänmaan tähden (2011, For the Fatherland). On the Finnish national narratives of the Second World War, see Meinander (2011). 36. See, for example, http://​www.faz.net/​aktuell/​politik/​brexit/​angela-​merkel-​ warnt-​nach-​brexit-​vor-​schnellen-​schluessen-​14306334.html. 37. On the need to extend hermeneutics beyond the human, see Herman (2016). 38. Batson (2009). On the ethical potential of literature in cultivating empathy, see also Keen (2007); Locatelli (2015); V. Nünning (2015); A. Nünning (2015). 39. In his review, Batson (2009, p. 274) concludes that the finding according to which “the imagine-​other perspective activates the right inferior parietal lobule (TPJ)—​a region associated with distinguishing self from other and self-​agency from other agency—​supports the idea that this perspective is not associated with self-​other merging but with self-​other distinctiveness.” See also Coplan (2011) on the need to distinguish emotional contagion from other-​oriented perspective-​taking, which she sees as a necessary condition of genuine empathy. 40. This mediation is not something that one could switch off; hence, no neuroimaging can compare “mediated” and “unmediated” imagining of others’ perspectives. 41. “Hermeneutic justice” only works as a relative, comparative notion: there can be no such thing as absolute/​perfect hermeneutic justice because it is not possible for us to understand even ourselves perfectly, not to mention other people. 42. On the hermeneutic significance of distance, see also Ricoeur (1991a, pp. 75–​ 88); Freeman (2010). See Sklar (2013) on distance as a constitutive aspect of sympathy.

[ 146 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

43. See, e.g., Walton (1990); Gerrig (1998). For an insightful critical discussion of such a dominant way of conceptualizing literary engagement, see Polvinen (2012). 44. On terrorist recruitment narratives, see Falke (2018). 45. In making this argument, Nussbaum seems to be addressing readers who are not themselves members of minority groups, i.e., white, middle-​class (primarily male) Westerners. 46. See also Nussbaum (1997, p. 90), and Johnson’s cognitively oriented view: “our moral understanding and deliberation depends crucially on the cultivation of our moral imagination” (1993, p. 1). 47. As Walker puts it, narratives situate moral problems in the context of socially meaningful (inter)action that unfolds in time: “Because negotiation of our lives in moral terms is a continuing process, new situations must be mapped onto past understandings and projected into future possibilities. . . . [S]‌tories . . . show how a situation comes to be the particular problem it is, and . . . explore imaginatively the continuations that might resolve the problem and what they mean for the parties involved” (2007, p. 72). 48. On simulation theories, see Bergen (2012, p. 13). 49. According to Hämäläinen, a “literary turn” has taken place in Anglo-​American moral philosophy since the 1980s as utilitarian and deontological theories have been challenged by virtue ethics, feminist ethics, and various “particularisms” (2016, p. 6). 50. On the modern conception of literature, underlying the Bildungsroman, see Saariluoma (2004). As Locatelli (2015, p. 61) puts it, modern literature’s “contribution to ethics comes largely from the polyphony of voices and points of view it orchestrates and from the hermeneutic debate it provokes.” 51. Derrida seems to have in mind a kind of regulative idea of what is most essential to the institution of literature; he is obviously not making a descriptive claim about how the literary institution works; in totalitarian societies, for example, literature is of course a very different kind of institution. 52. Gadamer acknowledges that the concept of application is problematic precisely insofar as it connotes pregiven knowledge that we “already possess” and simply apply to a particular case (1987, p. 120). 53. On the link between the modern novel and narrative identity, see Taylor (1989); Saariluoma (2004); Meretoja (2014b, pp. 9–​12).

S t or y t e l l i n g a n d   E t hi c s  

[ 147 ]

4 8 1

CHAPTER 4

The Uses and Abuses of Narrative for Life Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau

E

choing Friedrich Nietzsche’s analysis of how history can be either beneficial or harmful for life, the title of this chapter indicates my aim to explore, in more concrete terms, both the ethically valuable and the violent effects of narratives on lives. I will test the framework of hermeneutic narrative ethics, delineated in Chapter 3, by using it as a lens through which to analyze the uses and abuses of narrative for life in Julia Franck’s novel Die Mittagsfrau (2007), which has appeared in English as both The Blind Side of the Heart (2009) and The Blindness of the Heart (2010),1 and has received high critical acclaim, including the prestigious German Book Prize. By exploring the ethical complexity of narrative practices in relation to intersecting histories of violence, the novel provides a compelling study of how narratives expand and diminish the space of possibilities in which moral agents act and suffer. In Germany, literature has played a major role in dealing with the traumatic legacy of the Second World War, and each new generation of writers has brought new perspectives into the negotiation of the cultural memory of the war.2 Franck is one of the most interesting of the younger generation of contemporary German novelists to question the dominance of a male perspective and a stereotypical perpetrator–​victim dichotomy in representations of the war and the Holocaust. She asserts that women’s experience of the war is a realm that novelists have either largely neglected, or dealt with through strategies of victimization or glorification, and that in

501

trying to understand the Holocaust through literary imagination, it is necessary to think beyond the dichotomous categories of the “good victim” (typically a Jew) and the “evil perpetrator” (typically a Nazi) (Meretoja & Franck, 2010). To date, there are not many novels about the Second World War that explore the mind of a (female) Jewish protagonist who is not unambiguously a victim or a survivor. Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser (1995, The Reader) was heralded as a groundbreaking novel because it focuses on a female perpetrator and portrays her in human terms, but, as Erin McGlothlin analyzes, the narrative gives no access to the perpetrator’s mind because her entire story is filtered through the male protagonist’s “narrow, egocentric, and often self-​serving perspective” (2010, pp. 216–​217). Die Mittagsfrau, in contrast, is mostly focalized through the female protagonist and narrates her life story in all its complexity and ambiguity. The central questions underlying Die Mittagsfrau include the following: What do stories do to us, ethically speaking? What does the war do to our narrative identities, and what experiential aspects of the Second World War and the Holocaust have been underexamined in their literary representations? The novel begins to unravel these issues in terms of a more concrete question: How was it possible that after the Second World War there were women who felt that they were no longer able to be mothers and ended up abandoning their children? Julia Franck’s own father experienced such an abandonment: her grandmother survived the war with her seven-​year-​old son (Franck’s father), but when the war was over, she left him sitting on a bench at a railway station, told him to wait, and never returned. Franck wanted to try to imagine how this was possible.3 Her grandmother was by no means the only one to arrive at such a desperate decision. Not only after the Second World War, but also after other military conflicts, such as those in Bosnia and Rwanda, war babies in particular have frequently been abandoned, including children who were not born out of direct sexual violence.4 By writing an imaginary family history, Franck explores narrative as a means of understanding both a personal and a broader cultural past—​in terms of human lives unfolding in the space of possibilities of a particular historical world.

SHIFTING POSSIBILITIES

Franck’s novel begins with a prologue in which the protagonist, a young woman called Alice—​ who later turns out to be half-​ Jewish Helene Würsich—​abandons her seven-​year-​old son Peter at a railway station,

[ 150 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

along with the address of his relatives, as the reader later finds out. What follows is the story of Helene’s life up to that point, a story through which the novel asks whether it is possible to understand such a decision by following her preceding traumatic experiences in the given historical context. The opening scene, after the prologue, depicts Helene and her older sister Martha lying in bed fighting over a hot-​water bottle. As Helene takes hold of her sister’s thick, soft hair, it reminds her of their mother’s hair, which Martha frequently combs. Their mother purrs contently when her hair is brushed, but if she thinks that a strand of her hair is pulled out, she has an aggressive outburst, cries out “with the fervour of some large animal,” and begins to throw things at her daughters with “violent, aimless movements” (Franck, 2009, p. 26):5 But while Mother shouted at her daughters, cursing them, complaining that she’d given birth to a couple of useless brats, Helene kept on and on repeating the same thing like a prayer:  May I  comb your hair? Her voice quivered:  May I comb your hair? As a pair of scissors flew through the air she raised her arms to protect her head: May I comb your hair? . . . [Mother] whimpered, and finally she kept on stammering the name Ernst Josef, Ernst Josef. . . . This is us, Mother. Martha spoke sternly and calmly. We’re here. Ernst Josef is dead, like your other sons, he was born dead, do you hear me, Mother? Dead, ten years ago. But we are here. (pp. 27–​28)6

This scene introduces the reader to a family history of trauma. Helene’s way of seeking refuge in the chant-​like repetition at the moment of abuse betrays her traumatic relationship with her mother. As the reader learns, the mother is a Jew whom the people of their small hometown, Bautzen, treat as an inferior. She is also traumatized by the loss of four sons: most of the time she is lost in a confused, desperate state, struggling with suicidal thoughts, as each of the lost sons “seemed to her a demand for her life to end” (p. 58).7 She remains unstable, locked in her dark room, and refuses to talk to anyone. As she fails to be emotionally available to her two daughters, a nanny, Marie, takes care of them. As contemporary trauma studies increasingly acknowledges, trauma is not always caused by a single catastrophic event. Ongoing processes—​such as racist practices or other types of structural oppression—​can also be traumatizing (see Rothberg, 2009, pp. 89–​92; Craps, 2013, p. 4; Buelens et al. 2014). The feminist psychotherapist Laura S. Brown wrote as early as 1995 about the way in which girls’ and women’s “secret, private, hidden experiences of everyday pain” tend to be left outside the definition of trauma (1995, p.  110). In psychiatric diagnostics, trauma has been, until

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 151 ]

521

recently, defined in terms of “an event that is outside the range of human experience” (p. 100): War and genocide, which are the work of men and male-​oriented culture, are agreed-​upon traumas. . . . Public events, visible to all, rarely themselves harbingers of stigma for their victims, things that can and do happen to men—​all of these constitute trauma in the official lexicon. (pp. 101–​102)

Brown argues for the necessity to admit that “everyday assaults on integrity and personal safety are sources of psychic trauma” (p. 105), and that for the majority of girls and women in the world, the constant threat of trauma (linked to rape, silencing, violations of physical and psychic integrity) is “a continuing background noise rather than an unusual event” (pp. 102–​103). Helene is traumatized (most obviously) by her mother, who only wanted sons and emotionally abandons her daughters, refusing to give them recognition as subjects of experience. The legitimacy of Helene’s experiences and her need for affection are constantly questioned; she is the object of her mother’s wrath and loathing. She is not only a victim of what Fricker (2007) calls “epistemic injustice”; it is not just that her credibility as a knower is called into question—​what is undermined is her whole existence as a singular, unique being who deserves recognition and care. Cold mothers who deny their children love and protection are recurring figures in Franck’s novels, which explore how motherhood is socially conditioned. In Rücken an Rücken (2011, Back to Back, 2013), for example, the mother, Käthe, modeled after Franck’s maternal grandmother who lived in East Germany as a devoted socialist, teaches her children that no one has “a right to love and protection” (Franck, 2013, p. 99).8 What are the hermeneutic and affective resources available to a child as she struggles to deal with such coldness? What are the narratives in terms of which Helene seeks to make sense of her painful experiences? Marie, the nanny, frequently tells Helene and Martha an old Slavic legend according to which Lady Midday, or the Noonday Witch, “appears in the harvest fields at noon and can confuse your mind or even kill you unless you hold her attention for an hour” by telling stories to her; Marie explains to the girls that their mother simply refused to talk to the Noonday Witch: [H]‌ er lady, as she called the girls’ mother, just wouldn’t speak to the spirit. . . . There was nothing to be done about it . . . although all her lady had to do was talk to the Noonday Witch. . . . Just passing on a little wisdom, she told the girls. Martha and Helene had known the tale of the Noonday Witch as long as they could remember; there was something comforting about it, because it

[ 152 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

suggested that their mother’s confused state of mind was merely a curse that could easily be lifted. (Franck, 2009, p. 136)9

This mythical narrative provides the girls with an interpretative model for rendering their experiences intelligible. They also create their own mythical stories, such as that of the “blindness of the heart,” which is Martha’s way of explaining to Helene why their mother neglects them: “her mother could no longer recognize her younger daughter, her heart had gone blind, as Martha said, so that she couldn’t see people any more” (p. 114). For the girls, narrative sense-​making is a process of sharing experiences in a way that consoles and empowers them: it creates an intersubjective narrative in-​between that helps them bear and deal with a painful situation. The ontological and ethical dimensions of storytelling are entwined in the way stories shape the space of possibilities in which the characters’ lives unfold. The childhood and youth of the girls is structured by the stories that surround them, including not just the stories they hear, but also the ones they read. Novels from their father’s library in particular provide them with mirrors in which to reflect on their own being and to imagine different courses of life. They secretly steal “treasures” from the library, such as Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea:  A Tragedy, which Helene tucks under her apron; in her room “her familiar friends were waiting, Young Werther and the Marquise of O.” (p. 120).10 Literary narratives play a crucial role in opening up new worlds for Helene and in helping her imagine a future for herself in dialogue with others. Especially at bedtime, Martha tells Helene stories about people she knows, including young women who have studied to become teachers or other professionals. These stories lead them to imagine a future in which Helene, too, will study at university: “When Martha painted such a picture of her future, Helene held her breath, hoping Martha wouldn’t stop telling that story, would go on and on, and picture Helene studying human anatomy some day in a huge lecture room at Dresden University” (p. 49).11 Here the emphasis is on the futurity of their developing narrative imagination. Given the historical context, the gender system plays a decisive role in defining and shrinking the space of possibilities in which Helene and Martha have to fashion their lives. Their mother does nothing to encourage her daughters to cultivate their potential; on the contrary, her struggle to control them ends up diminishing their possibilities. When the teacher suggests to the mother that Helene would benefit from studying at university, the mother actively robs her daughter of this dream, wanting her instead to do something allegedly simple and useful. In fact, Helene’s mother is more attached to the cultural stereotypes of what is appropriate

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 153 ]

541

for women than Helene’s father, who is more open-​minded and questions conventional gender roles. Helene recalls how, when she was younger, her father often asked her to stand guard at the doorway of the salesroom of his printing works as he removed the money from the till, and to whistle if anyone came: Sometimes Helene said: Girls aren’t supposed to whistle. Then he would smile and reply: Oh, are you a girl, then? And once, half hidden by the open cupboard door, he chanted the lines he had written in her album: Sweet as the violet be, /​ virtuous, modest and pure, /​not like the rose whom we see /​flaunting her full-​blown allure. Then he changed his tone of voice, adjuring her almost menacingly: But all girls must know how to whistle, just you remember that. (p. 133)12

Helene’s father encourages her to become a strong and capable woman who transgresses the norms and expectations of conventional identity categories. The loss of her father is one of the painful losses of her childhood. As the First World War breaks out and he is drafted, Helene’s mother descends into almost complete “darkness,” leaving the girls practically orphaned. He is wounded in a random accident that is contrasted with the public discourse of heroism. In the novel, the war causes senseless misery and robs Helene’s father of his dignity: Cautiously, his thoughts circled around ideas like honour and conscience. Ernst Ludwig Würsich felt ashamed of his own existence. What use was a one-​legged, wounded man, after all? He hadn’t so much as set eyes on a Russian, he hadn’t looked an enemy in the face. Still less had he risked his life in some honorable action in this war. The loss of his leg was a pitiful accident and could not be considered any kind of tribute to the enemy. (p. 68)13

After their father’s death, Helene and Martha feel that the other worlds they had dreamed of slip beyond their reach. Helene’s “possible self” as a student or as a doctor fades away as such a future becomes suddenly so improbable that she cannot even hold on to that possible self as a “believable self” or as a “desired self.”14 Helene and Martha’s sense of the possible is radically altered, however, when they receive a letter from their aunt inviting them to live with her in Berlin. A new world of possibilities opens up for them, and their entire horizon of expectation is transformed: A whole world unfolded before their eyes. . . . Two years ago, when their father died, they had thought that from now on their lives would consist of working

[ 154 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

at the hospital and growing old here in Bautzen, at the side of their increasingly confused mother—​but here was this letter, the prelude to their future, and only now could they really dream of it. (p. 147)15

The deictic “here” and “now” invite the reader to participate in the girls’ visceral experience of being at a turning point in their lives. The passage illuminates how the transformation of Helene’s space of possibilities is linked to modifications in the relationship between her narrative unconscious and narrative imagination. At her childhood home, her narrative unconscious is shaped by the culturally dominant narrative models that dictate what a woman can become: in these narratives, a woman’s main task is to make herself useful in the roles of mother and wife, or by becoming a nurse or a secretary. Helene cultivates her own, secret narrative imagination, mainly in dialogue with Martha. This dialogue is a means of creating an intersubjective relational space, a dialogic narrative in-​between, even if it remains a realm of fragile dreams and fantasies. In contrast to their life in the conservative milieu of their hometown, the invitation to live with their aunt in Berlin, known for its social diversity, signifies an immense expansion of their horizon. For Martha, this diversity is particularly important for her sexual self-​expression. In Bautzen, it is not an option for a woman to be in a relationship with another woman; in Berlin, Martha can openly love and live with her partner Leontine. The contrast between these two worlds as spaces of possibilities is crystallized in the moment when Helene tries to explain, in vain, to the patriarchal professor of surgery for whom she works why she and Martha want to leave home and move to Berlin to live with their bohemian aunt: “Martha and I will have possibilities open to us in Berlin, please understand, possibilities. We will work there, and study—​possibly” (p. 155).16 Later in Berlin, at one of her aunt’s parties, Helene meets a young philosophy student, Carl Wertheimer. Helene has long discussions with him about literature: “Her excitement was caused by something she had never known before, an encounter with someone with whom she shared mutual ideas, a mutual curiosity, and, indeed, as she confided to Martha, a mutual passion for literature” (p. 211).17 She feels that with Carl, life and literature impregnate one another, and ultimate happiness would be to share all reading experiences with him: “If I could read every book with you I’d be happy, do you believe that?” (p. 223).18 As Helene and Carl keep exchanging stories of their past and dreams of their future, these stories create an intersubjective, shared space between them, a sense of “us”: “Helene liked the way he said we as she lay there in his arms” (p. 227).19 This is a “we” that not only allows for but celebrates

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 155 ]

561

difference: “it was a sense of closeness that did not merely admit or allow little secrets and differences; it unconditionally celebrated those secrets” (p. 261).20 Alan Badiou (2012) suggests that love is about the reinvention of the world from the perspective of two, of difference. Precisely such a reinvention takes place as Carl and Helene engage in a dialogic process of narrative world-​making, constructing a narrative in-​between that becomes inseparable from who they are. In Berlin, with Carl, Helene’s space of possibilities is radically transformed as it becomes possible for her, for the first time, to cultivate her talents and imagine different courses in life. Together, they develop what can be characterized as a dialogic narrative imagination. This involves engaging in an open-​ended process of co-​telling in which a variety of possible shared futures emerge. Although narrative imagination is always dialogic in the sense that it takes shape in a dialogic relationship to cultural narrative models of sense-​making, it can be dialogic in the stronger sense of interpersonal dialogic reciprocity, characterized by the kind of openness and receptivity to the other that leads to the dissolution of clear boundaries between the I and the non-​I. Helene’s and Carl’s relationship brings out the fundamentally temporal dimension of the process of becoming oneself together with the other in a process of dialogic storytelling. Storytelling is presented in the novel as a way of telling where one comes from—​making the past intelligible to others in the present—​but also as a way of orienting oneself to the future and imagining possible futures with others. For Helene and Carl, stories expand the present moment, both into the past and into the future. They come to know each other by exchanging stories about their past, imagining what they can become together, and reinventing their lives in relation to the stories they have read. Hence, storytelling is presented as a way of understanding the other in his or her temporal singularity, of constructing a shared narrative in-​between, and of expanding one’s sense of the possible through a dialogical cultivation of narrative imagination. Thus, Die Mittagsfrau agrees, to a certain extent, with the Arendtian-​ hermeneutic view that narratives can make painful experiences shareable and bearable, that they can be a means of understanding others in their singularity, and that they can help us take the perspective of the other and imagine different possibilities of being. What it also indicates, however, is the limits of the ethical potential of storytelling: narratives do not necessarily make a life ethical in the way suggested by Ricoeur when he identifies a narrated life with an examined and hence ethically superior life. Helene narrates her life, drawing on her family mythology (particularly the narratives of the Noonday Witch and the blindness of the heart), and

[ 156 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

she engages in narrative self-​reflection, but this does not save her. From early on, she knows that there is something fundamentally wrong with her mother, something irreparably broken, but the stories of the Noonday Witch and of the blindness of the heart are also a way of avoiding proper engagement with the unbearably painful experience of being emotionally abandoned. Only at rare moments does she acknowledge “her old fear that some day her heart might go as blind as her mother’s” (p.  116).21 This is what eventually happens to Helene, and the stories of Lady Midday and the blindness of the heart can do nothing to prevent it. On the contrary, they may even unconsciously lead her to repeat a destructive emotional pattern and to follow a path similar to that of her own mother when the situation becomes desperate enough. It could be argued, however, that this happens precisely because Helene is unable to bring to the level of consciousness and to engage critically with these narratives and the repressed painful affects they carry. To a certain extent, she naturalizes the narrative of the blindness of the heart and applies it to her own life subsumptively; insofar as this happens, the narrative limits and blinds her, leading her to believe that her life (or at least her life as a mother) is somehow fated to fail. In any case, the novel suggests that potentially most harmful for us are the stories—​particularly naturalized stories—​that remain part of our narrative unconscious due to a failure to engage with them self-​awarely as part of the narrative imagination that we develop in dialogue with our significant others.

FROM DIALOGUE TO MUTENESS: STORYTELLING AS AN ART OF SURVIVAL

Die Mittagsfrau presents human beings as irreducibly dialogically constituted—​as beings who become who they are only in a dialogic relation to others. This makes their existence fragile and vulnerable. The novel suggests that sharing experiences with others through storytelling is a necessary condition for cultivating a narrative sense of self and for experiencing life as meaningful. As a more or less orphaned child, Helene’s most important significant other—​the one with whom she shares her experiences—​is for a long time Martha, and then Carl, her fiancé. Helene’s dialogue with Carl transforms her narrative imagination and sense of the possible, her entire sense of who she is and what is possible for her. When Carl dies in a car accident, Helene’s sense of the possible is radically diminished, and her experience of time shrinks to the present: “Helene wasn’t waiting for anything now. . . . Time contracted, rolled itself up, folded itself” (p. 275).22

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 157 ]

581

Her wonderful idea of studying had now moved into the remote distance; it seemed to Helene as if that wish had belonged to another, earlier life and was not her own any more. Helene no longer wished for anything. The visions that they had developed, discussed and conjured up together were all gone, had vanished with Carl. The man who shared her memories no longer existed. (pp. 281–​282)23

When life is reduced to a mere struggle to survive, the temporal horizon shrinks to the present and, as Simone de Beauvoir argues, one cannot genuinely commit oneself to a goal “insofar as it is the future of this present moment and insofar as it is the surpassed past of days to come” (1976, p. 27). Helene struggles with every “ordinary, unasked-​for, unwanted, unimaginable new day of her life” that is dominated by enormous, shattering questions to which she cannot even begin to imagine possible answers: “What was her life really like? What was it going to be like, was it ever to be anything, was she ever to be anything?” (Franck, 2009, p. 293).24 Helene recognizes that living a human life is about searching for a connection with other human beings that could release us “from our condemnation to isolation and solitude”—​that is why we think of, talk to, and embrace each other—​ but she “found herself in a dilemma, torn both ways”:25 She didn’t want to think, she didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to embrace another human being ever again. But she wanted to live on for Carl, not in order to survive him but to live for him. What else was left of him but her memories? How was it possible to live on without thought or language or human embraces? (p. 299)26

Helene loses her sense of identity even more dramatically when the Nazis seize power. In order to survive as a half-​Jew, she agrees to marry Wilhelm, a member of the Nazi Party, who arranges a false identity for her. She becomes Alice, an Aryan woman, who must remain silent about her true past and identity. This leaves her feeling alienated, as if she were no longer living her own life: “Something like me isn’t supposed to exist at all. It burst out of her” (p. 312).27 The experience of not living one’s own life is connected to a sense of not being in contact with one’s own emotions and experiences, being unable to communicate them to anyone, and to a concomitant sense of being unable to imagine in what direction one’s life could develop: “But she lacked any real idea of what life should and could be. She would have to turn to someone else for that” (p. 315).28 Helene’s passionate discussions with Carl are contrasted with the lack of connection she feels to Wilhelm. They never really talk to each other, not even on their wedding cruise: “Two strangers sat side by side looking

[ 158 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

in different directions” (p.  332).29 Later, Wilhelm’s supremacist racism becomes increasingly abusive:  “Perhaps jokes are a question of race, child. Wilhelm turned to her now. We just don’t understand each other” (p. 351).30 Helene retreats into silence in order to survive, and thinks of it as her strength: “Helene was good at keeping silent, as he would soon find out” (p.  341).31 But the muteness begins to destroy her from the inside, and eventually she cannot talk even to her own son. Instead of helping her survive, the muteness slowly annihilates her. She ends up speaking so little that she wonders if her vocal cords are beginning to deteriorate—​if there might be a medical condition that causes “premature ageing of the vocal cords” (p.  382).32 This “voice failure” (p.  382) functions as one of the key metaphors of the novel, giving expression to Helene’s experience of losing her own voice and her own sense of self as “terror and shame were taking hold of her” (p. 343).33 In her “vocal ontology of uniqueness,” Cavarero argues that voice “manifests the unique being of each human being” (2005, p. 173); to lose one’s voice is to lose one’s capacity to express one’s singular being. As Arendt articulates, we enter the intersubjective, political sphere by sharing “words and deeds” (1998, p. 198), through which we express our singularity. Without such sharing and expressing, we do not fully exist as moral agents: “Action . . . is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act” (p. 188). The idea of the Greek polis was to constitute a public space that gives reality to action and speech—​“the reality that comes from being seen, being heard, and, generally, appearing before an audience of fellow men” (p. 198)—​but Arendt acknowledges that in the history of humanity, most people have been denied reality in this pregnant sense: This space does not always exist, and although all men are capable of deed and word, most of them—​like the slave, the foreigner, and the barbarian in antiquity, like the laborer or craftsman prior to the modern age, the jobholder or businessman in our world—​do not live in it. . . . To be deprived of it means to be deprived of reality. . . . (p. 199)

Helene’s loss of identity is linked to the way in which she is denied the possibility to express and explore who she is through speech and action, and not only in the public sphere, but even within her private life. Helene does not suffer mere epistemic injustice; she loses much more than her credibility: her entire right to “exist at all” (Franck, 2009, p. 312). Our experiences of being able or unable to speak in our own voice and to tell our own stories take shape within social and historical worlds. Nazi

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 159 ]

6 0 1

Germany is a historical world in which the range of culturally acceptable narrative identities was exceptionally limited. The only “narrative identity” that the society offers for Jews is that of the “parasite” that must be annihilated (p. 353).34 The non-​Jewish Germans, by contrast, develop a strong collective narrative identity, a sense of “we-ness,” in the struggle against the forces that supposedly threaten their Germanness. Helene is perplexed by this “we”: “The word Germany was like a clarion call in his [Wilhelm’s] mouth. We. Who were we?” (p. 315).35 “We’d all die out otherwise, you know. . . . What did the woman mean by we? The Nordic race, humanity itself?” (p. 379).36 The counterpart of this German “we” is the Jewish “they,” in which Helene cannot recognize herself either. The novel foregrounds how certain people have the power to tell the official, subsumptively functioning stories that define “us” and “others.” Already as a child, Helene learns that because of her mother’s Jewish background people looked away and “hurried past in silence” (p. 30) instead of greeting her on the street; similarly, Helene’s own son Peter learns that “his father was a hero” and that there is “something suspect” in his mother’s “background” (p.  21).37 The novel thereby shows how narrative practices are intertwined with and embedded in power structures, how subsumptive narratives can be used as vehicles of social ideologies and instrumentalized for violent political purposes, and how thoroughly the narratives in which we are entangled shape the way we see ourselves and others, including those closest to us. The narrative in-​betweens bind people together, but exclude others in ways that can become tantamount to annihilation. From the perspective of the current book, perhaps most significant is the way in which Franck’s novel shows how destructive it can be for individuals to be denied the right to tell their own stories—​their own versions of events from their own perspectives. As Peter grows older, Helene finds herself in a situation in which she feels she cannot honestly tell her son about herself, about who she is and where she comes from. She asks herself how she could be a mother to him without being able to tell him anything: “What could she be to her Peter? And how could he be her Peter if she couldn’t do anything for him, if she couldn’t speak or tell stories or say anything to him?” (p. 390, emphasis added).38 Helene seems to feel that sharing one’s life with the other—​through generosity, compassion, and storytelling—​is so important to motherhood that when she is unable to share stories of her own, and her life has become a series of losses leading to the annihilation of her entire sense of self, then she can no longer be a mother. Although she has repeatedly reflected on her mother’s “blindness of the heart,” in this desperate situation she cannot stop herself from repeating the family history of abandonment and muteness.

[ 160 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The idea that sharing and passing down stories is integral to motherhood can also be found in other contemporary novels that deal with the effects of war on women, mothers, and their sense of self. For example, it is pivotal to the Finnish novelist Sofi Oksanen’s Puhdistus (2008, Purge), an international bestseller that depicts the traumatic experiences of Estonian women under Soviet occupation. Aliide Truu is one of the victims of Communist terror, and she ends up marrying a Communist and living a false life, unable to tell her daughter stories, despite her conviction that storytelling is integral to motherhood: She would be raised on stories with nothing true in them. Aliide could never tell Talvi her own family’s stories, the stories she had learned from her granny, the ones she heard as she fell asleep on Christmas Eve. She couldn’t tell her any of the stories that she was raised on, she and her mother and grandmother and great-​grandmother. . . . What kind of person would a child become if she had no stories in common with her mother, no yarns, no jokes? How could you be a mother if there was no one to ask advice from, to ask what to do in a situation like this? (Oksanen, 2010, 248)39

In Puhdistus, Communist terror leaves behind wounded, traumatized, mute women whose whole bodily posture and way of looking at other people is altered: From every trembling hand, she could tell—​there’s another one. From every flinch at the sound of a Russian soldier’s shout and every lurch at the tramp of boots. Her, too? . . . When she found herself in proximity with one of those women, she tried to stay as far away from her as she could. So no one would notice the similarities in their behaviour. . . . They wouldn’t be able to raise the glass without spilling. They would be discovered. Someone would know. . . . And all the blurring of memory she had managed by marrying Martin Truu would be in vain. (pp. 168–​169)40

Under Communist terror, people avoid looking one another in the eye, and gradually honest communication disappears. Like Franck’s novel, Puhdistus links terror to a culture of silence: Meanwhile, the gold that had been carried to Siberia was turning into new teeth for new mouths, golden smiles that nearly outshone the sun, casting a great shadow, and in that shadow an immense number of averted eyes and shrinking expressions bred and multiplied. You met them in the market squares, in the roads and fields, an endless current, their pupils tarnished and gray, the whites

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 161 ]

621

of their eyes red. When the last of the farms was roped into the kolkhozy, plain talk vanished between the lines. . . . (pp. 208–​209)41

Both Franck and Oksanen suggest that sexual violence plays a crucial role in women’s muteness. In Die Mittagsfrau, Helene suffers from a history of sexual exploitation: her aunt’s lover Erich repeatedly harasses her as a teenager, and as a young woman she is routinely raped by her husband Wilhelm and at least twice by soldiers.42 Her rape by Russian soldiers is told from the perspective of Peter, who witnesses the rape without fully comprehending its meaning: “Her skirt was torn, her eyes were wide open, Peter didn’t know if she could see him or was looking straight through him. Her mouth was wide open too, but no sound came out” (Franck, 2009, p. 12).43 The rape and the fact that Peter witnesses it seem to be particularly traumatic for Helene, a breaking point after which she feels unable to continue being a mother. Afterward, she refuses to let Peter sleep in the same bed as her anymore and treats him almost as if he were complicit in the crime.44 Research on the gendered experience and memory of the Holocaust suggests that women often felt that their survival required the repression and forgetting of experiences like rape and assaults on maternity, resulting in “a collaborative familial discourse of silence” (Reading, 2002, p.  61). Helene’s decision to abandon her son—​who witnessed her demolition as a woman and a mother—​appears as a desperate attempt at complete forgetting, an attempt to leave behind the traumatic past, which then contributes to the transgenerational inheritance of the trauma, in an even more aggravated form. In Puhdistus, Aliide’s niece, Linda, experiences sexual assault as a child, as part of the Communist “hearings,” and her traumatic experiences of abuse leave her mute and numb, emotionally unavailable to her own daughter, Zara, the other protagonist of the novel. Zara’s grandmother tells her, “Your mother’s a woman of few words.” “Of no words, you mean.” . . . Other people’s mothers had been in the bombing when they were children, and they still talked, even though Grandmother said that a bomb can frighten a child into silence. (Oksanen, 2010, p. 52)45

Both Puhdistus and Die Mittagsfrau link muteness to the failure to confront the devastating events of the past. When Helene and Martha leave home for Berlin, Martha suggests that they should take a picture of their mother with them, to preserve their memory of her: “We want a souvenir, don’t we? A souvenir? Helene looked at Martha blankly. She thought of

[ 162 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

saying: Not me, I don’t, but then decided not to” (Franck, 2009, p. 163).46 Later in Berlin, she actively practices forgetting: “Her old life had retreated into the distance; she didn’t like to think about it. She practised not remembering” (p. 184).47 This “not remembering” is similar to Aliide’s effort of “blurring of memory” (Oksanen, 2010, p. 169). In both cases, remembering is too painful, and becomes intertwined with an overwhelming sense of shame: “There in the basement of the town hall, where Aliide had vanished, where she just wanted to get out alive. But the only thing left alive was the shame” (p. 254).48 In Die Mittagsfrau, Helene’s inability to engage with her past is inextricably linked to the way in which her narrative imaginary is ridden with shame, anxiety, and guilt, dominated by a narrative unconscious that contains elements that cannot be confronted and that affect her in harmful ways. Helene first feels ashamed of having a mother whom others avoid because of her Jewish background. Then she feels ashamed of abandoning her mother, later of her own lack of integrity in accepting a false identity, and, finally, of herself as an inadequate mother. She blames herself for not being different, and her narrative imagination is directed more at possible selves defined by dominant cultural norms—​she imagines how she should be—​than at empowering counter-​narratives that could open up alternative futures for her. For example, when she visits her mother at a mental institution, she blames herself for not visiting earlier and imagines what “another daughter” would have done: “Another daughter would have gone years ago, another daughter wouldn’t have left her mother in the first place” (Franck, 2009, p. 317).49 To use Dominick LaCapra’s (1994) distinction, instead of “working through” her issues with her mother, Helene keeps “acting out” their troubled relationship by repeating harmful emotional patterns.50 Terrified of turning into her mother, Helene tries to invert her mother’s attitudes and habits without realizing that she thereby perpetuates them. Her mother had wished for a boy, but lost each of her four sons; instead, she had two girls whom she did not want and ended up neglecting. Helene wanted a girl, and her son reminds her of his Nazi father. While Helene’s mother is completely self-​absorbed and unable to do anything for anyone else, Helene wants to devote all her time to being useful to others. She works day and night at the hospital, but the work is largely an escape for her, allowing her to avoid confronting painful issues in her personal life and having to enter into a dialogue with anyone: “Her uniform protected her. . . . If you wore white you could keep your mouth shut; if you wore white you weren’t asked how you were . . . ; pity for the suffering of others was her inner prop and stay” (Franck, 2009, p. 292).51

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 163 ]

641

As a nurse, Helene is drawn into the machinery that implements the Nazi ideology, and her self-​loathing is reinforced by her complicity in Nazi crimes. For example, she is involved in operations in which non-​Aryan women are sterilized. She knows that even though she is technically only assisting, should she be given the orders, she would comply: “If the surgeon had told her to make the incision, she would probably have cut the tubes herself” (p. 380).52 Here the use of free indirect discourse conveys Helene’s sense of how she would probably act; she is fully aware of her own complicity and yet is unable to break free from it. As a child, Helene is crushed by the self-​loathing and misanthropy of her mother, who sees people as “earthworms,” which Helene took “as an expression of the hatred that Mother had always tried imparting to her, and it bore fruit when Helene dreamed of slugs and fell into a void that appeared to her like her mother’s womb” (p. 117).53 When Wilhelm compares Jews to parasites, Helene identifies with this image: “Jews as worms. I  am a parasite, thought Helene” (p.  353).54 She begins to suspect that Wilhelm is right in saying that she has a heart of stone, and eventually she seems to genuinely believe that Peter would be “better off” with relatives who would “talk to him about this, that and the other,” rather than with his mute mother (p. 409).55 Narratives mediated by cultural contexts and family histories affect how we experience things in the first place and our self-​interpretations. These self-​interpretations shape the way we act in the world, our behavioral and emotional patterns, and our relationships. There is always a multitude of ways to interpret and narrate a particular experience. No matter how difficult her situation is, Helene could narrate it in a variety of ways. By drawing on the culturally available narratives to which she feels closest and which have been woven into her narrative imaginary, she interprets her situation in terms of her inevitable descent into the “blindness of the heart,” and this narrative self-​interpretation plays a crucial role in leading her to the desperate decision to abandon her child. Here we can see the logic of the triple hermeneutic at work. Experience is always already interpretative. It is never merely the here and now:  it carries traces of earlier experiences, including our earliest experiences of love, care, abandonment, and loss, and the narrative webs in which we grow up color our experiences and our ways of rendering them intelligible for ourselves and others. At the level of the double hermeneutic, cultural narratives—​such as the narratives of Lady Midday and the blindness of the heart, central to Helene’s family mythology—​give expression to and provide interpretations of individuals’ interpretative experiences. The triple hermeneutic is at work as Helene uses these cultural narratives to

[ 164 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

reinterpret and renarrate her experiences in ways that have very tangible real-​world effects, both on her own life and on those of others.

THE CULTURE OF SILENCE

In the epilogue of Die Mittagsfrau, Helene comes to visit the relatives who have taken in Peter, hoping to meet her teenage son. Peter, however, is angry, hurt, and determined to punish his mother by never letting her see him, so he hides in a barn—​in a scene that echoes an earlier episode where Helene hides in a forest from her little boy for so long that the hide-​and-​ seek game ends in tears.56 The ending suggests that the legacy of silence, muteness, and non-​communication is passed on from one generation to the next, as in fact happened in Franck’s own family:  her father, Peter, traumatized by his early abandonment, later deserted his own family, and led a lonely life in silence. Julia Franck got to know her father only as a teenager, shortly before he died. Apparently the “double wall” of silence (Bar-​On, 1999) prevented them from discussing what had happened. The story that was left untold was not one of straightforward perpetration or victimization—​it was a more complicated, messier one:  the story of an implicated subject untold to his equally implicated daughter. At the end of the 1990s, Franck searched for her grandmother, only to find out that she had died shortly before in Berlin, where she had lived a socially isolated life in a one-​room apartment with her sister (Geu & Franck, 2007). The novel is an attempt to understand the family history of abandonment and muteness. As an exploration of what Franck describes as a “culture of remaining silent” (“die Kultur des Schweigens”),57 however, it also has wider relevance and can be read as a contribution to the ethics of storytelling and implication in connection to the ongoing endeavor to work through the legacy of the Second World War and the Holocaust. When Die Mittagsfrau appeared, some critics questioned Franck’s right to tell, as a non-​Jew, such an ethically ambiguous story of a Jewish woman. This discussion exemplifies how the telling of other people’s stories is linked to debates over claims of entitlement—​who has the right to tell whose story and on what terms. In response to claims of a lack of entitlement, Franck revealed her own Jewish background, which she had not considered relevant prior to this incident, as she does not practice any religion and had not thought of herself as a “Jewish novelist.” Ashley Barnwell discusses the “complex social complicity in deciding which stories we as a society want to hear and who we will allow to tell them” (2017, p. 113). Franck needed to “come out” as a Jew in order to be allowed to tell the story of a Jewish

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 165 ]

61

woman who does not quite fit the stereotype of the good victim. This came as a surprise to her, because although in the novel she attempts to imagine what could have happened to her own grandmother, she does not pretend to tell her “true story.” Instead, Franck tells a story that, through its particularity, addresses more general questions of what war does to women, the transgenerational effects of the culture of silence, and the necessity of storytelling for our survival as unique individuals and moral agents. As Amy Shuman (2005) observes, one of the reasons we tell other people’s stories is that we feel compassion and empathy for them, and empathy creates possibilities for understanding across differences, but critique of empathy is equally important, because “easy empathy” is so often used as an alibi for “the packaging of suffering as sentimentality” (p. 24): “Storytelling needs a critique of empathy to remain a process of negotiating, rather than defending, meaning” (p. 5). The narrative dynamic of Die Mittagsfrau invites the reader to take part in such a negotiation of meaning and seeks to interrupt the kind of easy, sentimental empathy that is always a risk when we read about the suffering of others.58 One of the concerns of those who criticize the narrative representation of the Holocaust has been that readers, in identifying with the victims, appropriate and exploit the victims’ suffering for their own cathartic pleasure.59 The narration of Franck’s novel is dominated by free indirect speech that conveys the thoughts and experiences of the characters, but the narration is laconic, seemingly unemotional, and the narrator refrains from laying claim to any ultimate authority or truth.60 The narration neither condemns nor idealizes the protagonist; without defending her decision to abandon her son, it presents Helene’s failure as a human one and as not entirely incomprehensible. The novel neither asks the reader to accept Helene’s decision, nor provides an exhaustive explanation for it. Instead of giving cathartic pleasure, it invites the reader to engage with her story in its ethical complexity. The novel tells the story of a unique individual, whose experiences and life cannot be understood through simple identity categories. Helene is not primarily a representative of a social group (Jews, women), but a singular being, whose life course has an element of unpredictability and indeterminacy. By imagining what her grandmother’s life might have been like, Franck gives dignity to that life without claiming that her imaginative interpretation is the truth. Rather, the narrative suggests that before we condemn other people’s actions, we should consider the possibility that there is more to their stories—​and other perspectives on them—​than we are able to know, understand, or imagine. In the novel, this effect is created through shifts of perspective and a narrative technique that disrupts the illusion of immediate access to

[ 166 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

the other’s experience. It plays with focalization in ways that encourage readers to adopt an engaged yet critical perspective on the protagonist. Helene is first presented to the reader from Peter’s perspective, as a mother who abandons her seven-​year-​old son on a railway bench, before the narration rewinds to the time when Helene herself was a girl of a similar age and recounts her life story with Helene as the center of experience. In the end, we see her again from the son’s perspective and realize how the traumatic culture of silence is passed on from one generation to the next. That we first see Helene through the eyes of the abandoned, hurt child, and then acquire a sense of her own perspective on her story, creates an intense sense of perspectivism—​of how every story is different, depending on the perspective from which it is told. We are encouraged to take the perspective of someone who may not fit into our preconceived categories and to understand her actions and inactions in the context of a historical world that questions her very right to exist, while at the same time remaining acutely aware of other perspectives to which she herself seems to be blind. Franck’s novel has been criticized for substituting “big history” with a personal/​family one. Elisabeth Krimmer asserts that “such a critique is not without foundation: in Die Mittagsfrau historical and political events function as little more than a distant roar in the background” (2015, p.  44). I would argue, however, that in fact the contrary is true: in the novel, history is precisely not a distant background, but pervades individual lives, and the novel actually questions the narrow conception of history on which the aforementioned criticism is based. It shows how the historical situation shapes the individual’s space of possibilities. History is not somewhere out there, where “political” events take place, but right here where everyday lives unfold. The culture of silence manifests itself not only in the public, but also in the private sphere, where muteness erodes the narrative in-​betweens that bind people together. Franck’s other novels, too, explore specific historical worlds as spaces of possibilities that diminish the protagonists’ sense of the possible. Lagerfeuer (2003, West, 2014), for example, depicts a camp where East German refugees are detained when they flee to the West—​Franck herself spent part of her childhood in such a camp. The protagonist feels marked by a history of fear and suggests that both Communism and Nazism were symptoms of the “fear of what’s strange” (2014, p. 63).61 Instead of coming across as a country of freedom, the camp “feels like a prison,” epitomized by the camp’s canteen and the fact that the protagonist is deprived of the possibility to cook for her own children:

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 167 ]

6 8 1

When you eat only what’s put in front of you, and you’re just not in a position to decide what you’ll cook and how, and your children aren’t eating the food you’ve bought and prepared for them at your own table. It means you’re not giving them a home anymore. . . . (p. 240)62

In the space of possibilities in which she finds herself, the protagonist feels that she is unable to be and do what a mother should. At her most desperate moments, language fails her, and appears to be no longer able to convey anything meaningful:  “Even words seemed no more than useless sounds” (p. 164).63 She is reduced from a moral agent, a subject of speech and action, to someone who has no home, voice, or place in the world. Franck’s characters often struggle with the feeling of being muted, but the logic of her novels is emphatically dialogical. Die Mittagsfrau is dialogical on several levels. It engages in a dialogue with the narrative tradition by functioning as a reinterpretation of the legend of Lady Midday, but it also alludes to a longer literary tradition that deals with storytelling as a strategy of survival, reaching back to One Thousand and One Nights.64 Against the backdrop of this tradition, it unearths on a thematic level the complex ethical significance of exchanging experiences through storytelling. While for Scheherazade storytelling is a struggle to stay alive, Franck’s novel complicates the notion of survival by showing how physical endurance does not always guarantee the survival of one’s integrity as a unique individual capable of moral agency. It suggests that even if, as Freeman puts it, “ ‘life itself’ may not be quite as narrative-​laden as some theorists (including me) have suggested, life without narrative, without some sense of location and rootedness in one’s history and story, can be quite horrifying” (2017, p. 25). He writes this in the context of what dementia does to our narrative sense of self, but I would like to suggest that there is ethical signifance not only in the question of whether we can or cannot tell stories, but also in the continuum from being able to tell stories that we feel are our own to narrative identities violently imposed on us in a way that diminishes or even annihilates us. In Dori Laub’s (1995) terms, it could be said that Helene cannot even begin to properly process her traumatic experiences because she is denied the possibility of sharing them with others by telling her own story, and therefore she cannot bear witness to her own experiences. As a result, her whole sense of self begins to collapse to such an extent that she starts to doubt whether she is even capable of love and motherhood. As Laub puts it, the “loss of the capacity to be a witness to oneself and thus to witness from the inside is perhaps the true meaning of annihilation, for when one’s history is abolished, one’s identity ceases to exist as well” (1995, p. 67).

[ 168 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The novel suggests that moral agency requires a minimum narrative sense of self as a being capable of good—​and explores (the annihilation of) the conditions of possibility for such agency. Those who have experienced trauma that they have not been able to share with anyone frequently begin to doubt their own experiences and whether the traumatic events even happened in the first place. Laub writes about the way in which the experiences of the Holocaust were not “communicable” for the survivors, “even to themselves, and therefore, perhaps never took place” (p. 67). In Helene’s case, the way in which the people around her—​from her own mother to the Nazis who treat her as a parasite—​see her as worthless erodes her sense of self as a unique person worthy and capable of love. Being robbed of the possibility of sharing her experiences, including the experiences of rape and other forms of assault on her physical and psychic integrity, becomes tantamount to Helene’s annihilation as a person. When we share experiences by exchanging stories with others, we often discover new ways of reorienting ourselves to these experiences, which can help us come to terms with painful experiences and find ways to avoid the kind of damaging silence that is depicted in Franck’s novel. It is from such a perspective that narrative therapists emphasize “the importance of an audience other than the therapist for the person’s telling and re-​telling of her developing story” (Payne, 2006, p. 16).65 It is precisely when Helene is cut off from reciprocal dialogic relationships that she fails to stop herself from repeating the family tradition of abandonment. Her relationship with Carl suggests that it is only through an intersubjective process of exchanging experiences that narrative imagination can sometimes develop into an empowering process of dialogic reinterpretation. The novel develops the view that we are constituted by storytelling, by sharing our lives and experiences with others, and that this is so indispensable for human existence that the inability to engage in storytelling—​ closing up into silence and muteness—​can lead to something worse than death: the complete erosion of the self and the loss of loved ones. The novel links this problematic to a specific historical context, thereby underlining that our capacity for storytelling and moral agency are conditioned by our historical situation and its power relations, thus highlighting that this is always also a broader cultural question. By unearthing a mentality of silence and by depicting how being a mother is linked to the construction of a narrative identity with which one can live, the novel shows how historical conditions in which individuals are violently forced into certain narrative frames can seriously impair their ability to tell their own stories, and thus lead to a damaging loss of identity and integrity—​to a blindness of the heart.

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 169 ]

701

Die Mittagsfrau therefore suggests that storytelling is crucial for moral agency and for sharing the world with others, but it also demonstrates how narrative identities imposed on us may lead us to repeat harmful, potentially violent emotional and behavioral patterns. The novel homes in on why it is important to reflect on what kinds of social circumstances enhance or impair our capacity for storytelling and moral agency. It explores the devastating consequences of the breakdown of narrative identity and narrative agency, and makes salient the real, world-​constituting effects of narrative practices.

THE SIX ETHICAL ASPECTS OF STORYTELLING

In On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, 1874), Nietzsche asserts that “knowledge of the past has at all times been desired only in the service of the future and the present and not for the weakening of the present or for depriving a vigorous future of its roots” (1999b, p. 77). In Nietzsche’s account, history is good for us when it strengthens us and enhances our ability to express and develop our potential. Similarly, narratives can be considered good for us when they empower us—​when they reinforce our moral agency and our sense of the possible. From an ethical point of view, however, it is important to consider these issues not only from the perspective of how narratives foster or impede self-​realization, but also in relation to how they influence our capacity to be affected by others and to engage in ethical relationships with them. As the discussion of Franck’s novel has made clear, there is nothing in stories to guarantee that their possible ethical potential will be actualized. Narrative form makes a narrative neither inherently harmful nor beneficial; instead, its ethical value is contextual, that is, dependent on how the narrative is interpreted and put to use in a particular social, historical, and cultural world. Historical circumstances crucially affect the dialogic process in which individuals interpret their experiences in relation to the narrative models that are mediated by culture and family tradition. The novel depicts this dialogic process in its temporality, without moralizing or categorizing: its narrative organization emphasizes that individuals always experience the world from their own unique perspectives, and it leaves the task of interpretation and ethical reflection to the reader. Within the fictive world of the novel, stories console, connect, empower, and invite reorientation to the future, but they also mutilate, paralyze, and wound. I will conclude by summarizing the analysis of the novel in terms of the six aspects of the ethical potential of storytelling delineated in Chapter 3.

[ 170 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

First, the novel explores how culturally mediated narratives expand and diminish the spaces of possibilities in which individual lives unfold. These spaces are inherently heterogeneous: one historical world constitutes a radically different space of possibilities for different individuals and groups. For the Jews, for example, the Nazi narratives drastically diminished their possibilities to the point of denying them the right to live. The novel shows how the (im)possibility of sharing stories is linked to the characters’ narrative identity, agency, and sense of the possible. It suggests that by addressing how the culture of silence is passed down from one generation to the next, literary narratives have the power to disrupt such traumatic legacies and help us confront aspects of family histories and broader cultural mentalities that perpetuate these legacies. Literary narratives can cultivate our sense of the possible by expanding the culturally available repertoire of narrative models in relation to which we (re)interpret our experiences and lives, the past and the future, as well as by helping us critically reflect on the different ways in which narratives mediate our relation to ourselves and others. Second, the novel suggests that our narrative agency and identity take shape in a dialogic relation to narratives that are culturally available to us, but this dialogue is always conditioned by the specific historical and social circumstances in which it takes place. In extreme conditions, when the narrative web becomes a web of power relations that denies the subject of experience and action any right to self-​expression, agency, or even existence, then the dialogue no longer deserves that name. Then culturally available narratives no longer serve self-​understanding or self-​exploration, but merely damage, distort, and diminish the sense of one’s possibilities. The novel shows, through its depiction of the Nazi “we,” that the narrativity of identity is no guarantee of its ethicality. Third, Die Mittagsfrau displays both subsumptive and non-​subsumptive narrative practices. Within the novel, it is first and foremost in the context of Helene and Carl’s relationship that storytelling functions in the non-​ subsumptive explorative and dialogical mode, as a means of understanding the other in his and her singularity. The Nazi mythology, in contrast, exemplifies an extreme form of subsumptive narrative appropriation. The novel as a whole, in turn, can be seen as a non-​subsumptive attempt to give dignity to a singular life. Without the complex temporal process of narratively engaging with the unfolding of her life, Helene could be easily assigned to simplified moral categories, such as those of a failed mother or a Nazi collaborator. The novel narrates the life story of a unique individual in its singularity. By doing so, it questions “identity power” (Fricker, 2007, pp. 14–​17) that directs us to interpret individual experiences and

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 171 ]

721

lives in terms of generalizations. The narrative that tells the story of a unique individual—​inviting the reader to follow the temporal process of how she experiences things and how her experiences gradually change her—​functions as a mode of non-​subsumptive understanding. The narrative does not set out to define her by subsuming her into a general category, such as that of a good victim or an evil perpetrator; instead, it narrates an ethically complex, temporal process of becoming in which the reader acquires the task of interpreting Helene’s character, the ethically demanding situations she faces, and her actions in them. Fourth, narratives create a sense of connection and build intersubjectively shared worlds, but these are not necessarily ethical worlds: the Nazis had a strong narrative sense of a shared identity based on their narrative in-​between. In the novel, literary narratives provide empowering counter-​ narratives that support the individuals’ struggle to construct narrative identities and dialogic intersubjective spaces, but at the same time, collectively shared narrative in-​betweens are shown to have devastating consequences for individuals who are excluded from the sphere of the “we.” Sharing experiences by sharing stories is so essential to a sense of self that losing this possibility can entail an erosion of one’s sense of “possible selves” to the point of undermining one’s ability to see oneself as a moral agent capable of intimate human relationships. Fifth, the novel encourages us as readers to take the perspective of a character who does not fit received identity categories and to see the ethical complexity of her situation. It shows that perspective-​taking does not automatically mean accepting the other’s interpretations and actions; rather, it signifies engaging with the other from one’s own experiential horizon. Through its storyline, the novel links the ethical potential of storytelling to the creation of narrative in-​betweens that encourage perspective-​taking and celebrate difference. Within the fictive world of the novel, the element of hope amid all the violence and muteness is the story of the lovers who cultivate a dialogic narrative imagination—​engaging with each other’s perspectives through a dialogic exchange of stories. It suggests a regulative idea for an ethics of storytelling: to strive toward dialogical practices of telling, sharing, and reinterpreting stories in ways that help us look at the world from the perspective of difference and to reinvent it—​and our lives—​as both individuals and communities. Sixth, and finally, the novel functions as a mode of ethical inquiry, as a moral laboratory that unsettles our preconceived categories of right and wrong. This inquiry takes the form of a narrative trajectory:  the novel engages the reader’s ethical imagination through the temporal process of engaging with the story of a mother who abandons her child. While in the

[ 172 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

beginning our judgment of Helene is likely to be straightforwardly negative, in the end we may still think that what she did was wrong, but we are likely to have a more nuanced understanding of her actions and of the complexity of her moral failure. The novel questions the adequacy of the concepts of perpetrator and victim in the effort to understand lives entangled in violent histories. In a sense, Helene is both a victim and a perpetrator: she is a victim of emotional child abuse and of the Nazi mythology that portrays her as “vermin”; but she takes the side of the perpetrators by marrying a Nazi and perpetrates her own act of extreme emotional violence by abandoning her child. Yet she does not unproblematically fall into either category, and the dichotomy fails to do justice to who she is. Inhabitants of a historical world are implicated, in different ways, in the dominant narrative webs that are also webs of violence. In relation to these divergent modes of implication, the novel explores the sociohistorical conditions of possibility for moral and narrative agency and for being capable of giving and receiving affection and care. As an inquiry into the frailty of goodness, it invites us to consider the possibility that some minimal sense of dialogic narrative agency—​including the ability to share stories with those who matter to us—​may be a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for being a subject capable of moral agency and human intimacy. NOTES 1. I have used the German original, Die Mittagsfrau, as my primary source, but I provide the quotations from the English translation (The Blind Side of the Heart) in order to make the book accessible for those who do not read German. The original quotations can be found in the notes. 2. On the role of different generations in dealing with the German legacy of the Second World War, see, e.g., McGlothlin (2006); Cohen-​Pfister & Vees-​Gulani (eds.) (2010); Fuchs (2012); Assmann (2013). 3. See Meretoja & Franck (2010); Geu & Franck (2007). 4. See, e.g., Carpenter (2010). 5. “. . . mit der Inbrunst eines groβen Tieres”; “heftigen und ziellosen Bewegungen” (2007, p. 32). 6. “Doch während die Mutter über ihre Töchter schimpfte, fluchte, sie habe eine nichtsnutze Brut geboren, wiederholte Helene wie ein Gebet immer denselben Satz: Darf ich dich kämmen? Ihre Stimme zitterte: Darf ich dich kämmen? Als eine Schere durch die Luft flog, hob sie schützend die Arme über ihren Kopf: Darf ich dich kämmen? . . . [Die Mutter] wimmerte, und schlieβlich stammelte sie in einem fort den Namen Ernst Josef, Ernst Josef. . . . Wir sind es, Mutter. Das sagte Martha streng und gefasst. Wir sind hier, Ernst Josef ist tot wie deine anderen Söhne auch, tot geboren, hörst du, Mutter. Zehn Jahre, tot. Aber wir sind da” (2007, pp. 33–​34).

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 173 ]

7 4 1

7. “Jedes Kind, das sie nach Marthas Geburt verloren hatte, war ihr als Aufforderung erschienen, ihrem Leben ein Ende zu setzen” (2007, p. 63). 8. “Niemand habe ein Recht auf Liebe und Schutz” (2011, p. 120). 9. “[I]‌hre Dame, wie sie die Mutter nannte, weigere sich einfach, mit der Mittagsfrau zu sprechen. . . . Nur ein wenig Wissen weitergeben. Martha und Helene kannten die Geschichte von der Mittagsfrau, solange sie denken konnten, es lag etwas Tröstliches in ihr, weil sie nahelegte, dass es sich bei der mütterlichen Verwirrung um nichts anderes als einen leicht zu verscheuchenden Fluch handelte” (2007, p. 142). 10. “. . . wo ihre Vertrauten warteten, der Werther und die Marquise” (2007, p. 126). 11. “Wenn Martha ihr so eine Zukunft ausmalte, hielt Helene den Atem an, sie hoffte, dass Martha nicht aufhören würde, diese Geschichte zu erzählen, sie sollte weitersprechen und davon erzählen, wie Helene eines Tages in einem großen Lehrsaal an der Dresdner Universität die Anatomie des Menschen studieren würde” (2007, 55). 12. “Manchmal sagte Helene: Mädchen sollen nicht pfeifen. Dann fragte er lächelnd zurück: Ja, bist du denn ein Mädchen? Und einmal sang er hinter der geöffneten Schranktür hervor jenen Vers, den er ihr schon ins Album geschrieben hatte: Sei wie das Veilchen im Moose, sittsam, bescheiden und rein, nicht wie die stolze Rose, die immer bewundert will sein. Dann veränderte er seinen Tonfall, drohend, fast beschwörend flüsterte er: Aber jedes Mädchen muss pfeifen können, merk dir das” (2007, p. 139). 13. “Vorsichtig umkreisten seine Gedanken Begriffe wie Ehre und Gewissen. Ernst Ludwig Würsich fühlte Scham für sein Dasein. Was war schlieβlich ein verwundeter Mann ohne Bein? Nicht einmal zu Gesicht bekommen hatte er einen Russen, keinem Feind ins Antlitz geschaut. Geschweige denn hatte er in diesem Krieg sein Leben irgendeinem ehrenvollen Einsatz entgegengebracht. Sein Bein war ein kläglicher Unfall und konnte als keinerlei Tribut an den Feind gelten” (2007, p. 74). 14. On these concepts by Anneke Sools (2016), see Chapter 2. 15. “Eine Welt lag da aufgefaltet vor ihnen. . . . Hatten sie noch vor zwei Jahren beim Tode des Vaters geglaubt, ihr Leben werde von nun an darin bestehen, im Krankenhaus zu arbeiten und an der Seite ihrer zunehmend verwirrten Mutter in Bautzen alt zu werden, gab dieser Brief den Auftakt für eine erst zu erträumende Zukunft” (2007, p. 153). 16. “In Berlin werden Martha und ich Möglichkeiten haben, bitte verstehen Sie, Möglichkeiten. Wir werden dort arbeiten, studieren—​vielleicht” (2007, p. 161). 17. “Ihre Aufregung galt einer Begegnung, wie sie noch nie eine erlebt hatte, ein Zusammentreffen mit einem Menschen, mit dem es ein gemeinsames Denken, eine gemeinsame Neugier, ja, wie sie Martha anvertraute, eine gemeinsame Leidenschaft für die Literatur gab” (2007, p. 217). 18. “Wenn ich jedes Buch mit dir zusammen lesen könnte, wär ich glücklich, glaubst du das?” (2007, p. 229). See also Franck (2009, p. 204; 2007, p. 210). 19. “Helene mochte es, wenn er wir sagte und sie in seinen Armen lag” (2007, p. 232). 20. “[D]‌ie Zugehörigkeit, die sie zwischen ihm und sich spürte, war eine, die kleine Geheimnisse und Verschiedenheiten nicht zugestand oder gestattete, sie feierte die Geheimnisse, unbedingt” (2007, p. 266). 21. “[I]‌hre jüngere Tochter konnte die Mutter nicht mehr erkennen, eben blind am Herzen, wie Martha sagte, dass sie niemanden mehr sehen konnte . . . Helene

[ 174 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

spürte die alte Furcht in sich aufkommen, sie könne eines Tages erblinden wie diese Mutter” (2007, pp. 120–​122). 22. “Helene auf nichts mehr wartete, auf den Hunger nicht, nicht auf das Essen. . . . Die Zeit zog sich zusammen, sie rollte sich ein und faltete sich” (2007, p. 280). 23. “ . . . war ihre hehre Vorstellung zu studieren in weite Ferne gerückt, es schien Helene, als gehörte dieser Wunsch zu einem anderen, früheren Leben, nicht mehr zu ihr. Helene wünschte sich nichts mehr. Visionen, da sie gemeinsam entwickelt, gemeinsam erwogen und gemeinsam erkoren worden waren, gab es nicht mehr. Sie waren mit Carl verschwunden. Denjenigen, der ihr Gedächtnis teilte, gab es nicht mehr” (2007, p. 286). 24. “Was war das, ihr Leben? Was sollte das sein, sollte es überhaupt etwas, es etwas, sie etwas?” (2007, p. 298). 25. “. . . der Verdammnis in das einzelne, alleinige”; “Helene befand sich im Zwiespalt und Widerspruch” (2007, p. 305). 26. “Sie wollte kein Denken, kein Sprechen, keine Umarmung mehr mit einem anderen Menschen, mit niemandem mehr. Aber sie wollte Carl weiterleben, nicht ihn überleben, ihn weiterleben; denn was anderes blieb von ihm als ihre Erinnerung. Wie sollte ein Weiterleben möglich sein, ohne Denken und Sprechen und Umarmen?” (2007, p. 305). 27. “So etwas wie mich dürfte es gar nicht geben, platzte sie heraus” (2007, p. 318). 28. “Allein, ihr fehlte eine Vorstellung vom Leben, von dem, was es sein sollte und konnte. Sie würde sich für diesen Zweck einem Menschen zuwenden müssen” (2007, p. 321). 29. “Zwei Fremde saβen nebeneinander und schauten jeder in seine Richtung” (2007, p. 338). 30. “Vielleicht ist das doch ne Frage der Rasse, Kindchen, mit dem Scherzen. Wilhelm drehte sich jetzt zu ihr um. Wir verstehen uns nicht” (2007, p. 357). 31. “Helene konnte gut schweigen, er würde schon sehen” (2007, p. 347). 32. “Ob es eine krankhaft frühzeitige Alterung der Stimmbänder gab, das Versiegen der Stimme?” (2007, p. 388). 33. “. . . wie Entsetzen sie erfasste und Scham und nichts” (2007, p. 348). 34. “[D]‌er Parasit bin ich, Helene dachte” (2007, p. 359). 35. “Das Wort Deutschland klang aus seinem Mund wie eine Losung. Wir. Wer waren wir? Wir waren wer. Nur wer?” (2007, p. 321). 36. “Wissen Sie, wir würden sonst aussterben. . . . Wen meinte die Frau mit wir? Die nordische Rasse, die Menschheit?” (2007, p. 385). 37. “Sein Vater war ein Held. Und seine Mutter . . . hatte eine fragwürdige Herkunft” (2007, p. 28). 38. “Was konnte sie ihrem Peter sein? Und wie konnte er ihr Peter sein, wenn sie ihm nichts sein konnte, nicht sprechen, noch erzählen, einfach nichts sagen konnte?” (2007, p. 397). 39. “Hänen tyttärensä kasvaisi tarinoihin, joissa mikään ei olisi totta. Aliide ei voisi ikinä kertoa Talville oman perheensä tarinoita, niitä joita oli kuullut mammaltaan, niitä joihin oli itse nukahtanut lapsena jouluyönä. Hän ei voisi kertoa mitään siitä, mihin oli itse kasvanut, mihin hänen äitinsä, hänen äidinäitinsä ja äidinäidin äiti. . . . Minkälainen ihminen kasvaisi lapsesta, jolla ei olisi yhteisiä tarinoita äitinsä kanssa, ei yhteisiä juttuja, ei vitsejä? Miten olla äiti, kun ei ollut ketään, keneltä kysyä neuvoa, miten tällaisessa tilanteessa voisi toimia?” (Oksanen, 2008, pp. 243–​244).

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 175 ]

761

40. “Jokaisesta tärisevästä kädestä hän päätteli, että tuokin. Jokaisesta hätkähdyksestä, jonka sai aikaa venäläisen sotilaan huuto tai jokaisesta nytkähdyksestä, joka johtui saappaiden töminästä. Tuokin? . . . Jos hän joutui samaan tilaan sellaisen naisen kanssa, hän yritti pysytellä mahdollisimman kaukana. Jotta heidän käytöksensä samankaltaisuutta ei huomattaisi. . . . He eivät pystyisi nostamaan samaan aikaan lasia läikyttämättä. He paljastuisivat. Joku tajuaisi. . . . Ja kaikki se muistamisen hämärtyminen, jonka Aliide oli saanut aikaan naimalla Martin Truun, olisi turhaa” (Oksanen, 2008, pp. 165–​166). 41. “Samaan aikaan Siperiaan viedyiltä viety kulta muuttui uusiksi hampaiksi uusissa suissa, kultaiset hymyt kiilsivät kilpaa auringon kanssa ja niiden katveessa koko maassa sikisi suunnaton välttelevien katseiden, väistyvien ilmeiden määrä. Niitä tuli vastaan toreilla, teillä ja pelloilla loputtomana virtana, harmaiksi himmenneitä mustuaisia ja punertavia valkuaisia. Kun viimeisetkin talot hirtettiin kolhooseihin, suorat sanat katosivat rivien väleihin” (Oksanen, 2008, p. 203). 42. Despite the traumatic rape, Krimmer is probably right in arguing that the marital sexual abuse is the “most drastic form of sexual exploitation” (2015, p. 40) in the novel: “Because the terse and distanced description of the rape by Russian soldiers is preceded by the lengthy passages that dwell on Helene’s sexual victimization by Wilhelm, the rape by the Russians is almost an afterthought, a final confirmation or master metaphor for the ‘night trap’ (Nachtfalle) that Helene’s life has become, that is, for her multiple victimizations in a sexist and racist society” (p. 42). In a way, Helene’s history of sexual harassment reaches back to her childhood, when her lesbian sister asks her for sexual favors, but this close, ambivalent relationship is not unequivocally abusive. It involves physical intimacy and an exploration of their developing sexuality, but it is clearly indicated that at times Helene is uncomfortable about Martha’s sexual advances on her: when Martha guides Helene’s hand on her body and presses her tongue in her mouth, Helene thinks of the time when Martha forced berries in her mouth and nose and would not stop although she begged her to, and she considers biting Martha’s tongue but in the end “she couldn’t” (“sie konnte nicht”), as there is also something about it that she likes even as she feels “ashamed” (2009, p. 57; “zugleich schämte sich Helene,” 2007, p. 63). 43. “Ihr Rock war zerrissen, ihre Augen weit geöffnet, Peter wusste nicht, ob sie ihn sah oder durch ihn hindurch blickte. Aufgesperrt war ihr Mund—​aber sie blieb stumm” (2007, p. 18). 44. Helene’s reasons for treating Peter as if he were complicit in the rape remain unclear. She had asked him to get a new lock to the door, which he forgot to take care of; it may also play a role that he is male and the son of a Nazi, or she may unconsciously blame him simply because he witnessed the rape and could not do anything about it. Rejecting Peter seems like an irrational, visceral response from Helene, as if she, unable to process her trauma, were simply trying to refuse the reality of what Peter witnessed. 45. “–​Äitisi on hieman harvasanainen. –​ Mykkä se on. . . . Muidenkin äidit olivat olleet lapsena pommituksissa ja silti puhuivat, vaikka isoäiti sanoikin, että pommi voi säikäyttää lapsen hiljaiseksi” (Oksanen, 2008, pp. 56–​57).

[ 176 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

46. “Wir brauchen doch eine Erinnerung, nicht? Eine Erinnerung? Helene sah Martha ratlos an. Sie wollte sagen: Ich nicht, unterlieβ das aber” (2007, p. 169). 47. “Ihr altes Leben war in eine gute Ferne gerückt, sie erinnerte sich lieber nicht. Was sie übte, war die Erinnerungslosigkeit” (2007, 190). 48. “Siinä kunnantalon kellarissa, jossa Aliide oli kadonnut ja josta hän halusi selvitä hengissä, vaikka ainoa mitä oli jäänyt henkiin, oli häpeä” (Oksanen, 2008, p. 250). 49. “Eine andere Tochter wäre schon vor Jahren gefahren, eine andere Tochter hätte ihre Mutter nicht erst im Stich gelassen” (2007, p. 322). 50. LaCapra (1994) adopts the notions of acting out and working through from Freud, and they have now become part of the basic vocabulary of trauma studies. 51. “Die Uniform schützte sie. . . . Wer Weiβ trug, durfte schweigen, wer Weiβ trug, wurde nicht gefragt, wie es ihm ging . . . , die Anteilnahme am Leiden anderer stützte sie von innen” (2007, p. 298). Helene’s desire to escape her personal life is also evident in the scene in which she hides from Peter in the woods, a scene that anticipates her later abandonment of her son. 52. “Hätte der Chirurg zu Helene gesagt, schneiden Sie, so hätte sie womöglich auch den Eileiter durchtrennt” (2007, p. 386). 53. “. . . als Ausdruck des Hasses, den ihr die Mutter von jeher mitteilen wollte und der Früchte zeigte, wenn Helene von den nackten Schnecken träumte, um in ein Nichts zu fallen, das ihr wie der mütterliche Schoβ erschien” (2007, p. 123). 54. “Die Juden als Gewürm, der Parasit bin ich, Helene dachte” (2007, p. 359). 55. “[E]‌r es besser haben würde und jemand mit ihm sprechen würde, über dies und jenes” (2007, p. 416). 56. That play is over becomes obvious when Peter begins to weep: “It was no joke” (2009, p. 402; “Es war kein Spaβ,” 2007, p. 409). 57. In her interview, Franck used the phrase “die Kultur des Schweigens” several times (Meretoja & Franck, 2010). 58. With narrative dynamics I refer to the interaction between “textual dynamics” and “readerly dynamics” (see Phelan, 2007). I discuss narrative dynamics in more detail in Chapter 6. 59. On this concern, voiced for example by Adorno and LaCapra, see McGlothlin (2010, p. 211). 60. For a discussion of how Franck’s laconic style—​which Franck describes as “female sobriety”—​is a response to the gendered reception of male and female authors’ work, see Merley Hill (2008). 61. “Angst vor dem Fremden” (2005, p. 78). 62. “Wie ein Gefängnis fühlt sich das an. . . . Wenn du nur noch ißt, was dir einer vorsetzt, und einfach nicht mehr in der Lage bist, selbst zu entscheiden, was du wie kochst, und deine Kinder essen nicht mehr an deinem Tisch das Essen, das du für sie besorgt und zubereitet hast. Dann schaffst du ihnen kein Zuhause mehr, vielleicht noch ideell, praktisch nicht mehr” (2005, p. 271). 63. “Auch die Worte schienen nicht mehr zu sein als unnütze Geräusche” (2005, p. 188). 64. On the significance of One Thousand and One Nights and the trope of storytelling as an art of survival in Arabic literature, see Hiddleston (2017, pp. 47–​56). 65. White (1997, pp. 94–​95) uses the concept of “outsider-​witness” with reference to such audiences.

Th e U s e s a n d A b u s e s of N a r r at i v e f or   Li f e  

[ 177 ]

78 1

CHAPTER 5

Narrative Ethics of Implication Günter Grass and Historical Imagination

F

ictional and autobiographical narratives have their own ways of contributing to historical imagination. While much scholarship emphasizes their differences, pointing to the alleged non-​referentiality of fiction, I believe that we should not only be attentive to their specificity, but also acknowledge the ways in which they achieve similar effects through their own specific means. In this chapter, I suggest that they both can have ethical potential to cultivate our sense of history as a sense of the possible. I  will test, in dialogue with the German novelist Günter Grass’s oeuvre, the framework I sketched in Chapter 3 for unearthing different aspects of historical imagination. After a brief overview of the debate on the relationship between fiction and history, I will analyze (1) how Grass’s literary and autobiographical narratives explore the historical world of Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities; how they self-​reflexively examine (against different conceptions of time and history) (2) how history consists in concrete actions and inactions and (3) the ways in which our narrative interpretations of the past shape our orientation to the present; and (4) how they address the duty to remember through a future-​oriented narrative ethics of implication. Grass is a particularly compelling case from the perspective of historical imagination. The controversy surrounding him demonstrates poignantly both how the ability to deal with traumatic historical legacies is crucial to why literature matters to the reading public, and how the way in which readers ascribe value to literary narratives is linked to their

8 01

evaluation of the ethos—​and the ethical integrity—​of the author.1 Ever since the publication of the Danzig trilogy—​Die Blechtrommel (1959, The Tin Drum), Katz und Maus (1961, Cat and Mouse), and Hundejahre (1963, Dog Years)—​Grass has been considered the “moral consciousness” of the postwar generation; he has played a seminal role in the German nation’s memory work, that is, in its process of “coming to terms with the past” (Vergangenheitsbewältigung). However, his autobiography Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006, Peeling the Onion), in which he reveals that he not only was a member of the Hitler Youth (which he has always been open about) but also served in the Waffen-​SS as a seventeen-​year-​old in the final stages of the war, led to a reassessment of his stature. Grass’s belated confession forms a minor part of his autobiographical Bildungsroman that primarily focuses on his development into an artist and deals with the conditions of possibility for becoming an artist in the post-​Holocaust world. 2 Yet the passage where he confesses his Waffen-​SS past gained the most publicity (by far) and triggered a media debate in which the fact that he had withheld information about his precise role in the war devalued the credibility of his novels for many critics. Some even demanded that he should return his Nobel Prize in Literature (1999).3 Against the backdrop of this debate, how should we evaluate his work from the perspective of an ethics of storytelling, and what insights does his oeuvre bring into our understanding of such ethics? In what ways can his fictional and autobiographical narratives be understood in terms of a process of taking responsibility for one’s implication in the horrors of history? Ever since the Danzig trilogy, Grass’s work has depicted a society of repression and forgetting that has a very complicated relationship with the past. In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, we get to know exactly how deeply he was part of that society. Does his personal complicity and his belated confession diminish the ethical value of his oeuvre’s exploration of Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities and the postwar cultural amnesia? I address these ethical issues by analyzing how his works deal, both thematically and through their narrative structure, with the narrative ethics of being implicated in violent histories. Also ethically relevant is the way in which his autobiography deals self-​reflexively with the role of storytelling in the construction of the past, which is shown to exist for us only through narrative imagination. What insights can we draw from a comparison of the strategies through which fictional and autobiographical narratives deal with the traumatic past? What difference does the shift to the autobiographical first-​person make?

[ 180 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

FICTION AND HISTORY, POSSIBLE AND ACTUAL

It seems evident that people read fiction in part to learn about past worlds and that literature participates in negotiating cultural memory. In fact, over the last couple of decades, narrative fiction all over the world has engaged with history with unprecedented intensity. Yet there is no consensus among literary theorists on whether fiction can contribute to our understanding of history, or—​if it can—​how to conceptualize this contribution. The Aristotelian tradition of drawing a dichotomy between the actual and the possible in conceptualizing the relationship between fiction and history still dominates current discussions. Nevertheless, it is far from evident whether this conceptual dichotomy is the best starting point for making sense of how literary narratives provide insights into history. One of the central arguments of this book is that the way in which this dichotomy has been used to theorize the relationship between fiction and history is linked to problematic ontological assumptions about the nature of history and reality, and that it risks dismissing how a sense of the possible constitutes an important dimension of every actual world. Historical, autobiographical, and literary narratives have their own means of providing interpretations of actual worlds, but they all can contribute to our sense of a past world as a space of possibilities. Fiction is freer to imagine what could have happened in a particular historical world than is historical nonfiction, which is bound by the requirement of documentation; when speculating, the historian is expected to clearly indicate this.4 Nevertheless, both novelists and historians frequently imagine what might have been possible and what was experienced as possible in a particular world. When the relationship between literature and history is discussed, both philosophers and literary theorists tend to place emphasis on the specificity of fiction and to distinguish fiction from nonfiction on the grounds that only the latter is “referential”; that is, it deals with the real, actual world and can have truth value (see, e.g., Frege, 2008, orig. 1892; Cohn, 1999, p. 15; Doležel, 2010, p. 41). This position, however, rests on problematic assumptions about the ontology of history and literature. Cohn’s influential “Signposts of Fictionality” (1990), for example, suggests that what essentially distinguishes fiction from nonfiction is that “a text-​oriented poetics of fiction excludes, on principle, a realm at the very center of the historiographer’s concern:  the more or less reliably documented evidence of past events out of which the historian fashions his story”; it is a “bi-​level” model that excludes the relationship between “the story level and what we might call the referential level (or data base)” (p. 778). Cohn argues that this exclusion makes the bi-​level model

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 181 ]

821

inadequate for the analysis of history-​writing but considers it fitting for the analysis of fiction, which is structured by a “constitutional freedom” from a referential dimension (p.  800). I  would argue, however, that the bi-​level model (which still largely dominates narratology) is just as problematic for our understanding of literature and its role in our lives precisely because it assumes that the referential level is not relevant to fiction. This model is untenable if we acknowledge that literary narratives deal with our worldly existence in ways that provide insights into the actual, real world and often to specific historical worlds.5 Narratological approaches (such as Cohn’s and Doležel’s) tend to ignore that although fictional narratives are not “literally true,” they can have truth value at the level of the work as a whole, even when it makes no sense to speak of truth value on a sentence level. As Thomas Pavel puts it, against analytic philosophers who deny the truth value of fiction, a literary work can be “true as a whole,” although it is “useless to set up procedures for assessing the truth or falsity of isolated fictional sentences” (1986, p. 17). As Ricoeur observes, “there is no discourse so fictional that it does not connect up with reality,” but instead of referring to reality at the level of “descriptive, constative, didactic discourse that we call ordinary language,” fiction refers to reality at the level of “being-​ in-​the-​world” (1991a, pp.  85–​86). Through its thematic and structural organization, a literary work communicates a certain interpretation of the world. This is a central insight of hermeneutic aesthetics: works of art disclose the world from a certain perspective, opening it up in such a way that allows us to see and experience what we would not be otherwise able to see and experience.6 The problematic assumptions underlying the prevalent way of drawing a conceptual dichotomy between the actual and the possible in theorizing the relationship between history and fiction are rarely articulated because they are often simply taken for granted. Contemporary theories of fictionality, for instance, tend to depend on a tacit theory of factuality that draws a conceptual opposition between the actual and the possible, on the basis of the ontological assumption that the actual and the real refer to objectively verifiable actions, events, and facts. If we subscribe to a non-​positivistic conception of historical reality, in contrast, we should acknowledge that reality also consists of phenomena that are less accessible to observation, such as modes of experience, affect, and sense-​making, and ways of orienting oneself to the past, present, and future. Understanding these aspects of reality requires the use of narrative imagination in the effort to chart a historical world as a space of possibilities that sets certain limits on what is perceivable, sayable, and thinkable.

[ 182 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

If we conceptualize, from a hermeneutic perspective, the past world as a space of possibilities in which it was possible to think, experience, feel, do, and imagine certain things, and difficult or impossible to think, experience, feel, do, and imagine other things, we can see how a sense of the possible is an integral aspect of every actual world. Modes of relating to the past and orienting oneself to the future are constitutive of each historical world as a non-​homogeneous, intersubjective space of possibilities. If we acknowledge, against mainstream narratology, that the apparently uneventful everyday life of individuals and communities is also constitutive of history, we can analyze how the historical world in which we live affects the very form of our experience and how different modes of experience find expression in divergent narrative forms.7 This conceptual framework enables us to observe how fiction as the art of narrative imagination deepens our understanding of past worlds in terms of the possible. The reading public tends to assess the truth value of historical and autobiographical narratives from the perspective of whether they depict accurately what happened in a particular historical world or life. Interestingly, however, it is mainly theorists of fictionality who emphasize the referential aspect of autobiographical and historical narratives in order to distinguish (allegedly non-​referential) fiction from them, whereas theorists of autobiography have increasingly come to stress the fictional aspects of life-​writing and its literary construction through various textual and narrative strategies. Max Saunders voices a widespread sentiment in autobiography studies: “however truthful or candid an autobiography might be judged, it is nonetheless a narrative, and shares its narrative features with fictional narratives” (2010, p. 7). The question of truth is often bracketed in contemporary autobiography studies, but it nevertheless remains (even if often tacitly) central to what Paul John Eakin (2004) calls the “ethics of life-​writing” and Phelan terms the “ethics of referentiality” (2007, p. 219). The expectation of truth-​telling regulates the reception of texts that are generically framed as autobiographies, which explains why works like James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (2003) or Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Bruchstücke: Aus einer Kindheit 1939–​1948 (1995, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood), framed and marketed as “memoirs,” were considered “frauds” when they turned out to be fictional.8 Grass’s autobiography appeals to the reader by aspiring to be truthful and, through its truthfulness, ethical, and it also sets out to produce important insights into the broader historical context beyond the individual life. At the same time, however, it emphasizes its own element of fabrication and fabulation, that is, the inevitable fictionalization that is woven into the nonfictional. This self-​reflexivity has the effect of making

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 183 ]

8 4 1

the autobiographical narrator more reliable, rather than less, due to his lucid awareness of his human limitations and of the inevitable selectivity and inaccuracy of memory. What I would like to suggest is that an important aspect of the truth value and ethical value of both literary and autobiographical narratives is how they succeed in conveying a sense of the past world as a space of possibilities that encourages certain modes of experience and discourages others. This argument will be elaborated next through an analysis of how Grass’s fictional and autobiographical narratives produce insights into Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities.

NAZI GERMANY AS A SPACE OF POSSIBILITIES

How do Grass’s Danzig trilogy and his autobiography Beim Häuten der Zwiebel develop a narrative dynamic that contributes to the readers’ sense of history as a sense of the possible? Both depict the petit bourgeois historical world of 1930s Danzig, the milieu of Grass’s childhood and adolescence, as a space of experience for a child to grow up. Grass’s was a Catholic, National Socialist home: in the words of his lyrical self, he was raised “between the Holy Spirit and the picture of Hitler” (1997a, p. 198). In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, Grass tells us that he was “a Young Nazi” who believed in the legitimacy of the war and was an easy target for the heroism and war propaganda promoted, for example, by the newsreels played before feature films: I was a pushover for the prettified black-​ and-​ white “truth” they served up. . . . I would see Germany surrounded by enemies . . . : a bulwark against the Red Tide. The German folk in a life-​and-​death struggle. Fortress Europe standing up to Anglo-​American imperialism at great cost. (2007, pp. 69–​70)9

Grass’s autobiography paints a detailed picture of how carefully crafted ideological narratives (such as the master narrative of “American imperialism”) were used to legitimize Nazi politics and were fed to the young. Indoctrination shaped the narrative unconscious and narrative imagination of the boys and drew them into a “never-​ending hero-​worship” (p. 12).10 They hoped that the war would last long enough for them to enlist. As a 15-​ year-​old, Grass volunteered for submarine service, but due to his youth, his application was declined. He was later drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst and, at the end of 1944, he joined the Waffen-​SS, without properly understanding what he was involved in:

[ 184 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

True, during the tank gunner training  .  .  .  there was no mention of the war crimes that later came to light, but the ignorance I claim could not blind me to the fact that I had been incorporated into a system that had planned, organized, and carried out the extermination of millions of people. Even if I could not be accused of active complicity, there remains to this day a residue that is all too commonly called joint responsibility. I will have to live with it for the rest of my life. (p. 111)11

Ever since Die Blechtrommel (1959, Tin Drum), one of the earliest novels to deal with the complicity of ordinary Germans in Nazi crimes, a key question of Grass’s work has been how to understand this joint responsibility. His fictional oeuvre has been an attempt to address this responsibility through literary means. As his autobiography testifies, he eventually came to the conclusion that the literary project had not been enough—​that taking responsibility through storytelling needed to include an autobiographical account of his personal involvement and of what he had left untold. Yet there are many similarities between the narrative strategies of his fictional and autobiographical writings. In particular, they interlace the perspective of the “experiencing I,” which reinforces the experientiality and immersiveness of the narrative, with the distance-​creating, self-​reflexive, retrospective interpretations of the “narrating I,” and they suggest (as in the preceding quotation) that although the “experiencing I” is part of a historical world (Nazi Germany) that he understands only in limited ways, he is still responsible for his actions and inactions in that world (as the “narrating I” acknowledges in hindsight). Grass’s novels that depict Nazi Germany from the perspective of those who collaborated with the Nazis are examples of perpetrator fiction or complicity fiction, and in many respects they can be regarded as being ahead of their times: the notion of perpetrator fiction was launched much later, and the phenomenon has become a popular research topic only within the past decade.12 Susan Suleiman (2009) praises Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones), the topic of Chapter  6, for its innovative narrative structure, as its first-​person narrator and protagonist is both a perpetrator—​a willing if somewhat passive participant in the Holocaust—​and a moral witness whose depiction of the action in the past is intertwined with the kind of reflection that is “clearly retrospective, even though it seems to be occurring at the moment”:13 Littell, in making his SS narrator into a reliable historical witness—​that is, one who functions as a witness informed by retrospective historical knowledge—​ accomplishes something completely new. For here the historical truth—​which

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 185 ]

8 61

includes not only the facts but also an attempt to grapple with their ethical and psychological implications—​comes out of the mouth of one who was part of the very system responsible for the horrors he is recounting. . . . (Suleiman, 2009, pp. 8–​9)

Such a narrative strategy, however, is not as completely new as Suleiman suggests:  a similar strategy had already been developed by Grass several decades earlier. The narrators of the Danzig trilogy are character-​narrators who perceive their younger selves through the lens of their older selves. They recount their past experiences (of growing up in Nazi Germany) in such a way that a sense of immediacy (the perspective of the time when the experiences took place) is intertwined with retrospective interpretations of these experiences. While narratologists frequently assume that the “experiencing I” and the “narrating I” are separate, and that we cannot experience and narrate at the same time (see, e.g., Cohn, 1999, p. 96), Grass and Littell develop a form of narration that emphasizes, in a hermeneutic spirit, the intertwinement of the two, particularly the way in which the experiences of the “narrating I” affect how that I interprets narratively the experiences of the past self. Discussions on focalization usually focus on shifts between the perspectives of different characters, but equally important are shifts between the perspectives of the same characters at different points in time. Although focalization is often linked to how a text invites the reader to take the perspective of a certain character, shifts in focalization have a wider range of functions. As Vera Nünning puts it, such shifts are important in highlighting differences of perception and feeling, as well as requiring readers to position themselves in the face of such contradictions. Focalization is not only about empathy and perspective taking, it is also about distancing and interpretation. (2015, p. 107)

In the narrative strategies of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel and the Danzig trilogy, shifts of focalization are integral to the narrative dynamic based on the interplay between the perspective of the critical, self-​reflexive “narrating I” in the present and that of the child and young man (the “experiencing I”) who grows up and is immersed in the historical world of Nazi Germany. Hundejahre, the third book of the Danzig trilogy, consists of three parts, each of which has its own narrator. The novel focuses on the life stories of two narrators, the childhood friends Eddi Amsel and Walter Matern, during their adolescence in the outskirts of Danzig and during their postwar

[ 186 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

years. In the first part, “The Morning Shifts,” Eddi Amsel, under the guise of mine director Brauksel, tells in the third person about the childhood years (1917–​1927) of Eddi and Walter. The second part, “Love Letters,” comprises Harry Liebenau’s letters to his cousin Tulla; in them he recalls the years after 1927, focusing on the Nazi era. The third part, “Materniades,” is written in the third person by the actor Walter Matern, who recounts his experiences in postwar Germany until the year 1957. This narrative strategy allows the novel to combine a depiction of petit bourgeois everyday life at the time of the rise of Nazism, from the perspective of those who experienced it, with a retrospective narrative interpretation of these experiences and events. In Hundejahre, National Socialism arrives at Langfuhr (an outlying district of Danzig) little by little, taking hold of people’s daily lives: “gradually more and more swastika flags” (1987, p. 661).14 The success of the Nazi doctrine is linked to its ability to appear normal and natural—​representative of the values of decent, upright, hard-​working Germans. Much of the petit bourgeoisie join the Nazi Party mainly because their neighbors are members. A critical impetus for the community’s enthusiasm for Hitler is a letter that the Führer sends them, furnished with his photo, in order to thank them for giving him a dog, Prince: “Letter and picture of the Führer—​both were immediately placed under glass and framed in our shop—​went on long excursions in the neighborhood. As a result, first my father, then August Pokriefke, and finally quite a few of the neighbors joined the Party” (p. 682).15 The novel suggests that Nazism responded to a need for identity, provided by a sense of belonging to a collective—​a yearning to be part of a larger movement in order to feel accepted and important. Several scholars have singled out the need for identity as one of the most crucial factors behind the rise and success of Nazism:  as Philippe Lacoue-​Labarthe and Jean-​Luc Nancy (1990) suggest, the “Nazi myth,” the narrative of a superior race with a world-​historical mission, provided ordinary Germans with a seductive narrative identity. As we have seen, some narrative identities perpetuate dominant power structures, while others provide individuals with the means to resist them and to find alternative ways to construct a sense of self. Hundejahre depicts the ways that the dominant ideologies and the naturalizing narratives at the heart of their discourse of legitimation shape the narrative identities of the average petit bourgeois citizens. It also shows, however, how identity construction can draw on counter-​ narratives, particularly through the story of Eddi Amsel, who seeks in scarecrow-​building an alternative identity, his own variation of an artist’s self-​reflexive, subversive identity.

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 187 ]

81

Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer have analyzed how the need for an unambiguous identity is particularly powerful in “authoritarian personalities” (1998, p. 212), who compensate for a weak self by identifying with a powerful collective and complying with the prevalent ideology, whatever it may be. In Hundejahre, such a personality is displayed particularly by Matern, who is first a Catholic, then a Nazi, then a Communist, and in the end searches for a new master, like a dog, symbolizing the desire to give up one’s autonomy and to lead a life based on following authority and ready-​made narrative identities. In Hundejahre, some residents of Danzig quickly become devoted adherents to the Nazi movement, but more often they participate in passive collaboration, blending into a conformist crowd. Liebenau, for example, asserts self-​ironically that “all he was good for was looking on and saying what he’d heard other people say” (p. 803).16 With this modus operandi, he follows the model of his parents. He lives in a community in which no one wants to know or think about the broader implications of Nazi politics, shockingly exemplified by the mountain of bones that accumulates from the victims of Stutthof concentration camp: “No one talked about the pile of bones. But everybody saw smelled tasted it” (1987, p. 809).17 As much as people struggle to forget its existence, it penetrates their consciousness with its stubborn presence as the sickeningly sweet odor of cremated ashes wafts around the surrounding villages. In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, Grass depicts himself in similar terms: I did my part unquestioningly . . . ; I was a schemer [Mitläufer] whose mind was forever elsewhere. (2007, pp. 20–​21)18 But I  can take care of the labelling and branding myself. As a member of the Hitler Youth I was, in fact, a Young Nazi. A believer till the end. Not what one would call fanatical, not leading the pack, but with my eye, as if by reflex, fixed on the flag that was to mean “more than death” to us, I kept pace in the rank and file. No doubts clouded my faith. . . . (p. 35)19

The narrator here—​as in Hundejahre—​functions as a moral and historical witness. For Avishai Margalit, “paradigmatic cases of what makes one into a moral witness” involve “an encounter with external evil,” but there are no conceptual reasons to disqualify confessions of encountering evil in one’s “own soul” from moral testimony (2002, pp. 175–​176). The forms of evil on which Grass’s works focus are generally very mundane:  evil ingrained in indifference, laziness, lack of courage, and the failure to doubt. It is essentially the same type of everyday evil that he depicts in his novels and that—​ he suggests in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel—​made him into a young Nazi.

[ 188 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

In evaluating Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities, it is significant that Grass, as the I-​narrator of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, sees himself not only as importantly shaped by his sociohistorical milieu, but also as an active moral agent who could have questioned prevailing forms of power. Crucial, from this perspective, is the way in which both Hundejahre and Beim Häuten der Zwiebel display the possibility of resistance. In the former, one of the teachers (Dr. Brunies) refuses to collaborate with the Nazis; he is deemed unpatriotic and ends up in a concentration camp. In the latter, the narrator tells us that among the boys serving in the Reichsarbeitsdienst, there is one whose performance is otherwise exemplary except that he refuses to hold a gun. He drops it each time it is put into his hands and asserts simply “Wedontdothat” (2007, p.  86; “Wirtunsowasnicht,” 2006, p. 100). He is repeatedly and severely punished without success, until he disappears—​presumably to a concentration camp. This episode not only underlines Grass’s personal culpability—​he too had the option to resist—​ but also shows how widespread conformism was and how fatal the consequences of resistance often were.20 The sense of conformism that Grass’s narratives portray is integral to the mode of existence of those inhabiting the depicted historical world. While Fludernik believes that “novels and fiction films tend to foreground the universally human in past experience” (2010, p. 48), what I am arguing here, in contrast, is that Grass exemplifies the ambition of much of contemporary fiction to create a sense of a certain world as a historically specific space of experience. Both the Danzig trilogy and Beim Häuten der Zwiebel convey a sense of how, in the Danzig of the 1930s, widespread conformism prevailed, and although it was possible to resist Nazism, doing so required exceptional courage. The dominant narrative imaginary pushed ordinary people to conform, luring them to follow blindly a movement that offered them a seductive, heroic narrative identity. In Hundejahre, Nazism builds on and radicalizes the everyday evil of modern society, that is, what Hannah Arendt (1994) describes as the banality of evil: the novel shows that Nazism was not enabled by any inherent, radical evilness of the Germans, but by quotidian indifference fueled by the instrumental logic of modern Western society that divides responsibility into such small pieces that nobody feels responsible for the ends and goals of societal developments.21 In an essay, Grass writes about the “complex ‘modernity’ of genocide”: extreme evil disguises itself as the modern virtues of decency and efficiency—​as a mentality that encourages everyone to unquestioningly take care of their own strictly defined responsibilities (Grass, 1997f, p. 516). As Arendt shows, Eichmann and his ilk sat conscientiously at their desks and acted on orders. In depicting this banal evil,

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 189 ]

9 01

Grass prompts the reader to ponder how much the logic of today’s Western society differs from that of Nazi Germany and to recognize contemporary mechanisms that are similar to those that enabled the rise of Nazism. In our society, too, individuals become cogs in machines, in processes the ends of which are not subject to critical discussion. We are taught to consider efficiency (in terms of time and money) as an end in itself, although the real issue should be the discussion of the ends and values toward which we so efficiently strive. Grass’s ethics of remembering what he designates metonymically as “Auschwitz” urges us to acknowledge that the Nazis and bystanders—​implicated subjects who were not directly involved but who failed to resist the Nazis—​were ordinary, conscientious men who did what they were told and were driven by the need to conform and by the comforts of a secure narrative identity. While Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil remains easily abstract as a philosophical theory, narratives like those by Grass embody similar insights in a concrete form by showing us in experiential terms what it is like to live in a world in which few people stop to reflect critically on the ultimate values that steer their actions, or have courage to question the goals imposed on them. Living through, with the characters, the social developments through which the banality of evil takes shape and is harnessed to make the Holocaust possible gives us an understanding of those developments that is different from the one we would get from abstract accounts that lack the perspectives of subjects of experience and action that are elemental to narrative logic. In the temporal process of engaging with everyday banal evil, readers acquire a sense of how a specific historical world and its narrative imaginary conditioned the experiences and actions of its inhabitants. It contributes to our sense of history by cultivating our sense of what was possible in that historical world: what different modes of action—​including bystanding, acting courageously, and showing resistance—​meant in that world, and how that space of possibilities is similar or dissimilar to the one we inhabit today.

EXPERIENCE OF TIME AND HISTORY

Another way in which literary and autobiographical narratives contribute to historical imagination is by shaping our understanding of time and history and of different modes of perceiving and experiencing them. In a sense, Grass’s narratives are narratives about time and history. They not only cultivate a sense of what a particular historical world (such as Nazi Germany) was like, they also propose a more general philosophy of

[ 190 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

history: a sense of how history, instead of being a linear progressive movement governed by necessity or destiny, is made up of actions and inactions of individuals in concrete situations. In Grass’s work, the mentality that fosters the banal evil is linked to a particular dual experience of history and time: they are experienced as both open and determined—​coupling a sense of the indeterminacy of the future with an assumption of history as an inevitable process. On the one hand, the characters are immersed in the events they are experiencing, and their future is open in the sense that they do not know where the present events are leading; they cannot (or are unwilling to) imagine the consequences of their actions, or make sense of the larger contexts to which they belong. In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, the narration particularly foregrounds the tension between the experience of those at the scene of the action, immersed in the course of events, and the perspective of those looking back and retrospectively narrativizing the events. For example, Grass the narrator tells us that no one talked about “war crimes” at the time they were committed, or declared in Marienbad, when the Germans surrendered to the Americans, that this is “Stunde Null” (a “fresh start”): the events experienced primarily as confusing and chaotic by those immersed in them came to be seen only much later as marking “the end of one era and the beginning of the next” (2007, p. 164).22 The characters originally experience the events from within an entirely different narrative framework than the one in terms of which they are later narrativized. According to the narrative framework operational at the time of the experience, the Germans were protecting Europe from the “Red Terror”; according to the latter, the Americans came to rescue the Germans from Nazi propaganda. On the other hand, the dominant experience of time and history in Nazi Germany is marked by a sense of inevitability. The characters do not perceive themselves as agents making history but, rather, as being immersed in an inevitable process that they are powerless to affect: “What is man? A mere particle, partner, fellow traveller, cog in the cog-​wheel of history. A colourful ball being kicked around—​I guess that was the way I pictured myself” (p. 217).23 This experience of historical time as a determined process is connected to an “idealistic” conception of history. Like Arendt, Grass considers critical to the success of Nazism the belief that individuals must submit to an inevitable historical process: for him, “faith in a coherent historical process in a Hegelian sense” is an extremely dangerous “form of superstition” that has been used to legitimate the most hideous crimes of the twentieth century (Durzak & Grass, 1985, p. 14). As Arendt puts it, totalitarian ideologies are based on an “ ‘idea’ by which the movement of history is

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 191 ]

921

explained as one consistent process”: totalitarian rule claims to obey the “laws of Nature or of History” (1976, pp. 461, 469). In Grass’s oeuvre, the real consists in the everyday actions, inactions, and sufferings of concrete individuals: this, indeed, is the stuff of history. He worries that we lose sight of this reality if history is viewed only through abstract ideas or portrayed as a teleological, rational, and meaningful process with a given end, rather than as a process devoid of inherent meaning—​ à la Döblin, for whom “no Hegelian Weltgeist rides over the battlefields” (1997e, pp.  265, 272).24 Grass’s work foregrounds the concrete here and now and the indeterminacy of the moment of action against teleological historical narratives in which the singular is lost under abstract ideas. He draws an opposition between the idea that history consists in the concrete here and now, on the one hand, and, on the other, idealist conceptions of history that subsume the concrete under abstract ideas.25 Grass puts forward his narratives as an antidote to idealism that presents history as a path toward a predetermined future. For Grass, the basic evil (Grundübel) that functions as the condition of possibility for the rise and triumph of Nazism is “idealism,” by which he means sacrificing the particular and the individual in the name of universal and abstract ideas (1997e, pp. 472–​474). In Hundejahre, the fascist ideology attempts to sublimate, sanctify, and conceal the concrete suffering of individuals through abstract conceptual constructions. For example, hero worship and a mythology knit together of nationalist narrative imaginary and the misuse of pseudo-​philosophical (here: pseudo-​Heideggerian) jargon enable Liebenau and Matern to dismiss the mass murder that is taking place in the nearby concentration camp: A boy, a young man, a uniformed high school student, who venerated the Führer, Ulrich von Hutten, General Rommel, the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, for brief moments Napoleon, the panting movie actor Emil Jannings, for a while Savonarola, then again Luther, and of late the philosopher Martin Heidegger. With the help of these models he succeeded in burying a real mound made of human bones under medieval allegories. The pile of bones, which in reality cried out to high heaven between Troyl and Kaiserhafen, was mentioned in his diary as a place of sacrifice, erected in order that purity might come-​to-​ be in the luminous, which transluminates purity and so fosters light. (1987, pp. 813–​814)26

The parody stems here from Grass’s anti-​idealism—​from the conviction that one should hold fast to that which is particular, to the concrete nature of reality, instead of the general and abstract (1997e, pp.  472–​474). He

[ 192 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

thereby understands idealism in approximately the same way as Arendt, who comments on Eichmann’s way of defining himself as an “idealist”: An “idealist” was a man who lived for his idea—​hence he could not be a businessman—​and who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. When he said in the police examination that he would have sent his own father to his death if that had been required, he did not mean merely to stress the extent to which he was under orders, and ready to obey them; he also meant to show what an “idealist” he had always been. The perfect “idealist,” like everybody else, had of course his personal feelings and emotions, but he would never permit them to interfere with his actions if they came into conflict with his “idea.” (Arendt, 1994, p. 42)

In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, the narrator articulates a recurring theme of Grass’s oeuvre by saying that the ability to doubt developed in him “much too late,” but when it appeared, it came with overwhelming force: “I missed the opportunity to learn to doubt, an activity that—​much too late, but then pursued all-​out—​enabled me to clear every altar and go beyond faith in making decisions” (2007, p. 81).27 He asserts that only the ability to doubt could have enabled him to resist Nazism, and on the basis of that ability he developed—​through the painful process that is the main topic of his autobiography—​into an artist. Grass suggests that it is precisely through the ability to doubt that art can resist idealism and show that there are different possibilities of being and acting in every historical situation. In the historical world depicted in Hundejahre, the narrative unconscious of the petit bourgeois characters is dominated by the sense of the inevitability of the course of events and of the concomitant powerlessness of ordinary people to change it. At the same time, however, the reader is shown how the unfolding of events is in fact shaped by the concrete actions taken by particular individuals. The reader senses that things could have happened differently. Hence, the reader’s sense of history is intertwined with a sense of the “alternativeness of human possibility” (Bruner, 1986, p. 53). By using the narrative technique that Morson (1998) calls “sideshadowing,” Hundejahre draws the reader’s attention to the possibilities of action available for individuals in certain situations—​possibilities that they often leave unrealized, with fatal consequences. An illuminating example is the pocket knife scene at the beginning of the novel. Walter plays with his friend Eddi and the dog Senta on the Nickelswalde dam and wants to throw a stone into the river Vistula, but he fails to find one and, instead, ends up throwing in a pocket knife that he has received as a gift from Eddi. The

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 193 ]

941

narrative makes clear that he could have asked Eddi to throw him a stone or commanded the dog to fetch him one: “He could catch Amsel’s eye at the foot of the dike with a hey and a ho, but his mouth is full of grinding and not of hey and ho” (1987, p. 564).28 As he decides not to call Eddi but, instead, throws away his gift, something is shattered between them—​and in Walter—​and the narrative conveys a sense of how that would not have been necessary. The novel suggests that history is made of such open situations in which individuals seize certain possibilities and ignore others. While for those growing up and living in Nazi Germany the events appeared largely inevitable, from a retrospective perspective the narrator can show—​against teleological narratives of history—​that history consists in concrete actions and inactions in particular spaces of possibilities in which individuals practice their agency. The novel builds on the tension between these notions of time—​time as unfolding different possibilities, defined and structured but not determined by the past, and time experienced as an inevitable succession of predetermined events. This tension can be clarified by Koselleck’s concepts of the space of experience and the horizon of expectation, which he uses as metahistorical, transcendental categories that allow us to disentangle different ways of experiencing time, or “the inner relation between past and future or yesterday, today, or tomorrow” (2004, p.  258). While the space of experience refers to the manner in which the past and its reception—​the past as remembered, reworked, and unconsciously present—​constitutes a space of possibilities within which it is possible to experience certain things, the horizon of expectation refers to the diverse ways in which we orient ourselves to the “not-​yet.” With the rise of a new sense of historicity at the turn of the nineteenth century—​an awareness of the particularity of each historical age—​the space of experience and the horizon of expectation began to drift apart due to the novel vision of the present as a disconnected starting point for a new future. Since then, “there has existed and does exist the consciousness of living in a transitional period” in which the “historical experience descending from the past could no longer be directly extended to the future” (pp. 259, 268–​269). The moderns no longer expect to be able to derive the future from how things are and have been; instead, they perceive it as something that needs to be made. In modern philosophies of history, however, the idea of an open future is wedded to the belief that history follows a conceivable teleological course.29 Hundejahre displays a dual sense of disruption and inevitability, which is integral to the modern experience of time. The novel’s petit bourgeois characters are waiting for a future that is, in principle, in the process of becoming and of being shaped in the present, but that they nevertheless

[ 194 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

experience as slipping beyond their reach and as ultimately dependent on a “world-​historical” plot in which certain nations and individuals—​such as the Nazi leaders—​are destined to fulfill a special mission. Hence, their experience of time is defined by the narrative imaginary constructed, disseminated, and exploited by the Nazi regime.30 The novel shows how that particular experience of time and history structures the narrative unconscious that dominates the historical experience of petit bourgeois Germans in the 1930s. It is an inquiry into the experience of time and history that functioned as a condition of possibility for the Holocaust—​and beyond that, continues to function as a condition of possibility for many persistent practices of structural violence. The reader is invited to see the ethical problems in such an experience of time and history—​how it prevents ordinary people from taking responsibility for their actions—​and to reflect on how such a mentality still shapes the contemporary world. The mode of narration, which both depicts the experience of growing up in Nazi Germany and provides retrospective reflection on that experience, encourages the reader to explore the significance of the narrated from the perspective of our own time—​to ask, for example: How do we make sure that history does not repeat itself? Are we not also bystanders to genocides? How does the rhetoric of inevitability structure contemporary politics and narrative unconscious?

VERGEGENKUNFT

Literary and autobiographical narratives can also contribute to our historical imagination by heightening our awareness of the different ways in which the three dimensions of time are intertwined in human experience and of how particular ways of interpreting and relating to the past affect who we are in the present. They can contribute to our understanding of how the past is always constructed through interpretation that takes place from the horizon of the present, and how storytelling plays a crucial role in this process of interpretation, which is never ethically neutral. Even if ours is an age of unprecedented interest in history and memory, paradoxically it is also an age marked by the experience of an increasing acceleration of life that is often linked to a narrow focus on the present. The philosophical position known as “presentism” argues that only events and entities that occur in the present truly exist.31 Commentators sometimes refer to our age as one of presentism to problematize the mentality that focuses on the present at the expense of how the past shapes it. In extreme forms, such a mentality can be linked to an explicit attack against reflection

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 195 ]

961

on the past, or against what Gadamer calls “wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewuβtsein,” or “consciousness of being affected by history” (1997, p. 301). An example would be Strawson’s provocative view (analyzed in Chapter 2) according to which narrative self-​reflection, involving reflection on the trajectory through which we have become who we are, is inherently harmful. Although Strawson acknowledges that the “way I  am now is profoundly shaped by my past” (2004, p. 438), he is committed to the normative idea that we should refrain from reflecting on the past and, instead, focus on living in the present moment. A major risk of such an attitude, of course, is blindness to how the past shapes the present. A repressed past affects us “behind our backs,” whereas conscious reflection on the complex ways in which the past shapes the present can arguably help us gain emancipatory distance from it, even when we acknowledge that self-​transparence is impossible. Grass’s oeuvre suggests that the fight against harmful forms of forgetting and silence is crucial to the ethics of storytelling. Some thinkers, such as Elie Wiesel, have maintained that only silence can be an appropriate response to the Holocaust, which is unrepresentable (like God): “The unspeakable draws its force and its mystery from its own silence” (1990, p. 165). Elsewhere, however, he acknowledges that silence “encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (p. 233). Grass’s work springs from the latter insight. Remaining silent is also a mode of being implicated: not speaking for the victims is often a way of implicitly taking the side of the victimizers. While silence in Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau is primarily the silence of the traumatized, Grass’s work foregrounds the silence of implicated subjects who are mainly bystanders and witnesses, both at the time of the events and afterward. Both Beim Häuten der Zwiebel and the Danzig trilogy reflect on the historical experience of not only those living in Nazi Germany, but also those whom the traumatic past haunts in postwar Germany. The narrators of Hundejahre provide an account of their wartime experiences by weaving them into narratives that manifest and reflect on different ways of relating to the past. The novel suggests that in postwar Germany, the most common survival strategy was the attempt to forget and simply leave behind the troubling past: Left behind: mounds of bones, mass graves, card files, flagpoles, Party books, love letters, homes, church pews, and pianos difficult to transport. Unpaid: taxes, mortgage payments, back rent, bills, debts, and guilt.

[ 196 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

All are eager to start out fresh with living, saving, letter writing, in church pews, at pianos, in card files and homes of their own. All are eager to forget the mounds of bones and the mass graves, the flagpoles and Party books, the debts and the guilt. (1987, pp. 848–​849)32

The quotation represents petit bourgeois life and narrative imagination as revolving around the accumulation of commodities. This life may be temporarily interrupted by mounds of bones and mass graves, but will soon resume its course. The passage creates a grotesque effect by drawing a parallel between economic matters (taxes, bills, debts) and ethical-​existential issues (the guilt linked to the Holocaust). It plays with the double meaning of the German word “die Schuld,” which signifies both debt and guilt, and with the conflation of these two meanings in the Germany of the “economic miracle.” Economic productivity was offered as a solution to society’s moral dilemma, as if guilt could be paid off like a debt. Hundejahre suggests that forgetting and the idea of a new beginning formed the official ideology because they guaranteed the smooth functioning of the economic machinery:  “Little by little this becomes the first principle of all concerned: Forget! Maxims are embroidered on handkerchiefs, pillow slips, and hat linings: Learn to forget. Forgetfulness is natural” (p. 938).33 Of the three narratives, it is Matern’s that most clearly represents an obsessive attempt to forget the past. The narrative form gives expression to his unwillingness to remember: unlike the other two parts of the book, the “Materniades” are written in the third-​person present tense, reflecting his attempt to live in a present moment cut off from the past. He is unwilling to tell about his life in the form of a story, which would require relating the past to the present and reflecting on who he is on the basis of how he has lived. The time experience that dominates the “Materniades” is similar to the chronotope of “adventure time,” which Bakhtin has shown to be typical of Robinsonades (modeled on Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), that is, narratives about a series of exciting adventures that remain episodic and disparate in relation to one another and that do not substantially change the agent of the adventure.34 Matern sees his past in terms of such disparate episodes. At the beginning of the novel, he betrays his friend by throwing into the river a pocket knife that Amsel has given him. At the end of the novel, he receives a second chance when Amsel gives him another pocket knife, but he again throws it into the same river. This scene is emblematic of his tendency to repeat the same aggressive behavioral and affective patterns, resulting from his inability to engage with the past, which he attempts to compulsively erase from his mind and surroundings:

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 197 ]

9 8 1

Matern buys a large eraser, stations himself on a kitchen chair, and begins to erase the names, crossed off and not crossed off, from his heart, spleen, and kidneys. As for Pluto, that four-​legged hunk of past, feeble with age though still running around, he’d be glad to sell him, send him to a rest home for dogs, erase him. . . . (p. 938)35

The novel displays the return of the repressed, showing how the untold past haunts the present and how those unable to confront the past are condemned to repeat it. Matern’s narrative unconscious, which he represses with supreme effort, makes him repeat over and over again the same narrative scenes of revenge and aggression toward the “evil other” onto whom he projects and externalizes corruption and barbarity in order to avoid confronting the evil within. That our past experiences and narrative interpretations of them come to constitute us is an ontological insight that is developed, in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, through the image of an onion. As a metaphor for the human experience of time, it suggests that life is ultimately about memories piling up on one another like layers of an onion. When “skin upon skin” is peeled off, “life’s onion” proves devoid of any “meaningful core” (2007, p. 384).36 Instead of taking the form of a linear sequence, there are only interpenetrating layers of time that leak into one another. This metaphor is linked to fierce criticism, throughout Grass’s oeuvre, of the assumption that the Nazi past could be appropriated or “taken care of,” as the German word for dealing with the past suggests:  Vergangenheitsbewältigung includes the verb bewältigen, which means “to master,” “take care of,” “resolve,” or “overcome.”37 Hundejahre, for example, parodies attempts to find a technological solution to the “problem of the past” by depicting the invention of “miracle glasses,” which enable children to see the crimes committed by their parents (1987, p. 936; 1997b, pp.  601–​602). The way in which the characters of Grass’s novels remain haunted by the traumatic past, even when they believe they have put it behind them, demonstrates that time is not a succession of point-​like moments but, rather, the past is a constitutive part of the present. Grass depicts this conception of time that is at the core of his oeuvre through the term Vergegenkunft, which combines the words referring to the past (Vergangenheit), present (Gegenwart), and future (Zukunft) (1997d, p. 127). Such a conception of time and history, stressing the coalescence of the past, present, and future, is central to the hermeneutic tradition of thought, including Koselleck’s analyses of temporality and historicity. With the spatial metaphor of “the space of experience,” Koselleck indicates how past experiences are “assembled into a totality, within which many

[ 198 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

layers of earlier times are simultaneously present” (2004, p. 260), thereby underscoring how experience is not constituted as simply an additive series of events.38 Expanding on Koselleck’s ideas, Ricoeur (1988, pp. 215–​235) writes about the need to resist the shrinkage of the space of experience that is linked to the tendency to see the past as separate from the present, as a closed and unchangeable collection of past events. He suggests that, through processes of reinterpreting and retelling, the past should be kept open so that its presence in the present is acknowledged and attention is paid to the possibilities that the past opens up in the present. This requires responsivity, for the cultivation of which we need imagination: we are capable of being affected by the possibilities of the past “only to the extent to which we are capable of broadening our capacity to be so affected. Imagination is the secret of this competence” (Ricoeur, 1991a, 181). Grass’s insistence on how the past is never totally past and experience is always historically charged questions the assumption of the immediacy of experience, prevalent in much of narrative studies. In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, for example, Grass brings elements of his past narrative unconscious to the level of present consciousness by charting how his own childhood and adolescent experiences were mediated by cultural imagery prevalent at the time and through narrative models handed down to him from novels, such as those by Erich Maria Remarque and Louis-​Ferdinand Céline: But I  had already read everything I  write here. I  had read it in Remarque or Céline, who—​like Grimmelshausen before them in his description of the Battle of Wittstock, when the Swedes hacked the Kaiser’s troops to pieces—​were merely quoting the scenes of horror handed down to them. (2007, p. 125)39

The present “narrating I” has richer hermeneutic resources available to interpret his past experiences than did his past “experiencing I.” The distance between the two selves draws attention to how understanding not only is a matter of overcoming distance and empathizing with the other (such as one’s past self) but also can have a sobering effect—​making possible a new understanding that involves awareness of the limits of one’s previous understanding. Here we can see the hermeneutic productivity of distance, that is, “temporal distance as a positive and productive condition enabling understanding” (Gadamer, 1997, p. 297). In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, the metaphor of an onion, not unlike the notion of Vergegenkunft, points to the layered character of temporal experience. When the onion of memories is peeled back, layer by layer, “each skin sweats words too long muffled, and curlicue signs, as if a mystery-​monger

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 199 ]

02

from an early age, while the onion was still germinating, had decided to encode himself” (p. 3).40 What makes this process particularly challenging is that many of the layers of our memories are only partly “ours”: we are marked by a certain historical world and its narrative unconscious, which we can acknowledge and understand only in a limited way. This limitedness, however, does not free us from the obligation to try to remember and understand.

NARRATIVE ETHICS OF IMPLICATION: ART

The next issue that we should explore here is the potential of narratives to cultivate our sense of what it might mean to learn from the past in orienting ourselves to the future. In Grass’s oeuvre, the duty to remember is the motor for writing, and it is repeatedly thematized in both his fictional and autobiographical works. In this section, I examine how his oeuvre presents artistic practice as a process of taking responsibility; in the next one I will address the idea of autobiographical storytelling as a means of taking responsibility. Grass has repeatedly argued that Auschwitz is not only a crime of past generations, but something that places a permanent obligation on us (1997g, p. 63). This conviction, which he shares with many other artists of his generation, has been the driving force behind his art from the beginning. He thereby contributes to the discourse on collective responsibility that Thomas Mann (1997, orig. 1945) and Karl Jaspers (1946) started in the immediate postwar years by arguing that the Germans have joint responsibility for the German catastrophe because they are complicit in the German culture that made National Socialism possible—​a discourse that members of the Frankfurt School continued by showing how Auschwitz was enabled by the logic of instrumental rationality integral to modern Western society. Grass’s thinking also has a close affinity with that of Ricoeur’s ethics of memory that discusses our debt to the people of the past and asserts that in the case of extreme atrocities, “the relation of debt is transformed into the duty never to forget” (1992, p. 164). Ricoeur places the emphasis on how the past is handed down to us as a legacy that includes a collective responsibility to do justice to the victims of history by telling their stories, and on the capacity of literature to function as a form of alternative historiography that follows “the plot of suffering” (1991b, p. 464).41 Grass’s work, however, suggests that in responding to this challenge, it is important that literature explores, on an experiential level, not only the perspectives of the victims and the perpetrators, but also those of various implicated subjects, such as bystanders, in order to help

[ 200 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

us imagine how such atrocities were possible and wherein lies the possibility to act otherwise.42 I call this his narrative ethics of implication. Grass’s oeuvre presents art as the most powerful counterforce to the mentality of conformism and cultural amnesia, and it ascribes art’s subversive force to the ways in which it can ignite the capacity for doubt. It also presents art as a process of taking responsibility by exploring the mechanisms of modern, Western society that made the Holocaust possible and by prompting us to recognize that they have not disappeared, but still structure our lives in certain respects, implicate us, and need to be resisted so as to prevent history from repeating itself. In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, Grass depicts his own shock when he learned, at the American re-​education camp, about the concentration camps and presents this experience as a key moment in his own development into an artist. Disbelief changed into shock and then to the profound transformation of his whole outlook and sensibility. Like many other artists of his generation, he adopted suspicion—​“total doubt of all ideologies” (“totale Ideologieverdacht,” Mayer, 1967, pp. 300–​320)—​as his most important maxim; it was also more broadly the cornerstone of the aesthetic program developed by the German postwar generation of novelists, most importantly in Gruppe 47, the literary group of which Grass was a leading figure. This generation felt an urgent need to find new forms of expression in order address Adorno’s famous dictum: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (1981, p. 34).43 Grass understood this not as a prohibition against writing poetry, but as a requirement to write differently than before Auschwitz. As Wolfdietrich Schnurre, his fellow writer in Gruppe 47, observed, the poet can write about anything he wants, even about trees, but “his trees must be different from the ones that rustled in poems written before Auschwitz.”44 For Grass, Adorno’s dictum meant that one must write in a way that addresses what made twentieth-​century totalitarianisms possible, such as the idealist, determinist conception of history and the subjection of the singular and concrete to abstract, general ideas and ideologies. In Grass’s oeuvre, art plays a crucial role in making us aware of the presence of the past in the present. In Hundejahre, such reflection is conducted by Eddi Amsel, who makes most salient the possibility of the individual to resist—​by developing one’s own subversive narrative imagination—​the pressures of the social environment and its prevailing narrative imaginary. As a child, his resistance entails the creation of his own world of scarecrows, which parody and critically comment on the surrounding social reality. After the war, he constructs a “scarecrow hell” in a former mine:  he asserts that man has created the scarecrow in his own image, and his vocation is to create an entire scarecrow world in the image of the contemporary

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 201 ]

0 2

world, the above-​ground hell: “Here the turning points in history are scarecrowified. Degraded yet dynamic, scarecrow history unfolds in its proper order, reciting dates, defenestrations, and peace treaties” (1987, p. 1016).45 The end of the novel gestures toward the view that art can bring us to a self-​encounter, even if it cannot save us from ourselves. It suggests that Matern’s visit to the scarecrow hell prompts him to realize just what kind of a hell has been built on earth. Such a self-​encounter finds expression, in the final scene, as Matern finally relinquishes his third-​person perspective and assumes a first-​person narrative voice: And this man and that man—​who now will call them Brauxel and Matern?—​I and he, we stride with doused lamps to the changehouse. . . . For me and him bathtubs have been filled. I hear Eddi splashing next door. Now I too step into my bath. The water soaks me clean. Eddi whistles something indeterminate. I try to whistle something similar. But it’s difficult. We’re both naked. Each of us bathes by himself. (p. 1023)46

Undressing suggests that the protagonists have given up the costumes they have been wearing throughout the novel. Nudity, however, does not imply here a self-​enlightened state of knowing who one is and what one should do. Matern’s way of lying in the bathtub, helpless and perplexed, trying to imitate Eddi’s whistling behind the wall, indicates that, in the end, everyone is alone with his or her past and guilt—​they cannot be washed away like dirt—​but at least Matern now has the courage to acknowledge that it is his own guilt. A similar gesture of changing into the first person—​and thereby taking personal responsibility—​is the founding gesture of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel. The scarecrow hell, Amsel’s book project, and Grass’s autobiography are all fueled by the dual need to address the past and to grapple with it in the present. Already as a schoolboy, remembering is important for Eddi. The motto of his diary is “Began at Easter because I shouldn’t forget anything” (p. 595).47 Similarly, the key task of art for Grass is to struggle against forgetting, particularly against cultural amnesia: “A writer, children, is someone who writes against the passage of time,” because its passage benefits the perpetrators, not the victims (1997h, pp. 139–​141).48 A central dimension of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel is its self-​reflexive rumination on the role of narrative fiction as a means of producing counter-​narratives that shape narrative imagination—​of the young in particular—​and on how their narrative identities develop in a dialogical relation to the culturally available stock of narrative models. These models provide the young with mirrors in which to reflect on their own sense

[ 202 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

of life. The I-​narrator depicts the young Grass as an avid reader, but the books he reads are largely random—​whatever happens to be available in his uncle’s library. Even so, books provide him with mirrors and the opportunity to travel to imaginary worlds: Books have always been his gap in the fence, his entry into other worlds. (2007, p. 29) Wilde’s copious roster of sins outdoing one another provided me with a suitable mirror. . . . I would sit on an upside-​down fire bucket and read more than I could digest. I was especially drawn to heroes who took me out of myself and into other spheres: Jürg Jenatsch, August Welumsegler, Der grüne Heinrich, David Copperfield, or the Three Musketeers—​all three at once. (pp. 95–​96)49

The narratives that reinforce culturally dominant ideologies and the ones that provide counter-​narratives lie side by side on the book shelves; it is often largely by chance that the young boy picks up one book instead of another, even if authority figures like teachers and parents obviously play an important role in those choices. One of the books Grass tells us he read as a youth was an officially forbidden book, which, however, neither he nor his uncle knew to be forbidden. It was Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (1929, All Quiet on the Western Front), the influential antiwar novel that affected an entire generation: I can’t say for sure when I plucked All Quiet on the Western Front from my uncle’s bookshelf. Was it not until I was waiting to be called up or was it at the same time I read Jünger’s Storm of Steel, a war diary that my German teacher at Saint Peter’s had prescribed as good preparation for the front? (2007, p. 96)50

The reading experience was so powerful that it left a lasting impression on him: “To this day the delayed effect of that early reading experience is with me” (2007, pp. 96–​97).51 Yet, even this experience was not powerful enough to develop his ability to doubt to the extent of enabling him to resist Nazi propaganda. Hence, the book came to symbolize for him the limits of the transformative, empowering, and emancipatory force of literature: “Over and over, author and book remind me of how little I understood as a youth and how limited an effect literature may have. A sobering thought” (p. 97).52 Hence, Grass’s oeuvre suggests that individuals are constituted dialogically in relation to cultural webs of narrative, which condition (without determining) their life courses and narrative identities, but while artistic counter-​narratives open up the possibility for resistance

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 203 ]

4 0 2

based on imagining other worlds and modes of experience, ultimately they rarely empower individuals enough for them to stand up against dominant ideologies.

NARRATIVE ETHICS OF IMPLICATION: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORYTELLING

Grass’s way of dealing with storytelling as a process of taking responsibility and his narrative ethics of implication gain an entirely new dimension in his autobiography, Beim Häuten der Zwiebel. By entering into the “autobiographical pact” (Lejeune, 1988, p. 12), Grass drops the protective shield of art and sets out to tell the “full” truth about his adolescent years in Nazi Germany. We learn that the cultural amnesia that he has depicted throughout his work has a pressing personal dimension to him:  he now pleads guilty of this same amnesia, which manifested itself in his inability to confess his personal involvement in the Waffen-​SS. In interviews following the book’s publication, Grass explained that it was only in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel that he found a narrative form in which he was able to deal with these issues: the form of an autobiographical narrative of becoming an artist, which links his personal failure to the broader failure of his generation to “ask questions” (Wickert & Grass, 2006). Integral to the autobiography is confronting not just his own implication in a web of violence, but also his concealment of this implication. Grass begins by addressing the “temptation to camouflage oneself in the third person” (2007, p. 1):53 “But because so many kept silent, the temptation is great to discount one’s own silence, or to compensate for it by invoking the general guilt, or to speak about oneself . . . in the third person: he was, saw, had, said, he kept silent” (p. 28).54 The driving force of the narrative is the sense that while in a way he has already dealt with all of these themes before—​in his novels in which he has trapped his “dual self” (p. 9)55—​he still needs to write about them in his own first-​person voice. At the same time, he engages in intense reflection on the nature, possibilities, and limits of autobiographical writing. In his autobiography, Grass emphasizes a theme that has been a recurring undercurrent of all his books:  the intimate relationship between memory and storytelling. He explores how we deal with our experiences and remember them by weaving them into narratives, and he presents storytelling as ethically ambivalent in that it often distorts experience:  “once experiences of this sort blossom into stories, they take on a life of their own and flaunt one detail or another” (2007,

[ 204 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

p. 172).56 On the other hand, memory has a tendency to link events and experiences together into stories precisely because we can remember stories better than disparate events:  “Clearer in my mind, because it can be told as a story, is an incident that took place outside the hazing routine” (p. 115).57 We need stories in order to remember, but we also need to be aware of their interpretative, selective nature and how this shapes our memory. One of the central themes of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel is the way in which remembering is always an act of interpreting, bound up with acts of narrativization not only in literary, but also in autobiographical memory. Grass openly displays the paradox of all autobiographical narratives: they are evaluated in terms of their “truthfulness,” and yet autobiographical memory is necessarily selective and interpretative. Autobiographical narratives can never be an exhaustive account of what “truly” happened. Instead of being the sole version, it is inherent to narrative logic that every narrative can be contested and told from a different perspective: there are always other versions of the story. I propose that the truth aspect of autobiographical narratives should not be understood in narrowly referential terms. Both fictional and autobiographical narratives can have truth value on a non-​propositional level, for example when they are able to disclose the space of possibilities in which the narrated life is embedded. An important aspect of the autobiographical endeavor to give a truthful account of one’s past actions and experiences is precisely the mapping of the narratively shaped space of possibilities in which the events of one’s life unfold. In Grass’s narratives, such mapping takes place in conjunction with continuous reflection on the fictional and imaginative aspects of life-​storying. They emphasize how every account of the past is a narrative interpretation that is necessarily selective and partial. In Hundejahre, the alternation of three “constrained” narrative perspectives, with no overriding authorial intervention or normative commentary, displays the way in which there is no single “correct” or ethically neutral perspective. While authors of historiography interpret and explain the narrated historical events, in historiographical novels with homodiegetic narration (a narrator who is also the protagonist or other character in the novel), most of this interpretative and evaluative work is left to the reader. In Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, an authorial voice occasionally takes part in this reflection, observing his past self as if from an outsider’s perspective: “[M]‌y now lenient, now stringent eyes remain focused on a boy still in shorts, snooping into hidden affairs, yet failing to ask ‘Why?’ ” (p. 10).58 However, the point of such reflection is less to give the “right” answer and more to make the reflective work visible, so as to encourage similar reflection in the reader.

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 205 ]

0 62

Grass’s narratives are emphatically self-​reflexive: they are aware of their own narrative—​ selective, interpretative, ethically charged—​ nature. In many novels written in response to the trauma of the Second World War, the dissolution and fragmentation of narrative forms manifest the experience of disorientation itself.59 Grass, in contrast, embraces storytelling as something that belongs inextricably to the human mode of making sense of experience in time, but his narratives never pretend to simply reflect order found in reality; rather, they self-​reflexively present themselves as modes of (re)interpretation, construction, and selection, inevitably involving both remembering and forgetting.60 While Hundejahre draws attention to the material textuality of the narrative through the distinctly literary styles of its three parts, Beim Häuten der Zwiebel foregrounds the voice of the storyteller who—​no matter how sincerely he is striving to be truthful—​ cannot avoid fabulation. A central insight in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel is that in autobiographical narration, too, we have access to the past only via narrative imagination. One has to imagine who one was and what it was like to be an earlier version of oneself. That past self is now an other, a partly imaginative variation of oneself, living in a different space of possibilities than one’s present world. The autobiographical narrator of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel makes visible the process of imagining his past self. He struggles to recognize himself in “the boy I apparently was” (p. 4)61 and asks in what sense he is that child and therefore responsible for his past actions and inactions. He calls himself a “Young Nazi” and interrogates himself, but elsewhere feels sympathy for the 12-​year-​old tortured by these questions and accusations, and suggests that he may be demanding too much of that boy (p.  10; 2006, p. 17). The hesitation and oscillation between the accusatory and the reconciliatory mode invite the reader to take part in this process—​pondering, for example, what one can expect from a child of that age. Beim Häuten der Zwiebel tells the story of how a Nazi-​minded teenager grew into a young man who felt that it was only possible to become an artist by devoting all one’s creative powers to the attempt to deal with the legacy of “Auschwitz,” but who has to admit, in the end, that it is not enough to address this ethical challenge through art—​that even if all memory is necessarily incomplete, he can only make peace with his past by integrating into his life narrative what he had earlier edited out as too painful and shameful. In making sense of how we relate to our past selves, Marya Schechtman’s distinction between persons and selves is useful. While a “person is a moral

[ 206 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

agent who can be held responsible for her actions” (2007, p. 169), selves are constituted by the experiences and actions they identify with: Temporally remote actions and experiences that are appropriated into one’s self narrative must impact the present in a more fundamental sense than just constraining options or having caused one’s current situation and outlook. These events must condition the quality of present experience in the strongest sense, unifying consciousness over time through affective connections and identification. (p. 171)

A person constituted narratively needs only “to recognize one’s human history as one’s own and accept certain implications of that fact” (p. 172); a self, in contrast, is constituted narratively in the sense of making certain parts of one’s past one’s own through affective identification. In order to experience that we are the same self as our past selves, it is not enough to have a cognitive sense of being the same person. Instead, we must have a phenomenological connection to our past, implying an affective relation to it: we must feel it was our own past (p. 167). Phenomenological selves, however, are “fluid and amorphous,” and it is not clear where the self begins and ends (pp. 177–​178). Hence, the distinction between persons and selves is not a binary opposition, but includes degrees of attribution: [A person] will relate to different elements of her narrative in different ways. She will identify more strongly with some than with others, and feel more of an affective connection to them. Those narrative elements that a person more strongly appropriates . . . are more fully or completely her own than those from which she is more distanced. (p. 175)

In Grass’s case, he clearly feels that his former self—​the young Nazi—​is phenomenologically so different from his present self that it is necessary to ask in what sense he is still the same person. But at the same time, he is autobiographically the same person, if not the same self, and he recognizes the responsibility he has to bear for the deeds of that person, no matter how long ago they took place. Schechtman explains: “What one considers one’s own actions and experiences in this weaker sense will have to correspond for the most part to what is in one’s human history” (p. 170). What Grass did as a child and a youth is part of his life history and in that sense part of his narrative, but he had excluded aspects of it, up until his autobiographical effort to integrate the untold, shameful fragments of his past into the story of his youth.

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 207 ]

8 0 2

Schechtman acknowledges that although the distinction between person and self is analytically useful, there are important connections between the two. While in her earlier narrative self-​constitution theory she “strongly implied that it is desirable for a person to be as strongly identified as possible with the whole of her narrative, a tightly woven self-​narrative making for a stronger person than a weaker one,” in its revised version she suggests more cautiously that “there are advantages to making one’s self-​narrative coincide as far as possible with one’s person-​narrative,” and she no longer insists that “it is always desirable to have an extended self-​narrative. There may be circumstances in which it is better for a life to include radical affective breaks within it” (p.  176). She remains committed, however, “to the view that there is value in seeking to maintain affective connection to as much of our (person) lives as we can” (p. 176). Schechtman’s examples of the tension between a sense of self and a sense of person are examples of “alienation or indifference with respect to part of one’s human past” (p. 175), which breaks the sense of “a phenomenological experience of unity of self,” a unity based on “the subject’s strong identification with past and future phases of his life” (p. 175). But in Grass’s case it is a matter of something more than just alienation or indifference. It is a question of how to deal with a repressed aspect of his past, a painful element that he has been too ashamed to acknowledge as part of his history. The task that Grass takes up in his autobiography is to integrate the previously excluded parts of his life history into his self-​narrative in a process of taking responsibility for his past and his silence. It is clear that he cannot simply identify with what he experienced and did as a young Nazi, but he is not indifferent toward it either: it is marked by an affective investment—​colored by shame, guilt, compassion, and anxiety. It seems to me that Schechtman does not adequately acknowledge how important change, development, and transformation often are to self-​ narratives. Her “phenomenological self” appears relatively coherent and unified, rather than radically temporal and changing. It is not so simple that we either identify with our pasts or have an affective break with them. As selves we are constantly changing, and integral to these transformations and to our sense of self can be what we have learned from the past. In Grass’s case, the process of learning is pivotal. His narrative ethics of implication is an ethics of learning—​learning courage to fight silence, to doubt, and to acknowledge that one is often wrong. His development into an artist is based on the will to devote his life to struggling against the forces that made him into a young Nazi so that others may avoid repeating his mistakes and succeed in the art of doubting. There is a sense in which his past obligates him to deal with who he was and how it was possible that

[ 208 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

he became that person. Even if the sense of self largely concerns the past we identify with, our life narratives should also address the past we must take responsibility for—​including the past we no longer identify with. As for the debate around Grass’s belated confession, does his Waffen-​SS past and its concealment undermine the way in which he deals with issues of guilt, forgetting, and the obligation to remember in his literary oeuvre? Fictionalization was for Grass a strategy of dealing with both personal and collective guilt, and now his complicity is used, by many, as a strategy for dismissing the ethical demand his work places on us. Such a response ignores the narrative ethics of implication that forms the driving force of his work, an ethics which suggests that we are all implicated differently in histories of violence. It also eschews the ways in which Grass has dealt with his Nazi past (with the exception of the Waffen-​SS episode) in his writings from early on: as Stuart Taberner puts it, “at least since the early 1960s, Grass had transformed reflection on his own ‘biographical failure’ into a staple of his essays, speeches and literary texts” (2009, p. 2). It is ethically important that even insofar as Grass the novelist was able to address his complicity only “in the third person,” as he says, the third-​ person narrative perspective in his novels has never been one of a moral high ground that would present evil as something that does not concern “us” (the author and the readers). His novels undermine the perspective of an external, morally superior narrator in possession of unconditional truth: their narrators are themselves entangled in the events they narrate, and although they sometimes try to adopt an impartial third-​person narrative mode, this gesture is thematized, and guilt is revealed as the motor for their narration.62 The ethical challenge Grass presents to us is intertwined with the view pervading his work that “Auschwitz” is not only a German or a Jewish trauma. It is an “incurable rupture of civilization history,” which “will never stop being present in the present”: it is not only a crime of past generations, but something that implies a permanent moral debt, an obligation to remember, for all of humanity, even if it is particularly urgent for European self-​understanding to address this debt (1997g, pp. 63, 236, 239). Grass’s literary work has consistently argued that the Holocaust implicates all of us and can never stop implicating us. The reaction to the disclosure of his Waffen-​SS past is symptomatic of a sensationalist hunger for revelations that would allow us to allocate responsibility to the “evil other,” as if establishing Grass as “guilty” would mitigate the burden on the rest of us who are posited as “not guilty”—​as if Grass’s act of confession would relieve us of the duty to reflect on the conditions of possibility for genocide.

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 209 ]

0 21

Grass’s work not only provides us with a sense of the space of experience of those living in Nazi Germany; it also reflects on how the legacy of that historical world continues to shape our space of experience in the contemporary world and how we could learn from it. It encourages us to ask how we should live and how we do live with the weight of the past: “After is always before. What we call the present, this fleeting nownownow, is constantly overshadowed by a past now in such a way that the escape route known as the future can be marched to only in lead-​soled shoes” (2007, p. 144).63 For Grass, the “ethics of memory” has a broader meaning than, for example, for Margalit, who reserves this term only for “thick relationships” within “communities of memory” (2002, pp. 6–​9) or between individuals, based on feelings of intimacy and belonging. For Grass, it pertains to the obligation of the whole of humankind to remember “Auschwitz.” His work, however, suggests that it is not just a matter of remembering what happened; it also involves the obligation to try to imagine and understand how it was possible that what happened could actually happen, what processes of implication were involved and continue to be involved, and how we could, through such understanding, try to prevent history from repeating itself. It is hence a future-​oriented obligation to try to understand something that cannot be accepted. In this chapter, I have suggested that essential to this task is the obligation to narratively imagine the space of experience in which these actions were rooted and to reflect on how processes of storytelling—​that always involve both remembering and forgetting—​mediate the interpenetration of the past, present, and future in our lives.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO HISTORICAL IMAGINATION

I have argued here that opposing the factual, actual, and real to the fictional, possible, and unreal makes it difficult to conceptualize how a fictive world can—​precisely by creating a world of its own—​function as an interpretation of the world (past, present, or future). In Grass’s case, such an approach has trouble explaining why and how both his novels and his autobiography succeed in producing insights into the historical world of Nazi Germany. I have explored here several dimensions of the ways in which literary and autobiographical narratives contribute to our historical imagination and cultivate our sense of history as a sense of the possible. I will conclude by emphasizing the intimate interconnections between these aspects. First, I analyzed how narratives can develop our awareness of how a historical world and its narrative webs condition the experiences and actions of its inhabitants. Grass’s first-​person narrators, both in his novels and in

[ 210 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

his autobiography, are moral and historical witnesses who convey a sense of Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities in which conformism, bystanding, and resistance had specific consequences. The historical world as a space of possibilities also shapes the experience of time and history, the understanding of which I examined as the second dimension of how narratives contribute to our historical imagination. Due to their self-​reflexive distance, narratives can not only convey a certain experience of time and history, but also cultivate our sense of how history, instead of being governed by necessity or destiny, consists of everyday actions and inactions of individuals in concrete situations. They can thereby help us perceive each historical present as an open space in which the future is in the process of being made. Grass’s work makes tangible the tension between the ways in which Nazism was linked to the belief in the inevitability of the historical process and how history is made of concrete actions and inactions. It shows the power of literature to function as an antidote against an idealist conception of history, and how such a conception functioned as a condition of possibility for the Holocaust. Third, I  suggested that literary and autobiographical narratives can contribute to our awareness of how the past, present, and future always interpenetrate one another, and how our relation to the past is narratively mediated. Grass warns us against cultural amnesia that represses the trace of the past in the present. Our sense of how narrative interpretations of the past shape our space of possibilities in the present and our orientation to the future is intertwined with our experience of time and history, as well as with our understanding of how the past implicates us. Finally, I analyzed Grass’s autobiographical exploration of how we need narrative imagination to understand both our personal and cultural past. This is also a form of the interconnectedness of different dimensions of time and is linked to our sense of the possible: not only does our understanding of the past affect how we experience our possibilities in the present, but also our present sense of the possible affects how we interpret, remember, and narrate the past. For Grass, it became possible to narrate untold, shameful parts of his past only in twenty-​first-​century Germany. In this chapter, literary and autobiographical storytelling have provided complementary perspectives on the ways in which narratives can cultivate our sense of how the past implicates us: their analyses have suggested that the duty to remember entails a duty to try to understand and imagine how the horrors of the past were possible, and how we might learn from the past as we orient ourselves to the future. Acknowledging this results in an ethics of implication that draws attention to the ways in which violent history implicates not only those involved in direct acts of perpetration,

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 211 ]

21

but also all those indirectly involved, including those whose actions and inactions made the events possible and who witnessed them, even if from a temporal or spatial distance, such as ourselves. Awareness of the historical conditions of possibility for past atrocities can make us more attentive to the historicity of our own world and to how it perpetuates violent practices and mentalities—​for example, in an effort to analyze the continuities and discontinuities of the racist politics of the current US administration with the intersecting histories of nationalism, colonialism, and fascism. Discussions on the ethics of autobiography are often centered on the individual and could pay more attention to ethical issues arising from the ways in which lives are implicated in processes that go beyond individual agency. Autobiographical storytelling often functions as a mode of exploring how individual lives are entangled in violent historical processes and can alert us to how witnessing at a distance implicates us. It is also important to acknowledge how narratives of different genres can shed light on the fictional and imaginative aspects of life-​storying and on the historically conditioned but non-​determined nature of our narrative agency. While the postwar suspicion of all ideologies often took the form of rejecting narrative per se because it was taken to speak the language of destiny, Grass’s narratives exemplify how storytelling can function against discourses of destiny and idealism—​which sacrifice the individual to an “idea” or a historical movement—​by providing counter-​narratives that cultivate our narrative imagination and our powers of doubt.

NOTES 1. On ethos attribution, see Booth (1988); Korthals Altes (2014). As Korthals Altes puts it, an author’s “discourse through its whole form is likely to be understood as expressing its enunciator’s character” (p. 5). Grass’s fictional and nonfictional discourse made him into the moral conscience of the nation; the way he covered up a part of his political past incited, for some, the need to revise this ethos attribution, or even to see his previous ethos (underlying his work and his “identity as a person”) as a “fraud” (p. 10). 2. On the question of the genre of Grass’s book, see Taberner (2008, p. 145), and Schade (2007, p. 292). 3. For documentation of the debate, see Köbel (ed.) (2007). 4. Historians indicate speculation in various ways, such as through the conditional tense or speculative words such as “perhaps” or “maybe” (see Salmi, 2011, p. 177). 5. Equally problematic is Cohn’s assumption that there is an immediately given “database” available to the historian. As several philosophers of history—​from Gadamer (1997) to White (1981) and Gardner (2010)—​have argued, historians do not encounter past events as immediately given, but as perceived from a certain historically constituted horizon of interpretation.

[ 212 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

6. On the hermeneutic conception of truth in connection to art, see Heidegger (1977a); Gadamer (1997); Bowie (1997); Eaglestone (2004a); on truth as “fidelity” or “respectful beholding” in narrative hermeneutics, see Freeman (2016). 7. Such a wider notion of the historicity of experience has been developed in the hermeneutic and other continental traditions: Foucault, for example, insisted that everything has a history, including sexuality, emotions, and concepts. 8. See Phelan (2007, p. 219); Korthals Altes (2014, pp. 89, 110–​111). 9. “Ein Bollwerk gegen die rote Flut. Ein Volk im Schicksalskampf. Die Festung Europa, wie sie der Macht des angloamerikanischen Imperialismus standhielt” (2006, p. 82). 10. “. . . immerwährenden Heldenanbetung” (2006, p. 19). 11. “Zwar war während der Ausbildung zum Panzerschützen . . . nichts von jenen Kriegsverbrechen zu hören, die später ans Licht kamen, aber behauptete Unwissenheit konnte meine Einsicht, einem System eingefügt gewesen zu sein, das die Vernichtung von Millionen Menschen geplant, organisiert und vollzogen hatte, nicht verschleiern. Selbst wenn mir tätige Mitschuld auszureden war, blieb ein bis heute nicht abgetragener Rest, der allzu geläufig Mitverantwortung genannt wird. Damit zu leben ist für die restlichen Jahre gewiß” (2006, p. 127). 12. The earliest uses of the term “perpetrator fiction” that I am aware of are Eaglestone (2011), and Meretoja (2011) (independently of each other). For research on perpetrator fiction, see Suleiman (2009); McGlothlin (2010, 2016); Sanyal (2015); Pettitt (2016). 13. In 2009, Suleiman wrote that perpetrators’ testimonies have been so far “virtually nonexistent” (2009, p. 1), but, in fact, these testimonies had been discussed by literary critics for more than a decade (see e.g., Wood, 1999). 14. “Mehr und mehr Hakenkreuzfahnen” (1997b, p. 164). 15. “Brief und Führerfoto—​beides wurde sogleich unter Glas gelegt und in eigener Tischlerei gerahmt—​machten lange Wege durch die Nachbarschaft und bewirkten, daß zuerst mein Vater, dann August Pokriefke, danach etliche Nachbarn in die Partei eintraten” (1997b, p. 197). 16. “Harry Liebenau . . . eignete sich nur zum Zugucken und Nachplappern” (1997b, p. 392). 17. “Niemand sprach von dem Knochenberg. Aber alle sahen rochen schmeckten ihn” (1997b, p. 402). 18. Heim has translated “Mitläufer” sometime as “fellow traveller” and sometimes as “schemer.” “[M]‌itgemacht habe ich fraglos . . . ; ein Mitläufer, dessen Gedanken immer woanders streunten” (2006, pp. 27–​28). 19. “[D]‌as Belasten, Einstufen und Abstempeln kann ich selber besorgen. Ich war ja als Hitlerjunge ein Jungnazi. Gläubig bis zum Schluß. Nicht gerade fanatisch vorneweg, aber mit reflexhaft unverrücktem Blick auf die Fahne, von der es hieß, sie sei ‘mehr als der Tod,’ blieb ich in Reih und Glied, geübt im Gleichschritt. Kein Zweifel kränkte den Glauben” (2006, p. 43). 20. See Fuchs (2007, p. 269); Schade (2007, p. 287). 21. A similar approach to the Holocaust has been developed by a range of thinkers who include the theorists of the Frankfurt school and Foucault, who insists that fascism and Stalinism “used, to a large extent, the ideas and the devices of our political rationality” (2000, p. 328).

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 213 ]

4 21

22. “Eine ‘Stunde Null’ jedoch, die später als Zeitenwende . . . im Handel war, wurde mir nicht geläutet. . . . Vielleicht wirkte der Ort des Geschehens . . . zu einschläfernd, um den historischen Tag als ein Ende und Anfang bezifferndes Datum wahrzunehmen” (2006, pp. 185–​186). Heim’s translation does not seem to convey the ironic and critical distance the narrator maintains to what was announced as “a new beginning”: “a fresh start [Stunde Null] of the sort I felt later as a whole new era . . . I did not yet feel. . . . [I]‌t was too soporific a setting for marking the monumental day as the end of one era and the beginning of the next” (2007, p. 164, emphasis added). 23. I re-​translated the end of the quotation, which Heim translates somewhat too definitively as “that is how I saw myself.” “Was ist der Mensch? Nichts anderes als ein Partikel, Teilhaber, Mitläufer, ein Stück im Stückwerk der Geschichte. So etwa, als jeweils anders bunter Spielball, den andere querfeldein stießen, werde ich mich eingeschätzt haben” (2006, p. 245). 24. Cf. Saariluoma’s (1995, p. 66) discussion of Grass’s relation to Döblin. 25. As Arendt explains, “ideological thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses, and insists on a ‘truer’ reality concealed behind all perceptible things” (1976, p. 470). 26. “Ein Knabe, ein Jüngling, ein uniformierter Gymnasiast, der den Führer, Ulrich von Hutten, den General Rommel, den Historiker Heinrich von Treitschke, Augenblicke lang Napoleon, den schnaufenden Schauspieler Heinrich George, mal Savonarola, dann wieder Luther und seit einiger Zeit den Philosophen Martin Heidegger verehrte. Mit Hilfe dieser Vorbilder gelang es ihm, einen tatsächlichen, aus menschlichen Knochen erstellten Berg mit mittelalterlichen Allegorien zuzuschütten. Er erwähnte den Knochenberg, der in Wirklichkeit zwischen dem Troyl und dem Kaiserhafen gen Himmel schrie, in seinem Tagebuch als Opferstätte, errichtet, damit das Reine sich im Lichten ereigne, indem es das Reine umlichte und so das Licht stifte” (1997b, 409). Although Grass’s critique is not aimed at Heidegger’s philosophy as such, but at the way it was imitated and made use of during the Nazi era (and in his autobiography Grass recounts how he himself took part in such imitation), part of the critical edge of this parody is also directed at the way Heidegger was lured by Nazism. 27. “Ich verpaßte die Gelegenheit, in erster Lektion das Zweifeln zu lernen, eine Tätigkeit, die mich viel zu spät, dann aber gründlich befähigte, jedweden Altar abzuräumen und mich jenseits vom Glauben zu entscheiden” (2006, p. 94). 28. “Könnte Amsels Blick mit Häh! und Häh! von der Deichsohle auf sich ziehen, hat aber den Mund voller Knirschen und nicht voller Häh! und Häh!” (1997b, p. 12). 29. Cf. Ricoeur (1988, pp. 208–​211, 214–​215); Lyotard (1991, pp. 67–​68). 30. See, e.g., Koselleck (2004, p. 266); Ricoeur (1988, pp. 209–​210). 31. For an overview of versions of presentism as a philosophical position, see Bourne (2006); in the theoretical debates on history and historiography, “presentism” is often used in a different sense, to refer to ways of interpreting the past from the perspective of present-​day interests and concerns (see Tamm, 2013). On the acceleration of life in digital capitalism, see Wajcman (2015). 32. “Zurück bleiben Knochenberge, Massengräber, Karteikästen, Fahnenhalter, Parteibücher, Liebesbriefe, Eigenheime, Kirchenstühle und schwer transportierende Klaviere. Nicht bezahlt werden: fällige Steuern, Raten für Bausparkassen, Mietrückstände, Rechnungen, Schulden und Schuld. Neu beginnen wollen alle mit dem Leben, mit dem Sparen, mit dem Briefeschreiben,

[ 214 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

auf Kirschenstühlen, vor Klavieren, in Karteikästen und Eigenheimen. Vergessen wollen alle die Knochenberge und Massengräber, die Fahnenhalter und Parteibücher, die Schulden und die Schuld” (1997b, pp. 465–​466). 33. “Diese Verhaltensweise wird mehr und mehr zur Hauptlebensregel aller Beteiligten: Vergessen! Sprüche werden in Taschentücher, Handtücher, Kopfkissenbezüge und Hutfutter gestickt: Jeder Mensch muß vergessen können. Die Vergeßlichkeit ist etwas Natürliches” (1997b, pp. 605–​606). 34. On the episodic nature of adventure time, see Bakhtin (1981, pp. 87–​88, 125, 244, 391); Mäkikalli (2007, pp. 70, 80–​93). 35. “Matern kauft sich einen großen Radiergummi, setzt sich auf einen Küchenstuhl und beginnt alle abgezinkten und nicht abgezinkten Namen von Herz, Milz und Nieren wegzuradieren. Auch den Hund Pluto, ein altersschwaches und dennoch herumlaufendes Stück Vergangenheit auf vier Beinen, möchte er verkaufen, in ein Tierheim geben, ausradieren” (1997b, p. 606). 36. “. . . keinen sinnstiftenden Kern” (2006, p. 433). 37. See, e.g., Grass (1997g, p. 236); Adorno (1998) presented a similar critique of the idea of mastering or coming to terms with the past. 38. On the importance of this idea for Ricoeur, see his (1991b, p. 467). 39. “Aber das, was hier im einzelnen geschrieben steht, habe ich ähnlich bereits woanders, bei Remarque oder Céline gelesen” (2006, p. 142). 40. “Und jede weitere schwitzt zu lang gemiedene Wörter aus, auch schnörkelige Zeichen, als habe sich ein Geheimniskrämer von jung an, als die Zwiebel noch keimte, verschlüsseln wollen” (2006, p. 9). 41. See also Ricoeur (1988, pp. 215–​235; 1991a, p. 221; 1998; 2000). 42. Ricoeur (2000, pp. 507–​511) presents similar ideas on the relationship between history and cultural memory, for example by suggesting that the “culture of memory” provides history with important “imaginative variations.” 43. Adorno later expressed regret at this formulation: “Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems” (1973, p. 362). 44. “[S]‌eine Bäume müssen andere sein als die, die in den Gedichten rauschten, die vor Auschwitz enstanden” (Schnurre, 1987, p. 58). 45. “Hier finden sich die historischen Wendepunkte scheuchifiziert. Verunglimpft und dennoch dynamisch ereignet sich der Reihe nach und Jahreszahlen, Fensterstürze und Friedensschlüsse herbetend die Geschichte in Scheuchengestalt” (1997b, p. 732). 46. “Und Dieser und Jener—​wer mag sich noch Brauxel und Matern nennen? –​ich und er, wir schreiten mit abgelöschtem Geleucht zur Steigerkaue . . . Für mich und ihn wurden die Badewannen gefüllt. Drüben höre ich Eddi plätschern. Jetzt steige auch ich ins Bad. Das Wasser laugt uns ab. Eddi pfeift etwas Unbestimmtes. Ich versuche ähnliches zu pfeifen. Doch das ist schwer. Beide sind wir nackt. Jeder badet für sich” (1997b, p. 744). 47. “Fing an auf Ostern weil man nichts vergessen soll” (1997b, 61). 48. “Ein Schriftsteller, Kinder, ist jemand, der gegen die verstreichende Zeit schreibt” (1997c, pp. 147–​148). 49. “Bücher waren ihm von früh an die fehlenden Latte im Zaun, seinem Schlupflöcher in andere Welten” (2006, p. 37). “Oscar Wildes üppiges Angebot an Lastern, die sündhaft einander überboten, eignete sich zur Selbstbespiegelung. . . . Auf einem umgestülpten Feuerlöscheimer saβ ich

N a r r at i v e E t hi c s of I m p l i c at i o n  

[ 215 ]

621

und las mehr, als ich halten konnte. So ging ich in Büchern auf, die dazu einluden, jeweils in anderer Gegend ein anderer zu sein: Jürg Jenatsch, August Weltumsegler, der grüne Heinrich, David Copperfield oder die drei Musketiere zugleich” (p. 110). 50. “Fraglich bleibt, wann ich mir aus dem Bücherschrank eines Onkels Im Westen nichts Neues gezogen habe. Ist mir dieses Buch erst während meiner Wartezeit als Kriegsfreiwilliger zwischen die Finger geraten oder habe ich es zeitgleich mit Jüngers In Stahlgewittern gelesen? Ein Kriegstagebuch, das uns mein Deutschlehrer auf der Petrischule am Hansaplatz als vorbereitende Lektüre für künftige Fronterlebnisse verordnet hatte” (2006, pp. 110–​111.). 51. “Bis heute läβt die verzögerte Wirkung früher Leseerfahrung nicht von mir ab” (2006, p. 111). 52. “Immer wieder erinnern mich Autor und Buch an meinen jugendlichen Unverstand und zugleich an die ernüchternd begrenzte Wirkung der Literatur” (2006, p. 112). 53. “[D]‌ie Versuchung, sich in dritter Person zu verkappen” (2006, p. 7). 54. “Weil aber so viele geschwiegen haben, bleibt die Versuchung groß, ganz und gar vom eigenen Versagen abzusehen, ersatzweise die allgemeine Schuld einzuklagen oder nur uneigentlich in dritter Person von sich zu sprechen: Er war, sah, hat, sagte, er schwieg” (2006, p. 36). 55. “[S]‌ein doppeltes Ich” (2006, p. 15). 56. “[W]‌eil Erlebnisse dieser Art, sobald sie sich zu Geschichten mausern, nun mal auf Eigenleben bestehen und gern mit Einzelheiten prahlen” (2006, p. 194). 57. “Deutlicher, weil erzählbar, ist mir ein Ereignis” (2006, p. 131). Variations of this idea recur in the book (see, e.g., 2007, p. 199; 2006, p. 225). 58. “[M]‌ein mal nachsichtiger, dann wieder strenger Blick auf einen Jungen gerichtet bleibt, der kniefreie Hosen trägt, allem was sich verborgen hält, hinterdreinschnüffelt und dennoch versäumt hat, ‘warum’ zu sagen” (2006, p. 17). 59. I have analyzed elsewhere the problematization of narrativism in the Robbe-​ Grilletean nouveau roman as a response to the experience of the Second World War (see Meretoja, 2014b). 60. In Suleiman’s (2009, p. 9) terms, we can say that there is a degree of “derealization” in his narratives, as they make us aware of the literary choices the author is making and thereby add a metanarrative dimension to his novels. Hence, they are closely related to what is commonly called, after Hutcheon (1988), “historiographic metafiction.” 61. “Junge, der anscheinend ich war” (2006, p. 10). 62. Grass asserts that guilt functions as the motor of narration for all of the narrators of the Danzig trilogy (Arnold, 1971, pp. 10–​11). 63. “Danach ist immer davor. Was wir Gegenwart nennen, dieses flüchtige Jetztjetztjetzt, wird stets von einem vergangenen Jetzt beschattet, so daß auch der Fluchtweg nach vorn, Zukunft genannt, nur auf Bleisohlen zu erlaufen ist” (2006, p. 165).

[ 216 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

CHAPTER 6

Narrative Dynamics, Perspective-​Taking, and Engagement Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes

O

ne of the persistent taboos in post-​Holocaust narrative imagination has been, for a long time, engagement with the perpetrator’s perspective. For Ricoeur, it was self-​evident that while historians count the cadavers, the task of fiction is to tell the victims’ stories: “Fiction gives eyes to the horrified narrator. . . . Either one counts the cadavers or one tells the story of the victims” (1988, p. 188). Telling the perpetrators’ stories was not an option. For Lanzmann, all attempts to understand perpetrators represent “the obscenity of the very project of understanding” (1995, p. 205). While early French postwar thinkers saw Nazism in connection to other histories of racialized violence, and the commemoration of the Second World War focused on celebrating those who fought against the Nazis, the focus then shifted, as Debarati Sanyal puts it, “from heroic to tragic registers”: “from the droit au souvenir (right to remembrance) demanded by the figure of the Resistance fighter to a devoir de mémoire (duty of remembrance),” characterized by “an orientation toward the innocent victim’s memory along with the Shoah’s singularity” (2015, pp.  183–​184). Even though philosophers and historians like Hannah Arendt (1994, orig. 1963)  and Christopher Browning (1992) have persistently argued for the need to understand how ordinary men became Nazi perpetrators, it is only in the recent years that a turn to the perpetrator has come to mark literary Holocaust studies, at the same time as fiction has increasingly come to feature perpetrators as

8 21

protagonists, first-​person narrators, and focalizers (whose experiences a third-​person narrator narrates), rather than representing them through an external, distanced perspective.1 Even so, as Jenni Adams writes, “the sense of literary and cultural unease which surrounds attempts to conceptualise or depict the Holocaust perpetrator continues” (2013, p. 1). As novelists have increasingly taken up the task of engaging with the minds of Holocaust perpetrators, this has created heated discussions on narrative empathy and ethics, revolving around this question:  Do narratives that are narrated from the perpetrator’s perspective, particularly when they are in the first person, give rise to ethically problematic empathy? In this chapter, I address this question in connection to broader issues of narrative dynamics and of the ethical relevance of the temporal process of readerly engagement. These issues will be discussed in relation to a novel that has created perhaps the most heated controversy around the contribution of perpetrator fiction to the understanding of the Holocaust: Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones). The novel, which consists exclusively of the first-​person narration of former SS officer Maximilien Aue, has been criticized for a lack of realism and an ethically questionable attempt to lure the reader into identifying with a Nazi. At the same time, it has been repeatedly praised as the most important novel of the twenty-​first century thus far. Among the admirers of the novel, the novelist Jorge Semprún asserts that in 50 years’ time, our memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust will be defined less by the works of historians than by Littell’s Les Bienveillantes:  “Historians will continue to write on the Second World War. But only novelists can renew memory” (2008, p. 35). Like the historian Antony Beevor (2009) and many others, Semprún believes that the novel succeeds in producing insights into history that are possible only through fiction. The different ways in which the novel has been read provide fertile ground for discussing the assumptions underlying divergent understandings of the relationship between history and fiction. The novel has mostly been read either “mimetically,” as a representation of the Second World War that lends itself to a comparison with what we know about it from historical research, or “anti-​mimetically,” stressing its nature as an imaginative discourse and an aesthetic artifact. Here, I shall explore how narrative hermeneutics problematizes the mimetic–​anti-​mimetic dichotomy—​and allows us to advance beyond it—​in connection to undermining the standard way of drawing a dichotomy between literature as the realm of the possible and history as the realm of the actual. As I  have suggested, the current discussion on the relationship between fiction and history does not adequately take into account how the actual and the possible constantly

[ 218 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

interpenetrate each other in both fiction and nonfiction, and how actual worlds can be productively understood as spaces of possibilities. I aim to show how the conceptual framework developed in this book enables us to analyze how ethically challenging narratives, such as Les Bienveillantes, can deepen our understanding of historical worlds (in this case, that of Nazi Germany) in terms of the possible and, by the same token, make an ethically valuable contribution to our narrative imagination. Although I  will touch upon all six aspects of the ethical potential of story­telling, enumerated in Chapter  3, I  will mainly focus on the possibilities of narrative fiction in contributing to our comprehension of the limits of narrative understanding of the horrors of history and on the ethical issues involved in perspective-​taking, particularly in engaging with the perpetrator’s perspective. After discussing how Les Bienveillantes unearths the historical world of Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities, I will analyze the narrative dynamic of the novel and how it functions simultaneously immersively, inviting emotional engagement, and self-​reflexively, producing critical distance. I suggest that this interplay gives rise to a readerly dynamic that is crucial for the potential of fiction to contribute to our understanding of history in specifically literary ways, which involve reflection on the conditions and limits of narrating, representing, and understanding the traumatic past.

THE DIMENSION OF THE POSSIBLE

The question of the possible pervades Les Bienveillantes on several levels. The novel not only tells us what happened, it explores the conditions of possibility of those events. It imagines what the agents of the past experienced to be possible in the historical world of Nazi-​occupied Europe, and what might have been possible for them from a retrospective perspective, marked by hindsight and temporal distance. The novel also asks what is possible for us to know about that world, and what possibilities this might open for us in the current world. Les Bienveillantes shows in a multidimensional way how the actual and the possible constantly interpenetrate each other. In the fictive world of the novel, this applies to both past and present reality. On the level of the narrated events, Aue, the protagonist-​narrator, is present and sees what happens, but there is no certainty of what is happening beneath the surface, inside people’s heads, or what invisible forces make people act in a certain way. Aue looks at the Ukrainian soldiers forced by the Nazis to massacre Jews, and he tries to imagine who they are, where they have come

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 219 ]

0 2

from, and what they would think, in the future, of their actions at this moment: I thought about these Ukrainians:  How had they got to this point? Most of them had fought against the Poles, and then against the Soviets, they must have dreamed of a better future, for themselves and for their children, and now they found themselves in a forest, wearing a strange uniform and killing people who had done nothing to them, without any reason they could understand. What could they be thinking about all this? Still, when they were given the order, they shot, they pushed the bodies into the ditch and brought other ones, they didn’t protest. What would they think of all this later on? (Littell, 2010, pp. 85–​86)2

The way in which the narrator reflects on these issues from the perspective of an eyewitness highlights how the answer to the question of what kind of intersubjective reality made the Holocaust possible is by no means something that can be simply seen, even at the moment the events unfold. The question was as acute then as it is now. Responding to this question requires narrative imagination: one needs to imagine the sense of the possible that structures the mode of experience of those involved. A sense of different possibilities, of alternative courses of life, and of the interconnections between the past, present, and future regulates how things are experienced in the first place: I thought about my life, about what relationship there could be between this life that I  had lived—​an entirely ordinary life, the life of anyone, but also in some respects an extraordinary, an unusual life, although the unusual is also very ordinary—​and what was happening here. There must have been a relationship. . . . (p. 95)3

The protagonist and the other characters orient themselves to the present and future on the basis of their horizon of expectation, shaped by their past experiences. Their narrative unconscious affects whether they consider certain courses of events possible, likely, unlikely, or impossible. The unfolding of the political events transforms their horizon of expectation and puts them under pressure to modify their behavior in order to survive. For example, the protagonist is acutely aware of the impossibility of expressing his homosexuality under the Nazi regime. In the Nazi narrative imaginary, homosexuality is forbidden—​taboo—​and those who are guilty of it are considered weak, effeminate, and degenerate. Through its detailed depiction of the rise of National Socialism, Les Bienveillantes gives us a sense of how the space of possibilities in which

[ 220 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

the characters live slowly changes. When the officers first hear about the plan to kill all the Jews, women and children included, their first reaction is sheer disbelief—​they simply cannot believe that it is possible: “But look, that’s impossible,” Callsen said. He seemed to be begging. . . . Oh Lord, I was saying to myself, now that too must be done, it has been spoken, and we’ll have to go through that too. I felt invaded by a boundless horror but I remained calm, nothing showed through, my breathing remained even. Callsen continued his objections: “But Standartenführer, most of us are married, we have children. They can’t ask us to do that.” (p. 100)4

After the initial shock, they eventually grow accustomed to the atrocities, their horizon of expectation is transformed, and they learn to dissociate themselves from what they consider to be their unfortunate but necessary job. The novel depicts the gradual process through which a sensitive young man who is shocked by such orders develops into a cog in the machinery of industrial mass murder, into someone who can no longer walk in the forest without thinking of mass graves: “A sudden burst of bitterness invaded me: so this is what they’ve turned me into, I said to myself, a man who can’t see a forest without thinking about a mass grave” (p. 702).5 Like Grass’s work, Les Bienveillantes explores, in a literary form, the Arendtian idea of the banality of evil, but this time from the perspective of a Nazi perpetrator. It shows how officers work in chains of command in which no one feels responsible for the actions committed by the chain, and how they have trouble understanding the overall rationale of the machineries in which they function as small, obedient cogs. By giving the reader a sense of what the banality of evil meant in terms of everyday decision-​ making, and by asking the reader to live through the temporal process in which that evil transforms the protagonist, the novel engages the reader in a different way than abstract academic studies. The way in which the novel deals with this problematic in a narrative form, from the perspective of lived time, is ethically relevant: the reader goes through, imagines, and experiences, in an embodied, affectively charged way, the temporal process that turns ordinary men into brutal, cold-​blooded killing machines. The sheer length of the book and the astonishingly detailed depiction of “the production of the day-​to-​day of the genocide” (Eaglestone, 2011, p. 24) is ethically crucial. The readers’ emotional investment intensifies as the story unfolds and the effects of war on human integrity become apparent. As the narrator asserts in the beginning, in wartime man loses “his right to life,” but he also “loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 221 ]

2

to kill. . . . In most cases the man standing above the mass grave no more asked to be there than the one lying, dead or dying, at the bottom of the pit” (Littell, 2010, p. 17).6 The reader’s emotional engagement is also likely to involve sharing Aue’s feeling of growing numbness—​as the initial shock of terror turns into gradual habituation—​and his experience of dizziness and disorientation after extended immersion in the world of atrocity. National Socialism is depicted in the novel as a power that penetrates people’s everyday lives in such a way that they lack a sense of alternatives. For example, a certain type of bureaucratic language guides people to act as if the orders were inevitable: This tendency spread to all our bureaucratic language, our bürokratisches Amtsdeutsch, as my colleague Eichmann would say; in correspondence, in speeches too, passive constructions dominated: “it has been decided that . . . ,” “the Jews have been conveyed to the special treatment,” “this difficult task has been carried out,” and so things were done all by themselves, no one ever did anything, no one acted, they were actions without actors, which is always reassuring, and in a way they weren’t even actions, . . . there were only facts, brute realities, either already present or waiting for their inevitable accomplishment, like the Einsatz, or the Einbruch (the breakthrough). . . . (p. 631)7

The narrator reflects critically on the tendency of the Nazis to reify the social reality they have constructed, but at the same time he himself is deeply complicit with the Nazi regime. Aue’s first-​person narration functions against reification both through such critical commentary and by drawing attention to how history consists of concrete actions and inactions, conditioned by a historical world as a space of possibilities. The narration is shot through with sideshadowing, as Aue repeatedly asks himself whether he could have done things differently, questioning his options and alternative possibilities. He acknowledges the difficulty of obtaining any definite certainty on these issues: Could there have been another realm of activity that might have agreed with me better, where I would have felt more at home? There might have been, but it’s hard to say, for it didn’t happen, and in the end, the only thing that counts is what was, and not what could have been. From the very beginning, things weren’t as I would have liked them: I had resigned myself to that a long time ago (yet at the same time, it seems to me, I never accepted things as they are, so wrong and so bad . . .). It is also true that I have changed. When I was young, I felt transparent with lucidity, I had precise ideas about the world, about what

[ 222 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

it should be and what it actually was, . . . but I . . . did not yet know the force of time, of time and fatigue. And even more than my indecision, my ideological confusion, my inability to take a clear position on the questions I was dealing with, and to hold to it, it was this that was wearing me down, taking the ground away from under my feet. (pp. 761–​762)8

The narration here foregrounds the process of retrospective sense-​making. A feeling of powerlessness, fatigue, and the “force of time” are factors that Aue sees in hindsight as reasons for not embarking on different courses of action. He refrains from emplotting the past into a narrative that would provide exhaustive causal explanations. This is part and parcel of accepting responsibility for what he did. Aue does not deny the fact that his actions were not inevitable: he made choices that were not predetermined; things could have gone differently. It is ethically important that his actions are presented as conditioned by the historical circumstances, but not determined by them. It is integral to the dynamic of the novel that throughout its textual progression the narrative in-​between within the depicted world is in the process of being constructed and transformed. The emergent narrative imagination, shaped by the Nazi ideology, clearly affects Aue’s worldview and beliefs, but he is also able to maintain, to a certain extent, critical distance from it. In particular, the racist Aryan mythology that plays an important role in legitimating the Holocaust remains alien to Aue, and he develops, with his colleagues, theories to explain the German obsession with the Jews. They suggest that it is first and foremost the repressed desire to be like the Jews that underlies the anti-​Semitic fantasy of destroying them. This view has a close affinity with René Girard’s (1976) theory of mimetic desire, according to which the driving force underlying many forms of violence is an identificatory mechanism based on the desire to be like the rival, to have what he or she has, and to annihilate the rival in order to take his or her place. Colin Davis sums up the Girardian triangular desire as follows: So there are three figures involved in the Girardian drama of desire: the desiring subject, the desired object, and the prestigious mediator who makes the object desirable to the subject by desiring or possessing it first. . . . Triangular or mimetic desire can easily turn to violence. By desiring what the other desires, I desire also to be like, even to be, that person. But I also establish the other as my rival. The deadlock of desire is that the mediator both makes the object of desire desirable and stands in the way of my obtaining it. (2003, pp. 243–​244)

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 223 ]

4 2

Aue suggests that a similar ambivalent triangular desire underlies the Holocaust. To demonstrate this, he cites several Nazi ideologists who argue that the Jews are the mirror image and the only true rivals of the Germans: The Jews were the first genuine National Socialists, for almost three thousand five hundred years they’ve been so. . . . All our great ideas come from the Jews, and we must have the lucidity to recognize it: the Land as promise and as accomplishment, the notion of the Chosen People, the concept of the purity of blood. . . . They are our only real competitors, in fact. Our only serious rivals. (Littell, 2010, pp. 454–​455)9

On the other hand, Aue’s way of explaining the logic of destroying the other also echoes Levinas’s thinking on the face of the other and on how our irrevocable responsibility for the other cannot be annihilated, even through murder. Levinas maintains that the face of the other presents an ethical appeal that calls to responsibility, and we are human only insofar as we assume responsibility for the other.10 Aue suggests that the sadism of the soldiers and officers is ultimately linked to the unbearable task of having to kill fellow human beings, whose humanness can not be denied, and to the realization that in fact the murderer is less human than the murder victim: I came to the conclusion that the SS guard doesn’t become violent or sadistic because he thinks the inmate is not a human being; on the contrary, his rage increases and turns into sadism when he sees that the inmate, far from being a subhuman as he was taught, is actually at bottom a man, like him, after all, and it’s this resistance, you see, that the guard finds unbearable, this silent persistence of the other, and so the guard beats him to try to make their shared humanity disappear. Of course, that doesn’t work: the more the guard strikes, the more he’s forced to see that the inmate refuses to recognize himself as a non-​ human. In the end, no other solution remains for him than to kill him, which is an acknowledgment of complete failure. (2010, p. 624)11

Lirian Razinsky suggests that Aue’s response to a female partisan whose “look stuck into [him], split open [his] stomach” so that he wanted with all his heart to tell her that “everything would be fine, but instead . . . compulsively shot a bullet into her head” (2010, p. 130)12 sounds “like a parodic response to Levinas’s ethics of encounter with the face of the other” (2008, p. 79).13 Levinas, however, never claimed that the face of the other would prevent one from killing; rather, he emphasized that killing is no real solution—​it does not abolish the ethical claim made by the face—​and

[ 224 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

precisely this is Aue’s point.14 Being forced to kill the woman fills him with “immense, boundless rage” (2010, p. 130),15 and he keeps shooting compulsively until he begins to cry. He suggests that such an affective response, marking most men, testifies to the indestructability of the other:  “Their reactions, their violence, their alcoholism, the nervous depressions, the suicides, my own sadness, all that demonstrated that the other exists, exists as an other, as a human, and that no will, no ideology, no amount of stupidity or alcohol can break this bond, tenuous but indestructible” (p. 147).16 Aue also acknowledges that there were very human, mundane reasons for individuals to act in ways that benefited the Nazi regime, reasons linked to personal ambition, vanity, laziness, and indifference: even if, objectively, there was no doubt about the final aim, it wasn’t with this aim in mind that most of the participants were working, it wasn’t that which motivated them and drove them to work so energetically and single-​mindedly, it was a whole gamut of motivations, and even Eichmann . . . at bottom it was the same to him whether or not the Jews were killed, the only thing that counted, for him, was to show what he could do, to prove his worth, . . . the only thing he did give a fuck about was that no one fucked with him, . . . and for the others it’s the same, everyone had his reasons. . . (pp. 781–​782)17

In the novel, such personal, mundane motivations are presented as the driving force behind people’s actions, but they are also linked to rationalization mechanisms fueled by the willingness to believe in the inevitability of the events. Like Grass’s work, Littell’s novel suggests that the discourse of inevitability is intimately connected to the logic of modern society, governed by instrumental rationality; the concentration camp, “with all the rigidity of its organization, its absurd violence, its meticulous hierarchy,” is presented as “a reductio ad absurdum of everyday life” (p. 622).18 It is important that the novel does not merely illustrate Arendtian theories of the Holocaust, but contributes in its own right, through its own literary means, to the understanding of the banality of evil. As a fictional narrative, it invites and requires different interpretative strategies and modes of engagement than historical studies, for example. Fiction communicates its interpretation of history not just through the referential language of statements about what happened and why; it requires from the reader a complex interpretation of the work as a whole, including its structure and narrative organization. Its overall narrative dynamic involves both textual and readerly dynamics. Brian Richardson argues that narrative dynamics refers to an approach that “views narrative as a progressively unfolding, interconnected system

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 225 ]

6 2

of elements rather than as a succession of discrete elements” (2005, p. 353), but I would like to stress that, in addition to the “system,” the analysis of narrative dynamics should acknowledge the encounter between the text’s world and the reader’s world. I have a similar reservation about Phelan’s (2017, p. 62) otherwise helpful definition of textual dynamics as “the internal mechanisms governing the movement of events and their telling” and of readerly dynamics as “the trajectory of the audience’s multi-​layered responses to those textual dynamics.”19 Namely, I want to emphasize that readerly dynamics is not limited to the reader’s responses to text-​internal mechanisms, as Phelan implies; engagement always takes place within worldly contexts and involves everything that the reader brings into play in the dialogic encounter with the narrative (his or her values, commitments, understanding of the world, and so on). Let us now take a closer look at the readerly dynamics of Les Bienveillantes. What kind of engagement does it invite from the reader?

MULTILAYERED READERLY CONTRACT

Les Bienveillantes has been read mainly as a historical novel. This is hardly surprising, given that the novel deals with the Second World War and the Holocaust from the perspective of a character who takes part in its planning and execution. Littell has studied the Holocaust extensively, and historians agree that the novel’s historical details are generally accurate. Right from the opening sentence, Aue endeavors to convince readers that they are embarking on an eyewitness testimony of what happened—​and “how it happened” (2010, p. 3; “comment ça s’est passé,” 2006, p. 11)—​in Nazi-​ occupied Europe between 1941 and 1945. Razinsky observes that Aue’s function is first and foremost “that of an eye”:  “He is more often a conduit of information than active participant. . . . Aue’s narrative expresses a strong, almost obsessive, need to tell, and to provide a faithful account of historical events themselves” (2008, pp. 71–​72). Yet Aue recognizes that “watching involves my responsibility as much as doing” (2010, p. 482).20 Moreover, he positions himself as an expert who not only worked during the war as an intelligence officer, compiling reports about the events and their underlying forces, but also as someone who holds a doctorate in law and has studied “quite a few books” on the Holocaust (2010, p. 6; 2006, p. 13). In addition to depicting historical events, the book abounds in reflections on the philosophy of history and sociology. Aue is not merely an eyewitness, but also someone who perpetually reflects on the meaning of what he sees and remembers, in relation to what he has read.

[ 226 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Littell himself has said that he did not search, in the novel, for “verisimilitude” (vraisemblance) but for “truth” (verité): the novel had to be written precisely because perpetrator testimonies and historical and sociological studies of perpetrators did not get us far enough under their skin (Littell & Blumenfeld, 2006). Many commentators, however, have focused on whether the novel is historically or psychologically convincing.21 For example, the historian Jeremy D. Popkin writes that the novel impressed him “as historically accurate” in certain respects, but it struck him as “unrealistic” in others: “I found it hard to believe that anyone could survive a bullet through the head, like the one Aue receives at Stalingrad, and be back on the job in a matter of weeks, with his memory sufficiently unaffected to allow him to reconstruct, years later, every detail of his wartime experiences” (2012, p. 189). What is most disturbing for Popkin and many other critics, however, is the way in which the novel combines historical and imaginative aspects: One cannot have it both ways: if The Kindly Ones is meant to tell us something about what actually happened in Nazi-​occupied Europe between 1941 and 1945, then Littell can legitimately be taken to task for ignoring the historical knowledge we now have about the perpetrators; if it is to be understood as a non-​ referential exercise of the imagination, then it is risky to regard it as a source of factual insight into their psychology. (p. 198)

What he means by historical research on perpetrator psychology are studies that “demonstrate that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were, in most respects, rather ordinary individuals, whose extraordinary behavior can be explained in terms of mundane psychological processes of rationalization, conformity to group norms, and obedience to authority” (p. 197). Popkin acknowledges that such research informs Littell’s novel, but for him, Littell ultimately undermines this insight when he portrays the perpetrator as a sexually deviant, monstrous character who kills his mother and has sex with his sister.22 It is, of course, the mythical frame of the novel, the Orestes myth to which the title already refers, that motivates the matricidal story of the protagonist.23 Given the ways in which the novel underlines its own status as imaginative discourse—​particularly through its abundant intertextuality and mythical framing—​it clearly invites readings that diverge from straightforwardly realist ones.24 These elements introduce a self-​reflexive level to the novel, one that works against its realist, immersive level. In my view, the mimetic/​historical versus anti-​mimetic/​imaginative dichotomy is unhelpful in understanding this complex “both–​and” quality that lies at the heart of the novel’s narrative dynamic.

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 227 ]

8 2

The way in which the novel activates simultaneously different interpretative frames underlines the nature of the novel as an artistic, synthetic composition that is much more than merely the memoir of a fictional Nazi officer. Let us take a closer look at the novel’s opening paragraph: Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened. I am not your brother, you’ll retort, and I don’t want to know. And it certainly is true that this is a bleak story, but an edifying one too, a real morality play, I assure you. You might find it a bit long—​a lot of things happened, after all—​but perhaps you’re not in too much of a hurry; with a little luck you’ll have some time to spare. And also, this concerns you: you’ll see that this concerns you. (2010, p. 3)25

What kind of readerly contract does this opening propose to the reader? By directly addressing the reader, the novel thematizes the question of the readerly dynamics from the beginning. It raises the question of why one should spend so much time reading a narrative of hundreds of pages that is dominated by the voice and perspective of a perpetrator, a Nazi officer, who can be considered “dispositionally unreliable” (Shen, 2013). The narrator appeals to us, the readers, asking us to “admit him into the circle of human communication” and to listen to his story (McGlothlin, 2016, p. 252). The appeal largely takes place through the insistence that the narrated events involve the readers, too, perhaps more directly than they would like to admit. At the same time, however, the narrator presents his story rhetorically as a narrative that does not want to be read: “And if you’re not convinced of this, don’t bother to read any further. You’ll understand nothing and you’ll get angry, with little profit for you or for me” (2010, pp. 21–​22).26 By simultaneously inviting readers to immerse themselves in the fictive world and pushing them away from it, the opening asks for active reading: readers have to choose whether to read or not, and the narrator later reminds them of their power to cease or continue reading: “you have an irrevocable power, that of closing this book and throwing it in the rubbish, a final recourse against which I am powerless, so I don’t see why I should wear kid gloves” (p. 783).27 The opening sentence also breaks the mimetic illusion by being emphatically literary and dense with intertextual allusions. It alludes to François Villon’s line “Frères humains qui après nous vivez” (Villon, 2005, p. 159) and to Charles Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal (1857): “Hypocrite lecteur—​ mon semblable—​mon frère!”28 Villon addresses the reader to ask for his or her sympathy; Baudelaire asks the reader to admit his or her complicity. In Littell’s novel, the narrator seems to address readers primarily to stress the way the narrative implicates them, but as an undercurrent, the sentence

[ 228 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

also echoes the thought of a shared humanity. Intertextual allusions function in the novel as a counterforce to its dark confessionality and build a self-​ironic, self-​reflexive, almost playful dimension to the memoir.29 It is therefore evident that the opening passage does not merely sketch a historical frame for the novel’s events. It proposes a readerly contract that asks the reader to do several things at once. First, on a superficial level, it persuades readers to read in the mode of the “as if,” to imagine that they are reading the confessional memoir of an SS officer. Yet, second, the self-​ reflexive, metafictive level undermines simple realist or naïvely identificatory readings. It is a thoroughly literary work, dense with literary allusions, which repeatedly remind the readers that they are reading imaginative discourse, a narrative that is conceived not by a real SS officer, but by an author who does not share the views of his narrator. The novel’s intertextual, mythical frame transcends the narrator’s consciousness, and through it the (implied) author draws the reader’s attention to the nature of the text as a literary composition.30 Third, the opening raises the issue of unreliability. As the narrator is a self-​confessed former SS officer, a perpetrator of the worst kind, why should we trust him? It is generally true that while third-​person narration with internal focalization (where an external narrator provides information about the protagonist’s inner, mental life) is conventionally perceived as authoritative, first-​person character-​narrators are typically perceived as less reliable (Lissa et  al., 2016, p.  44). An empirical study by Caspar van Lissa, Marco Caracciolo, Thom van Duuren, and Bram Leuveren suggests that “the narrative situation has an effect on readers’ trust for the protagonist of a literary text” and that readers are “less inclined to trust a deviant character when he or she is also the narrator of the story—​possibly, because of the awareness that he or she might be lying or deliberately manipulating them” (2016, p. 58). In such a situation, readers are encouraged to construct alternative versions of the story: Character narration confronts the readers with a narrator who is distinct from the flesh-​and-​blood author, and whose perspective on the storyworld may be limited, biased, or otherwise unreliable. Thus, unreliability invites readers to construct the story as told by the narrator with hypothetical alternative versions of the events (if the narrator misunderstands what happened), or with alternative value systems (if the narrator expresses judgments that clash with what we understand to be the author’s own ethical framework). (p. 45)

Les Bienveillantes can be seen to foreground the readers’ task of constructing such alternative versions of the story and to reflect on the discordance

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 229 ]

0 32

between the narrator’s and the implied author’s values. In first-​person perpetrator fiction more generally, this task is more salient and urgent than in most cases of first-​person narration. Such perpetrator fiction typically relies on knowledge that readers bring to the text, allowing them to “compare the perpetrator’s description and interpretation of the events with accounts of victims and historians and to identify moments in which the perpetrator fudges the facts, mischaracterizes the events, or downplays particular experiences in order to defer responsibility from them” (McGlothlin, 2016, pp. 261–​262). Aue, however, is not a typical perpetrator in this respect, in that he comes across as largely honest: as Lothe puts it, “there is a sense in which his brutal honesty and lack of regret make him more, not less, reliable as a reporter,” even if this does not “grant him narrative authority, and certainly not moral authority” (2013, pp.  108–​109). His narration, however, blends the registers of sincerity and irony, and everything he says is “troubled by its site of enunciation” (Sanyal, 2015, p. 210). The most influential starting point for discussion on unreliability has been Booth’s definition, according to which a narrator is “reliable when he speaks for or acts in accord with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author’s norms), unreliable when he does not” (1961, pp. 158–​159). To this day, discussions on unreliability tend to pay inadequate attention to the way in which all narrators narrate from a particular, subjective, and limited perspective (even when they pretend to be objective, omniscient, etc.). A narrator (such as Aue), whose views are in tension with the implied author’s views, can still be a reliable witness of his own experiences, and it is from such a perspective that he appeals to the readers to win their trust—​he asks them to consider the possibility that he will recount his experiences in an honest, sincere way, and that it may be worth their time to engage with those experiences because they concern the reader, too, even if the ironic aspects of the narration simultaneously encourage the reader to stay cautious.31 Fourth, the opening thematizes readers’ resistance to engage with the perpetrator and presents them with a certain personal challenge as a condition for reading further, namely a willingness to think that they, too, might have done similar things had the circumstances been different: Once again, let us be clear: I am not trying to say I am not guilty of this or that. I am guilty, you’re not, fine. But you should be able to admit to yourselves that you might also have done what I did. . . . I think I am allowed to conclude, as a fact established by modern history, that everyone, or nearly everyone, in a given set of circumstances, does what he is told to do; and, pardon me, but there’s not much chance that you’re the exception, any more than I was. (2010, p. 20)32

[ 230 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The narrator goes on to argue that even if there are some psychopaths in all wars, the state machinery is ultimately made of ordinary men, and that is where the real danger lies: “The real danger for mankind is me, is you. And if you’re not convinced of this, don’t bother to read any further” (pp. 21–​22).33 The narrator’s central argument and justification for the claim that the narrative concerns the reader is the view that the success of National Socialism arose from the willingness of ordinary people to obey orders, take care of the duties assigned to them, and refrain from critically reflecting on the objectives that the machinery ultimately served. This phenomenon is integral to modern Western society, and hence concerns us all. From this perspective, Aue provocatively suggests that it is by no means evident that what he is about to tell is actually over. He goes through other, temporally or otherwise less distant genocides and colonial violence (including the elimination of the American indigenous populations, the crimes of British Empire [p. 590], and the massacre of the Vietnamese and Algerians of whom “you never speak . . . in your books or TV programs,” p.  16) and asks, “Now of course the war is over. And we’ve learned our lesson, it won’t happen again. But are you quite sure we’ve learned our lesson? Are you certain it won’t happen again? Are you even certain the war is over?” (p. 17).34 The novel asks us to reflect on how the narrated concerns us in the current world—​how the legacy of the Holocaust implicates us today. It challenges our tendency to consider others (the Nazis, the terrorists) as evil so as to ignore the potential for evil within ourselves—​a tendency that importantly structures our culturally shaped narrative unconscious. As Sanyal (2015) puts it, the way in which the novel reverberates “within the contemporary global political horizon, in relation to Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and other sites of conflict and war,” places it “in the cultural legacy of ironic complicity” in which “its memorial knots entwine forms of terror both in the European past and within our contemporary world” (p. 189) and create “links to past and ongoing histories of imperialism, occupation, and genocide” (p.  203).35 The uncomfortable position it offers for the reader is one of an implicated subject. Littell speaks of the “moral implication” that readers can experience as they confront their own “potential for perpetration” (Littell & Nora, 2007, pp.  43–​44). In what follows, I analyze how the novel engenders an experience of moral implication through a narrative dynamic that simultaneously encourages immersion and critical distance. This interplay lies at the heart of the way the novel deals with the ethics of engaging with the legacy of the Holocaust.

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 231 ]

2 3

EMPATHY, IDENTIFICATION, AND PERSPECTIVE-​TAKING

Ricoeur argues that fiction plays a particularly important role in dealing with the Holocaust due to its “capacity for provoking an illusion of presence, but one controlled by critical distance” (1988, p. 188). The interplay between immersion and critical distance is essential to much of Holocaust fiction, and it is particularly salient in Les Bienveillantes. It is precisely through this interplay that the text responds to the challenge described by scholars as “imaginative resistance.” This concept refers to the unwillingness or inability of readers to imagine things that a fictive text invites them to imagine (Gendler, 2013). While we find it relatively easy to imagine impossible or counterfactual states of affairs in a fictive world, we find it much harder to imaginatively engage with the perspective of a character whom we find immoral (p. 31). Les Bienveillantes is acutely aware of the reader’s resistance and addresses it by bringing it into play as an essential part of the novel’s narrative dynamic. The novel responds to the reader’s imaginative resistance by showing how it is possible to emotionally engage with an ethically problematic life-​world so that one both imaginatively immerses oneself in that world and retains critical distance from it. Imagining the perspective of an SS officer does not mean adopting his values or accepting his orientation to the world. As we saw in Chapter 3, the ability to perceive the world from the perspective of the other does not imply letting go of one’s own values and beliefs; instead, it means considering a different mode of experience from the perspective of one’s own interpretative horizon. The narrative dynamic of Les Bienveillantes particularly encourages the reader’s critical awareness through its self-​reflexive aspects. Encountering Aue’s worldview from the horizon of their own allows readers to evaluate what is problematic in his world and why it is nevertheless a human world—​a world constructed by human beings and one that manifests certain aspects of being human—​ and a world that may not be in all respects as different from our own as we would perhaps like to think. The first-​person narration of the novel is motivated by the conviction that it can be an ethically valuable exercise to engage with the perspective of a perpetrator directly, without the mediation of third-​person narration. The novel sets out to mobilize our narrative and ethical imagination by engaging us in an “experientially driven” reflection on how the Holocaust was made possible by certain mechanisms in modern Western society that still shape our everyday lives. In particular, it invites us to reflect on the ethical implications of a mode of living in a bureaucratic world in which most people focus on efficiently and diligently carrying out orders imposed

[ 232 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

on them, and few people have the courage to question the ultimate values and goals that steer their actions. The ethical underpinnings of the novel have been evident for many—​McGlothlin, for example, describes the novel as an example of a “markedly pedagogical and ethical approach” (2016, p. 253), and Adams discusses it in terms of a “radical ethics of encounter” (2011, p.  28)—​but a number of established scholars have more ambivalent sentiments. While Charlotte Lacoste dismisses the invitation “to fraternize with evil in a guided tour of the Jewish genocide” (2010, p. 46), Susan Rubin Suleiman voices, in a more nuanced manner, a central ethical concern of critical responses to Les Bienveillantes by asking whether a protagonist such as Aue should be “allowed the privilege of the narrative voice, given the almost automatic call to empathy that accompanies first-​person narrative” (2009, p. 2). The first-​person perspective is certainly likely to humanize the protagonist, but does it automatically invite empathy? It seems evident that Les Bienveillantes does not provoke simple, straightforward empathy of the type evoked by sympathetic characters with whom we can easily identify. The protagonist appears unlikable, even abhorrent, to most readers, and this disrupts and complicates any empathy that the first-​person perspective may elicit from the reader. Moreover, we should acknowledge that empathy is not a uniform phenomenon, but refers to a complex range of overlapping phenomena that involve both perspective-​taking and affective responsiveness to others’ emotions and situations (Lissa et al., 2016, 44; Davis, 1983). Many contemporary accounts emphasize that empathy does not imply taking on the other’s emotions or taking the side of the other (as in sympathy), and that it involves awareness of the other’s alterity (e.g., Goldie, 1999, p.  398; LaCapra, 2004, p.  65; Coplan, 2011). Eric Leake defines empathy as “a cognitive and affective form of identification and understanding” that relies on perspective-​taking, an “effort in feeling toward the positions and decisions of another”; it is not about sharing the other’s feelings in the sense of experiencing them oneself—​rather, it is about “reaching out toward the other person’s situation” (2014, p. 176). At a minimum level, empathy may designate simply the affective recognition of the other’s experiential perspective as a human perspective and finding in it aspects that one can relate to. While it is currently widely recognized that our engagement with fiction involves empathetic perspective-​ taking, the complexity of such engagement may not have been adequately appreciated when it comes to the ethically ambiguous and challenging protagonists of literary fiction. Lissa, Caracciolo, Duuren, and Leuveren suggest that research on “the real-​ world effects of engaging with fiction” tends to “downplay an important

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 233 ]

4 3 2

distinction between fiction and literary fiction”: although a stark opposition between the two appears problematic, it should be acknowledged that literary fiction often “tends to challenge—​rather than confirm—​readers’ beliefs and expectations” and this challenge is “at least in part created by morally ambivalent characters” who “overstep readers’ comfort zone, confronting them with perspectives and worldviews dramatically different from their own” (2016, pp. 44–​45). With a similar concern for the specificity of ethically challenging literary fiction, Leake distinguishes between easy and difficult empathy. The former refers to “non-​threatening empathy that does not much challenge our views of ourselves” (2014, p. 175); the latter, in contrast, unsettles us and “pushes the limits of our understanding in reaching out to those with whom we might not otherwise wish contact or association” (p. 176). From this perspective, he defends the value of difficult empathy for social critique: If we only empathize with those who reassure us and confirm our sensitivities, then we will be unable to understand through empathy a wider range of human actions, many of which are in particular need of greater understanding and address. . . . [T]‌hat critique is directed more at prevailing social values and our own acceptance and recognition of them as part of our identities, too. . . . Difficult empathy pushes us to not only see others differently but to also per­ haps see ourselves differently and more expansively through problematic others and their social conditions. (p. 184)

If Les Bienveillantes invites empathy, it such difficult, uneasy empathy—​ a limited, ambivalent form of empathy that involves distancing, reservations, and doubt. It is empathy at the minimum level of the affective recognition of the other’s experience as a human experience. However, because in common usage empathy frequently connotes participation in the feelings of and concern for someone who suffers, it may not be the best concept to use in the analysis of perpetrator fiction. We speak about empathy less often with reference to people whom we perceive to be thriving or evil than with reference to people whom we perceive to be suffering or vulnerable. This also concurs with much of the research on empathy. Batson, for example, uses the concept of “empathy to refer to other-​oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need” (2011, p.  11). McGlothlin argues that “given the positive connotations associated with empathy not only in the general popular understanding of the term but also in narrative theory,” it may be necessary to avoid the language of empathy because it risks implying a willingness “to absolve [perpetrators] of responsibility for their crimes”

[ 234 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

(2016, p. 258). She suggests that identification is a more fruitful concept for analyzing engagement with perpetrators, and she usefully distinguishes between different aspects of “the fluid and multidirectional operation of identification” (p. 259): she calls them existential, perspectival, affective, and ideological identification (pp. 260–​264). Of these aspects, most relevant in the case of Les Bienveillantes is existential identification, which concurs with what I earlier called empathy in the minimum sense: it “involves the reader’s basic recognition of the perpetrator as a human agent involved in particular historical circumstances” (p. 260). In contrast, the reader is least likely to engage in ideological identification, or alignment with the protagonist’s ethical worldview, which McGlothlin considers to exist “only as a potentially dangerous but abstract specter and not as a likely possibility” for Littell’s reader (p. 364). Relevant is also perspectival identification, which for her refers “to the measure of the reader’s readiness to view the events of the narrative through the eyes of the perpetrator-​protagonist and to exclude some or all alternate points of view” (p. 260). McGlothlin argues that it necessarily remains partial and provisional in the case of a perpetrator novel like Les Bienveillantes (p. 261). She asserts that our affective identification most probably takes place primarily with the perpetrator’s life “outside his identity as a victimizer, which is much more available to the reader for identification” (p. 263). We should acknowledge, however, that both in terms of perspectival and affective identification, the reader’s response is likely to shift and vary throughout the reading process. If readers were asked about their affective response to the protagonist, they would most probably express critical, distanced attitudes, as they have in empirical studies on engagement with dislikable characters, but the process of engagement involves an affective dimension that differs from evaluation after the process of reading: measuring “readers’ self-​reported empathy as an outcome of reading a certain text . . . does not necessarily reflect what happened while reading. . . . Readers may have imaginatively entertained the protagonist’s viewpoint while reading even as other aspects of their experience eventually led them to distance themselves from the character” (Lissa et al., 2016, p. 60). McGlothlin argues that identification “better conveys the ethical dimension of the reader’s relationship to a given character, as it implies a sense of active agency or conscious alignment on the part of the reader, even as unconscious mechanisms are also at play” (2016, p. 258). It seems to me, however, that identification can be as visceral as the feeling of empathy and as much beyond the conscious control of the subject. It has also been associated, particularly in Holocaust studies, with an ethically problematic assimilation of the other.36 I consider engagement and perspective-​taking

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 235 ]

6 3 2

the most useful umbrella terms for analyzing the ethical dimension of our responses to perpetrator fiction. While empathy is an other-​oriented concept and identification (in the form it is frequently used) a self-​oriented concept (in the sense that the focus tends to be on the I who identifies with someone or something else), engagement and perspective-​taking place the emphasis on the interaction between the self and the other. Engagement with literary narratives always involves some form of perspective-​taking, because it is elemental to narratives that they are told from a particular perspective with which the recipient needs to engage. I see identification as a strong form of perspective-​taking that affects the subject’s identity, that is, his or her sense of self, which I conceptualized, in Chapter 2, not in terms of sameness but in terms of a temporal process of identifications-​ with. Perspective-​taking is often entwined with empathy, a feeling toward the other, which can range from minimal empathy to strong empathy that involves taking the side of the other. Identification is a useful term in describing an important aspect of readerly engagement, but it should be qualified in two important ways. First, identification should not be conceptualized as a process of merging or assimilation, but rather as one that always involves both distance and proximity. McGlothlin suggests that we engage in “perspectival identification” insofar as we are willing to exclude “some or all alternate points of view” (2016, p. 260). Others use the vocabulary of merging and fusion, as when Carroll defines character-​identification in terms of thinking of oneself as “identical to or one with the character—​i.e., a state in which the audience member somehow merges or fuses with the character” (2004, p. 90; see also LaCapra, 2014, p. 27). In thinking about identification as a form of perspective-​taking, however, the model of merging or of exclusion (of one’s old views, for example) appears problematic to me because identification takes place across difference: one identifies with someone who is different from oneself and, particularly insofar as such identification has ethical potential, it cannot involve giving up one’s own values and commitments but, rather, putting them into play. When identification is conceptualized in terms of perspective-​taking, it is a process in which one’s identity is enlarged and a new dimension is added to it by enriching the repertoire of perspectives from which one views the world. This is not an exclusion of one’s old perspectives but an enlargement of one’s horizon as one engages in a dialogue with different perspectives. Second, the concept of identification should not lead to a character-​centered approach that dismisses identification with the narrative’s larger intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical project (see Chapter 3; Felski, 2016). Identification with the work can entail looking at the

[ 236 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

world from the perspective opened up by the work as a whole, not merely by the protagonist. The ethical impetus of Les Bienveillantes is largely based on the way it invites the reader to identify with its overall project, rather than with the protagonist. What makes this task particularly demanding for the reader is that the protagonist-​narrator’s perspective is so dominant in the novel. As LaCapra observes, “Littell offers scant opportunity for victims to speak or even for exchanges between Nazis and Jews”; he is worried that other characters fail to “offer viable critical alternatives” to Aue’s views (2011, p. 76). The narrative is so ethically challenging precisely because it is not overtly dialogic, that is, it does not offer for the reader’s consideration a range of different voices. Integral to the ethical challenge that it presents to the reader is the task of engaging in a dialogue with a perpetrator whose dangerousness is not separate from his monological style of existence. On the other hand, Aue does engage in dialogue, not only with different characters, but also with a range of social theorists, philosophers, historians, and poets. This dialogue makes the novel more polyphonic than it may first appear. Nevertheless, the protagonist’s communicative style is not particularly dialogic, and the implied author encourages the reader to see through his pseudo-​dialogical gestures, starting with the opening sentence. The social diagnostic dimension of Les Bienveillantes—​its way of inviting us (in dialogue with a range of social theorists) to observe how our own world continues the legacy of instrumental rationality that made the Holocaust possible—​is only one aspect that complicates its narrative dynamic and cautions us against simple empathy; another complicating factor is the novel’s mythical dimension. It is essential to the novel’s interpretation of history that its mythical frame is placed in a tensional relation with the novel’s exploration of the modern instrumental rationality underlying the Holocaust. Through the Orestes myth, the question of responsibility acquires a classic Greek dimension. According to the Ancient Greek conception of guilt, we are responsible for our actions, irrespective of whether or not we understand what we have done (Littell, 2010, p. 592; 2006, p. 546). The novel suggests that ultimately the Holocaust eludes the human capacity to comprehend, and yet it places a responsibility upon us. The dedication of the novel reads “For the dead” (“Pour les morts”), and it is because of our responsibility to the dead that we must try to understand how it is possible that what happened could actually happen; yet at the same time, we must not fall prey to the hubris of believing that we have reached an exhaustive explanation.

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 237 ]

8 32

The use of the Orestes myth and Bach’s baroque suite as structural principles highlights that history in itself does not follow a narrative order; literature must bring order to it. In the end, however, the use of the Orestes myth does not provide any overall explanation, and we should acknowledge its playful, parodic aspect. Aue compares the policemen Clemens and Weser, who act in the role of “the Furies,” to Laurel and Hardy (2010, p. 753; 2006, p. 693) and kills them before they have a chance to turn into “the Kindly Ones.” In the end, it is futile to seek correspondences between the characters and the myth. Aue refers to the Kindly Ones only once, in the final sentence of the novel, when Clemens and Weser have already been killed: I felt all at once the entire weight of the past, of the pain of life and of inalterable memory, I remained alone with the dying hippopotamus, a few ostriches, and the corpses, alone with time and grief and the sorrow of remembering, the cruelty of my existence and of my death still to come. The Kindly Ones were on to me. (p. 975)37

Here the Kindly Ones seem to allude to the haunting of a past that does not let go of us, maybe also to the “dead” to whom the novel is dedicated and to whom we have an obligation to try to understand the past, not from the perspective of vengeance—​hence the reference is to the Kindly Ones, not to the Furies—​but in order to end the vicious circle of violence. The mythical frame transcends the consciousness of the narrator and functions as one way in which Littell emphasizes the difference between the I-​narrator and the work as a whole:  the latter is not of Aue’s design and construction. Aue is an Orestes figure who does not know it; he is blind to his own actions and yet guilty. Blindness becomes a central trope in the novel, and it is personified in the final scene, where a blind man wanders the streets to the sound of cannon fire and the Red Army taking over Berlin: “ ‘Where are you going?’ I asked, panting.—​‘We don’t know,’ the blind man replied.—​‘ Where are you coming from?’ I asked again.—​‘ We don’t know that either’ ” (p. 970).38 The theme of blindness reinforces the novel’s intertextual relation to Michel Tournier’s Le Roi des Aulnes (1970, The Erl-​King), which is an early example of perpetrator fiction. Its protagonist is a car mechanic who identifies with mythical ogre figures; similarly to Les Bienveillantes, the mythical and the historical-​realistic function concurrently in the novel, and the mythical level is linked to the intertextual emphasis on the nature of the novel as a literary artifact. Like mythical ogre figures, the protagonist is myopic, and blind to what he becomes:  he identifies with the legendary

[ 238 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

figure of Saint Christopher, who carries the young Christ safely across a river, but as he collaborates with the Nazis and recruits boys to a Napola (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten), he ends up becoming more like the Erl-​King, who carries children to their death.39 The names of both Tiffauges and Aue allude to the German word for eye (Auge); both are eyewitnesses of horror, and both are to an important extent blind. Both novels retell the myth indicated in their titles in a way that escapes the awareness of the protagonist and points not only to his personal blindness, but also to a more pervasive cultural blindness, linked to the limitations and distortions of cultural self-​understanding in relation to the Holocaust.

“A QUESTION WITHOUT AN ANSWER”

Narrative hermeneutics is committed to the hermeneutic conception of the singularity of each literary text and the need for interpreters to let their preconceptions be challenged in the encounter with the text. A certain strand of “unnatural narratology” has much in common with the hermeneutic non-​reductive ethos, namely the “non-​naturalizing approach,” which, as Stefan Iversen puts it, “argues in favor of keeping open the possibility that unnatural narratives produce effects (emotions and experiences) that should not be immediately, if at all, transformed back into graspable proportions” (2013, p. 151).40 However, I find problematic the concept of “unnatural narrative,” which is frequently used interchangeably with “anti-​ mimetic narrative.” It is based on the shared endeavor of “unnatural narratologists” to challenge what they claim to be the dominant “mimetic understanding of narrative,” that is, a tendency to treat fictional works “as if they were primarily lifelike reproductions of human beings and human actions” (Alber et  al., 2013, pp.  2, 4). Their criticism of “mimetic understanding” is problematic insofar as it rests on a naïve conception of mimesis as imitation and dismisses the long tradition of acknowledging how mimesis is a dynamic poetic activity of creation and construction, which is “completely contrary to a copy of some preexisting reality” (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 45).41 While I  agree that fictive and nonfictive narratives require different strategies of reading, in unnatural narratology this emphasis often seems to be fused with the problematic assumption that the aesthetic is separate from the spheres of ethics and understanding. In order to illustrate the difference between how we read fictive and nonfictive first-​person narratives, Iversen compares Les Bienveillantes to interviews with former inmates of German concentration camps: allegedly, we relate to the interviews as we

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 239 ]

0 42

do to “acts of communication,” where we try to understand the speaker, whereas we read a fictive narrative more “as an artifact in itself,” which calls for Kantian “ ‘interesseloses Wohlgefallen’ (disinterested pleasure)” (2013, p. 152). Here Iversen explicitly commits himself to the Kantian tradition of aesthetic formalism in which the sphere of the aesthetic is seen as separate from the spheres of ethics and knowledge. This tradition risks reducing the literary work to its production of aesthetic pleasure and ignoring how works of art also function as ethically charged modes of making sense of the world. Literary works are meaningful wholes that not only produce aesthetic pleasure but also, among other things, provide interpretations about the world (past, present, and future), expand our sense of the possibilities of human existence, and shape the narrative in-​between that is part and parcel of intersubjective reality. This difference can be illustrated through the scene from Les Bienveillantes that has probably given rise to most scholarly debate and which Iversen also cites: the scene in which a bullet passes through Aue’s head. The scene has baffled readers because it is here that an apparently realistically constructed text begins to break down, rendering a realist reading insufficient. It is precisely this insufficiency that is the starting point for non-​naturalizing reading. In the bullet scene, we are not, in fact, told that a bullet hits the protagonist’s forehead; we can only eventually reconstruct this storyline. The scene in which Aue is wounded is first depicted thus: “Ivan was running toward me, but I was distracted by a slight tap on my forehead: a piece of gravel, perhaps, or an insect, since when I felt it, a little drop of blood beaded on my finger. I wiped it off and continued on toward the Volga” (2010, p. 414).42 The reader realizes the inadequacy of a realist reading at the latest when Aue dives under the ice and sees there the smiling body of his former colleague who had died long ago in another place, or when he climbs up to a Zeppelin that can turn into a giant spider and leap over the edge of the world. As he tries to follow his sister Una, whom he sees going down the river in a bridal boat, he is stopped by violent stomach cramps, and undergoes an experience that echoes the story of Minos, on whom Pasiphae placed a spell that made him ejaculate snakes, scorpions, and the like: “but instead of shit, living bees, spiders, and scorpions gushed out of my anus” (p. 424).43 Iversen (2013, p. 156) depicts this narration as “non-​conventional” and “unnatural” and argues that reading the novel from the perspective of unnatural narratology enables one to see it as a riddle that concerns the possibilities and limits of the representation of consciousness. In his interpretation, the novel is about aesthetic experimentation with the representation of consciousness, and the riddle concerns primarily the narrator: “Is

[ 240 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Aue unreliable? Unbelievable? Unlikely? Unreadable? Unnatural?” (p. 155). I agree that there is a riddle at the center of the novel and that this riddle is ultimately unresolvable, but I am not convinced that the riddle primarily concerns the representation of consciousness (one of the dominant interests of narratology). We should ask what the significance of “non-​ conventional” narration is in the novel as a whole. The distinctive narrative strategies of the novel are intimately linked to its themes, to the interplay of form and content in its narrative dynamic, and to its overall functioning as a signifying whole. In my interpretation, the fragmentation of the narration, which begins in the bullet scene and continues later in the form of hallucinations, emphasizes first and foremost the breaking down of narrative mastery. This, in turn, is central to the novel’s way of taking part in the discussion on the ethics of understanding and narrating the Holocaust. The narrative structure of the novel is directly linked to the exploration of the possibilities and limits of a narrative understanding of atrocity. While the novel begins with a gesture of narrative authority—​“let me tell you how it happened” (p. 3)—​that underpins the first half of the novel, the wound in Aue’s head marks a turning point in the narration; afterward, the sense of narrative mastery increasingly begins to falter. The fragmentation of the narration is linked to the way in which Aue’s experiences become detached from intersubjective reality. After being wounded, the subsequent long passage acquires hallucinatory features, and it is difficult for the reader to know whether the stream of consciousness should be interpreted as a dream, a hallucination, or some kind of retrospective reconstruction of Aue’s experiences at the time. The “narrating I” (the old Aue) does not organize the narration retrospectively into a coherent, logically proceeding narrative in the way he had before; instead, the “narrating I” and the “experiencing I” become more and more entangled. The experience of disorientation increasingly penetrates the very structure of the narration.44 As Aue is wounded, he loses his capacity for narrative sense-​making: he can no longer link events to each other in the form of a narrative. When he is in the hospital, Himmler visits him with several SS officers: “I didn’t understand much of what Reichsführer said: isolated phrases bubbled to the surface of his words, heroic officer, honour of the SS, lucid reports, courageous, but they certainly didn’t form a narration in which I could recognize myself” (p.  434).45 The bullet through the head acquires a symbolic meaning as it epitomizes a structural hole at the center of the novel. Aue’s orientation to the world changes drastically and begins to revolve around the hole: “My thinking about the world now had to reorganize itself around

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 241 ]

4 2

this hole” (p. 436).46 The hole stands in a metonymic relation to the larger lack at the center of the novel: all the narrative explanations cannot change the fact that in the end there is a blind spot at the center of everything, a hole that the narrator cannot see, understand, or explain, as there is in our own way of seeing the world and in our own entanglement in history. Aue later hears how he was wounded, but this story, told in a traditional, linear, quasi-​causal narrative form, remains emphatically detached from reality. This version no more captures what really happened than did Aue’s earlier, hallucinatory depiction of the events: I listened to his story attentively, and so I can report it, but even less than the rest, I  could connect it with nothing; it remained a story, a truthful one no doubt, but a story all the same, scarcely more than a series of phrases that fit together according to a mysterious and arbitrary order, ruled by a logic that had little to do with the one that allowed me, here and now, to breathe the salty air of the Baltic. . . . (p. 438)47

The narrator points here to a gaping chasm between his experience—​or his transformed sense of life—​and the narrative logic of his account. Through the breakdown of narrative mastery, the novel demonstrates how the Holocaust resists explanation, how it persists as an unanswerable question, haunting humanity and demanding interminable reflection: “for me, as for most people, war and murder are a question, a question without an answer, for when you cry out in the night, no one answers” (p. 24).48 The irresolvable nature of this question acquires a particular urgency due to the poignant tension between the I-​narrator’s apparently calm, unregretful manner of reporting the events and his bodily symptoms that express repressed trauma and palpable distress. Engaging with the haunting past proves to be more difficult than Aue initially expects, and the process of telling and recounting involves re-​enactment of the traumatic experiences in ways that gradually disintegrate the very form of the narration. The process of confronting the memories and affectively engaging with them entails exposure to forces that are beyond one’s control. Aue reacts in emphatically corporeal, visceral ways and suffers from regular vomiting attacks: A brief interruption while I go and vomit, then I’ll continue. That’s another one of my numerous little afflictions:  from time to time my meals come back up, sometimes right away, sometimes later on, for no reason, just like that. It’s an old problem, I’ve had it since the war, since the autumn of 1941, to be precise, it started in the Ukraine, in Kiev I think, or maybe Zhitomir. (p. 8)49

[ 242 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The vomiting underlines the palpable intertwinement of the “narrating I” and the “experiencing I.” The “narrating I” relives the bodily experiences he recounts, and the very process of telling evokes certain experiences; the “experiencing I” of the past, in turn, is rendered to the reader through the interpretations and experiences of both the “narrating I” and the “experiencing I” of the narrative present (the time of the narration). This dynamic produces multilayered temporalities in which past and present experiences impregnate one another. The process of storytelling manifests Aue’s attempt to confront aspects of himself—​and of humanity—​that resist narrative appropriation. These aspects resist taming, like the scratching, volatile cat to which Aue compares his memories, as he tries to convince himself and the readers that he is acting in good will (like the bienveillantes who wish for good): Whenever I tried to pet it, to show my goodwill, it would slip away to sit on the windowsill . . . ; if I tried to pick it up and hold it, it would scratch me. At night, on the other hand, it would come and curl up in a ball on my chest, a stifling weight, and in my sleep I would dream I was being smothered beneath a heap of stones. With my memories, it’s been more or less the same. The first time I decided to set them down in writing, I took a leave of absence. That was probably a mistake. . . . I began thinking. (pp. 5–​6)50

The narration draws a contrast between everyday life in which we lose ourselves in daily activities, without stopping to think, and moments of genuine reflection that can disrupt the comfortable flow of everyday life: Yet if you put your work, your ordinary activities, your everyday agitation, on hold, and devote yourself solely to thinking, things go very differently. Soon things start rising up, in heavy, dark waves. At night, your dreams fall apart, unfurl, and proliferate, and when you wake they leave a fine, bitter film at the back of your mind, which takes a long time to dissolve. (p. 7)51

The novel thereby shows how narrative self-​reflection does not necessarily lead to a coherent, integrated narrative sense of self but can, rather, trigger a disintegration of the self—​a coming apart of the illusion of a coherent, integrated self. The comparison of these memories to the volatile cat is a way of suggesting that the novel deals with a process of taming an aspect of our humanness that we tend to be terrified of and which we are tempted to repress—​the human capacity for evil. At the same time, the novel is a process of confronting a traumatic past that haunts one no matter how adamantly it is

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 243 ]

42

repressed. Narrative engagement with the traumatic past is not a task that can be completed, resolved, or taken care of so that one could move on to other things. It is always there and will not vanish; it refuses to become neatly appropriated or domesticated. Yet, the novel suggests, putting oneself at risk and engaging with that part of human history that horrifies us and which we are tempted to demonize or repress as something completely external to us is the only way to avoid even more damaging blindness. The very form of Les Bienveillantes dramatizes how no single narrative can provide a comprehensive understanding of what happened and why, and it manifests a process of narrative engagement that becomes increasingly aware of its own limits. I would argue that it is precisely the novel’s awareness of its own limits that gives it a particularly hermeneutic flavor. Contrary to a common misunderstanding, hermeneutics is not about the pursuit of happy, harmonious understanding, but about acknowledging that true understanding unsettles us and shows us that we do not actually know what we thought we knew. As Gadamer (1997, p. 362) wrote, at the heart of philosophical hermeneutics is docta ignorantia, knowing that one does not know. Narrative hermeneutics suggests that in order to be ethical, narrative knowing should be aware of its own interpretative nature, of being only one version, always contestable, limited, incomplete, and unfinalizable. As such, self-​conscious narrative knowing could be characterized as a form of ethical inquiry that takes the affirmative form of simultaneously knowing and not-​knowing. Different approaches to the possibility of understanding the Holocaust have been sometimes divided into two main strands. On the one hand, there is the long tradition of scholarship—​ classics of which include Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) and Browning’s Ordinary Men (1992)—​that emphasizes the ordinariness of the evil that underpins the Holocaust. On the other hand, there are those who stress the ineffability and incomprehensibility of the Holocaust, some of whom consider even attempts to understand it ethically suspicious. Lanzmann (1995) and several poststructuralistically oriented scholars exemplify this line of thought, which relies on the subsumption model in taking all understanding to be ethically problematic (see Chapter 3). Rothberg (2000, pp. 3–​4) calls these the realist and anti-​realist positions: while the first refers to the “epistemological claim that the Holocaust is knowable” and to the “representational claim that this knowledge can be translated into a familiar mimetic universe,” the latter refers both to the claim that the Holocaust is not knowable and to the position that it “cannot be captured by traditional representational schemata.” In a sense, Littell positions himself in the realist tradition by seeing the Holocaust in connection to other forms

[ 244 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

of state violence and as part of the history of genocides, which are all, in their own ways, exceptional: The question I’m interested in is the question of state violence, mass societal violence, as opposed to individual criminal violence. The German case is the most extreme case of societal violence.  .  .  .  I  personally understand the arguments for the exceptionality of the Holocaust, but I don’t agree with them. The basic argument is that the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, but I don’t see the difference between that and an extermination policy that was aimed—​and implemented on a large scale—​at groups such as the peasants in the Soviet Union or in Cambodia. Every genocide is exceptional. (Uni & Littell, 2008)

In aesthetic terms, however, Littell’s novel questions the dichotomy between realism and anti-​realism, in similar ways as work that Rothberg (2000) discusses under the rubric of “traumatic realism.”52 Les Bienveillantes shows—​ through experimental narration that breaks the mimetic illusion—​how the Holocaust is both beyond any exhaustive explanation and a result of the mechanisms of modern society that pervade our everyday lives. Littell stands in the tradition that does not accept the so-​called representation ban, the influential view that fictional representations of the Holocaust are intrinsically ethically questionable. Lanzmann (2006), one of the most famous representatives of this position, considers Les Bienveillantes to be particularly questionable because it provides a fictional representation of the Holocaust from the perspective of a perpetrator. Lanzmann’s position, however, does not take sufficiently into account how the novel presents the Holocaust ultimately as a question without an answer. In terms of different narrative logics, narratives that reflect on their own narrative nature and on the limits of storytelling tend to be ethically less problematic than narratives that mask their own narrative, interpretative, and perspectival nature and pretend to provide a totalizing narrative explanation. While naturalizing narratives risk collapsing into myth (in the Barthesian sense) by masking their own narrativity and taking the guise of “natural” explanations, self-​reflexive narratives caution us against these pitfalls and concomitant gestures of narrative mastery.

THE FORCE OF “US”

This chapter has explored the complexity of narrative perspective-​taking in relation to narrative dynamics. It has fleshed out and provided support for rethinking perspective-​taking along the lines suggested in Chapter 3. The

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 245 ]

4 62

analysis of the readerly engagement with an ethically problematic protagonist, a Nazi perpetrator, has suggested that it can be ethically valuable to engage with the perspectives of characters who are neither sympathetic, innocent victims nor any sort of aspirational role models. It is too restrictive to define one kind of emotional engagement with other perspectives—​ empathetic concern for the other in need—​as the only ethically valuable type of narrative perspective-​taking. We have also seen that perspective-​ taking does not imply merging with the other’s perspective and letting go of one’s own values and beliefs but, instead, exposing them and bringing them into dialogue with a different perspective—​in an encounter that can prove challenging. While this is always true, some narratives—​typically self-​reflexive literary narratives—​particularly encourage us to engage in critical self-​reflection on our own values, beliefs, and preconceptions. Les Bienveillantes is a good example of a literary narrative that provokes us to reflect on our own ethical identity and on the interpretative horizon from which we engage with the perpetrator, including our presuppositions concerning the “evil other.” It shows that in the temporal process of engaging with the other’s perspective, a broad range of affective responses can be valuable, depending on how they mobilize our ethical imagination. Affective engagement with the perpetrator can facilitate understanding of evil—​both past and present—​in its complexity, as something that implicates us. One of the pivotal questions with which the readerly engagement with Littell’s novel confronts us is the issue revolving around our willingness or unwillingness to identify with the perpetrator in the minimum sense of accepting him as human. If we fail in this minimum identification, we repeat the failure of the Nazis who refused to acknowledge the Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, the disabled, and various groups of dissidents as human. Are we able to include the Nazis in the realm of “us”—​or even in our first-​person narratives—​in our understanding of who we are? This is what Littell’s novel asks us, and this is what Knausgård insists in his autobiographical Min kamp 6 (My Struggle, vol. 6): [W]‌e all know, even if not all are willing to admit it, that had we lived at the time, we ourselves probably would have marched under the Nazi flag. . . . Most of us think what everyone thinks, do what everyone else does, and we do this because this “we” and this “everyone” are those who decide the norms, rules, and morality in a society. Now that the Nazis have become “they,” it is easy to take distance from them, unlike when they were “us.” If we want to be able to understand what happened, how it was possible, we have to understand this first. . . . The force of “us” is great, its strings almost unbreakable, and we can only wish that our own “us” is a good “us.” Because when the evil comes, it will

[ 246 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

not come in the guise of “they,” as something strange that we can easily reject, it comes in the form of “us.”53

While Knausgård reflects on the “force of ‘us’ ” through the mode of essayistic autobiographical narration, Littell addresses it by engaging our imaginative powers. Les Bienveillantes is an imaginary autobiography—​ an attempt to imagine what might have transpired if he had been born in that world—​of someone raised in the shadow of Vietnam:  “We saw it on TV every day of my entire childhood. My childhood terror was that I  would be drafted and sent to Vietnam and made to kill women and children who hadn’t done anything to me. As a child there was always the possibility of being a potential perpetrator” (Uni & Littell, 2008). Watching the production of the genocide through the eyes of the perpetrator creates a sense of complicity during the reading process, and it has the potential to turn into a more lasting sense of implicatedness. As Aue acknowledges, the witnesses are also responsible (2010, p. 482; 2006, p. 445). The implication is that we should reflect on how the legacy of past genocides and the violence that is happening in the world right now—​and that we are witnessing (through our screens)—​implicate and obligate us. A  similar ethos of implication underlies the work of all the authors discussed in this book. Grossmann encapsulates it by suggesting that we should all ask ourselves whether we are “consciously or unconsciously, actively or passively, through indifference or with mute acceptance, collaborating at this very moment with some process that is destined to wreak havoc on another human being, or on another group of people”: we need to recognize the mechanisms, in the contemporary world, that are similar to those at work in Nazi Germany—​mechanisms that “blur human uniqueness and evade responsibility for the destiny of others”—​because it is not only genocides that kill, “hunger, poverty, disease and refugee status can defile and slowly kill the soul of an individual, and sometimes of a whole people” (2007). While defending the view that both fiction and nonfiction provide interpretations of the past, I have sided with those who emphasize that fiction requires specific modes of engagement. But instead of understanding this specificity in terms of a separation of the aesthetic sphere from the spheres of ethics and understanding, I  have emphasized their interpenetration, arguing that fiction requires complex interpretations that engage with the literary work as a whole, including its narrative organization and overall narrative dynamic. Such an approach has shown how the narrative dynamic of Les Bienveillantes, marked by the interplay between immersiveness and

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 247 ]

8 42

critical distance, is ethically relevant for engaging with the perpetrator’s perspective: through its dynamic, the novel does not ask readers to accept the protagonist’s perspective, but rather encourages them to engage with it in a simultaneously affectively participatory and critical way. It is through such an interplay that the novel invites us to reflect on Nazi Germany as a space of possibilities that encouraged certain types of experiencing, speaking, and acting and discouraged others, on the possibilities and limits of representing the Holocaust, and on the ultimate impossibility of narrative appropriation. Taking the novel seriously requires attentiveness to its specific aesthetic means of developing its own interpretation of history, including its ways of reflecting on the limits of understanding the Holocaust. Understanding both fictive and historical narratives as interpretations of the human being in the world is a productive starting point for analyzing the specific ways in which fictional and historical narratives imagine past worlds as spaces of possibilities. Exploring how narrative fiction can produce new insights into history requires rigorous textual analysis that not only scrutinizes isolated passages, but also reflects on what the work as a whole suggests through the interplay of its various, often tensional dimensions. Such an analysis benefits from a consideration of how fiction cultivates our sense of history as a sense of the possible as we struggle to understand the past and the present—​and to imagine the not-​yet. Les Bienveillantes takes part in negotiating the cultural memory of the Holocaust through narrative strategies that endeavor to bring the thinking of the possibility of the Holocaust into contact with critical examination of modern Western society more broadly. This is not a gesture of playing down the incomprehensible horror of industrial mass murder; rather, it is a gesture of encouraging critical self-​reflection on our complicity in the mechanisms that made the Holocaust possible. Our narrative imagination concerning the Holocaust is crucial to our ethical imagination at large, including our ways of perceiving more recent and contemporary structures of violence. As inhabitants of the post-​Holocaust world, we still have to ask ourselves: How is it possible that Western civilization led to the mass destruction of millions of people, and what are the implications of that for how we understand ourselves today and for how we navigate in the nexus of narrative, identity, and ethics? What are the continuities and discontinuities between the fascism of the 1930s and the rise of far-​right populist and racist movements in the contemporary world? As a vehicle of cultural memory, storytelling can be put to wildly different uses. An ethics of storytelling must acknowledge that different narrative forms mobilize our ethical powers in divergent ways. While attempts at totalizing narrative mastery are intimately linked to violence and suffering,

[ 248 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

the ethical potential lies with storytelling that explores self-​reflexively the conditions of possibility for different forms of violence and the risks of narrative appropriation.

NOTES 1. On the new perspective on perpetrators that has emerged in fiction and literary criticism, see McGlothlin, 2010. Well-​known examples of perpetrator fiction include Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (1991), Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser (1995, The Reader), Tony Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), and Joshua Oppenheimer’s and Christina Cynn’s The Act of Killing (2012). Earlier examples of perpetrator fiction include Michel Tournier’s Le Roi des aulnes (1970, The Erl-​King) and Edgar Hilsenrath’s Der Nazi und der Friseur (1971, The Nazi and the Barber). 2. “Je songeai à ces Ukrainiens: comment en étaient-​ils arrivés là? La plupart d’entre eux s’étaient battus contre les Polonais, puis contre les Soviétiques, ils devaient avoir rêvé d’un avenir meilleur, pour eux et pour leurs enfants, et voilà que maintenant ils se retrouvaient dans une forêt, portant un uniforme étranger et tuant des gens qui ne leur avaient rien fait, sans raison qu’ils puissent comprendre. Que pouvaient-​ils penser de cela? Pourtant, lorsqu’on leur en donnait l’ordre, ils tiraient, ils poussaient les corps dans la fosse et en amenaient d’autres, ils ne protestaient pas. Que penseraient-​ils de tout cela plus tard?” (2006, p. 86). 3. “Je pensais à ma vie, au rapport qu’il pouvait bien y avoir entre cette vie que j’avais vécue—​une vie tout à fait ordinaire, la vie de n’importe qui, mais aussi par certains côtés une vie extraordinaire, inhabituelle, bien que l’inhabituel, ce soit aussi très ordinaire—​et ce qui se passait ici. De rapport, il devait bien y en avoir un, et c’était un fait, il y en avait un” (2006, p. 95). 4. “ ‘Mais c’est impossible, voyons,’ dit Callsen. Il semblait supplier. . . . Oh Seigneur, je me disais, cela aussi maintenant il va falloir le faire, cela a été dit, et il faudra en passer par là. Je me sentais envahi par une horreur sans bornes, mais je restais calme, rien ne se voyait, ma respiration demeurait égale. Callsen continuait ses objections: ‘Mais, Herr Standartenführer, la plupart d’entre nous sont mariés, nous avons des enfants. On ne peut pas nous demander ça’ ” (2006, p. 99). 5. “Une bouffée d’amertume m’envahit: Voilà ce qu’ils ont fait de moi, me disais-​je, un homme qui ne peut voir une forêt sans songer à une fosse commune” (2006, p. 645). 6. “[P]‌erd en même temps un autre droit, tout aussi élémentaire et pour lui peut-​ être encore plus vital, en ce qui concerne l’idée qu’il se fait de lui-​même en tant qu’homme civilisé: le droit de ne pas tuer. . . . L’homme debout au-​dessus de la fosse commune, dans la plupart des cas, n’a pas plus demandé à être là que celui qui est couché, mort ou mourant, au fond de cette même fosse” (2006, p. 24). 7. “Cette tendance s’étendait à tout notre langage bureaucratique, notre bureaucratische Amtsdeutsche, comme disait mon collègue Eichmann dans les correspondances, dans les discours aussi, les tournures passives dominaient, ‘il a été décidé que . . . ,’ ‘les Juifs ont été convoyés aux mesures spéciales,’ ‘cette tâche difficile a été accomplie,’ et ainsi les choses se faisaient toutes seules, personne ne faisait jamais rien, personne n’agissait, c’étaient des actes sans acteurs, ce

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 249 ]

0 52

qui est toujours rassurant, et d’une certaine façon ce n’étaient même pas des actes, . . . il y avait seulement des faits, des réalités brutes soit déjà présentes, soit attendant leur accomplissement inévitable, comme l’Einsatz, ou l’Einbruch (la percée)” (2006, p. 581). 8. “Y aurait-​il eu un autre domaine d’activité qui m’aurait mieux correspondu, où je me serais senti chez moi? C’est possible, mais c’est difficile à dire, car cela n’a pas eu lieu, et au final, seul compte ce qui a été et non pas ce qui aurait pu être. C’est dès le départ que les choses n’ont pas été comme je les aurais voulues: à cela, je m’étais fait une raison depuis longtemps (et en même temps, il me semble, je n’ai jamais accepté que les choses soient comme elles sont, si fausses et mauvaises . . . ). Il est vrai aussi que j’ai changé. Jeune, je me sentais transparent de lucidité, j’avais des idées précises sur le monde, sur ce qu’il devait être et ce qu’il était réellement, et sur ma propre place dans ce monde; et avec toute la folie et l’arrogance de cette jeunesse, j’avais pensé qu’il en serait toujours ainsi; que l’attitude induite par mon analyse ne changerait jamais; mais . . . je ne connaissais pas encore la force du temps, du temps et de la fatigue. Et plus encore que mon indécision, mon trouble idéologique, mon incapacité à prendre une position claire sur les questions que je traitais et à m’y tenir, c’était cela qui me minait, qui me dérobait le sol sous les pieds” (2006, p. 700). 9. “Les Juifs sont les premiers vrais nationaux-​socialistes, depuis près de six mille ans déjà . . . Toutes nos grandes idées viennent des Juifs, et nous devons avoir la lucidité de le reconnaître: la Terre comme promesse et comme accomplissement, la notion du peuple choisi entre tous, le concept de la pureté du sang. . . Ce sont nos seuls vrais concurrents, en fait. Nos seuls rivaux sérieux” (pp. 420–​421). 10. On Levinas’s discussion of the face, see Levinas (1980, pp. 198–​214; 1996, pp. 17–​18). 11. “J’en suis arrivé à la conclusion que le garde SS ne devient pas violent ou sadique parce qu’il pense que le détenu n’est pas un être humain; au contraire, sa rage croît et tourne au sadisme lorsqu’il s’aperçoit que le détenu, loin d’être un sous-​homme comme on le lui a appris, est justement, après tout, un homme, comme lui au fond, et c’est cette résistance, vous voyez, que le garde trouve insupportable, cette persistance muette de l’autre, et donc le garde le frappe pour essayer de faire disparaître leur humanité commune. Bien entendu, cela ne marche pas: plus le garde frappe, plus il est obligé de constater que le détenu refuse de se reconnaître comme un non-​humain. À la fin, il ne lui reste plus comme solution qu’à le tuer, ce qui est un constat d’échec définitif” (2006, p. 574). 12. “. . . ce regard se planta en moi, me fendit le ventre . . . je voulais . . . lui dire que ça allait, que tout irait pour le mieux, mais à la place je lui tirai convulsivement une balle dans la tête” (2006, p. 126). 13. Similarly, Sanyal interprets the execution of the young female Russian partisan as the “parody of a Levinasian face to face” (2015, p. 195). 14. As Eaglestone puts it, the Levinasian “originary relation to the other . . . underlies any system or organization (any ‘said’) and is made manifest—​especially, in fact—​in the act of murder” (2004b, p. 311). 15. “[J]‌’étais envahi d’une rage immense, démesurée” (p. 126). 16. “Leurs réactions, leur violence, leur alcoolisme, les dépressions nerveuses, les suicides, ma propre tristesse, tout cela démontrait que l’autre existe, existe en tant qu’autre, en tant qu’humain, et qu’aucune volonté, aucune idéologie, aucune quantité de bêtise et d’alcool ne peut rompre ce lien, ténu mais indestructible” (p. 142).

[ 250 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

17. “[M]‌ême si, objectivement, le but final ne fait pas de doute, ce n’est pas en vue de ce but que travaillaient la plupart des intervenants, ce n’est pas cela qui les motivait et donc les poussait à travailler avec tant d’énergie et d’acharnement, c’était toute une gamme de motivations, et même Eichmann . . . au fond ça lui était égal qu’on tue les Juifs ou non, tout ce qui comptait, pour lui, c’était de montrer ce qu’il pouvait faire, de se mettre en valeur, . . . la seule chose dont il ne se foutait pas, c’était qu’on se foute de lui . . . et pour les autres c’est pareil, chacun avait ses raisons” (p. 718). 18. “[A]‌vec toute la rigidité de son organisation, sa violence absurde, sa hiérarchie méticuleuse, . . . une reductio ad absurdum de la vie de tous les jours” (2006, p. 572). 19. While Phelan (2005, 2007, 2017) uses “narrative progression” as the main concept under which he analyzes the textual and readerly dynamics, I use the notion of narrative dynamics to refer to the interaction between the textual and readerly dynamics. 20. “[R]‌egarder engage autant ma responsabilité que faire” (2006, p. 445). 21. This perspective has particularly dominated the German reception of the novel (see Asholt, 2012). 22. For a more nuanced reading that places the emphasis on Aue as a reliable historical and moral witness but sees the transgressive dimension of the novel as a potential weakness, see Suleiman (2012). 23. In addition to the Orestes myth, seven baroque dances that follow the sequence of a Bach suite—​from Toccata to Gigue—​form another structuring principle of the novel (Littell & Millet, 2007, p. 9). 24. On the intertextual dimension of the novel, see Sanyal (2015, pp. 199–​201). While LaCapra suggests that Littell’s use of myth risks absorbing history “into the transhistorical and the mythological” (2011, p. 80), to me the mythical frame appears as an emphatically literary one, and I do not see it as implying any kind of commitment to a mythological worldview. As far as I can see, the novel questions fatalism by using sideshadowing that shows the indeterminacy and openness of each moment of action; rather than on fate, the emphasis is on the way in which things could have gone differently. 25. “Frères humains, laissez-​moi vous raconter comment ça s’est passé. On n’est pas votre frère, rétorquerez-​vous, et on ne veut pas le savoir. Et c’est bien vrai qu’il s’agit d’une sombre histoire, mais édifiante aussi, un véritable conte moral, je vous l’assure. Ça risque d’être un peu long, après tout il s’est passé beaucoup de choses, mais si ça se trouve vous n’êtes pas trop pressés, avec un peu de chance vous avez le temps. Et puis ça vous concerne: vous verrez bien que ça vous concerne” (2006, p. 11). 26. “Et si vous n’en êtes pas convaincu, inutile de lire plus loin. Vous ne comprendrez rien et vous vous fâcherez, sans profit ni pour vous ni pour moi” (2006, p. 28). 27. “[V]‌ous disposez d’un pouvoir sans appel, celui de fermer ce livre et de le jeter à la poubelle, ultime recours contre lequel je ne peux rien, ainsi, je ne vois pas pourquoi je prendrais des gants” (2006, p. 720). 28. On this intertextual reference, see Koppenfels (2012, p. 142). 29. Sanyal describes the mode of narration established in the opening scene as “ironic complicity,” which “coerces the reader into solidarity with the narrator, yet simultaneously sabotages this identification through irony” (2015, p. 191). The pulp elements of the novel (evident, for example, in relation to such characters as Clemens and Weser) also contribute to the ironic dimension of the novel.

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 251 ]

2 5

30. This self-​reflexive dimension seems not to be properly acknowledged by critics who have suggested that the “family strand” of the narrative, depicting Aue as “driven mad by complex incestuous and oedipal rage,” functions as a “swerve” away from confronting the “evil of the ‘ordinary Nazi’ ” and leads us to assume that Aue is a psychopath (e.g., Eaglestone, 2011, pp. 22–​23; see also Adams, 2011, p. 42). 31. I agree with Adams that the novel’s provocative mode of narration can be seen to “dislodge the reader from a passive orientation towards the text, eliciting a questioning and interrogative form of reading that is valuable as a means of responding to the novel’s ethical provocations” (2011, p. 42). 32. “Encore une fois, soyons clairs: je ne cherche pas à dire que je ne suis pas coupable de tel ou tel fait. Je suis coupable, vous ne l’êtes pas, c’est bien. Mais vous devriez quand même pouvoir vous dire que ce que j’ai fait, vous l’auriez fait aussi. . . . Je pense qu’il m’est permis de conclure comme un fait établi par l’histoire moderne que tout le monde, ou presque, dans un ensemble de circonstances donné, fait ce qu’on lui dit; et, excusez-​moi, il y a peu de chances pour que vous soyez l’exception, pas plus que moi” (2006, p. 26). 33. “Le vrai danger pour l’homme c’est moi, c’est vous. Et si vous n’en êtes pas convaincu, inutile de lire plus loin” (2006, pp. 27–​28). 34. In the French version, the reference is to “votre petite aventure algérienne,” in the English version to “your little Vietnam adventure” (2010, p. 16; 2006, p. 23). “[V]‌ous n’en parlez pour ainsi dire jamais, dans vos livres et vos émissions . . . Bien sûr, la guerre est finie. Et puis on a compris la leçon, ça n’arrivera plus. Mais êtes-​vous bien sûrs qu’on ait compris la leçon? Êtes-​vous certains que ça n’arrivera plus? Êtes-​vous même certains que la guerre soit finie?” (p. 2006, p. 23). 35. Like Sanyal (2015), I consider Littell’s background—​he worked for 10 years on humanitarian missions around the world, for example, in Bosnia, Chechnya, Congo, and Sierra Leone (see Uni & Littell, 2008)—​and his interviews to be factors that inevitably inform the process of readerly engagement. As Korthals Altes puts it, textually induced ethos interacts with “extratextual ethos clues” (2014, pp. 11–​12) as readers construct an author’s overall ethos, which, in turn, affects the way the author’s texts are read. 36. For discussion of identification as appropriation, assimilation, and consumption in the context of Holocaust studies, see Adams (2011, pp. 34–​35). On Les Bienveillantes as a “challenging treatment of identification itself,” see Sanyal (2015, p. 198). 37. “Je ressentais d’un coup tout le poids du passé, de la douleur de la vie et de la mémoire inaltérable, je restais seul avec l’hippopotame agonisant, quelques autruches et les cadavres, seul avec le temps et la tristesse et la peine du souvenir, la cruauté de mon existence et de ma mort encore à venir. Les Bienveillantes avaient retrouvé ma trace” (2006, p. 894). 38. “ ‘Où allez-​vous?’ demandai-​je en pantelant. –​‘Nous ne savons pas,’ répondit l’aveugle. –​‘D’où venez-​vous?’ demandai-​je encore. –​‘Nous ne le savons pas non plus’ ” (2006, p. 889). 39. For a more detailed discussion of Le Roi des Aulnes, see Meretoja (2014b). 40. On the non-​naturalizing approach, see also Nielsen (2013, p. 72). 41. See also Halliwell (2002); Polvinen (2012); Meretoja (2014b). “Non-​naturalizing narratology” might be a more appropriate term for those “unnatural narratologists” who want to distance themselves from a naïve criticism of

[ 252 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

mimesis and from the concomitant distinction between unnatural/​anti-​mimetic and natural/​mimetic and, instead, insist on the importance of non-​naturalizing reading strategies. One might ask, however, if good literary research that does justice to the specificity of literature is not all “non-​naturalizing” in this sense; this ethos of reading is hardly unique to “non-​naturalizing narratology.” 42. “Ivan courait vers moi, mais je fus distrait par un léger heurt sur mon front: un morceau de gravier, peut-​être, ou un insecte, car lorsque je me tâtai, une petite goutte de sang perlait sur mon doigt. Je l’essuyai et continuai mon chemin vers la Volga” (p. 2006, 383). 43. “[P]‌lutôt que de la merde, ce furent des abeilles, des araignées et des scorpions vivants qui jaillirent de mon anus” (2006, p. 392). 44. Suleiman (2012, p. 116) acknowledges that the “loss of control in the narration” can be seen as “textually mirroring the disintegration of Berlin,” of Aue himself, and of “realist narrative,” but does not consider the significance of the loss of narrative mastery to the novel’s overall interpretation of—​and ethics of representing—​the Holocaust. 45. “Je compris peu de choses aux propos du Reichsführer: des termes isolés barbotaient à la surface de ses paroles, officier héroïque, honneur de la SS, rapports lucides, courageux, mais cela ne formait certes pas une narration où j’aurais pu me reconnaître” (2006, p. 402). 46. “Ma pensée du monde devait maintenant se réorganiser autour de ce trou” (2006, p. 404). Aue believes that the wound in his head opens a “pineal eye” that allows him to see a deeper truth behind the apparent reality; as McGlothlin (2014) argues, the “pineal eye” marks a shift from a realist, documentary style of reporting the historical events to hallucinatory narration concerning both the historical reality and Aue’s sexual fantasies. It seems to me that the pineal eye can be interpreted either as the implied author’s parodic way of accentuating Aue’s delusional self-​perception and blindness to what is happening or as symbolizing the way in which he begins to engage with what evades narrative mastery, that is, with the chaotic reality behind the apparently orderly unfolding of events. 47. “[J]‌’écoutai son récit avec attention, et je puis donc le rapporter, mais moins encore que le reste je ne pouvais le raccorder à rien, cela restait un récit, véridique à n’en pas douter, mais un récit néanmoins, guère plus qu’une suite de phrases agencées selon un ordre mystérieux et arbitraire, régies par une logique qui avait peu à voir avec celle qui me permettait, à moi, de respirer l’air salé de la Baltique” (2006, p. 405). 48. “[P]‌our moi, comme pour la plupart des gens, la guerre et le meurtre sont une question, une question sans réponse, car lorsqu’on crie dans la nuit, personne ne répond” (2006, p. 30). 49. “Une brève pause pour aller vomir, et je reprends. C’est une autre de mes nombreuses petites afflictions: de temps en temps, mes repas remontent, parfois tout de suite, parfois plus tard, sans raison, comme ça. C’est un vieux problème, ça date de la guerre, ça a commencé vers l’automne 1941 pour être précis, en Ukraine, à Kiev je pense, ou peut-​être à Jitomir” (2006, p. 15). 50. “Quand je tentais de le caresser, pour faire preuve de bonne volonté, il filait s’asseoir sur le rebord de la fenêtre . . . ; si je cherchais à le prendre dans mes bras, il me griffait. La nuit, au contraire, il venait se coucher en boule sur ma poitrine, une masse étouffante, et dans mon sommeil je rêvais que l’on m’asphyxiait sous un tas de pierres. Avec mes souvenirs, c’a été un peu pareil. La première fois que

N a r r at i v e D y n a m i c s , P e r s p e c t i v e - Ta k i n g , a n d E n g ag e m e n t  

[ 253 ]

4 52

je me décidai à les consigner par écrit, je pris un congé. Ce fut probablement une erreur . . . je me mis à penser” (2006, p. 13). 51. “Or si l’on suspend le travail, les activités banales, l’agitation de tous les jours, pour se donner avec sérieux à une pensée, il en va tout autrement. Bientôt les choses remontent, en vagues lourdes et noires. La nuit, les rêves se désarticulent, se déploient, prolifèrent, et au réveil laissent une fine couche âcre et humide dans la tête, qui met longtemps à se dissoudre” (2006, p. 4). 52. For Rothberg, ”Traumatic realism mediates between realist and antirealist positions in Holocaust studies and marks the necessity of considering how the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of genocide intersect and coexist” (2000, p. 9). 53. The translation is my own (the English translation of the sixth volume has not yet appeared).”[A]‌lle vet vi det, selv om ikke alle erkjenner det, at vi selv, om vi hadd vært en del av den tiden, . . . sannsynligvis ville ha marsjert under nazismens fane. . . De aller fleste av oss mener det alle mener, gjør det alle mener, og det gjør vi fordi dette ‘vi’ og dette ‘alle’ er det som bestemmer både normene, reglene og moralen i et samfunn. Nå når nazismen har blitt ‘de’, er det lett å ta avstand fra den, men det var det ikke da nazismen var ‘vi.’ Skal vi kunne forstå det som hendte, hvordan det var mulig, er det det første vi må forstå. . . . Stor er vi-​ets kraft, nesten uavslitelige dets bånd, og alt vi egentlig kan gjøre, er å håpe at vårt vi er et godt vi. For kommer det onde, kommer det ikke i formen av ‘de,’ som noe fremmed vi lett kan avvise, det vil komme i formen av ‘vi’ ” (Knausgård, 2011, pp. 791–​792).

[ 254 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

CHAPTER 7

Transforming the Narrative In-​Between Dialogic Storytelling and David Grossman

T

hroughout this book, I  have suggested that in a sense storytelling is always dialogical:  it takes place in relation to existing narrative practices—​to narrative webs in which we are entangled and narrative traditions that we have inherited. However, there are important differences in the kinds of dialogical forms that narrative practices take. They range from minimum dialogicality that structures even the most monologic narratives to overt dialogicality that seeks to cultivate an ethos of dialogue. A similar distinction can be made in the fields of psychology and philosophy between weak and strong dialogicality: the minimum sense in which our selves are always dialogical (as articulated in Chapter 2), on the one hand, and the cultivation, on the other, of an affirmatively dialogical mode of existence that cherishes our being in relation to others, our being vulnerable and exposed to others, and the ethical potential in our being-​affected-​by-​ others. Theoretical discourse on our dialogical condition often oscillates between the ontological and normative meanings of the term. In what follows, I will discuss dialogic storytelling by looking at two narratives by the Israeli writer David Grossman: To the End of the Land (2010, Isha Borachat Mi’bsora, 2008) and Falling Out of Time (2015, Nofel mi-​huts la-​zeman, 2011). Unlike the other literary narratives discussed in this book, these are not about the Second World War—​they are situated in the present or “out of time”—​and yet their narratives unfold under the shadow of a series of wars and disasters from the Holocaust to the present. These narratives are particularly interesting from the perspective of the narrative

6 5 2

in-​between: To the End of the Land shows how the narrative in-​between is created and transformed in dialogic interaction, and Falling Out of Time explores the breaking down of the narrative in-​between and the limits of storytelling. Both have an autobiographical connection to Grossman’s personal loss.

GROSSMAN’S LOSS

Grossman has been a politically engaged writer for a long time, actively fighting against the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel. For many years, however, he kept his political writings and fiction separate and did not overtly deal with the Israel-​Palestine conflict in his prose. The situation changed for him in May 2003. His older son, Yonatan, was six months from completing his military service—​which in Israel takes three years—​ and his younger son, Uri, was 18 months from beginning it. At that point he felt an acute need to write about the Israel-​Palestine conflict; in fact, he felt unable not to write about it (Cooke & Grossman, 2010). Grossman started To the End of the Land, a novel about a middle-​aged woman, Ora, whose son, Ofer, is discharged from military service but volunteers to rejoin the army in an operation against the Palestinians at the start of the Second Intifada. In the desperate situation of not knowing how to survive while her son is on the frontline, Ora is overcome by the irrational, magical thought that she can protect Ofer by leaving her house so that the army “notifiers” cannot come to inform her of his death. So she embarks on a long walk across Israel to Galilee. As we will see, the novel parallels walking and writing as strategies of survival; the latter, in particular, was Grossman’s lifeline when Uri was on the frontline. Not unlike Ora, he indulged in the half-​magical thought that if he just kept on writing, it might keep his son safe: Uri was very familiar with the plot and the characters. Every time we talked on the phone, and when he came home on leave, he would ask what was new in the book and in the characters’ lives. (“What did you do to them this week?” was his regular question.) He spent most of his service in the Occupied Territories, on patrols, lookouts, ambushes, and checkpoints, and he occasionally shared his experiences with me. At the time, I had the feeling—​or rather, a wish—​that the book I was writing would protect him. (Epilogue of Grossman, 2010)

The charm seemed to work for a while, but then, on July 12, 2006, war broke out, after Hezbollah attacked Israeli soldiers on patrol near the Lebanese

[ 256 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

border. Over the next 34 days, 165 Israelis, approximately 500 Hezbollah fighters, and 1,191 Lebanese civilians were killed. Although Grossman was terrified for his son Uri, who was serving as a tank commander at the front, he was not initially opposed to the war, which he saw as a form of self-​defense. But as weeks went by, he started to feel that it was Israel’s duty to find other solutions, and on August 10, together with his fellow writers Amoz Oz and A. B. Yehoshua, Grossman held a press conference, where he urged the government to agree to a ceasefire and to negotiate peace: “We had a right to go to war. . . . But things got complicated. . . . I believe that there is more than one course of action available” (Cooke & Grossman, 2010). Only two days later, shortly before the Israeli government accepted a UN-​brokered ceasefire, Grossman’s 20-​year-​old son Uri was killed in southern Lebanon when his tank was hit by a rocket while he and his crew were trying to rescue soldiers from another tank. In his eulogy to Uri, Grossman (2006) recounts how the notifiers came to their house in the middle of the night:  “The person said through the intercom that he was from the army, and I went down to open the door, and I thought to myself—​that’s it, life’s over,” but when he and his wife went to tell their little daughter the terrible news in the morning, they promised her that they will keep on living despite everything. Grossman continued to write, which meant for him “a way of choosing life” (Cooke & Grossman, 2010). He also continued to fight for peace: in November 2006, he addressed a crowd of about 100,000 Israelis in the Tel Aviv square where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated 11 years earlier for trying to make peace with the Palestinians. He fiercely criticized the politics of Ehud Olmert’s government for its inability to open “a new horizon for Israelis” (Silver, 2006). Grossman denounces the apathy with which the Israelis have come to respond to the failure of the peace process, and he argues for reaching out to the ordinary, moderate Palestinians: Appeal to the moderates among them, those who are opposed like you and me to Hamas and its path. . . . Speak to their deep wound, recognise their suffering. . . . Just for once, look at them not only through the sights of a gun and not beyond the closed barrier. You will see there a people that are tormented no less than we are, an occupied and oppressed and hopeless people. Look at the overwhelming majority of that miserable people, whose fate is linked to ours, whether we want it or not. (quoted in Silver, 2006)

Both his resilience as a political activist1 and his work as a writer are aimed against cynicism, against the “diminishing of the soul”:

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 257 ]

8 52

I learned from Uri that . . . [w]‌e have to guard ourselves, by defending ourselves both physically and morally. We have to guard ourselves from might and simplistic thinking, from the corruption that is in cynicism, from the pollution of the heart and the ill-​treatment of humans, which are the biggest curse of those living in a disastrous region like ours. Uri simply had the courage to be himself, always and in all situations—​to find his exact voice in every thing he said and did. That’s what guarded him from the pollution and corruption and the diminishing of the soul. (Grossman, 2006)

The view that emerges from Grossman’s thinking is that literature should function as a counterforce to such diminishing of the soul:  it can create a space that has power to increase the agency of both the author and the readers. After his son’s death, writing felt to Grossman like a search for a way of making one’s experiences one’s own—​becoming the agent of one’s experiences, rather than merely a sufferer and a victim: [I]‌magining, infusing life into characters and situations, I felt I was building my home again. It was a way of fighting against the gravity of grief. . . . It was so good that I was in the middle of this novel [To the End of the Land], rather than any other. A different book might suddenly have seemed irrelevant to me. But this one did not. . . . I feel I was thrown into no-​man’s-​land and the only way to allow my life to coexist with death is to write about it. When I write about it, I’m not a victim. . . . The great temptation is not to expose yourself to these atrocities. But if you do that, you’ve lost the war. The language of war is narrow and functional. Writing is the opposite. You describe your reality in the highest resolution even when it’s a nightmare and in doing so, you live your own life, not a cliche others have formulated for you. (Cooke & Grossman, 2010)

Grossman testifies here to the empowering potential of exploring painful experiences through storytelling. Precisely this empowering potential is one of the central themes of To the End of the Land.

DIALOGIC STORYTELLING

While Littell’s novel exposes us to the dangers of monologic storytelling, Grossman’s To the End of the Land is a compelling novel on the power of dialogic storytelling. It presents storytelling as a process of mutual sharing of experiences, and it shows its ontological and epistemological significance:  the novel foregrounds how narrative interaction is part and parcel of who the characters are and of how they (re)interpret, construct,

[ 258 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

and reshape their lives in a dialogic relationship to one another. Over and beyond this, it explores the ethical potential of this performative activity in connection to how it shapes the sense of the possible of the characters, their narrative in-​between, and their understanding of themselves and others. In the novel, dialogue is both something that happens between the characters and something that structures the entire novel as it engages in a dialogue with other narratives and draws the reader to dialogic engagement. While in this section I will focus on the first two levels of dialogicality, sketched in Chapter  2—​dialogue between characters and internal dialogue—​in the subsequent sections I will expand on how the characters and the novel as a whole engage in a dialogue with culturally mediated narrative models of sense-​making. At the center of the novel are the interconnected life stories and love triangle of Ora, Avram, and Ilan, unfolding against the backdrop of the Israel-​Palestine conflict. Their lives are bound together already in 1967, during the Six-​Day War, when they get to know each other as teenagers in a darkened isolation hospital, half forgotten, and delirious with fever. The opening section is narrated in the form of a dialogue—​voices piercing the darkness—​through which the reader witnesses the encounter between the characters, curious to get to know one another: Don’t sleep, watch over me. Then talk to me. Tell me. About what? About you. (2010, p. 17)

After the opening section, the narration shifts to the year 2000 and leaves it to the reader to piece together, step by step, the events between 1967 and the narrative present. The narrative is rendered through story fragments in Ora’s and Avram’s dialogue and third-​person narration, which blends (often through free indirect discourse) description of the characters’ experiencing and reminiscing self in the narrative present (as they look back at their past experiences) and representation of their past experiencing self. For example, here the narrative discourse begins as a description of how Ora remembers the hospital episode as something so precious that she did not want to talk about it to anyone else afterward, but then, through the deictic “now,” shifts to conveying her experience at the time it was lived: Ora knew that what had happened to her there all those nights was too precious and rare to be handed over to strangers, and this was all the more true of what was happening to her with them now, with both of them; the duality presented

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 259 ]

0 62

a mystery she did not even try to decipher. . . . But from day to day it grew more obvious, until she knew with unimpeachable certainty: they were both necessary to her. (p. 332)

We learn that the three of them became inseparable and formed a mini-​ community that defied the rules imposed on them by conventional social morality. In her early twenties, for a year, Ora shared her life and love with both Avram and Ilan, but then a catastrophe befell them and their lives were forever changed. The 1973 Yom Kippur War erupted as Ora had just finished her military service, and Ilan and Avram were still soldiers. On leave, they visited Ora and asked her to put their names in a hat and pull out one. As Ilan won, Avram returned to the frontline, was captured by the Egyptians, and, as an intelligence officer, tortured unmercifully. During his captivity, he held onto life through stories: [H]‌e had the sketch he wrote while he was on duty in Sinai, until the war started, with its complex plots and multiple characters, and he kept returning to a secondary plot that had never preoccupied him before he was taken hostage, but this was what saved him over and over again. (p. 162)

Here we encounter again the idea of storytelling as an art of survival, but this time it is intimately linked to reflection on the limits of storytelling. There is a limit to how far anyone can survive on stories. For Avram, the breaking point comes when he is forced to dig his own grave and he sees an Egyptian officer take a picture of him being buried alive: [S]‌trangers, in a strange land, are pouring earth on his face, burying him alive, throwing dirt into his eyes and mouth and killing him, and it’s wrong, he wants to yell, it’s a mistake, you don’t even know me, and he grunts and struggles to open his eyes to devour one more sight, light, sky, concrete wall, even cruelly mocking faces, but human faces—​and then, above his head to the side, someone takes a photograph, a man stands with a camera, it’s the dhabet, a short, thin Egyptian officer with a large black camera, and he takes meticulous pictures of Avram’s death, perhaps as a souvenir, to show the wife and kids at home, and that is when Avram lets go of his life, right at that moment he truly lets go. . . . Avram no longer wanted to live in a world where such a thing was possible, where a person stood photographing someone being buried alive, and Avram let go of his life and died. (pp. 161–​162)

This passage seems to begin like a flashback that hits Avram as he watches Ora dig the earth with her hands, in the beginning of their hike, but the

[ 260 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

shifting of the third-​person narration to the present tense makes tangibly present the event as it is unfolding, at a time when Avram is still truly alive and different possibilities lay ahead. At the moment when he “let go of his life,” the narration shifts to the past tense as if to signal how abruptly the future was closed down on him.2 Upon Avram’s return, more pain is inflicted on him by Israeli intelligence, as they interrogate him harshly, suspecting that he may have revealed information to the Egyptian torturers. Ora and Ilan are determined to nurse him back to life, but Avram withdraws, and it crushes them to see that he is unable to “understand what was once the spirit of his life” (2010, p. 353). Avram used to write all the time, on his own and with Ilan, and get excited by creative possibilities that he saw everywhere: “[A]‌ll the endlessly possible. Remember?” (p. 142). He used to be the embodiment of a heightened sense of possibilities, characterized by spontaneous orality, verbal flights of fancy, and constant fabulation: his mind would not stop skipping “to the brink of possibilities” (p. 46). The trauma of the torture destroys all that at one stroke, leaving mere “silence, lights out” (p. 143). Avram becomes a walking wound. The state of his soul is epitomized by a physical wound close to his spine that refuses to heal: “[T]‌he wound was the focal point of concern for Ora and Ilan. . . . The word ‘wound’ was uttered so often that it sometimes seemed Avram himself was fading away, leaving only the wound as his primary being” (p. 186). Avram’s trauma becomes a shared trauma in the sense that they all feel implicated in it, and it paralyzes all three of them: “It was his actual existence—​empty, hollow—​that devoured them constantly, so she felt at the time, and sucked the life out of them” (p.  187). Everything that happens in their lives afterward—​all actuality—​bears the traumatic mark of the possible, of what could have happened. This is the case not only for Ora but also for Ilan, who is tormented by the thought that his own life and family could have been Avram’s: “There will be a child here who’ll grow up and be an entire world, and over there he’ll be a living dead, and this child could have been his, and you could have been his too, if only—​” (p. 194). This alternate reality of the if only accompanies them—​like a shadow—​in everything they do. Previously so full of love and life, the traumatic experience leaves both men feeling incapable of love or intimacy. Ilan has a child with Ora, but feels unable to love him (p. 195) and leaves Ora and their son Adam. While Ora and Ilan are separated, Avram gets Ora pregnant but does not want the child or “anything to do with life” (p. 256), whereas Ilan returns and wants to raise Avram’s son, Ofer, as his own, as if raising and loving him could heal the old wound. Ora and Ilan live together for 20 years and raise the two boys, but in the narrative present Ilan has left Ora again.

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 261 ]

2 6

Ora and Ofer had planned to walk across Israel to Galilee to celebrate the end of his military service, but as he volunteers to continue, she decides to go anyway, to avoid the “notifiers,” and she asks Avram to accompany her. When they embark on the walk, Ora wants to tell Avram about Ofer so that he could get to know his son (whom he has never met). After first refusing, Avram eventually gives Ora the permission to talk about their son, but asks her to “start from a distance” (p.  175). What follows is a step-​by-​step movement from silence and muteness to talking and listening: “We’re practicing together, Avram and I. Practicing on Adam, before we get to Ofer. Exercising vocabulary, boundaries, endurance” (p.  203). Talking is as difficult to Ora as listening is to Avram, but they take the leap together, both terrified and certain of its necessity: “She realizes that perhaps she is no less afraid to tell these things than he is to hear them” (p. 192). The narrative shifts back and forth between two life-​changing, transformative phases of their lives: the six years they shared in their youth and the present time, when their son is doing his military service as they are trying to cope with the uncertainty and deal with the trauma that has marked their lives. The dialogic process is not only about exchanging information and getting to know and understand the other, it is also about bearing together a traumatic past and vulnerability in the face of a terrifying present (p. 106). Sharing stories alleviates them both of their pain, as hearing the other say out loud what one has been struggling with alone is in itself liberating: as Avram says, “Ora, it’s my finally hearing from the outside something I’ve been hearing inside my head for years,” Ora responds, “You know, it’s strange, but it’s the same way for me” (p. 194). As they walk, Ora eventually tells Avram more and more about Ofer, and gradually Avram gets to know him through these stories: And for the first time, she describes Ofer to him in detail. The open, large, tanned face, the blue eyes that are both tranquil and penetrating. . . . The words tumble out of her, and Avram swallows them up. Sometimes his lips move, and she realizes that he is memorizing her words, trying to make them his, but it occurs to her that they will never really be his until he writes them down himself. She is embarrassed by her fluent gush of speech, but she cannot stop because this is exactly what she needs to do now: she must describe him in minute detail, especially his body. . . . This is it. This is why she brought Avram with her. To give a name to all these things, and to tell him the story of Ofer’s life, the story of his body and the story of his soul and the story of the things that happened to him. (p. 465)

[ 262 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

The narration here shifts into free indirect discourse whereby Ora’s thoughts and idiom emerge from the third-​person narration. Such passages of free indirect discourse alternate with dialogue that conveys the direct speech between Ora and Avram. This mode of narration gives the reader access both to the characters’ dialogue and to the internal dialogue conducted by Ora in her mind (particularly with her construction of Avram) and to some extent by Avram (with his construction of Ora).3 Thereby the novel not only illuminates the two levels of the dialogicality of the subject discussed in Chapter 2, but also draws attention to their intertwinement and to how the one mobilizes, maps onto, and feeds into the other. The internal dialogue in which Ora engages within her mind includes Ora’s dialogue with herself or with the voices of different Oras, such as her construction of the resilient, resolute Ora, that is, herself as determined to bring Avram back to life and to keep Ofer alive. This resilient, resolute Ora reassures the vulnerable, anxious Ora: “Go on, keep going. Talk, tell him about his son” (p. 202). This internal dialogue then flows into the dialogic action of telling Avram more and more stories. In their dialogic exchange, Ora and Avram take on the role of storytellers as they tell each other of the years in which they led separate lives. But they are not only “narrating selves”; they are just as much “experiencing selves” to whom the very process of exchanging memories through storytelling forms a transformative experience. The new experiences they go through as they walk through Israel are mediated through the stories they have told and are in the process of telling, and their new experiences prompt them to retell their stories in new ways. Hence, living and telling are woven together in complex ways. It is salient that Ora tells Avram of her family life from the perspective of the present moment, and the stories are interpretations that play a part in constructing a shared past for the purposes of the present and future. It is simultaneously a process of looking back and moving on; it is an activity of transforming their narrative in-​between so as to create a new space in which unprecedented experiences and identities—​such as that of a shared parenthood—​become possible. Storytelling takes the form of a transformative travel, and it is hence an experience in the strong hermeneutic sense. As Gadamer puts it, Erfahrung (experience) alludes to traveling and is only worth the name when it does not leave the one who has it “unchanged” (1997, p. 100). Dialogic storytelling is so central to To the End of the Land that it can be said to structure the entire novel. The novel not only thematizes the world-​ creating power of storytelling—​“Avram and Ilan created a world in almost everything they did” (Grossman, 2010, p. 246)—​but also shows the very process of such world-​creation. Through the dialogic exchange between

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 263 ]

4 6 2

Ora and Avram, the novel displays the power of dialogic storytelling to create and transform intersubjective reality: as the characters share their memories, these narrative interpretations are not so much representations of the past as part of a performative activity that creates a new reality in the present: “Ora realizes that now, having crossed the stream, he is beginning to grasp that he has left behind what used to be, and that from here on there will be a new reality” (p. 132). The gradual process of Ora finding the courage to tell more and more about her and Ofer’s life and of Avram becoming ready and able to listen is also a process in which readers assemble a narrative from the story fragments that they receive from the meandering narration. As Hoffman observes, the opening scene imposes on readers the “utter inability of these three young people to fathom what is going on around them,” as the “staccato dialogue” is “like waking up in the middle of the night and not knowing where you are” (2012, p. 46). The reader has to piece together their life stories from a narrative that then shifts back and forth between different temporalities. The narration is emphatically polyphonic: it presents different voices and perspectives side by side, without the narrator privileging one over another. The non-​linearity of the narration emphasizes the way in which different times coexist in the present, as we look back on the past, and it foregrounds narrative sense-​making as a connection-​creating activity: it simultaneously shows how Ora and Avram engage in reaffirming and enriching their connection, and draws the reader into the action of conjuring up connections. As readers engage in a dialogue with the novel, they draw on their cultural background and the narrative traditions to which the novel refers. The novel’s narrative is told against the backdrop of a plethora of both literary and broader cultural narratives that it comments on, challenges, and draws on. For the purposes of the present discussion, the most important literary intertext of the novel is One Thousand and One Nights and its way of dealing with storytelling as an art of survival (to which I will come back).4 The novel also engages critically with the cultural narratives of Israeli nationalism by showing what war does to families, describing, in Grossman’s words, “how the cruelty of the external situation invades the delicate, intimate fabric of one family, ultimately tearing it to shreds” (2008, p. 64). While it resonates with and perpetuates the mythical narratives of the lengths to which maternal love can go, the family of three adults challenges conventional, heteronormative narratives of monogamous love, marriage, and parenthood. Hence, To the End of the Land both takes part in a dialogue of interpretations and deals with dialogic storytelling on several levels.

[ 264 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

NON-​S UBSUMPTIVE UNDERSTANDING

As we saw in Chapter 2, our being is dialogical not only because of the internal dialogue that goes on in our minds and the external one that we conduct with others, but also because we engage in a constant dialogue with cultural narrative models of sense-​making as we orient ourselves to the world and negotiate our identities. First, To the End of the Land conveys a sense of how, rather than determining our experiences and our understandings, cultural narratives shape the space in which we orient ourselves, and how we often must struggle with dominant narrative models in order to find our own path. Second, the novel highlights that in addition to the minimum structural dialogicality of all sense-​making (in that it takes place in relation to cultural webs of meaning), storytelling can be dialogical in the stronger sense in which it involves affirmatively non-​subsumptive understanding and transformative encounters between individuals. While arguments against narrative sense-​making often suggest that narratives are ethically problematic in imposing order on singular experiences and events, Grossman’s novel shows how storytelling—​when it is dialogical in the strong sense—​ can function non-​subsumptively as a means of encountering the other in his or her singularity. The ethical counterpoles that emerge from the novel are, on the one hand, subsumptive cultural narratives that reinforce cultural stereotyping and contribute to the perpetuation of social conflicts and, on the other, non-​subsumptive dialogic storytelling that opens up the possibility of ethical encounters and transformations. The agency of individuals consists in their capacity to initiate something new, and integral to this capacity is the reinvention of themselves through co-​fabulation. This creativity necessarily takes place in relation to cultural narrative frameworks. Ora and Avram tell their stories by drawing on and reinterpreting stories that their cultural situation has bestowed on them, but instead of mechanically repeating culturally available stories, they retell them in their own ways, whereby they invent new ways of dealing with their loss, grief, anxieties, and hopes. The novel suggests that families, couples, and friends can partly co-​create their own, shared mythologies and narrative in-​betweens, and it shows how these intersubjective narrative webs exist through the process of being interpreted and reinterpreted in the circular movement of the triple hermeneutic. There are important differences, however, in whether individuals follow blindly the prevalent narrative unconscious or question the narrative models imposed on them in order to find their own paths. When Ora and Avram first meet, in the dark hospital, their whole lives lie ahead of them, but are on hold as they are cut off from their normal

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 265 ]

62

lives. Avram likes the way they neither see each other nor know each other’s name. The darkness and the surreal situation allows them to encounter each other as raw souls, as it were, without the customary process of ascribing identity categories to others based on their visual characteristics. The voices in the dark place the emphasis on listening, rather than seeing, and listening is of course the foundation of dialogic storytelling.5 As Freeman puts it, responding to the “call of the Other” requires listening (2014b, p. 217), and such responsiveness is the condition of genuine dialogicality. The opening scene also draws attention to the importance of narrative imagination in the dialogic engagement with the other. Avram keeps fictionalizing his own experiences and thoughts of Ora and narrating them to her in the third person, which compels Ora, too, to tell him about herself—​in the third person—​what she would not have been able to tell him otherwise: “She doesn’t know, Ora said after a long pause, unwillingly seduced by his style and finding that it was actually more comfortable to talk about herself this way” (2010, p. 34). During the years that follow, Ora, Avram, and Ilan are able to break free from conventional relationship normativity and create something unique that defies labeling. This involves negotiating the meaning of ethically charged words like “family” and “love.” When Avram is at the hospital, after being tortured by the Egyptians, the nurse asks whether Ora and Ilan are his family; Ora hesitates but then replies affirmatively: “ ‘So tell me, what are you to him? You and the tall guy. Family?’ ‘Sort of. Well, yes, we’re his family’ ” (p. 352). Having partially lost his memory, Avram wants to know about Ora’s relationship to him and Ilan. Words and categories fail them as they try to understand the singularity of what they felt: “And Ilan. . . . You loved him, right?” Ora nodded. She pondered how it was possible to use the very same word to describe such different feelings. “So how . . . I mean, how did we also. . . . ” (p. 352)

Avram asks whether Ilan knew, and Ora says that he was smart enough to know, but then feels the crushing inadequacy of the word:  “The word ‘smart’ explained nothing. There was something broad and deep, wonderful in its own way, in what the three of them had been given in that silenced year” (p. 354). The narrative dynamic of the novel is shaped by a movement from a heightened sense of the possible to a radical, traumatic diminishing of possibilities and then back to a joint, faltering search for a new sense of the possible. The latter involves building a connection to their prior lives and

[ 266 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

bringing back to life aspects of it, while at the same time implicitly preparing themselves for a possible new catastrophe in the near future. Ora’s stories of Ofer mobilize Avram’s narrative imagination, but he first finds it straining: There’s this guy, a person, who is Ofer, Avram thinks strenuously, as if struggling with both hands to stick a label that says “Ofer” onto a vague and elusive picture that constantly squirms in his soul as Ora speaks. And she is telling me a story about him now. I’m hearing Ora’s story about Ofer. All I have to do is hear it. (p. 181)

This is not the first time, however, that Avram engages in such imagining: “as Ofer’s discharge date had grown closer, he would sometimes pick out a boy at the right age in the restaurant where he worked, or on the street, and observe him stealthily, even follow him for a block or two, and try to imagine how he saw things” (p. 153). But this time Avram’s imaginative perspective-​taking is a response to stories told by Ora about their lived, everyday life, which gives it a different weight and reality. Gradually, his narrative imagination is set alight and he cannot get enough of Ora’s stories. Imagining becomes an extension of reality as he weaves what Ora tells him into the narrative fabric of his own life. Ora, in turn, is first anxious about not knowing what to tell and how, acutely aware of the problems in telling someone’s life: How do you tell an entire life? A whole decade would not be enough. Where do you start? Especially she, who is incapable of telling one story from beginning to end without scattering in every direction and ruining the punch line—​how will she be able to tell his story the right way? (p. 182)

She also worries about not really knowing Ofer: And perhaps this is the fear that is pressuring her brain . . . : she doesn’t really know him.  .  .  .  And what, really, will she say about him? How can you even describe and revive a whole person, flesh and blood, with only words—​oh God, with only words? (pp. 182–​183)

The tension between the real, singular flesh-​and-​blood person and the stories of him underlies the whole narrative. The person is always so much more than words can convey, but at the same time a person can become more, as it were, through the stories. Ora feels that her telling about Ofer is a way to “give him strength” (p. 157)—​that by weaving “the feeling of

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 267 ]

8 62

Ofer inside her like a game of connect the dots,” Ofer is “growing a little stronger while she talks, while Avram listens” (p. 198). The hesitant need to tell grows into confidence that telling about Ofer’s life in detail gives it new reality and dignity. For example, when Ora tells about his first steps, she feels overwhelmed by the enormity of the event: “It takes off inside her now, the greatness and the wonder of the act, the bravery of her little astronaut” (p. 233). She would like to cherish every aspect of his life by weaving it into a story: “There should be a whole story about that moment, when Ofer sucked his toes” (p. 263). How is it possible that stories can augment someone’s existence? The condition of possibility for this phenomenon is non-​subsumptive understanding. The novel shows in concrete terms what non-​subsumptive narrative understanding can mean. Ora and Avram reach toward each other through dialogic storytelling that is not an attempt to appropriate or define the other, but a search for understanding that involves thinking beyond their preconceived categories. Here, dialogic storytelling is not a means of subsuming individual experiences under what they already know, but rather a fluid, temporal activity: an interaction in which meanings are in the process of being created. Non-​subsumptive dialogic storytelling is presented as a potentially creative process in which new meanings and possibilities emerge and the partners of dialogue understand better both themselves and the other, as well as take part in creating and transforming the shared space between them. As a process of understanding simultaneously the other and—​through the other—​oneself, dialogic storytelling is presented as an activity that takes time. There is no quick route to understanding the other or oneself: the temporal process of engaging with the other’s perspective is pivotal to both self-​understanding and understanding the other within the fictive world, as well as to the reader’s process of engaging with the perspectives opened up by the novel. Ora’s and Avram’s long trajectory of walking and talking is elemental to the understanding it elicits. When Avram wants to know why Ofer started to eat meat after being a vegetarian for years, Ora responds:  “ ‘Wait, I’m not there yet.’ We still have a long way to go, she thinks; we’ll understand it slowly, together” (p.  274). Here, the dialogue with the other blends into the internal dialogue that Ora conducts with herself in her mind, and the two together take part in slowly transforming their narrative in-​between. By telling stories of Ofer’s childhood to Avram, Ora understands better both Ofer and her own life, and she sees things that she had missed earlier: As she recounts the story, she realizes something she missed at the time: the moment of Ofer’s choice between them, and his distress when they forced him

[ 268 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

to choose. She shuts her eyes and tries to guess his thoughts. He had no words, after all, just the inner push-​and-​pull, and she and Ilan and Adam cheered and danced around him, and Ofer was torn as only a baby can be torn. (p. 235)

Ora went through a similar experience of self-​understanding as she puts her experiences into words during a period of correspondence with Avram: “As she wrote the letters, she gradually found that dim and burdensome things became clear when she laid them out on paper” (p.  333). This dialogic exchange illuminates the hermeneutic insight that self-​ understanding takes place in relation to the other. Avram’s response and understanding are integral to Ora’s narrative self-​reflection and to her process of becoming herself: “she started to feel that she wanted, needed, to write, and that, no less than that, she wanted Avram to read what she had to say and to tell her more and more of what he saw in her” (p. 333). Self-​understanding and becoming oneself are mutually intertwined processes that unfold in relation to the other, so that this relationship becomes ontologically constitutive of who one is. This is salient in Ora’s case, as she feels that only with Avram does she exist in the proper sense of the word: [S]‌he was always easy with Avram, letting him see all of her, almost from the first moment she met him. . . . He was the only one who could truly know her and could pollinate her with his look, with his very existence, and without him she simply did not exist, she had no life, and so she was his, she was his prerogative. (p. 239)

The quotation captures beautifully our fundamental dependency on those whom we let see all of us. Theorists of dialogism and the dialogical self use the adjective “dialogical” sometimes in an ontological sense, to describe the fundamental structure of human existence, and sometimes in a normative sense, to characterize a regulative idea of sorts. Often they oscillate between these two meanings, which are clearly not entirely separable, because when one develops into a more dialogical direction in the ethical sense, becoming more open and receptive to the other, this affects one’s whole existence and hence has ontological bearing. For analytical purposes, however, it is useful to distinguish between different senses of the dialogical. To the End of the Land emphasizes our ontological dialogical constitution as subjects by demonstrating how we become who we are in relation to others and to cultural webs of meaning, but it also conveys an ethos of dialogue that characterizes a particular ethical mode of being in relation to others.

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 269 ]

0 72

In the light of Grossman’s novel, we can characterize the ethos of dialogue as an ethos of receptivity, responsiveness, and openness. It is an ethos of cherishing the ability to break free from one’s boundaries and being able to be affected and transformed by the other. This ethos values movement, fluidity, and transformation against fixity, boundaries, and control. Life is about becoming, changing, and moving; storytelling that captures this perpetual change does justice to the flow of reality. This is a key challenge for Ora: how to show life in a state of becoming through stories: It’s a bit like describing how a river flows, she realizes. Like painting a whirlwind, or flames. It’s an occurrence, she thinks, happily recalling one of his old words: A family is a perpetual occurrence. And she shows him: Adam at six and a bit, Ofer almost three. Adam lies on the lawn at the house in Tzur Hadassah. His arms are spread-​eagled and his eyes are closed. (p. 383)

Ora realizes that she has to use storytelling as a means of showing the events in their state of perpetual change, and she starts to narrate, in the present tense, which accentuates the quality of the events being alive and changing, not fixed like they often seem to be in past-​tense narratives.6 Perspective-​taking is integral to this process of showing. Ora repeatedly takes the perspective of her past self and of Ofer, Ilan, and Adam in various stages of their lives. For example, as she talks about Ofer as a toddler following a horse, this involves a complex structure of her present self taking the perspective of her former self, her as the toddler’s mother who was “seeing through his eyes the wonder of the large, emaciated beast” (p. 311). The dialogic exchange between Ora and Avram also involves perspective-​ taking through listening that expresses the willingness to consider the other’s mode of experience and through the invitation for the other to imagine what one has experienced and thought: “ ‘Just imagine. . . . ’ He turns to face her. The bags under his eyes glow, and now he is entirely here, shining with life, and the pillar of fire he used to be is visible through his skin” (p.  291). The dialogic narrative imagination that they cultivate through such perspective-​taking contributes to a singular sense of connection that makes their being-​in-​relation more and more reciprocal and fluid so that eventually “she can see all the pores of his soul opening up” (p. 296). In addition to perspective-​taking, and partly overlapping with it, an important vehicle of non-​subsumptive narrative understanding is question-​asking. Genuine questions are open in the sense that they do not predetermine the answer: they indicate a willingness to learn and alter one’s preconceptions. Implicit in Gadamer’s and Bakhtin’s dialogism is that although all use of

[ 270 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

language is dialogic in a sense, some forms of speech are more dialogic than others. Here we can see the use of “dialogic” in the ontological and normative/​regulative senses. For example, when both Gadamerian and Bakhtinian hermeneutics emphasize that language lives first and foremost through dialogue and that (tacit) questions drive dialogue forward, they make general ontological claims about the nature of language: “With meaning I give answers to questions. Anything that does not answer a question is devoid of sense for us” (Bakhtin 1986, p. 145). However, while this primacy of questions applies to all conversation and speech, dialogue animated by the ethos of dialogue is driven by genuine questions that open a space for answers that are themselves open: “Questioning opens up possibilities of meaning, and thus what is meaningful passes into one’s own thinking on the subject” (Gadamer, 1997, p. 375). Such questioning non-​subsumptively enriches one’s understanding of the subject matter. To the End of the Land foregrounds how questions function as the motor of dialogue for both the characters and readers. The questions are not always spelled out, but they are the hidden force that drives the dialogue forward. Particularly the big questions that revolve around the characters’ traumatic experiences are always there, at the back of their minds: What happened to Avram—​will he ever regain his creativity and capacity for love? In what sense is he and could he be a father to Ofer? Will Ofer survive? Some of these are spelled out in free indirect discourse or in internal dialogue: “For a moment Ora thinks she knows exactly what she is seeing, and the next moment she flings herself away. . . . What did they do to him there? Why doesn’t he ever talk?” (2010, p.  377). The closer Ora and Avram grow during their walk, the more they start to ask questions from each other. From a listener, Avram grows into a questioner and interlocutor. Genuine questioning is a way of reaching toward the other and being open to the other’s response. The discussion between them grows gradually effortless:  “And without even noticing it, they’re having a conversation. Two people conversing as they walk on one path” (p. 290). That questions function as the motor for dialogue is thematized when Avram and Ora come across a man who walks along the same route as they, but in the opposite direction. He asks them two questions, and they are left wondering who he is and where he comes from. It turns out that he and his wife had planned to take this trip together, but the wife fell ill and died. Before her death she made him swear that he would walk that route nevertheless, even if alone. She tried to think of something for him to do, and she came up with the idea that he could ask questions, as Ora learns from a boy to whom the man had told his story:

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 271 ]

2 7

“In the end she had this idea . . . that every time he met someone, he’d ask them two questions.” . . . [Ora] tries to picture the woman. She must have been very lovely, with a ripe, glowing beauty, spiritual yet corporeal, with flowing, honey-​ colored hair. For a moment she forgets her troubles and clings to this stranger—​ Tammi, Tamar, he’d called her, Tamysha—​who had tried, on her deathbed, to find that “something else” for her man. Or someone else, she thinks, and smiles with affection and subtle appreciation for this woman who knew her husband so well . . . and equipped him with two questions that no woman could resist. (p. 566)

The questions he asks are about “longings and regrets”: “What do we miss most? What do we regret?” (pp.  381–​382). This question-​asking functions as a mise en abyme that reflects the way in which mutual question-​asking initiates an exchange of stories and hence is a connection-​creating activity. By asking genuine, open questions about the other’s longings and regrets, one shows interest in and openness to the other as a singular being—​and such interest and openness contribute to creating a space of possibilities for sustained non-​subsumptive dialogue.

UNBEARABLE COMPLICITY: AGAINST SUBSUMPTIVE CATEGORIES

Although work on the dialogical self places emphasis on the relationality of subjectivity, it still usually focuses on the self at the expense of how sociohistorical webs, in which individual subjects are entangled, condition and affect the dialogic processes in which subjectivities take shape. Hermans envisions a sociocultural approach to the dialogical self, which would entail studying how the I-​positions within the self are “influenced, organized, limited, stimulated, and changed by significant historical or cultural developments in the society at large” (2015, p. 291), but to date work on the dialogical self is mainly centered on individual psychology and development.7 Conceptualizations of the dialogicality of narrative and subjectivity would have room to acknowledge more thoroughly how we are implicated in histories beyond our own agency and how we often have to struggle to maintain or regain a sense of narrative agency in fraught social conditions and in response to (personal, familial, national, and transnational) histories of violence. This implication complicates the ethical challenges that individuals face in their relationships. To the End of the Land addresses these issues both as a novel about the Israel-​Palestine conflict and as a novel about how our storytelling activities

[ 272 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

are conditioned by the historically constituted narrative webs in which we are entangled. An important part of the inherited legacies of violence that the Israelis have to deal with is the legacy of the Holocaust, and the entire Israel-​Palestine conflict unfolds in its shadow. Ora’s mother is a Holocaust survivor, and as a teenager Ora tells Avram that her mother is a particular expert on suffering and loss because of her past (p.  23). This is why she listened to her mother’s advice when her best friend Ada died when they were young: she did not visit Ada’s parents and stopped going to the shop that they kept. Avram finds this inhumane and responds to Ora’s trauma by offering to visit Ada’s parents with her, insisting on the importance of breaking the silence that has come to weigh so heavily on her. The novel shows that being a victim does not automatically make anyone ethically superior, and the roles are easily reversed. Ora is tormented by “constant, exhausting efforts to guess the reasons for her mother’s anger and for the implied accusations that were concealed in the space of the house like dense, inescapable netting”; her mother would regularly shut herself in her room and hit herself, whispering to herself: “Garbage, garbage, even Hitler didn’t want you” (p.  333). The trauma haunts her as physical self-​hatred that erupts as bursts of anger at herself and her family. To the End of the Land problematizes a black-​ and-​ white dichotomy between victims and victimizers through the story of Ora, the child of a Holocaust survivor, and the ex-​officer and torture victim Avram, both of whom belong to a nation that is occupying the land of the Palestinians. The violent history of their country inevitably colors their relationships with the Palestinians. In the novel, the fraught relationship between the Jews and the Arabs is addressed most directly through Ora’s relationship with the family taxi driver Sami. He is an Arab, from Jerusalem, “one of ours,” “almost one of the family” (p. 49), but at the same time theirs is a power relationship: Sami is dependent on his Jewish employers, “his main livelihood” (p. 49). Ora thinks of him sympathetically, as a man whose “earthy charm encircled everyone he met” (p. 54), but their relationship grows tense when Ora asks him to drive her and Ofer to the meeting point as Ofer decides to return to the army. Ofer is furious: “ ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he whispers into her face. ‘What if they find an Arab here and think he’s come to commit suicide? And didn’t you think about how he feels having to drive me here? Do you even get what this means for him?’ ” (p. 64). Ora quickly realizes that she is making Sami complicit in the war waged by the government against his own people, “asking him to add his modest contribution to the Israeli war effort” (p. 57). Feeling “tormented over her rudeness to Sami” (p. 59), Ora tells him that she owes him a favor; in response, Sami asks her to take the sick child of an illegal Arab to a secret

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 273 ]

4 7 2

hospital in Tel Aviv. This creates tension between them, and when they are having a fight, Sami uses the expression “you people”: “Ora’s cheeks are flushed. It was the way he shoved her into that ‘you people’ that riled her up . . . as though she really is not facing him alone—​as though she is with them” (p. 100). It is hurtful for both Ora and Sami to feel that the other is seeing oneself through the dichotomous categories of “us” and “them” and not as an individual, but awareness of this proves insufficient to make things right. Despite years of friendship, their narrative in-​between—​their mutual sense of “us” that defies the socially available categories of commonality—​ is fragile:  “And she knew, somewhere in the margins of her brain, she remembered, that if she only spoke to him candidly, if she only reminded him with a word, with a smile, of themselves, of the private little culture they had built up over the years, within the roaring and the drumming,” but she is overcome by a painful “desire to subdue him” (p.  136). In her internal dialogue, the empathetic, great-​hearted Ora loses the battle to the proud, cruel Ora, and she falls prey to a similar cultural stereotyping that offended her just a while before: What has he done to you, tell me, other than merely exist? This was all true, Ora retorted to herself, but it made her crazy to see that he could not give in to her even an inch, not even out of basic human courtesy! It’s just not in their culture, she thought. Them and their lousy honor, and their never-​ending insults, and their revenge, and their settling of scores over every little word anyone ever said to them since Creation, and all the world always owes them something, and everyone’s always guilty in their eyes! (pp. 136–​137)

The novel presents as a key ethical challenge the effort to remain oneself, true to one’s own singularity and open to that of others, in the face of a conflict in which both the Israelis and the Palestinians are tormented by hurtful cultural stereotyping. Ora appreciates the way in which Sami “still managed to be himself within all this” (p. 55). She values his goodness, and her sense of the possible includes a keen awareness of how their positions could be, one day, reversed: There were also times when it occurred to her that she was learning from him what she would need to know, one day, if—​or when—​the situation in Israel was reversed, God forbid, and she found herself in his position, and he in hers. That was possible, after all. It was always lurking behind the door. And perhaps, she realized, he thought about that too—​perhaps she was teaching him something by still being herself in all this. (p. 55)

[ 274 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Despite her aspiration to be herself, she clearly fails to be the person she would like to be and feels crushed by her own “stupidity, her failure in the principled and complicated matter of being a gentle human being in this place, in these times” (p. 55). She decides to talk with him properly, about “the roots of my mistake today, the fears and the hatred we both drank with our mothers’ milk,” and thinks that maybe their dialogue hasn’t really even started yet (p. 92). The drive, however, ends in a fight, with Sami cursing both the Jews and the Arabs. Despite all her determinacy, Ora finds herself repeating gestures and choreographies that are not her own and that she reprehends, not only in her relationships with Arabs, but also as a mother taking her child to war: “In every car sits a young boy, the first fruits, a spring festival that ends with a human sacrifice. And you? she asks herself sharply. Look at you, how neatly and calmly you bring your son here, your almost-​only-​son, the boy you love dearly, with Ishmael as your private driver” (p. 63). She hates all aspects of this play they enact, and she despises the euphemisms created by the military to cover up the brutality of their actions: “meetery, they call this, and she thinks in her mother’s voice: barbarians, language-​rapists” (p. 64). Here the Jews are paralleled to the Nazis who created euphemisms for the Holocaust. The mother’s voice in Ora’s mind demonstrates how we are partly constituted by voices we have internalized, and how they are mediated by inherited histories of violence. The novel addresses the question of how our affective responses are shaped by the narrative unconscious—​by culturally mediated models of sense-​making that we draw on without realizing it. It alerts us to how our experiences, gestures, and actions have layers that may not feel our own. In the fraught situation in which Ora and Sami have to live, it is hard not to repeat the emotional and behavioral patterns ingrained in their minds and bodies from early on. Ora feels betrayed and devastated when she realizes how she and her son repeat narrative models that she detests: An even greater treachery, and an intolerable foreignness, resided in his ability to be such a soldier-​going-​to-​war, so able to do his job, so insolent and joyful and thirsty for battle, thereby imposing her role upon her: to be wrinkled and gray, yet glowing with pride (a poor man’s coat of arms: Mother of Soldier). . . . (p. 74) She is not one of those mothers who sends her sons to battle. . . . Yet she is now surprised to discover that that is exactly what she is: she escorted him to the battalion “meetery” and stood there hugging him with measured restraint, so as not to embarrass him in front of his friends, and she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as required, with a proud grin of helplessness at the other parents who were making all the same moves—​where did we learn this

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 275 ]

6 7 2

choreography? And how do I obey it all, obey them, those people who send him there? (p. 80)

What makes her enact this choreography is, to a large extent, the narrative unconscious that her social and cultural situation has bestowed on her. She is not so much confronting here aspects of her narrative unconscious that “have not yet become part of one’s story,” to recall Freeman’s (2010, p. 120) definition, but rather aspects of her being from which she is unable to break free and which create in her a sense of self-​alienation, which the preceding passages of free indirect discourse convey. She finds herself enacting a culturally inherited choreography that she cannot identify with. She feels entrapped and powerless, as if her own moral agency were suspended and taken over by forces beyond her control. Grossman’s novel explores how we are caught in processes that are not of our own design and how we struggle to regain a sense of (narrative) agency in conditions that threaten to reduce us to mere sufferers. Both Ora and Sami respond to their self-​alienating situation by engaging in acts of resistance: Sami by taking the son of an illegal immigrant to a hospital, Ora by refusing to sit home and wait—​to play the part expected of soldiers’ mothers in the game of violence imposed on her. These acts of resistance are vital to them in the historical world in which the conflict with Palestine infiltrates all aspects of their lives. Ora expresses her desperation to escape by asking Sami to drive her to “where the country ends” (p. 133). She wants to run away from the destruction that her country has descended upon her, but ultimately she cannot escape her own life, which unfolds between the disaster in her past and the possible catastrophe of the near future. No matter how much she tries to dissociate herself from the “situation” (p. 54), she is powerless to prevent it from taking hold of her life:  “The general, almost eternal conflict from which she had disconnected herself years ago kept on making its dark circles” (p. 67). She feels that she already lost Adam when he did his military service because children “don’t really come back” from the army:  “Not like they were before. . . . [T]‌he boy he used to be had been lost to her forever the moment he was nationalized—​lost to himself, too” (p. 68). She fears that like Avram at the same age, Ofer’s world of possibilities will be reduced, and he too will return as a diminished soul: “Everything in him looked possible and open and propelled. The future itself lit up his face, from inside and out. And now this operation suddenly comes along” (p. 68). Going away for the long walk, not being there to receive the notifiers, is Ora’s desperate “protest” (p. 94), which she fails to fully understand herself: “if they don’t find her, if they can’t find her, he won’t get hurt. She

[ 276 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

can’t understand it herself. She tries to. She knows it makes no sense, but what does?” (p. 81). It is a frantic struggle against a narrative choreography laid out for her and an attempt to reduce her unbearable complicity to bearable proportions. She feels that if she “agrees to receive notification of her son’s death, thereby helping them bring the complicated and burdensome process of his death to its orderly, normative conclusion, and in some way also giving them the pronounced and definitive confirmation of his death, which would make her, just slightly, an accessory to the crime” (p. 95). But she feels guilt all the same and is full of self-​accusations: “What have I done. I took Ofer to war. I brought him to the war myself. . . . I didn’t stop him. I didn’t even try. . . . With my own hands, I did” (p. 110). Her life becomes a permanent “emergency state” in which the only thing she can do is to stay “constantly in motion” (p. 130). Walking is paralleled to storytelling:  through this double movement, Ora and Avram create their own reality and regain a sense of being in charge of their lives—​or at least of living their own lives—​instead of just waiting, at the mercy of what befalls them.8 This double movement transforms their narrative in-​ between in such a way that makes it possible for them to feel that they are being heard and recognized as unique individuals with agency and transformative power. This non-​subsumptive space follows a logic that forms the polar opposite of the subsumptive, self-​alienating narratives that are imposed on their lives. The novel suggests that subsumptive narratives based on labels such as “enemy” or “terrorist” tend to perpetuate conflicts by masking the singularity of the human experience behind them. For Grossman, the novelist’s task is to bring us face to face with the singularity of human experience and make us see individuals in their uniqueness, so that we can relate to the other’s experience and see its humanness. While general, abstract categories present the world as stable and fixed, the writer can convey a sense of reality in the state of becoming: “when we write, we feel the world in flux, elastic, full of possibilities—​unfrozen” (2008, p. 64). A similar sense of the world in the process of becoming emerges from the dialogues in which the characters weave a shared reality. Both literary and interpersonal storytelling can put the world back in flux, making us alive to how reality is created through speech and action. Grossman suggests that writing can function as a space in which the paralyzing power of memory can be overcome and turned into future-​oriented action: The consciousness of the disaster that befell me upon the death of my son Uri in the Second Lebanon War now permeates every minute of my life. The power of memory is indeed great and heavy, and at times has a paralyzing effect.

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 277 ]

8 72

Nevertheless, the act of writing creates for me a “space” of sorts, an emotional expanse that I have never known before, where death is more than the absolute, unambiguous opposite of life. . . . I write, and the world does not close in on me. It does not grow smaller. It moves in the direction of what is open, future, possible. (2008, pp. 64–​65)

Storytelling functions, for both Grossmann and his characters, as a process of regaining agency in a situation of loss or paralyzing fear of loss.

BEYOND THE DIALOGICAL SELF: TRANS-​S UBJECTIVE BECOMING-​T OGETHER

Dialogical conceptions of the self and subjectivity tend to place the emphasis on intersubjectivity in the sense of what happens between subjects or selves: on how subjects become who they are in a dialogue with one another. We should think of dialogicality, however, not merely in terms of a dialogue between subjects, but more radically: as primary in relation to the subjects who emerge and are transformed in the dialogic space. We become who we are in a dialogic space of possibilities. In thinking about this dialogic space, it is important to take seriously both the possibility of dialogic storytelling that functions as a form of non-​subsumptive understanding and the socially conditioned character of our dialogic engagements. In what follows, I suggest that this entails a need to think beyond intersubjectivity about the trans-​subjective dimension of dialogical encounters and spaces. The dialogic in-​between exceeds the limits of individual psyches. I will address this issue in relation to the embodied nature of the dialogical self and the transformative potential of dialogic storytelling. Foucault provides a useful model for thinking about the primacy of the intersubjective space with respect to individual subjects. When he describes power relations in terms of an “open field of possibilities,” he acknowledges that power is productive and makes available different subject positions and options for action.9 He does not consider, however, how the interaction of the subjects can also change the field of possibilities. His later focus on the “aesthetics of existence,” in turn, comes across as gesturing toward a relatively solitary project of individuals shaping their lives into works of art. To complement this vision, I suggest that we need an aesthetics of co-​ becoming that builds on sustained reflection on how dialogic interaction can transform trans-​subjective spaces in ways that expand our sense of the possible.

[ 278 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

When storytelling is dialogic in the strong sense of embodying what I  have here called the ethos of dialogue, it can be a mode of encounter that has transformative potential. This is what happens between Ora and Avram. Their dialogic transformative experience can be described as an encounter-​event. Bracha L. Ettinger uses this term to characterize an event in which “becoming-​subjectivities” meet and go through what she calls “co-​ transformation-​in-​difference” (2005, p.  705). Such events have creative potential in allowing subjects to become and produce together something singular and unprecedented:  “Co-​ poietic transformational potentiality evolves along aesthetic and ethical unconscious paths: strings and threads, and produces a particular kind of knowledge” (p. 703). Encounter-​events can create new forms of trans-​subjectivity through largely unconscious affectivity: [B]‌y affective, empathic, intuitive and even quasi-​telepathic knowledge and by erotic investment and sensual and perceptive sensitivities . . . I and non-​I are cross-​printing psychic traces in one another and continuously transform their shareable threads and sphere. While continually inspiring one another, I  and non-​I create a singular shared trans-​subjectivity where even traces of each one’s earlier or exterior trans-​subjective co-​emergences . . . influence the newly arising time-​space. (p. 704)

Such a process of co-​emergence or co-​poiesis—​which involves “reaching one another beyond each one’s personal boundaries” (p. 704) and a joint creation of a trans-​subjective space—​describes the processual dynamic of dialogic becoming-​together that would not be possible on one’s own. Ettinger acknowledges the risks in transgressing individual boundaries—​ which can be potentially traumatizing—​but when it happens in a space of “compassionate hospitality,” it can engender “response-​ability in wit(h)nessing,” a form of “ethical working-​through” of trauma (p. 706).10 In To the End of the Land, the non-​subsumptive process of encountering the other—​through exchanging experiences and memories in the back-​and-​forth of telling stories—​is a transformative process in which the subjects (Ora and Avram) create together a singular affective and meaningful trans-​subjective space in an unexpected process of co-​emerging and co-​poiesis. The new space that opens between them makes it possible for them to feel, express, and understand things that they were not able to feel, express, or understand before. It makes it possible for Avram to share and process his traumatic experiences and to listen, for the first time, to Ora’s story of how, after Avram was deserted in the middle of a territory taken

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 279 ]

0 8 2

over by Egyptian soldiers, Ilan set out to rescue him. Avram is baffled and insists that he would never have done the same, to which she responds: “Yes you would have. That’s exactly the kind of thing you would have done.” An act of greatness, she thinks. A misdeed. . . . “And I’ll tell you something else. It was exactly because of everything he’d learned from you over the years that he knew it could be done.” (2010, p. 472)

Ora and Avram engage in co-​telling the traumatic event, and this dialogic process becomes for them a strategy of survival, a shared mode of working through suffering, uncertainty, and guilt, as well as a mode of co-​imagining new narrative identities. Their exchange of stories is linked to a sense of what could have happened and of how grasping unrealized possibilities in the past can open up new possibilities for the future in a dialogic process of imagining the not-​yet. The dialogic encounter with Ora allows Avram to become a father in a sense that he had never been able to experience before and to imagine becoming involved in Ofer’s life. Ora overcomes a sense of impossibility and creates “memories” for Avram: “How could she explain this to Avram? This moment between a mother and her child. Yet she does explain it, right down to the last detail, so he’ll know, so he’ll hurt, so he’ll live, so he’ll remember” (p. 393). Memory is essential for Avram’s process of making Ora’s stories his own. Ora “sees his lips moving, as though he is trying to engrave her words inside him” (p.  306), and when he shows that he remembers, Ora feels that this is the inaugural moment when they are transformed into “Ofer’s parents”: “Always, in any situation, he chose Adam.” “From his first step,” Avram reminds her generously. “That’s right, you remember,” she says happily. “I remember everything.” He reaches out to embrace her shoulders. They walk on that way, side by side, his parents. (p. 384)

“His parents” gives expression to a trans-​subjective being that would not be possible without the dialogic narrative in-​between that they have created and transformed together. Memory is also elemental to the way in which exchanging stories functions for Ora and Avram as a way of reviving the bond between them: “Avram, do you remember us?” (p. 320). As we saw in Chapter 3, Brockmeier shows how narratives often serve primarily the function of “connecting”: narratives can keep alive the “affective fabric” that forms “the common ground

[ 280 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

of a shared life” (2015, pp. 203, 210, 216). Precisely such an affective fabric is integral to what I have called the narrative in-​between. Ora and Avram keep asking “remember?” and through this dialogic reminiscing they both affirm the affective connection they had in the past and continue to build on it and further enrich it in the present. The love and affection that becomes eventually possible in Ora’s and Avram’s transformed in-​between is a complex, multilayered combination of different affective intensities. On a certain level, it is about what Ettinger describes as “deep human compassionate connectivity” (2005, p. 709); it is nourished by compassionate hospitality and generosity and has a healing power. It is also directed toward “the not yet emerged” (p. 709): they expose themselves in their vulnerability to each other as they head together toward an unknown future that is beyond their control. Storytelling as an art of survival is a central theme of To the End of the Land. Ora, Grossman’s Scheherazade, believes that she can keep Ofer alive by telling stories about him. While the novel refrains from revealing what ultimately happens to Ofer, the storytelling in any case makes him alive for the reader and Avram, who get to know him through these stories. Storytelling functions in the novel as an art of survival, first and foremost by bringing Avram back to life, by restoring both his and Ora’s agency, and by giving the two of them a new life as friends and lovers. Like Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau, it suggests that true survival means that one survives as a being capable of moral agency and of giving and receiving love.11 It brings a new dimension to the idea of storytelling as an art of survival by emphasizing how our survival is always fundamentally dependent on the survival of others. Ultimately, we survive or are destroyed as relational beings. Butler articulates this view in relation to the precariousness of human existence: After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a “you” or a set of “yous” without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am. . . . [L]‌ife itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others. . . . If I survive, it is only because my life is nothing without the life that exceeds me, that refers to some indexical you, without whom I cannot be. (2009, p. 44)

Ora not only depends on others; her loved ones are so integral to her narrative identity that she feels she is nothing without them. Through free indirect discourse, the narration conveys to us Ora’s sense of how “without [Avram] she simply did not exist” (Grossman, 2010, p. 239). It is only as a

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 281 ]

8 2

dialogical being that Ora can survive, and she needs Avram in her struggle with the fear of losing Ofer. As Butler writes, we are “undone by each other” as we are “not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them”: passion, grief, and rage “tear us from ourselves, bind us to others, transport us, undo us, implicate us in lives that are not our own” (2004, pp. 23–​25). Ultimately, then, the ethics of implication that emerges from the novel takes the form of an ethics of relationality: it emphasizes how we are, as beings inescapably dependent on one another, both capable of inflicting violence and vulnerable as destructible beings. It gives expression to what Butler describes as the precariousness of our lives as social beings who are thoroughly “dependent on what is outside ourselves, on others, on institutions, and on sustained and sustainable environments” (2009, p. 23): “the subject that I am is bound to the subject I am not, . . . we each have the power to destroy and to be destroyed, and . . . we are bound to one another in this power and this precariousness” (p. 43). Grossman’s novel is a narrative of the complex entanglement of the individual’s life in human relationships and in the broader social world, including its webs of power and violence—​entanglement that erases any clear boundary between the individual and the social. In fact, family functions in the novel as a metaphor for our mutual dependency and for how we ontologically co-​constitute one another: “Ofer is always also Adam, and Ilan, and me. That’s the way it is. That’s a family” (2010, p. 359). This dependency of individual subjectivity on others recalls Freeman’s way of emphasizing that “the Other is the inspiration and primary source” that constitutes us as subjects (2016, p. 148). Our dependency on the intersubjective means both fundamental vulnerability and implicatedness in processes of violence. In the novel, storytelling functions as a form of cultural self-​reflection on both of these aspects of our relationality. It conveys a sense of the simultaneous cruelty and vulnerability of humans and shows how the narratives of those in power are fabulated to cover up the violence inflicted on others. Often the moments of insight are provoked by the perplexion of a child. For example, Ora tells Avram how devastated Ofer was when he first found out where meat comes from: “Then he asked if they take the meat from a cow that’s already dead so it doesn’t hurt her. He was really trying to find some dignified way out of the mess, you see, for me, but somehow also for all humanity” (2010, p. 271). His disbelief opens Ora’s eyes: [T]‌hen he asked me if there are people who kill the cow so they can take her meat. . . . And he stood there and yelled: “You kill her? You kill a cow to take her meat? Tell me! Yes? Yes? You do that to her on purpose?” And at that moment

[ 282 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

I got it. Maybe for the first time in my life I got what it means that we eat living creatures, that we kill them to eat them, and how we train ourselves not to realize that the severed leg of a chicken is sitting on our plate. (p. 272)

Going back to this event triggers in Ora the memory of how her own mother had told her about the concentration camps. She wonders if in both cases telling the child about atrocity had something cruel in it, or “even a bit of gloating,” as if telling Ofer about meat “was also, somehow, his punishment for having joined . . . the game of the human race” (p. 274). The main cruelty that the novel deals with, however, is of course war. To the End of the Land is a powerful antiwar novel that shows how those who wage war try to hide the precariousness of human existence. Butler demonstrates how war is “framed” so as to prevent us from recognizing the people who are to be killed as living fully human and hence “grievable” lives (2009, p. 22). She shows how nations such as the United States and Israel, when they argue that their survival is served by war, commit a “systematic error” of thought “because war seeks to deny the ongoing and irrefutable ways in which we are all subject to one another, vulnerable to destruction by the other, and in need of protection through multilateral and global agreements based on the recognition of a shared precariousness” (p. 43). Grossman’s novel conveys a sense of such precariousness. Ora has been aware of human vulnerability from early on, having lost her soul mate Ada as a child in a traffic accident, but as a mother she becomes even more “keenly aware of how fragile things are,” as she ponders “what the future will bring for the boys and where their lives will lead them” (2010, p. 406). Throughout the narrative, she keeps reflecting on this fragility—​on how easily even the strongest bonds are dissolved:  “How can we both be this paralyzed? How can we disintegrate so quickly?  .  .  .  What’s happening to us? Tell me, explain to me, why can’t we do anything?” (p.  397). Her struggle is to a large extent a struggle to retain agency in the face of the paralyzing feeling of powerlessness. What she ultimately comes to understand and accept is that she cannot affect what happens to Ofer on the frontline: “though she is his mother and he came out of her body, now, at this moment, they are merely two specks floating, falling, through infinite, massive, empty space” (p. 298). The novel as a whole suggests that our narrative agency lies somewhere between the “randomness in everything” (p. 298) and our ability to shape the fabric of the intersubjective world in which we live. The force of Ora’s narrative agency is most evident in her power to bring Avram back to life, but she is also a precarious subject, and the reader feels the tangible

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 283 ]

4 8 2

uncertainty of her future, bound together with Ofer’s fate, which the novel’s ending leaves open. That we need the sense of connection that dialogic storytelling can create and strengthen does not mean, however, that we need a unified narrative in order to survive as agents capable of love or moral action. In terms of the relationship between life and narrative, it is noteworthy that the narratives Ora and Avram exchange do not follow one coherent storyline. They are story fragments that sometimes fit together and sometimes remain in tension. Instead of aspiring to the unity of a narrative quest, Ora and Avram are open to the challenge presented by the other, letting their encounter unsettle their certainties and alter their narrative self-​interpretations. Through the process of co-​telling, they have the power to touch, affect, and disrupt each other, often in very visceral, embodied ways. Dialogic storytelling functions as a process of building a connection, but this connection does not depend on unified narratives. The novel links dialogic storytelling, in multifaceted ways, to embodied experiences of connection. Initially, Ora’s and Avram’s exchange of stories is frequently accompanied by thoughts of physical connection: “She wants to touch his hand, to absorb some of what’s overflowing from him, but she doesn’t dare” (p.  194). Eventually their sense of a deepened connection, receptivity, and fluidity—​the way their souls pour into each other—​also finds physical expression. At the same time, their walking evolves from that of two separate individuals to togetherness through a trans-​subjective becoming-​together:  “They walk side by side, each within himself, yet woven together. Capillary channels burst through Avram constantly as Ora speaks” (p.  303). This creates in Ora a powerful embodied experience of joy that exceeds verbal expression: “She feels like singing, shouting in joy, dancing through the field. The things she is telling him! The things they’re saying to each other!” (p. 303).12 In connection to the process of transforming the narrative in-​between, Grossman’s novel explores the link between dialogic storytelling and the sense of the possible. It suggests that dialogic storytelling animated by the ethos of dialogue can expand our sense of the possible and strengthen our agency when we are able to let the exposure to the other change us. It shows the ethical potential of a narrative space in which the partners of dialogue are open to the other and responsive to the unexpected possibilities that open up in their dialogic encounter. The transformation of Ora’s and Avram’s narrative in-​between palpably expands their sense of the possible:  “Excitement flutters down her body:  .  .  .  for a moment she almost believes that anything is possible on this journey strung along on a thin

[ 284 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

web of oaths and wishes” (p. 278). By presenting storytelling as interaction, as a process of becoming-​together, the novel advocates the ability to be open to the unexpected in the present—​not fixated on living according to a certain narrative, but willing to try out different possibilities that may lead to unexpected futures. In sum, the novel suggests that dialogic storytelling, driven by the ethos of dialogue, can bring together the six interconnected aspects of the ethical potential of storytelling discussed in this book. It links the expansion of the sense of the possible to the ways in which dialogic storytelling opens new possibilities of understanding oneself and others and of enriching the narrative in-​between in ways that unfold new possibilities of being-​in-​relation. Perspective-​taking is integral to dialogic storytelling, as it involves imagining the other’s experience and responding to it. The exchange between the main characters, as well as the novel as a whole, functions as a form of non-​ subsumptive understanding, which grows into ethical inquiry into what makes life worth living. Such inquiry is also part of the process in which Ora, Ilan, and Avram try to decide what life is about and how they should live: “ ‘It’s one hell of a job, this life,’ [Ilan] said. As if from within a dark mine, she said, ‘That’s how I’ve felt for years. Since the war, since Avram’ ” (p. 257). The reader is drawn to participate in the narrative interpretations put forward by the work as a whole as it engages in dialogue with other narratives, including the literary tradition of presenting storytelling as an art of survival. By showing how the relationship between Ora and Avram evolves through their dialogic exchange—​through their ethically significant transformative encounter-​event—​it proposes to the reader that storytelling as genuine dialogue holds the promise of an ethical event, in all six, overlapping senses discussed in this book.

THE POWER AND LIMITS OF STORYTELLING: FALLING OUT OF TIME

While To the End of the Land deals with the terrifying fear of the death of one’s child, Falling Out of Time is a book about unbearable grief following the loss of one’s child. It is also a book that, through its dialogic, lyrical form, addresses both the limits and the power of storytelling at moments when one’s world collapses and words fail. Like countless other parents in his region, Grossman lost his son in war, and after dealing with the desperate fear of such loss in the Israel-​Palestine context in To the End of the Land, in Falling Out of Time he addresses the ways in which loss and grief can disrupt the experience of time and place and take the bereaved to a space that

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 285 ]

8 62

seems to exist “out of time.” It is a book that evades genre descriptions. Written in the form of a hymn, fable, or lyrical play, it is entirely in dialogue (direct speech) and mainly in verse. In an interview, Grossman says that for him “poetry is more the language of grief than prose” (Cooke & Grossman, 2010). This idea shapes the book: “poetry /​is the language /​of my grief” (Grossman, 2015, p. 160). The importance of silence, the unsaid, and the spaces that surround the words is foregrounded in the lyrical work, which not only tells disrupted story fragments and seeks connection through them, but also reflects on the limits of what can be told and shared. The characters of Falling Out of Time are emblematic characters with a mythical quality to them, as in allegories, but at the same time their experiences of pain, loss, and grief are singular. One of them takes on the role of a narrator and observer, who reports what he sees and hears: the Town Chronicler, a former jester of the Duke, who—​after “the disaster befell” him when his daughter drowned—​has been condemned to “walk the streets day and night recording the townspeople’s stories of their children” (p. 110). The protagonist is the Walking Man, whom Edward Hirsch (2014) describes as a “Giacometti sculpture brought to life, a stubborn, wayward figure who paces in widening circles around the village and slowly picks up other distraught, grief-​stricken figures.” These include the Net Mender, the stuttering Midwife, the Cobbler, the Elderly Math Teacher, and Centaur, a writer figure who seeks to work through his pain by putting it into a story. Falling Out of Time opens with the Town Chronicler’s report of how a Man (later to become the Walking Man) is sitting at the dinner table with a Woman, five years after their son’s death. He suddenly thrusts his plate away, his bewildered gaze hovers around the woman, and he announces that he has to go “there.” He can no longer take the paralyzing grief and sets off without knowing where “there” might be. He desperately needs to see their dead son one more time, even as the woman insists that there is no place to go for those who have lost a child: “There’s no such place. There doesn’t exist!” The man replies: “If you go there, it does” (Grossman, 2015, p.  4). The longing for “there” is a desperate response to the tormenting experience of the loved one being both “present and absent” (p. 28), in an unattainable no-​space. For five years, the man and the woman have been suspended “between the living /​and the dead,” “on the gallows of grief” (p. 30). After hovering for years in this mute space between life and death, here and there, the man and the woman start to talk to each other, and the man remembers what life means: I had forgotten: life is in the place where you

[ 286 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

ladle soup under the glowing light. You did well to remind me: we are here and he is there, and a timeless border stands between us. I had forgotten: we are here and he –​ but it’s impossible! Impossible. (p. 6)

Here the sense of the possible has turned into an overwhelming, all-​ encompassing sense of the impossible. The feeling that what one experiences cannot be possible and hence cannot be integrated into one’s life is integral to traumatic experience. The traumatized oscillate between the sense of the impossibility of the traumatic event and the sense of the impossibility of what used to be one’s life. The woman asks the man to “Come back to me, /​to us,” so that they can together “come back /​to life” (pp. 6–​7), but the man replies: No, this is impossible. It’s no longer possible that we, that the sun, that the watches, the shops, that the moon, the couples, that tree-​lined boulevards turn green, that blood in our veins, that spring and autumn, that people innocently, that things just are. (p. 7)

It feels impossible to the man that their son is dead but equally impossible to go back to their old life. The man and the woman recall how the news of the death of their son changed their whole lives in an instant, as if their old life suddenly stopped growing after the last dying moments: “Our prior life

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 287 ]

82

/​kept growing /​inside us /​for a few moments longer. /​Speech, /​movements, /​expressions” (pp. 9–​10). As their souls were “uprooted,” they “fell mute” and “a sombre silence /​fell” (pp. 13–​14). They sought each other and their son in being “mute /​like him” and in learning “to live /​the inverse /​ of life,” “without words, /​without colours” (p. 14). Eventually their world shrinks and diminishes, dwindling into a dot: The world outside shrivelled, sighed, dwindled into a single dot, scant, black, malignant. (p. 19)

They feel trapped in this uninhabitable place, and the woman is convinced that they are forever doomed “to a land of exile” (p. 19). Grossman describes similarly his own experience of grief: The first feeling you have is one of exile. . . . You are being exiled from everything you know. You can take nothing for granted. You don’t recognise yourself. So, going back to the book, it was a solid point in my life. I felt like someone who had experienced an earthquake, whose house had been crushed, and who goes out and takes one brick and puts it on top of another brick. (Cooke & Grossman, 2010)

In Falling Out of Time, several characters experience similar self-​alienation, no longer able to recognize who they are as grief hollows them out:  the Cobbler, for example, feels that there is “no longer anything in me /​of myself that used to be” (p. 111). Everything they are, see, and experience is marked by their loss and a concomitant sense of absence: instead of seeing what is, they see what could have been. The woman asks: “Will I ever again /​see you /​as you are, /​rather than as /​he is not?” (p. 20). Wherever they look, they always see “the empty space /​of him” (p. 22). Every thought and experience takes shape against the backdrop of what is no longer, against the if only of what could have been, of the stories that are now forever disrupted: “all that is /​(oh, my child, /​my sweet, my lost one) –​/​all that is /​will now /​echo /​what is not” (pp. 50–​51). Grossman describes a similar experience in his eulogy to his son Uri: For three days, every thought begins with: “He/​we won’t.” He won’t come. We won’t talk. We won’t laugh. He won’t be that kid with the ironic look in his eyes

[ 288 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

and the amazing sense of humour. He won’t be that young person with understanding deeper than his years. There won’t be that warm smile and healthy appetite. There won’t be that rare combination of determination and gentleness. There won’t be his common sense and wisdom. We won’t sit down together to watch The Simpsons and Seinfeld, and we won’t listen to Johnny Cash, and we won’t feel the strong embrace. (Grossman, 2006)

For the grief-​stricken, the world appears through prematurely disrupted broken stories, too quickly cast into the past tense, instead of through stories that form the dynamic texture of ongoing everyday life in which multiple pathways are open to possible futures. Everyone deals with grief in his or her own way, and for the Walking Man it is through walking that he feels able to share “the vast expanse” that his son’s death created in him: walking is a performative act of giving the grief an expression—​one that signifies for him “not letting go” of his “lonely /​dead /​child” (Grossman, 2015, p. 37). When he walks, he feels like “an unleashed question, /​an open shout //​My son //​If only /​I could /​move /​you /​just /​one /​step” (p. 39). The Town Chronicler’s Wife wonders if “this walk itself is both /​the answer and the question?” (p. 177). The woman, in turn, is afraid that if the man goes “there,” he may not come back, or that he may come back so different that he does not acutally come back (pp. 26–​27). This is one of the important questions undergirding the book: When are we still the same person or the same self? In Chapter 5, I discussed Marya Schechtman’s ideas on how we become a self by affectively identifying with certain aspects of our past. How can one be a self if one only identifies with one’s past, if one’s present life feels like the life of someone else? When the loss of a loved one cuts off one’s old life so that one feels exiled from it, the sheer passing of time can become painful, as the Town Chronicler’s Wife articulates:  “The passing time /​is painful. I  have lost /​the art /​of moving simply, /​naturally, within it. /​I am swept back /​against its flow” (pp. 40–​41). The Walking Man wants to cross the divide and leave those who exist in ordinary time, in the time that he can no longer inhabit, and he believes that his problem is the inability to understand what lies outside time: I seem to understand only things inside time. People, for example, or thoughts, or sorrow, joy, horses, dogs,

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 289 ]

0 9 2

words, love. Things that grow old, that renew, that change. The way I miss you is trapped in time as well. Grief ages with the years, and there are days when it is new, fresh. So, too, the fury at all that was robbed from you. But you are no longer. You are outside of time. How can I explain to you, for even the reason is captured in time. A man from far away once told me that in his language they say of one who dies in war, he “fell.”13 And that is you: fallen out of time (p. 62)

This book, too, has been an attempt to understand different experiences in time, in a historical, temporal world. But the historical world can break down; one can fall out of time. This is when one confronts the limits and failures of narrative understanding: How can one come to terms with experiences for which one’s hermeneutic resources—​the culturally available interpretative tools—​are simply inadequate? Grossman’s answer to this question seems to be an ethos of dialogue and sharing of affect that does not necessarily require words: it can take the form of lived, embodied experience of togetherness, commonality, mutuality, empathy, or solidarity. He acknowledges that mourning can separate and isolate—​condemning “the living /​to the grimmest solitude” (p. 24)—​ but he also shows how it can bind together those who have experienced loss and create a trans-​subjective space in which the loved one continues to live and grief becomes bearable: Sometimes, when we are together, your sorrow grips my sorrow, my pain bleeds into yours, and suddenly the echo of his mended, whole body

[ 290 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

comes from inside us, and then one might briefly imagine –​ he is here. (pp. 32–​33)

Lost ones live in the shared memories, embodied experiences, and narrative imagination of those who remember them. Much of the anguish of the characters in Falling Out of Time stems from their experience of being torn between the need to remember and the pain of the memory. The book suggests that sharing painful memories can make them bearable, as ever new people join the Walking Man. They form a community of walkers with its own collective voice and movement: “They groan and trip and stand, hold on to each other, carry those who sleep, falling asleep themselves” (p. 113). They walk together, “shoulder to shoulder,” “hand in hand” (pp. 113–​114), and in the end they form one sleeping, walking, and talking body: “Sleeping and walking, speaking to one another in their dream, each head leaning on another walker’s shoulder. I do not know who carries whom and what force drives them to walk” (p. 128). In the final section of the book, the walkers speak together as a chorus. They face what they call “the blaze” (p. 106) and a final wall, a “threshold, /​one last line shared both by here /​and there,” where “perhaps, they still can sense /​the very tip, /​just one more hint, /​ the fading embers, slowly dying, /​of the dead” (pp. 133–​134). Falling Out of Time can be read as a book about how to take grief as “the possibility of apprehending a mode of dispossession that is fundamental” to who we are (Butler, 2004, p. 28). It depicts a process of accepting vulnerability—​that we are given over to others on whom our lives depend in ways that we “cannot fully predict or control” (p. 46). The question that drives the narrative forward is how to accept this vulnerability and how to avoid being so attached to the traumatic past that it paralyzes: How to continue living? Responding to this question involves asking, “Who am I?” (p. 148) after the loss of a loved one. The Walking Man observes that his memories of his son “gradually fade” (p. 85) and lose some of their paralyzing grip, and he wonders, addressing his dead son: “Perhaps, /​with remarkable tenderness, /​with your persistent /​wisdom, /​you are preparing me /​ slowly /​for it –​/​I mean, /​for the separation?” (p. 86). Narrative imagination keeps alive, in the present, the memory of the dead, and while the Walking Man fears that he will one day want the son to “fossilise,” to “bleed no more” and “not be /​so awake, so sharp,” precisely the power of imagination to make the lost one “so present” is “maddening” for him (pp.  137–​138). When the walkers start to realize that their dead children really are irrevocably dead, they keep repeating, “It can’t be, it can’t be”—​“It can’t be that it happened to me, it can’t be that these words

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 291 ]

2 9

are true” (p. 140)—​until the fire eats those words and burns them to ashes. Eventually, the Walking Man realizes that a part of him has to die with his son so that he can be “reborn” (p.  152). The transition is marked by the ritual in which the walkers dig graves for themselves and spend a night in the “belly /​of the earth” (p. 177) so that life and death can find an equilibrium in them: through this transformative ritual, they acquire an embodied understanding of how life and death constantly “pour /​and empty each into the other” (p.  178). The Walking Man finally comes to understand that his son is dead: “I know now. /​I now can say –​though /​always in a whisper –​‘The boy /​is dead’. /​I understand, almost, /​the meaning of the sounds: /​the boy is dead. I recognise /​these words as holding truth: /​he is dead. I know. /​Yes, I admit it: he is dead” (pp. 105–​106).14 This acknowledgment is linked to learning “to separate /​memory from the pain, . . . at least in part, . . . so that all the past /​will not be drenched with so much pain. /​ You see, that way I can remember more of you: /​I will not fear the scalding of memory” (pp. 175–​176). This involves learning to separate oneself from the lost one, but “only enough to allow /​my chest to broaden /​into one whole breath” (p. 176). While the oral exchange of story fragments creates an embodied sense of connection among the Walkers, Falling Out of Time also acknowledges that others deal with the experience of loss through writing or reading, like Centaur, the writer: “But if I don’t write it I won’t understand. . . . I cannot understand this thing that happened, nor can I  fathom the person I am now, after it happened. And what’s worse, pencil-​pusher, is that if I do not write it, I cannot understand who he is now either –​my son” (p. 77). It is not just any writing, but in particular writing as storytelling that he needs to engage in, in order to make sense of who he is and what he has experienced: That’s how it is with me, clerko, that’s how I’m built. . . . I can’t understand anything until I write it. . . . I must recreate it in the form of a story! . . . That’s the only way I  can somehow get close to it, to that goddamn it, without it killing me, you know? . . . the thing that struck like lightning and burned everything I had, including the words, goddamn it and its memory. . . . I have to mix it up with some part of me . . . try and make it a bit—​how can I explain this to you?—​a bit mine. (pp. 78–​79)

We encounter here again the idea of storytelling as a form of agency and as an empowering process of making one’s experiences one’s own. The Centaur needs to deal with “it” through stories, so that the characters

[ 292 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

make it budge even one millimetre, that’s enough, so that at least it moves a little on my page, so it twitches, and just makes it not so so impossible to anything. (p. 80)

Here we can see how the narrative prose begins to break down when he tries to utter a painful experience: the sense of the impossible. At the same time, however, his words testify to the potential of stories to make a difference, by moving things in some direction—​and by making, through that movement, something possible that felt impossible. But there are situations, when one is “alone, slowly /​diminishing” (p. 112), in which stories cannot work miracles—​when they fail to expand one’s space of possibilities and can, at most, make the diminishing slightly less unbearable. So the book brings us to the limit of storytelling, to the place where stories both break down and remain, despite everything, more necessary than ever. The stories in Falling Out of Time are wounded story fragments in verse: lyrical stories that abound in absences and silences, undergirded by the presence of what resists telling. The emptiness and absence that the white space around the words conveys give expression to the visceral experience of loss and longing. At the same time, the fragmentation and fragilization of the narrative suggests a letting go of the aspiration to narrative mastery and an acceptance of how the past and the traumatic loss resist sense-​making. The theme of letting go is developed through the journey from the obsessive fixation on going “there” to the learning to be “here.” The yearning for “there” evokes the desperate attempt of Orpheus, in the classical Greek myth, to bring back his lost beloved Eurydice from the Underworld, where she has been cast as a mute shadow: Orpheus turns too soon, impatient to make sure that Eurydice is behind him, only to see her vanish into the Underworld. Similarly, we can never see the past in a way that would amount to having full grasp of it, as Butler articulates with reference to Ettinger’s Eurydice series, to which the cover of my book belongs: If one is to see Eurydice, one must ask about the site of not-​knowing that forms the contour of that experience. . . . One must find the history of what she cannot narrate, the history of her muteness, if one is to recognize her. This is not

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 293 ]

4 9 2

to supply the key, to fill the gap, to fill in the story, but to find the relevant remnants that form the broken landscape that she is. (2006, x)

Butler’s reference to “not-​knowing” and what goes beyond “the story” suggests that she thinks here of knowledge and stories in terms of the subsumptive model, as is typical in poststructuralist thought. Falling Out of Time, in turn, attests to the possibility of non-​subsumptive, lyrical storytelling that creates a space—​“a broken landscape” of sorts—​which invites us to encounter what cannot be fully grasped. Its fragile and fractured storytelling has a powerfully affective effect on the reader’s body and soul, and its lyric qualities draw the reader to a participatory mode that may be more typical of lyric than of narrative dynamic, as Phelan asserts: “Lyric progressions often shift readerly activity from observation and judgment to participation and sharing” (2017, p. 64). With its plethora of voices, all of them speaking directly, without the narrator’s mediation, Falling Out of Time is as polyphonic as narratives can be; integral to the reader’s experience of participation is being cast in the middle of these voices. The dialogue is stammering and faltering, but the need to connect with others is desperate, and so is the search for consolation—​ for words and stories that could function as a means for sufferers to bear their pain together. Even if no such stories are available for the characters at their moment of despair, the book as a whole suggests that in a world of disaster and suffering, writing narratives such as Falling Out of Time can expand the space in which we can connect as creatures united by our shared vulnerability and our capacity for love and loss, grief and longing.

THE ETHOS OF DIALOGUE

This chapter has explored different dimensions of dialogic storytelling, looking into ways in which some forms of storytelling are dialogic in a stronger sense than others. I have suggested, in dialogue with Grossman’s narratives, that dialogic storytelling has not only ontological and epistemological but also ethical significance: it shapes who we are and how we understand ourselves and others, but it also fosters response-​ability—​the ability to be responsibly responsive to the other’s pain—​and can unleash our creative powers. The notion of the ethos of dialogue has been used here to characterize narrative practices particularly animated by such an ethical ambition. Storytelling as social interaction driven by such an ethos functions non-​subsumptively: in it, the self is exposed to the other in willingness to be transformed in the encounter.

[ 294 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

I believe that interdisciplinary narrative studies would benefit from systematically acknowledging the continuum from appropriative subsumptive to non-​subsumptive narrative practices, animated by the ethos of dialogue. Even if it is not always unproblematic to distinguish between subsumptive and non-​subsumptive narratives, the distinction functions as a heuristic that allows us to reflect on that difficulty. The distinction signals an ethically important difference in narrative logics, but we must remember that narrative structures cannot alone determine their ethical effects; what is decisive is the way in which the narratives function in concrete social interaction. Subsumptive narratives, for example, can be reinterpreted non-​subsumptively, or turned against themselves by refusing the subject positions they provide us with, as when Ora refuses the role of the soldier’s mother who waits obediently and patiently at home for news. Whether narratives function subsumptively or not is ultimately a question that must be evaluated contextually, looking at what narratives do to us and what we do with them as we engage with them in specific situations. The two narratives analyzed in this chapter remind us of the diversity of narrative forms and functions. The analysis suggests that lyrical narration (as in Falling Out of Time) can sometimes succeed best in creating a sense of connection and of visceral affectivity, in the face of inexpressible loss and grief. Both narratives by Grossman are about regaining agency and a fluid connectedness through storytelling in a situation in which a vulnerable subject is reduced—​or facing the threat of being reduced—​to a mere sufferer. They are, in a sense, counter-​narratives to stories of silencing, and they provide a mirror image of Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau, a narrative of what the incapacity to share experiences through storytelling does to a person (see Chapter 4). We must remember, however, that Ora is in a position of privilege: a middle-​aged, middle-​class woman who belongs to the more powerful part of the population, even though she is placed in a vulnerable position through the prospect of losing her son. Franck’s Helene, in contrast, belongs to a persecuted part of the population, facing even fewer choices. These two mothers, however, are not merely representatives of an ethnic or social group; they are individuals, vulnerable in their specific ways, as they face a difficult situation and act upon it in their own desperate manner. This chapter has suggested that the ethos of dialogue plays a crucial role in unleashing the ethical potential of storytelling—​in all six senses discussed in this book. At the same time, it has reflected on the limits of narrative sense-​making. Narratives cannot work miracles: they cannot bring the dead back to life, and they cannot keep those on the frontline safe. On the other hand, however, they also do sometimes make possible miracles of sorts. In both of Grossman’s narratives, vulnerable subjects paralyzed by

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 295 ]

6 9 2

grief, torture, loss, or fear are brought back to life through the connections that stories weave between souls. In line with Freeman’s view that psychology should make room for a “poetics of the Other” (2014b, p.  222), I  would suggest that in thinking about the dialogicality and relationality of the subject, both in narrative psychology and more widely across the humanities and social sciences, we should continue to develop a language that articulates the fundamental dependency of the self on the other. Also, more attention should be paid to the sociohistorical forces that condition the dialogical formation of subjectivities, to the ways in which sociocultural webs of meaning only exist through being dialogically interpreted by individuals in concrete situations, and to the transformations of trans-​subjective spaces to which dialogical encounter-​events can give rise. Dialogic storytelling is not just a constituent of all narrative practices, but also a regulative idea toward which we can strive in our efforts to be more sensitive and open to the otherness of others, more responsive and alive to what can happen in unexpected encounters, and more keenly aware of both our complicities and our vulnerabilities as beings fundamentally dependent on one another. Such an ethos of dialogue is ever more needed in the current world, when globalization increases mutual dependencies, forced migration creates a responsibility for the privileged parts of the world to address the call of those in need, and the discourse of hatred promoted by populist racist movements attempts to numb us to that responsibility. This chapter has refined the notion of the sense of the possible by reminding us of the need to acknowledge how it is inseparable from a sense of the impossible. One’s sense of the possible is radically diminished when loss and disaster render impossible what used to be one’s life. At the same time, we need to be alert to how dialogic encounter-​events can create new dialogic spaces of possibilities that can have healing and transformative power. What we need is more reflection on how to create conditions for such life-​enhancing encounter-​events that strengthen the capacity of vulnerable subjects to function as moral agents capable of receptivity and openness to the other.

NOTES 1. In an interview, Grossman describes how he goes to weekly demonstrations with his children: “They come with me every week to the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah [in east Jerusalem]. We are demonstrating against settlers taking over houses in Palestinian neighbourhoods, but it’s a kind of weekly reserve service

[ 296 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

against the occupation, too. Sometimes, it gets violent. Some weeks ago, we were beaten by the police” (Cooke & Grossman, 2010). 2. As Anne Golomb Hoffman observes, the camera lens functions here “not to connect two people, but to objectify one at the hands of the other” (2012, p. 55). 3. An example of Ora’s internal dialogue with her construction of Avram: “There you go again smiling, she thinks at Avram. Be careful, otherwise it might stick. Incidentally, I do appreciate your smiles, don’t hold back. At home I didn’t see much of them from my three wiseacres. . . . She wants to tell him: You know, Ofer has a laugh exactly like yours. Like a kookaburra in rewind. She hesitates. Your laugh? That one you used to have? She doesn’t even know how to phrase it. She almost asks: Do you still laugh that way sometimes, until tears run from your eyes? . . . Do you laugh at all?” (pp. 303–​304). 4. On the references of the novel to Israeli and Hebrew literary and mythological traditions, see Mintz (2013). 5. On the centrality of the element of voice in the novel, see Ben-​Dov (2013). 6. The emphasis on storytelling as showing recurs throughout the narrative. The narrator stresses that when Ora tells Avram about Ofer, she “shows him to Avram” (p. 310). 7. However, there are, of course, exceptions: Sunil Bhatia, for example, is a narrative psychologist who productively combines a dialogical and a sociocultural approach (see, e.g., 2007). 8. Throughout the novel, it is emphasized that for Ora, walking and writing are both forms of agency that make her feel safe: “when she writes she doesn’t have to keep walking and moving. Her whole body knows it: When she writes, when she writes about Ofer, she and Avram don’t need to run away from anything” (p. 262). 9. For Foucault, power can only be exercised over subjects insofar as they “are faced with a field of possibilities in which several kinds of conduct, several ways of reacting and modes of behavior are available” (2000, p. 342). 10. Ettinger considers this to be crucial to art, which she conceptualizes as “a compassionate encounter-​event of prolonged generosity” (2005, p. 707) and as a “transport-​station of trauma,” but she acknowledges that artwork cannot “promise that passage of remnants of trauma will actually take place in it; it only supplies the space for this occasion” (p. 711). See also Ettinger (2006). 11. Hoffman observes that Ora and Avram frequently use the Hebrew word mesugal, which means “to be capable of,” “to acknowledge their sense of their own limitations” but also to indicate that they are “capable or incapable of taking in and absorbing images, memories, and experiences, their own and those of others”: “We realize that this receptivity—​the ability to receive another person’s story or to recognize one’s own—​is really an active capacity” (2012, pp. 57–​58). 12. On the central role of embodiment in Grossman’s oeuvre, see Hoffman (2013). 13. This expression can be found in many languages, including English, French, German, and Finnish. 14. The same words are repeated on p. 192, which gives them particular weight and pregnancy.

T r a n s f or m i n g t h e N a r r at i v e I n - B e t w e e n  

[ 297 ]

8 92

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion Struggles over the Possible

T

his book has explored the power of storytelling to expand and diminish the space of possibilities in which we fashion our lives. In this world where violence and justice are unequally distributed, struggles over narrative agency are struggles over the possible. While oppressive narrative identities are imposed on some, others are encouraged to imagine ways to best fulfill their creative potential. The most vulnerable are reduced to damaging silence; the most powerful voice stories that change the world. This unequal distribution of possibilities emerges forcefully from the narratives analyzed in the preceding chapters, in which vulnerable subjects struggle to maintain their narrative agency in the face of atrocity, and implicated subjects in divergent positions draw on culturally mediated narrative practices to justify their actions and inactions. The discussed literary and autobiographical texts have demonstrated both the ontological significance of narratives—​how we are constituted as storytelling beings—​and how, despite the claim of some narrativists, stories are not inherently ethically beneficial. Throughout this book, we have seen how narratives function as a means of indoctrination and resistance, how they reinforce traumatizing processes, and how they empower us to imagine new identities and modes of relationality. Narratives can lead us to repeat harmful emotional patterns that we have blindly inherited from our family and cultural traditions, and they can engage us in reinventing the world together with others. I  have proposed here hermeneutic narrative ethics as a framework that provides analytical resources for studying and

03

evaluating both oppressive and empowering narrative practices, and for moving beyond arguments over whether narrative benefits or harms us, by looking at how narrative practices are used and abused in specific cultural contexts. The analyzed narratives stir both hope and caution: they suggest that while even the most desperate situations usually contain a possibility of resistance, stories—​even the most powerful—​are limited in terms of what they can achieve. The narratives examined in this book bring us to the limits of storytelling from a range of perspectives. They are self-​reflexive narratives that reflect not only on the ethical potential of storytelling, but also on the powerlessness of narrative fiction to save the characters from the social and historical worlds in which their lives are entangled. Franck depicts how an affectionate person, whose narrative imagination is nourished by books shared by her beloved, turns, in a society that denies her right to exist, into a mute mother whose capacity for moral agency and human intimacy is eroded to the point of annihilation. Reading Remarque’s antiwar novel fails to ignite Grass’s powers of doubt, and Littell’s SS officer reads Orestes but is unable to see himself re-​enact the myth. Grossman’s Avram and Ilan thrive on the literary works they grow up sharing, but these neither save Avram from the hands of the torturers nor help him overcome the trauma: we witness how even the most vivid narrative imagination shuts down when the human bond is severed beyond repair. At the same time, however, these narratives also attest to the ethical potential of storytelling in all the six senses articulated in this book, even if in none of these senses is it realized without complications. To revisit these six aspects, first, the guiding idea of this book has been that an ethically crucial question is whether narrative practices in different cultural contexts expand or diminish the space of possibilities of people taking up divergent subject positions. Nazi Germany exemplifies a historical world in which possibilities were exceptionally unevenly distributed, and the same narrative practices, such as the Nazi narrative of “Aryans” as a “chosen people” and of Jews as “vermin,” implied drastically different consequences for the space of possibilities of different parts of the population. The analysis suggests that literary and autobiographical narratives can expand our sense of the possible by contributing to our historical imagination in four interconnected ways: they can convey a sense of a past world as a space of possibilities in which certain modes of thought, experience, and action were possible and others difficult or impossible; they can cultivate our sense of how history is an open process that is not predetermined and that consists in our everyday actions and inactions; they can contribute to our understanding of how our interpretations of the past shape our space

[ 300 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

of possibilities in the present; and they can address the duty to remember through an ethics of implication that shows how the legacy of past violence places obligations on us in the present and for the future. The analyzed narratives contrast the blind perpetuation of the narrative unconscious (such as that defined by the Nazi ideology) with the way in which dialogic storytelling enables individuals to thrive and to narratively imagine possible selves, relationships, and futures. Second, narratives shape both personal and cultural self-​understanding in ways that are not ethically neutral. They can help us see ourselves more clearly—​as individuals and communities—​or they can be abused for violent political purposes as a means of indoctrination (as Grass describes in his autobiography) or self-​deception (as Littell shows through the Nazi discourse of self-​legitimation). In the analyzed narratives, it is evident that self-​understanding on both individual and collective levels takes shape in relation to what is other than self. They foreground, in different ways, the limits of narrative self-​understanding:  the way in which, due to our historical and cultural situatedness, we can only become partially aware of our own presuppositions, narrative unconscious, and habits of identification and sense-​making, and much of what we do and who we are remains beyond our consciousness and articulative capacities. At the same time, they present themselves as works that can potentially contribute to cultural self-​understanding, including our understanding of the ethically complex roles of narratives in our lives. They suggest not only that engagement with the legacy of the Holocaust remains integral to our cultural self-​understanding, but also, more broadly, that we should shift our understanding of autobiographical and life-​writing in a more sociocultural direction, emphasizing how our identities are shaped by our embeddedness in and our understanding of broader historical processes and cultural narrative webs. Third, we have seen that there are different logics of narrative and that it is ethically decisive whether narratives follow a subsumptive or non-​ subsumptive logic. Narrative hermeneutics challenges the dominant subsumption model of (narrative) understanding and articulates how storytelling can function as a non-​totalizing, non-​subsumptive mode of understanding the other in his or her singularity, particularly insofar as it foregrounds the temporal process of engagement with the narrated experiences, acknowledges the limits of narrative understanding, and is animated by an ethos of dialogue. In response to thinkers who consider narrative per se to be ethically problematic, I have suggested that narrative as a temporal process of reinterpretation that reflects on its own interpretative nature and limits is, ethically speaking, very different from attempts

Conclusion 

[ 301 ]

0 23

at narrative mastery that conceal their own nature as narratives—​as perspectival interpretations that can always be contested and told otherwise. The analyzed narratives show how subsumptive and non-​subsumptive narrative practices are linked to naturalizing and self-​reflexive narrative strategies. While naturalizing narrative strategies tend to function subsumptively under the pretense of value-​free knowledge and thereby participate in reifying human symbolic systems, self-​reflexive narratives tend to function non-​subsumptively, in an explorative mode that is open to change and that reflects on its own cultural mediatedness. Fourth, we have seen that the inter-​and trans-​subjective narrative in-​ betweens—​that both bind people together and separate them—​shape the space of possibilities of individuals, couples, families, and larger communities. Stories are about connections, and they create connections not only between experiences and events, but also between people who share stories. One important way in which dialogic storytelling can expand our sense of the possible is by transforming the narrative in-​betweens in ways that establish trans-​subjective spaces for new encounter-​events, which open new possibilities of being-​in-​relation. Nazi Germany, in contrast, is an extreme example of a mythological narrative in-​between in which narratives of “us” and “them” led to the annihilation of the latter. As beings fundamentally dependent on one another, we need to build together more inclusive narrative in-​betweens that also expand the space of possibilities of the most vulnerable subjects, who are structurally disadvantaged in struggles over the possible. Fifth, essential to the sense of the possible is the cultivation of what I have called perspective-​awareness, which entails the ability to perceive the world and particular situations from a variety of perspectives and the recognition that one’s own perspective is only one among many. The preceding analyses have suggested that perspective-​taking should be understood not merely in terms of putting oneself in the other’s shoes, but as a process of entering into a dialogic relation with another mode of experience without letting go of one’s own values and beliefs. Such dialogic perspective-​ taking not only allows critical challenging of problematic perspectives, but also engenders awareness of one’s own preconceptions and of alternatives to them. Engaging with the dark moments of history can develop our narrative imagination in ethically valuable ways that might teach us something about ourselves that we might not otherwise be able to see. I have drawn particular attention to the narrative dynamic that invites readers to be emotionally engaged with an ethically problematic life-​world so that even when immersing themselves in that world, they retain the ability—​ and are encouraged—​to view it critically and in such a way that also sheds

[ 302 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

light on their own historical world. Self-​reflexive narratives not only enrich the variety of culturally available narratives, in dialogue with which we can reinterpret and reimagine our lives, they can also promote awareness of the multitude of perspectives from which the world can be looked at, of how each narrative is told from a certain limited, ethically and politically charged perspective, and of how every story can be and often needs to be told anew from a different angle. Polyphonic, dialogical narratives are more likely to increase our perspective-​awareness, whereas monological narratives risk impeding such awareness by pretending that they simply mirror—​rather than interpret—​reality. Sixth, I have suggested that while many cultural narrative practices perpetuate the dominant social order and conventional morality through naturalizing narrative strategies, self-​reflexive literary and autobiographical narratives can function as a mode of ethical inquiry that provokes critical reflection on culturally dominant moral conceptions and prejudices. The narratives I have analyzed engage in complex reflection on the power and limits of storytelling and on the significance of narrative for who we are. They suggest that narratives do not make us better people or corrupt us by exerting power on us in any unilateral way; instead, they provide us with a space for ethical reflection. What happens in the encounter with new narratives is an interpretative feat. At best, encountering a literary narrative becomes a transformative encounter-​event in which our world and the world of the text are brought into a dialogue that challenges our pre-​ understandings and nuances our theoretical frameworks. As forms of ethical inquiry, the analyzed narratives have conveyed, directly or indirectly, an ethos of dialogue and a conception of subjectivity that emphasizes our fundamental vulnerability and dependency on one another. They suggest that we survive or perish as relational, interdependent beings, whose capacity for moral agency and affective reciprocity is fragile. Both the hope and the caution that hermeneutic narrative ethics stirs are linked to the dialogicality of narrative and subjectivity. We have seen that narrative hermeneutics perceives the relationship between cultural narrative models and the individuals who make sense of their experiences in light of them as fundamentally dialogical, so that narrative models do not determine how we act and understand ourselves and others, although they condition us and set limits on our space of experience and thought. There is hope because symbolic systems inherently encompass the possibility of reinterpretation, reorientation, and resistance. The process of retelling—​ of reinterpreting culturally mediated narrative models in the context of concrete life situations—​includes the possibility of telling otherwise, in

Conclusion 

[ 303 ]

4 0 3

ways that resist and challenge dominant sense-​making practices. Ethically relevant is whether narratives invite us, through an ethos of dialogue, to such retelling—​to a plurality of different versions and reinterpretations—​ or pretend, through naturalizing strategies, to be the only possible version. In the latter case, narratives are less likely to empower us and more likely to be abused as vehicles of manipulation. The dialogical conception of narrative and subjectivity cautions us against individualist, solipsist, principlist ethics by reminding us of our primordial dependency on our relationships with others and their stories. In order to survive in the fullest sense—​and beyond that, to flourish and to fulfill our potential—​we need others and their stories, and this makes us fundamentally vulnerable. Instead of seeing this as a problem, we should embrace our vulnerability as a basic condition of being human, and we should continue to reflect on its political implications. In these dark times, in this globalized world of mutual dependencies—​in the current age of terror, displacement, global warming, and the rise of populist, nationalist, and right-​wing extremist movements—​the need to perceive the world from a plurality of perspectives is as acute as ever. For a dialogue to take place, the participants must be able to imagine the world of the other as a world that—​although different from one’s own—​ is nevertheless a human world (or, in the case of non-​human others, a world of experience and suffering). The culturally dominant narratives that circulate in the media rarely foster such dialogue; all too often they perpetuate, instead, the narratives of conflict between the East and the West, the Islamic and the Christian world, or the “free” and the “unfree” world. Yet precisely in this situation, it is pivotal to engage imaginatively with what the dominant cultural narratives demonize and portray as the evil other. Such engagement can generate critical awareness of—​and provide us with hermeneutic resources for resisting—​the narrative imaginaries that perpetuate the uneven distribution of possibilities in the contemporary world. This book has aspired to show how a sense of history has far-​reaching ethical consequences. Cultural conflicts are frequently predicated on a lack of in-​depth understanding of the sociohistorical worlds from within which the “others” make their choices and develop their basic beliefs. Our sense of ethics is often too abstract and detached from the worlds and concrete situations in which people act, as well as from the narrative webs that are a constitutive dimension of these worlds. Much of the ethical power of the art of storytelling stems from the way it can help us imagine, in more concrete terms, ethical situations and spaces of possibilities of actors of ethical conflicts.

[ 304 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

Narrative fiction that questions the adequacy of the perpetrator–​victim dichotomy in dealing with traumatic histories is currently trying to shift our cultural narrative imagination away from the tendency to deal with evil by simply demonizing the perpetrators, whether Nazis or terrorists. It provides us with resources to analyze social and cultural mechanisms that produce violence and to recognize the ways in which we ourselves are complicit in perpetuating the conditions of possibility for the unequal distribution of vulnerability and narrative agency. It is precisely this kind of self-​reflection that the narratives of Franck, Grass, Littell, and Grossman provoke—​by inviting us to engage with the experiential world of implicated subjects entangled in complex histories of violence. These narratives are about storytelling, but they are also inextricably stories of silence. The interplay between storytelling and silence is woven into their fabric so intimately that one does not exist without the other. Franck’s Helene is reduced to a muteness in which the inability to tell her own story amounts to the inability to continue her life as a mother; Grass, after devoting his entire adult life to depicting the damaging silence in postwar Germany, finally confronts his own silence in his autobiography; Littell describes blindness that is also muteness—​an inability to articulate aspects of the traumatic past—​and provokes readers to confront what the victors of history keep silent; Grossman explores the struggle against devastating silence that surrounds trauma and loss. Like Franck’s Helene, Eurydice is mute, but Bracha L. Ettinger’s paintings (like the one on the cover of this book) create a space in which we can engage with her story, and if we are able to engage with it in a non-​subsumptive, dialogical way that does not strive for narrative appropriation, then we may see Eurydice and be affected by her. Butler articulates such a dynamic: We lost Eurydice because we sought too quickly to know that she was behind us, and the look that seeks to know, to verify, banished her yet more fully into the past. And yet, in Bracha’s tableaux, the image is still there, coming toward us, fading away, a moment frozen in its doubleness, layered, fractured, filtered. The suspension of time conditions the emergence of a space that suspends the sequential ordering of time. . . . We see Eurydice, but she does not belong to us at the moment that we see her. And because she does not belong to us, she comes forth. . . . (2006, pp. x–​xi)

As only the gaze that does not seek to grasp can see Eurydice, only storytelling that does not aspire to subsumptive appropriation can create an ethical, dialogic space for connection, recognition, and becoming-​together. Like other forms of art, storytelling, too, can be an activity of building a

Conclusion 

[ 305 ]

6 0 3

space for non-​subsumptive engagement with what is other. As dialogic storytellers—​beings affected and shaped by one another’s stories—​we need to foster narrative practices that contribute to more inclusive narrative in-​betweens that have space for even the most vulnerable to thrive. I have delineated here an ethics of storytelling that cautions us against subsumptive narrative logic and is fiercely committed to promoting non-​ subsumptive dialogic narrative practices. It reflects on how to move from a sense of the (im)possible that is imposed on us by narratives that harm and diminish us to a sense of the possible that we cherish and expand in dialogic encounters with others. While dominant models of narrative tend to see storytelling as a form of representing, capturing, or appropriating, we need to expand our thinking on narrative to include both ethically valuable and problematic practices and to acknowledge that narrative often functions—​particularly in the context of literary fiction—​as a mode of engaging with what we do not know or understand, what perplexes us, unravels us, moves us viscerally and unexpectedly. The (non-​subsumptive) ethos of dialogue and relationality of hermeneutic narrative ethics envisions a narrative agency that is not one of trying to impose one’s narratives onto others, but rather one that is sensitive to the multitude of perspectives from which the world is looked at, receptive to the stories of others, and attentive to how they implicate us. Instead of urging us to impose narrative order on the flux of the real, this ethos attunes us to reflect on how we could be open and alive to the change, fluidity, and transformative energies around us. It supports practices of sharing stories in ways that help us reinvent our lives in dialogic relations with others, by looking at the world from the perspective of both difference and commonality. Time and again, we have been reminded that nothing in narratives guarantees the actualization of their ethical potential. Narratives are easily abused if they are framed as an objective rendering of reality; in the guise of the discourse of truth, they can violently categorize people, reinforce the repetition of harmful emotional and behavioral patterns, and shut down conversation instead of opening it up. For this reason, it is pivotal for the ethics of storytelling to acknowledge the hermeneutic structure of narratives:  that they are culturally mediated (re)interpretations of experience and hence can always be contested and told otherwise. Only narratives that are aware of their own interpretative nature are likely to foster our dialogic narrative imagination by actively welcoming a plurality of interpretations. As beings fundamentally dependent on one another, we rely on each other in our struggles over the possible. My possibilities are not independent of your possibilities, and hence we need to build our spaces of possibilities together. Global warming and the impending ecocatastrophe is a

[ 306 ]  The Ethics of Storytelling

salient example of how the narrative imaginaries that shape our spaces of possibilities need to be transformed in ways that make this planet habitable for all of us. The struggle over the possible cannot be the struggle of individual actors and sufferers, but a joint struggle on a shared planet. Life is a messy affair in which every individual story is entangled in complex ways in other people’s stories, and it is ultimately only as dialogic storytellers that we can find new directions for our stories. As storytelling animals, we are constantly engaged in the process of imagining where we have come from, who we could become, and what kind of world we will co-​inhabit. In this process we need to think beyond our personal pasts and engage with the cultural narrative unconscious—​the cultural webs of narratives that orient our sense-​making practices without our awareness—​in order to expand our narrative imagination: our ability to creatively reinterpret, transcend, and enrich the culturally available repertoire of narrative sense-making models, and to imagine different forms of life, modes of experience, and possibilities of becoming-​together. Such engagement can elicit critical awareness of the taken-​for-​granted values that structure our narrative unconscious, so that we can prevent them from simply affecting us behind our backs, or restricting the dialogue that we conduct with imaginative variations of how our lives could unfold and of the futures we might build as communities. It is only as dialogic storytellers that we can achieve a trans-​subjective transformation of the relationship between our narrative unconscious and our narrative imagination. As an exploration into the realm of the possible, narrative fiction can contribute to such transformation: particularly self-​reflexive literary narratives can engender awareness of the narrative webs imposed on us, provide hermeneutic resources for analyzing the ways in which different narrative practices function in our lives, and nourish an ethos of dialogue that makes us more responsive to one another’s wounds and vulnerabilities, as well as to the ways in which we are implicated in violent histories that we have inherited—​histories in which we silently or actively participate, or against which we struggle. Narratives driven by such an ethos have the potential to create a trans-​subjective narrative in-​between that opens up pathways to less violent futures. There are no guarantees that they have such ethical effects. But when they do, this is importantly due to their power to expand our sense of the possible through the dialogic narrative imagination that animates our engagements with the past, the present, and the not-​yet. It is this power that cultivates our sensitivity to the unexplored possibilities for dialogic encounters lying hidden within the actual—​our sense of how “[e]‌very journey conceals another journey within its lines:  the path not taken and the forgotten angle” (Winterson, 2001, p. 9).

Conclusion 

[ 307 ]

8 0 3

REFERENCES

Abbott, H. Porter. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Adams, Jenni. 2011. “Reading (as) Violence in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones.” Holocaust Studies 17 (2–​3), 27–​50. Adams, Jenni. 2013. “Introduction.” In Representing Perpetrators in Holocaust Literature and Film, edited by Jenni Adams & Sue Vice, pp. 1–​9. Middlesex & Portland: Vallentine Mitchell. Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. Negative Dialectics (Negative Dialektik, 1966), translated by E. B. Ashton. London: Continuum. Adorno, Theodor W. 1981. Prisms, translated by Samuel Weber & Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Adorno, Theodor W. 1998. “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit” (1959). Gesammelte Schriften. Band 10.2: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft II. Darmstadt: WBG, 555–​572. Adorno, Theodor, & Max Horkheimer. 1998. Dialektik der Aufklärung. Gesammelte Schriften. Band 5 (1944). Darmstadt: WBG. Albeck, Joseph H., Sami Adwan, & Dan Bar-​On. 2002. “Dialogue Groups: TRT’s Guidelines for Working Through Intractable Conflicts by Personal Storytelling.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 8 (4), 301–​322. Alber, Jan, Henrik Skov Nielsen, & Brian Richardson (eds.). 2013. A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C., Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser, & Piotr Sztompka (eds.). 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Allen, Amy. 2008. The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Althusser, Louis. 2014. On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Sur la reproduction, 1995), translated by G. M. Goshgarian. London: Verso. Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London & New York: Verso. Andrews, Molly. 2014. Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Andrews, Molly, Corinne Squire, & Maria Tamboukou. 2013. “Introduction.” In Doing Narrative Research. 2nd edition, edited by Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, & Maria Tamboukou, pp. 1–​26. London: Sage Publications.

0 31

Andrews, Molly, Corinne Squire, & Maria Tamboukou (eds.). 2013. Doing Narrative Research. 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. Apollinaire, Guillaume. 1982. “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1918). In The Avant-​ Garde Tradition in Literature, edited by Richard Kostelanetz, pp. 7–​15. New York: Prometheus Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1968a. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. London: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1968b. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace. Arendt, Hannah. 1976. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harvest Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1994. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). Revised and enlarged edition. London: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition (1958). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aristotle. 1984. “Nicomachean Ethics.” In The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Arnold, Heinz Ludwig. 1971. “Gespräch mit Günter Grass.” In Text + Kritik: Zeitschrift für Literatur, 1/​1a: Günter Grass, edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold, pp. 1–​26. München: Richard Boorberg Verlag. Asholt, Wolfgang. 2012. “A German Reading of the German Reception of The Kindly Ones.” In Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, edited by Aurélie Barjonet & Liran Razinsky, pp. 221–​238. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Assmann, Aleida. 2013. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Assmann, Aleida. 2018. “The Empathetic Listener.” In Storytelling and Ethics: Historical Imagination in Contemporary Literature and Visual Arts, edited by Hanna Meretoja & Colin Davis, pp. 203–​218. London & New York: Routledge. Badiou, Alain. 2012. In Praise of Love (Éloge de l’amour, 2009), translated by Nicolas Truong. London: Serpent’s Tail. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, translated by Caryl Emerson. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, translated by Vern McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakthin, Mikhail. 1993. Towards a Philosophy of the Act, translated by Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bamberg, Michael, & Alexandra Georgakopoulou. 2008. “Small Stories as a New Perspective in Narrative and Identity Analysis.” Text & Talk 28 (3), 377–​396. Barnwell, Ashley. 2017. “Identity Hoaxes and the Complicity of Social Authorship.” In Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience, edited by Brian Schiff, A. Elizabeth McKim, & Sylvie Patron, pp. 99–​117. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Bar-​On, Dan. 1999. The Indescribable and the Undiscussable: Reconstructing Human Discourse after Trauma. Budapest: Central European University Press. Barrett-​Lennard, Godfrey T. 1981. “The Empathy Cycle: Refinement of a Nuclear Concept.” Journal of Counseling Psychology 28 (2), 91–​100. Barthes, Roland. 1957. Mythologies. Paris. Seuil.

[ 310 ] References

Barthes, Roland. 1982a. “Structural Analysis of Narratives” (1966). In Image/​Music/​ Text, translated by Stephen Heath, pp. 79–​124. Glasgow: Fontana. Barthes, Roland. 1982b. A Barthes Reader, edited by Susan Sontag, translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang. Batson, Daniel C. 2009. “Two Forms of Perspective Taking: Imagining How Another Feels and Imagining How You Would Feel.” In Handbook of Imagination and Mental Simulation, edited by Keith D. Markman, William M. P. Klein, & Julie A. Suhr, pp. 267–​279. New York: Psychology Press. Batson, Daniel C. 2011. Altruism in Humans. New York: Oxford University Press. Battersby, James. 2006. “Narrativity, Self, and Self-​representation.” Narrative 14 (1), 27–​44. Beauvoir, Simone de. 1976. The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press. Beck, Ulrich. 2014. “We Do Not Live in an Age of Cosmopolitanism but in an Age of Cosmopolitanization: The ‘Global Other’ Is in Our Midst.” In Ulrich Beck, edited by Ulrich Beck, pp. 169–​187. Dordrecht & London: Springer. Beevor, Antony. 2009. “The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell.” The Times, February 20. https://​www.thetimes.co.uk/​article/​ the-​kindly-​ones-​by-​jonathan-​littell-​dx99wdc02gv Ben-​Dov, Nitza. 2013. “Voices of War, Illness, and Dream.” Hebrew Studies 54, 287–​298. Benhabib, Seyla. 1999. “Sexual Difference and Collective Identities: The New Global Constellation.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 24 (2), 335–​361. Benhabib, Seyla. 2002. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. “The Storyteller” (1936). In Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn, pp. 83–​107. London: Pimlico. Bennett, Jill. 2005. Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bergen, Benjamin K. 2012. Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning. New York: Basic Books. Berger, Peter, & Thomas Luckmann. 1987. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966). London: Penguin Books. Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC, & London: Duke University Press. Bertau, Marie-​Cécile, Miguel M. Gonçalves, & Peter T. F. Raggatt (eds.). 2012. Dialogic Formations: Investigations into the Origins and Development of the Dialogical Self. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Bhatia, Sunil. 2007. American Karma: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Indian Diaspora. New York: New York University Press. Bloch, Ernst. 1996. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 1, translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, & Paul Knight. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bogue, Ronald. 1999. Deleuzean Fabulation and the Scars of History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bohanek, Jennifer G., Robyn Fivush, Widaad Zaman, Caitlin E. Lepore, Shela Merchant, & Marshall P. Duke. 2009. “Narrative Interaction in Family Dinnertime Conversations.” Merrill-​Palmer Quarterly 55, 488–​515. Booth, Wayne C. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Booth, Wayne C. 1988. The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

References  [ 311 ]

231

Borradori, Giovanna. 2003. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Habermas and Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bourne, Craig. 2006. A Future for Presentism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bowie, Andrew. 1997. From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory. London: Routledge. Boyd, Brian. 2009. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brah, Avtar, & Ann Phoenix. 2004. “Ain’t I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 5 (3), 75–​86. Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a Feminist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brockmeier, Jens. 2009. “Reaching for Meaning: Human Agency and the Narrative Imagination.” Theory and Psychology 19 (2), 213–​233. Brockmeier, Jens. 2013. “Fact and Fiction: Exploring the Narrative Mind.” In Travelling Concepts of Narrative, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara, & Lars-​Christer Hydén, pp. 121–​140. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brockmeier, Jens. 2015. Beyond the Archive: Memory, Narrative, and the Autobiographical Process. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Brockmeier, Jens (ed.). 2016. Special Issue: Narrative Hermeneutics. Storyworlds 8 (1). Brockmeier, Jens, & Hanna Meretoja. 2014. “Understanding Narrative Hermeneutics.” Storyworlds 6 (2), 1–​27. Brown, Laura S. 1995. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, pp. 100–​ 112. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Browning, Christopher. 1992. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Bruner, Jerome. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1987. “Life as Narrative.” Social Research 54 (1), 11–​32. Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1991. “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18 (1), 1–​21. Buelens, Gert, Sam Durrant, & Robert Eaglestone (eds.). 2014. The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London & New York: Verso. Butler, Judith. 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. Butler, Judith. 2006. “Foreword: Bracha’s Eurydice.” In Bracha L. Ettinger, Matrixial Borderspace, pp. vii–​xi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London & New York: Verso. Caracciolo, Marco. 2013. “Patterns of Cognitive Dissonance in Readers’ Engagement with Characters.” Enthymema VIII, 21–​37. Carpenter, R. Charli. 2010. Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. Carr, David. 1991. Time, Narrative, and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[ 312 ] References

Carroll, Noël. 2000. “Art and Ethical Criticism: An Overview of Recent Directions of Research.” Ethics 110, 350–​387. Carroll, Noël. 2004. The Philosophy of Horror: Or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York & London: Routledge. Caruth, Cathy. 1995. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, pp. 3–​12. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1975. L’institution imaginaire de la société. Paris: Seuil. Cavarero, Adriana. 2000. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, translated by Paul Kottman. London: Routledge. Cavarero, Adriana. 2005. For More than One Voice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press. Cohen-​Pfister, Laurel, & Susanne Vees-​Gulani (eds.). 2010. Generational Shifts in German Memory Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Cohn, Dorrit. 1990. “Signposts of Fictionality: A Narratological Perspective.” Poetics Today 11 (4), 775–​804. Cohn, Dorrit. 1999. The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cooke, Rachel, & David Grossman. 2010. “David Grossman: ‘I Cannot Afford the Luxury of Despair.’” The Guardian, August 29. https://​www.theguardian.com/​ books/​2010/​aug/​29/​david-​grossman-​israel-​hezbollah-​interview. Coplan, Amy. 2011. “Understanding Empathy: Its Features and Effects.” In Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, edited by Amy Coplan & Peter Goldie, pp. 3–​18. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Corbin, Alain. 2002. Le Monde retrouvé de Louis-​Francçois Pinagot: Sur les traces d’un inconnu (1798–​1876). Paris: Flammarion. Craps, Stef. 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Culler, Jonathan. 1988. “Interpretations: Data or Goals?” Poetics Today 9 (2), 275–​290. Currie, Gregory. 2010. Narrative and Narrators. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currie, Mark. 2016. “The Trace of the Future.” In Memory in the Twenty-​First Century: New Critical pespectives from the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences, edited by Sebastien Groes, pp. 199–​204. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Davis, Colin. 1996. Levinas: An Introduction. London: Polity Press. Davis, Colin. 2003. “The Cost of Being Ethical: Fiction, Violence, and Altericide.” Common Knowledge 9 (2), 241–​253. Davis, Colin. 2004. After Poststructuralism: Reading, Stories and Theory. London: Routledge. Davis, Colin. 2010. Critical Excess: Overreading in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Žižek and Cavell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Davis, Colin. 2018. Traces of War: Interpreting Ethics and Trauma in Twentieth-​Century French Writing. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Davis, Mark. 1983. “The Effects of Dispositional Empathy on Emotional Reactions and Helping: A Multidimensional Approach.” Journal of Personality 51 (2), 167–​184.

References  [ 313 ]

431

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Cinema 2: The Time-​Image (Cinema 2: L’image-​temps, 1985). Translated by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta. London: Continuum. De Cesari, Chiara, & Ann Rigney. 2014. Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Dennett, Daniel C. 1992. “The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity.” In Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives, edited by Frank S. Kessel, Pamela M. Cole, & Dale L. Johnson, pp. 103–​115. London & New York: Psychology Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference (1967), translated by Alan Bass. London: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques. 1992. Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money (1991), translated by Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995a. “Passions: An Oblique Suffering” (1993). In On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit, translated by David Wood, pp. 3–​31. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Derrida, Jacques 1995b. The Gift of Death (1992), translated by David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1997. Of Grammatology (1967), translated by Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan. Djikic, Maja, Keith Oatley, Sara Zoeterman, & Jordan B. Peterson. 2009. “On Being Moved by Art: How Reading Fiction Transforms the Self.” Creativity Research Journal 21 (1), 24–​29. Doležel, Lubomír. 2010. Possible Worlds of Fiction and History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Durzak, Manfred, & Günter Grass. 1985. “Geschichte ist absurd. Eine Antwort auf Hegel. Ein Gespräch mit Günter Grass.” In Zu Günter Grass. Geschichte auf dem poetischen Prüfstand, edited by Manfred Durzak, pp. 9–​19. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag. Dwivedi, Kedar Nath, & Damian Gardner. 1997. “Theoretical Perspectives and Clinical Approaches.” In The Therapeutic Use of Stories, edited by Kedar Nath Dwivedi, pp. 19–​41. London & New York: Routledge. Eaglestone, Robert. 2004a. “One and the Same? Ethics, Aesthetics, and Truth.” Poetics Today 25 (4), 595–​608. Eaglestone, Robert. 2004b. The Holocaust and the Postmodern. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eaglestone, Robert. 2011. “Avoiding Evil in Perpetrator Fiction.” Holocaust Studies 17 (2–​3), 13–​26. Eakin, Paul John. 2004. The Ethics of Life Writing. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Eakin, Paul John. 2006. “Narrative Identity and Narrative Imperialism: A Response to Galen Strawson and James Phelan.” Narrative 14 (2), 180–​187. Erll, Astrid. 2011. “Transcultural Memory.” Parallax 17 (4), 4–​18. Erpenbeck, Jenny. 2015. Gehen, Ging, Gegangen [Go, Went, Gone]. München: Knaus. Ettinger, Bracha L. 2005. “Copoiesis.” Ephemera 5 (X), 703–​713. Ettinger, Bracha L. 2006. Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Falke, Cassandra. 2016. The Phenomenology of Love and Reading. London: Bloomsbury. Falke, Cassandra. 2018. “Reading Terror: Imagining Violent Acts through the Rational or Narrative Sublime.” In Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Power of Narrative, edited by Hanna Meretoja & Colin Davis, pp. 253–​266. London & New York: Routledge.

[ 314 ] References

Felski, Rita. 2008. The Uses of Literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell–​Wiley. Felski, Rita. 2015. The Limits of Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Felski, Rita. 2016. “Identification: A Defense.” Keynote Lecture in the Symposium A Critique of Our Own: On the Epistemic Habits of Academic Feminism, April 14, 2016, University of Turku. Fivush, Robyn, Elaine Haden, & Catherine A. Reese. 2006. “Elaborating on Elaborations: Role of Maternal Reminiscing Style in Cognitive and Socioemotional Development.” Child Development 77 (6), 1568–​1588. Fludernik, Monika. 1996. Towards a Natural Narratology. London: Routledge. Fludernik, Monika. 2005. “Experientiality.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn, & Marie-​Laure Ryan, p. 155. London: Routledge. Fludernik, Monika. 2010. “Experience, Experientiality and Historical Narrative: A View from Narratology.” In Erfahrung und Geschichte. Historische Sinnbildung im Pränarrativen, edited by Thiemo Breyer & Daniel Creutz, pp. 40–​72. Berlin: De Gruyter. Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, Michel. 1983. “On the Genealogy of Ethics: Overview of Work in Progress.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd edition, edited by Hubert Dreyfus & Paul Rabinow, pp. 229–​252. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. 1984. “What Is Enlightenment?” In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, pp. 32–​50. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, Michel. 1996. Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961–​1984, edited by Sylvère Lotringer, translated by Lysa Hochroth & John Johnston. New York: Semiotext(e). Foucault, Michel. 2000. Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–​1984. Volume 3, edited by James D. Faubion. London: Penguin. Franck, Julia. 2005 (2003). Lagerfeuer. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Franck, Julia. 2007. Die Mittagsfrau. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Franck, Julia. 2009. The Blind Side of the Heart (Die Mittagsfrau, 2007), translated by Anthea Bell. London: Harvill Secker. Franck, Julia. 2011. Rücken an Rücken. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Franck, Julia. 2013. Back to Back (Rücken an Rücken, 2011). Translated by Anthea Bell. London: Harvill Secker. Franck, Julia. 2014. West (Lagerfeuer, 2003). Translated by Anthea Bell. London: Harvill Secker. Frank, Arthur. 1995. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frank, Manfred. 1989. What is Neostructuralism? (1984), translated by Sabine Wilke & Richard Grey. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Freeman, Mark. 1993. Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative. New York: Routledge. Freeman, Mark. 2010. Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Freeman, Mark. 2013. “Why Narrative Is Here to Stay: A Return to Origins.” In Travelling Concepts of Narrative, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara, & Lars-​Christer Hydén, pp. 43–​61. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Freeman, Mark. 2014a. “Narrative, Ethics, and the Development of Identity.” Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations, & Interventions 4 (2), pp. 8–​27.

References  [ 315 ]

631

Freeman, Mark. 2014b. The Priority of the Other: Thinking and Living Beyond the Self. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Freeman, Mark. 2015. “Narrative Hermeneutics.” In The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, edited by Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, & Kathleen L. Slaney, pp. 234–​247. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Freeman, Mark. 2016. “Why Narrative Matters: Philosophy, Method, Theory.” Storyworlds 8 (1), 137–​152. Freeman, Mark. 2017. “Narrative at the Limits (or What Is “Life” Really Like?).” In Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience, edited by Brian Schiff, A. Elizabeth McKim, & Sylvie Patron, pp. 11–​27. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Frege, Gottlob. 2008. “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” (1892). In Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung: Fünf logische Studien, pp. 23–​46. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frie, Roger. 2016. “Psychoanalysis, Narrative, and Hermeneutics.” Storyworlds 8 (1), 119–​136. Fuchs, Anne. 2007. “‘Ehrlich, du lügst wie gedruckt’: Günter Grass’s Autobiographical Confession and the Changing Territory of Germany’s Memory Culture.” German Life and Letters 60 (2), 261–​275. Fuchs, Anne. 2012. After the Dresden Bombing: Pathways of Memory, 1945 to the Present. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1981. Reason in the Age of Science, translated by F. G. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1984. “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion.” In Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects, edited by Gary Shapiro & Alan Sica, pp. 54–​65. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1987. “The Problem of Historical Consciousness.” In Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, edited by Paul Rabinow & William M. Sullivan, pp. 82–​140. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1993a. Gesammelte Werke. Band 2: Hermeneutik II. Tübingen: Mohr. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1993b. Gesammelte Werke. Band 8: Ästhetik und Poetik I. Kunst als Aussage. Tübingen: Mohr. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1994. Heidegger’s Ways. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 1997. Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode, 1960). 2nd edition, translated by Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 2000. Hermeneutik—​Ä sthetik—​Praktische Philosophie: Hans-​ Georg Gadamer im Gespräch, edited by Carsten Dutt. Heidelberg: Winter. Gadamer, Hans-​Georg. 2001. Reason in the Age of Science (1979), translated by Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gallagher, Shaun, & Daniel Hutto. 2008. “Understanding Others Through Primary Interaction and Narrative Practice.” In The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, edited by Jordan Zlatev, Timothy P. Racine, Chris Sinha, & Esa Itkonen, pp. 17–​38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. García Landa, José Ángel. 2008. “Narrating Narrating: Twisting the Twice-​Told Tale.” In Theorizing Narrativity, edited by John Pier & José Ángel García Landa, pp. 419–​452. Berlin: De Gruyter.

[ 316 ] References

Gardner, Philip. 2010. Hermeneutics, History and Memory. New York: Routledge. Gendler, Tamer. 2013. “Imagination.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2013 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://​plato.stanford.edu/​archives/​ fall2013/​entries/​imagination/​. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2007. Small Stories, Interaction, and Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gergen, Kenneth. 2009. Relational Being. New York: Oxford University Press. Gerrig, Richard J. 1998. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (1993). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Geu, Susanne, & Julia Franck. 2007. “Schreiben zum Überleben [Interview with Julia Franck].” Zeit Online. http://​www.zeit.de/​online/​2007/​40/​ interview-​julia-​franck. Giddens, Anthony. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. London: Hutchinson. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilmore, Leigh. 2001. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Girard, René. 1976. Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Goldie, Peter. 1999. “How We Think of Others’ Emotions.” Mind & Language 14 (4), 394–​423. Goldie, Peter. 2012. The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodman, David, & Mark Freeman (eds.). 2015. Psychology and the Other. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Gotlib, Anna. 2015. “Feminist Ethics and Narrative Ethics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://​www.iep.utm.edu/​fem-​e-​n/​ Gottschall, Jonathan. 2013. Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. New York: First Mariner Books. Grass, Günter. 1987. Dog Years (Hundejahre, 1963). The Danzig Trilogy, translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Pantheon Books. Grass, Günter. 1997a. Gedichte und Kurzprosa. Werkausgabe 1. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997b. Hundejahre (1963). Werkausgabe 5. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997c. Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (1972). Werkausgabe 7. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997d. Kopfgeburten oder Die Deutschen sterben aus (1980). Werkausgabe 10. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997e. Essays und Reden I: 1955–​1969. Werkausgabe 14. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997f. Essays und Reden II: 1970–​1979. Werkausgabe 15. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997g. Essays und Reden III: 1980–​1997. Werkausgabe 16. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 1997h. From the Diary of a Snail (Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke, 1972), translated by Ralph Manheim. London: Minerva. Grass, Günter. 2006. Beim Häuten der Zwiebel. Göttingen: Steidl. Grass, Günter. 2007. Peeling the Onion (Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, 2006), translated by Michael Henry Heim. London: Harvill Secker.

References  [ 317 ]

831

Grossman, David. 2006. “Uri, My Dear Son [eulogy].” The Guardian, August 20. https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​2006/​aug/​20/​syria.comment. Grossman, David. 2007. “Confronting the Beast.” The Guardian, September 15. https://​www.theguardian.com/​books/​2007/​sep/​15/​featuresreviews. guardianreview2. Grossman, David. 2008. Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics, translated by Jessica Cohen. London: Bloomsbury. Grossman, David. 2010. To the End of the Land (Isha Borachat Mi’bsora, 2008), translated by Jessica Cohen. London: Jonathan Cape. Grossman, David. 2015. Falling Out of Time (Nofel mi-​huts la-​zeman, 2011), translated by Jessica Cohen. London: Vintage Books. Guaraldo, Olivia. 2013. “To the Narrative Turn and Back: The Political Impact of Storytelling in Feminism.” In The Travelling Concepts of Narrative, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara, & Lars-​Christer Hydén, pp. 63–​82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gumbrecht, Ulrich. 2004. Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (1981), translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Hacking, Ian. 2004. Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hakemulder, Frank. 2000. The Moral Laboratory: Experiments Examining the Effects of Reading Literature on Social Perception and Moral Self-​concept. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Halliwell, Stephen. 2002. The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hämäläinen, Nora. 2016. Literature and Moral Theory. London: Bloomsbury. Hawthorn, Jeremy, & Jakob Lothe. 2013. “Introduction: The Ethical (Re)Turn.” In Narrative Ethics, edited by Jakob Lothe & Jeremy Hawthorn, pp. 1–​10. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Heavey, Emily. 2015. “Narrative Bodies, Embodied Narratives.” In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, edited by Anna de Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou, pp. 429–​446. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Heidegger, Martin. 1927. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Heidegger, Martin. 1977a. “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes” (1936). In Gesamtausgabe 5: Holzwege, edited by F.-​W. von Herrmann, pp. 1–​74. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin. 1977b. “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” (1938). In Gesamtausgabe 5: Holzwege, edited by Friedrich-​Wilhelm von Herrmann, pp. 75–​113. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin. 1993. “Letter on Humanism.” In Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, pp. 213–​265. New York: HarperCollins. Heidegger, Martin. 1996. Being and Time (1927), translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press. Herman, David. 2006. “Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments.” In A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan & Peter Rabinowitz, pp. 19–​35. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Herman, David. 2007. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, pp. 3–​21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[ 318 ] References

Herman, David. 2016. “Hermeneutics Beyond the Species Boundary: Explanation and Understanding in Animal Narratives.” Storyworlds 8 (1), 1–​30. Herman, David, Manfred Jahn, & Marie-​Laure Ryan. 2005. “Introduction.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn, & Marie-​Laure Ryan, pp. ix–​xi. London: Routledge. Hermans, Hubert J. M. 2001. “The Dialogical Self: Toward a Theory of Personal and Cultural Positioning.” Culture and Psychology 7, 243–​281. Hermans, Hubert J. M. 2015. “The Personal Position Repertoire (PPR) Method as Based on Dialogical Self Theory.” In The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, edited by Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, & Kathleen L. Slaney, pp. 277–​292. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Hermans, Hubert J. M., Harry J. G. Kempen, & Rens J. P. Van Loom. 1992. “The Dialogical Self: Beyond Individualism and Rationalism.” American Psychologist, 47 (1), 23–​33. Hermans, Hubert J. M., & Thorsten Gieser (eds.). 2014. Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hermans, Hubert, & Agnieszka Hermans-​Konopka. 2012. Dialogical Self: Positioning and Counter-​Positioning in a Globalizing Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hiddleston, Jane. 2017. Writing after Postcolonialism: Francophone North African Literature in Transition. London: Bloomsbury. Hill, Alexandra Merley. 2008. “‘Female Sobriety’: Feminism, Motherhood, and the Works of Julia Franck.” Women in German Yearbook 24, 209–​228. Hirsch, Edward. 2014. “Stop the Clocks: Falling Out of Time by David Grossman.” New York Times, July 18. http://​www.nytimes.com/​2014/​07/​20/​books/​review/​ falling-​out-​of-​time-​by-​david-​grossman.html?_​r=0 Hirsch, Marianne. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Hoffman, Anne Golomb. 2012. “The Body of the Child, the Body of the Land: Trauma and Nachträglichkeit in David Grossman’s To the End of the Land.” Narrative 20 (1), 43–​63. Hoffman, Anne Golomb. 2013. “Towards an Ethics of Embodiment.” Hebrew Studies 54, 311–​318. Holler, Claudia, & Martin Klepper (eds.). 2013. Rethinking Narrative Identity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Holzkamp, Klaus. 1983. Grundlegung der Psychologie [Groundwork of Psychology]. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Hongisto, Ilona. 2018. “Realities in the Making: The Ethics of Fabulation in Observational Documentary Cinema.” In Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Power of Narrative, edited by Hanna Meretoja & Colin Davis, pp. 190–​199. London & New York: Routledge. Husserl, Edmund. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–​1917), translated by John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, Edmund. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–​1934). Die C-​ Manuskripte. Dordrecht: Springer. Hutcheon, Linda. 1988. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge. Huyssen, Andreas. 2003. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsest and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hyvärinen, Matti. 2008. “Revisiting the Narrative Turns.” Life Writing 7 (1), 69–​82.

References  [ 319 ]

0 23

Hyvärinen, Matti. 2015. “Analyzing Narrative Genres.” In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, edited by Anna de Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou, pp. 178–​193. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Irwin, Mark, & Paul Auster. 2013. “Memory’s Escape—​Inventing the Music of Chance: An Interview with Paul Auster.” In Conversations with Paul Auster, edited by James M. Hutchisson, pp. 40–​49. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Iversen, Stefan. 2013. “Broken or Unnatural? On the Distinction of Fiction in Non-​ Conventional First Person Narration.” In The Travelling Concepts of Narrative, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara, & Lars-​Christer Hydén, pp. 141–​ 162. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jameson, Fredric. 1981. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Jaspers, Karl. 1946. Die Schuldfrage. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider. Johnson, Mark. 1993. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Josselson, Ruthellen, & Brent Hopkins. 2015. “Narrative Psychology and Life Stories.” In Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, edited by Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, & Kahtleen L. Slaney, pp. 219–​233. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Kansteiner, Wulf, & Harald Weilnböck. 2008. “Against the Concept of Cultural Trauma (or How I Learned to Love the Suffering of Others Without the Help of Psychotherapy).” In Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, edited by Astrid Erll & Ansgar Nünning, pp. 229–​ 240. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781), translated by Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 2002. Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790), translated by Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaufman, Geoff F., & Lisa K. Libby. 2012. “Changing Beliefs and Behavior Through Experience-​Taking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103 (1), 2012, 1–​19. Kearney, Richard. 2002. On Stories. London & New York: Routledge. Keen, Suzanne. 2007. Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keithley, Emily, & Michael Pickering. 2012. Mnemonic Imagination: Memory as Creative Practice. Basingtoke & London: Palgrave. Kerby, Anthony. 1991. Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kidd, David Comer, & Emanuele Castano. 2013. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342 (6156), 377–​380. Kidd, David Comer, & Emanuele Castano. 2016. “Different Stories: How Levels of Familiarity with Literary and Genre Fiction Relate to Mentalizing.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Aug 8 (advance online publication: http://​ dx.doi.org/​10.1037/​aca0000069). Kirschner, Suzanne. R. 2015. “Subjectivity as Socioculturally Constituted Experience.” In Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, edited by Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, & Kahtleen L. Slaney, pp. 293–​307. Malden,MA: Wiley Blackwell.

[ 320 ] References

Kirschner, Susanne R., & Jack Martin (eds.). 2010. The Sociocultural Turn in Psychology: The Contextual Emergence of Mind and Self. New York: Columbia University Press. Knausgård, Karl Ove. 2011. Min kamp 6. Oslo: Förlaget Oktober. Köbel, Martin (ed.). 2007. Ein Buch, ein Bekenntnis: Die Debatte um Günter Grass’s Beim Häuten der Zwiebel. Göttingen: Steidl. Kögler, Hans Herbert. 1999. The Power of Dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault (1992), translated by Paul Hendrickson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Koppenfels, Martin von. 2012. “The Infamous ‘I’: Notes on Littell and Céline.” In Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, edited by Aurélie Barjonet & Liran Razinsky, pp. 133–​152. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Korhonen, Kuisma. 2013. “Broken Stories: Narrative vs Narration in Travelling Theories of Cultural Trauma.” In The Travelling Concepts of Narrative, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Mari Hatavara, & Lars-​Christer Hydén, pp. 265–​284. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Korthals Altes, Liesbeth. 2014. Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (1979), translated by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press. Krimmer, Elisabeth. 2015. “The Representation of Wartime Rape in Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Heimsuchung.” Gegenwartsliteratur: A German Studies Yearbook XIV, 35–​60. LaCapra, Dominick. 1994. Representing the Holocaust: History, Trauma, Theory. Ithaca, NY, & London: Cornell University Press. LaCapra, Dominick. 2004. History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory. Ithaca, NY, & London: Cornell University Press. LaCapra, Dominick. 2011. “Historical and Literary Approaches to the ‘Final Solution’: Saul Friedänder and Jonathan Littell.” History and Theory 50, 71–​79. LaCapra, Dominick. 2014. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lacoste, Charlotte. 2010. Séductions du bourreau: Négation des victimes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lacoue-​Labarthe, Philippe, & Jean-​Luc Nancy. 1990. “The Nazi Myth,” translated by Brian Holmes. Critical Inquiry 16 (2), 291–​312. Landy, Joshua. 2012. How to Do Things with Fictions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lanzmann, Claude. 1995. “The Obscenity of Understanding.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, pp. 200–​220. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lanzmann, Claude. 2006. “Lanzmann juge Les Bienveillantes.” Le Nouvel Observateur, 2185, September 21–​27, p. 14. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laub, Dori. 1995. “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, pp. 61–​75. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Leake, Eric. 2014. “Humanizing the Inhumane: The Value of Difficult Empathy.” In Rethinking Empathy Through Literature, edited by Meghan Marie Hammond & Sue J. Kim, pp. 175–​185. New York: Routledge.

References  [ 321 ]

23

Le Doeuff, Michèle. 1990. The Philosophical Imaginary, translated by Colin Gordon. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lejeune, Philippe. 1988. On Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1980. Totality and Infinity (1961), translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1988. “The Paradox of Morality: An Interview with Emmanuel Levinas [Interview by Tamra Wright, Peter Hughes & Alison Ainley].” In The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, edited by Robert Bernasconi & David Wood, translated by Andrew Benjamin & Tamra Wright, pp. 168–​180. London: Routledge. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1991. Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1996. “Transcendence and Height” (1962). In Basic Philosophical Writings, edited by Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley, & Robert Bernasconi, pp. 11–​32. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1998. “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948). In The Levinas Reader, edited by Sean Hand, pp. 130–​143. Oxford: Blackwell. Levitas, Ruth. 2010. The Concept of Utopia. Bern: Peter Lang. Levy, Daniel, & Natan Sznaider. 2006. Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Levy, Ze’ev. 1997. “Utopia and Reality in the Philosophy of Ernst Bloch.” In Not-​ Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch, edited by Jamie Owen Daniel & Tom Moylan, pp. 175–​185. London: Verso. Lindemann Nelson, Hilde. 2001. Damaged Identities: Narrative Repair. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lindemann, Hilde. 2014. Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lissa, Caspar J. van, Marco Caracciolo, Thom van Duuren, & Bram van Leuveren. 2016. “Difficult Empathy: The Effect of Narrative Perspective on Readers’ Engagement with a First-​Person Narrator.” DIEGESIS. Interdisciplinary E-​ Journal for Narrative Research/​Interdisziplinäres E-​Journal für Erzählforschung 5 (1), 43–​63. Littell, Jonathan. 2006. Les Bienveillantes. Paris: Gallimard. Littell, Jonathan. 2010. The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes, 2006), translated by Charlotte Mandell. London: Vintage Books. Littell, Jonathan, & Samuel Blumenfeld. 2006. “Il faudra du temps pour expliquer ce succès.” Le Monde des livres, November 19, p. 2. Littell, Jonathan, & Richard Millet. 2007. “Conversation à Beyrouth.” Le Débat 144, 4–​24. Littell, Jonathan, & Pierre Nora. 2007. “Conversation sur l’histoire et le roman.” Le Débat 144, 25–​44. Locatelli, Angela. 2015. “The Moral and the Fable: A Fluid Relationship in Artistic Literature.” In Values of Literature, edited by Hanna Meretoja, Saija Isomaa, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, & Kristina Malmio, pp. 47–​62. Leiden: Rodopi Brill. Lothe, Jakob. 2013. “Authority, Reliability and the Challenge of Reading: The Narrative Ethics of Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones.” In Narrative Ethics, edited by Jakob Lothe & Jeremy Hawthorn, pp. 103–​118. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lyotard, Jean-​Francois. 1991. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (1988), translated by Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Cambridge: Polity Press.

[ 322 ] References

Macdonald, Iain. 2011. “‘What Is, Is More than It Is’: Adorno and Heidegger on the Priority of Possibility.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (1), 31–​57. Macé, Marielle. 2011. Façons de lire, manières d’être. Paris: Gallimard. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Mackenzie, Catriona. 2008. “Introduction: Practical Identity and Narrative Agency.” Practical Identity and Narrative Agency, edited by Kim Atkins & Catriona Mackenzie, pp. 1–​28. New York & London: Routledge. Mäkikalli, Aino. 2007. From Eternity to Time: Conceptions of Time in Daniel Defoe’s Novels. Oxford: Peter Lang. Mann, Thomas. 1997. Essays 6: Meine Zeit, 1945–​1955, edited by Hermann Kurzke & Stephan Stachorski. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Markus, Hazel, & Paula Nurius. 1986. “Possible Selves.” American Psychologist 41 (9), 954–​969. Mayer, Hans. 1967. Zur deutschen Literatur der Zeit. Zusammenhänge, Schriftsteller, Bücher. Hamburg: Rowohlt. McAdams, Dan P. 1993. The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. New York & London: Guilford Press. McAdams, Dan P. 2003. “Identity and the Life-​Story.” In Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self: Developmental and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Robyn Fivush & Catherine A. Haden, pp. 187–​207. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. McAdams, Dan P. 2006. The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, Dan P. 2015. The Art and Science of Personality Development. New York & London: The Guilford Press. McGlothlin, Erin. 2006. Second-​Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration. Rochester, NY: Camden House. McGlothlin, Erin. 2010. “Theorizing the Perpetrator in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow.” In After Representation? The Holocaust, Literature, and Culture, edited by R. Clifton Spargo & Robert M. Ehrenreich, pp. 210–​230. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. McGlothlin, Erin. 2014. “Narrative Perspective and the Holocaust Perpetrator in Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber and Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature, edited by Jenni Adams, pp. 159–​177. London: Bloomsbury. McGlothlin, Erin. 2016. “Empathetic Identification and the Mind of the Holocaust Perpetrator in Fiction: A Proposed Taxonomy of Response.” Narrative 24 (3), 251–​276. McLean, Kate C. 2015. The Co-​Authored Self: Family Stories and the Construction of Personal Identity. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. McLean, Kate C., & Cade D. Mansfield. 2012. “The Co-​Construction of Adolescent Narrative Identity: Narrative Processing as a Function of Adolescent Age, Gender, and Maternal Scaffolding.” Developmental Psychology 48 (2), 436–​447. Meinander, Henrik. 2011. “A Separate Story? Interpretations of Finland in the Second World War.” In Nordic Narratives of the Second World War: National

References  [ 323 ]

4 2 3

Historiographies Revisited, edited by Henrik Stenius, Mirja Österberg, & Johan Östling, pp. 55–​77. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Meretoja, Hanna. 2011. “An Inquiry into Historical Experience and Its Narration: The Case of Günter Grass.” Spiel: Siegener Periodicum for International Empiricist Literary Scholarship (Special issue: Towards a Historiographical Narratology, edited by Julia Nitz & Sandra Harbart Petrulionis) 30 (1), 51–​72. Meretoja, Hanna. 2014a. “Narrative and Human Existence: Ontology, Epistemology, and Ethics.” New Literary History 45 (1), 89–​109. Meretoja, Hanna. 2014b. The Narrative Turn in Fiction and Theory: The Crisis and Return of Storytelling from Robbe-​Grillet to Tournier. Basingstoke, UK, & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Meretoja, Hanna. 2018. “From Appropriation to Dialogic Exploration: A Non-​ Subsumptive Model of Storytelling.” In Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Power of Narrative, edited by Hanna Meretoja & Colin Davis, pp. 101–​121. London & New York: Routledge. Meretoja, Hanna, & Colin Davis. 2018. “Introduction: Intersections of Storytelling and Ethics.” In Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Power of Narrative, edited by Hanna Meretoja & Colin Davis, pp. 1–​20. London & New York: Routledge. Meretoja, Hanna, & Julia Franck. 2010. “Tarinat jotka on kerrottava: Julia Franck ja Keskipäivän haltija [Julia Franck’s interview].” Nuori Voima 4, 60–​63. Meretoja, Hanna, & Pirjo Lyytikäinen. 2015. “Why We Read: The Plural Values of Literature.” In Values of Literature, edited by Hanna Meretoja, Saija Isomaa, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, & Kristina Malmio, pp. 1–​22. Leiden: Rodopi Brill. Mink, Louis O. 1970. “History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension.” New Literary History 1, 541–​558. Mintz, Alan. 2013. “David Grossman’s To the End of the Land: A Symposium.” Hebrew Studies 54, 285–​286. Morson, Gary Saul. 1994. Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Morson, Gary Saul. 1998. “Sideshadowing and Tempics.” New Literary History 29 (4), 599–​624. Mootz, Francis, & George Taylor (eds.). 2011. Gadamer and Ricoeur: Critical Horizons for Contemporary Hermeneutics. London: Continuum. Muschg, Adolf. 1997. “Die Teilnahms-​Ferne.” Die Zeit. February 7. http://​www.zeit. de/​1997/​07/​Die_​Teilnahms-​_​Ferne. Musil, Robert. 1965. The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, 1930–​1943), translated by Eithne Wilkins & Ernst Kaiser. New York: Capricorn Books. Musil, Robert. 1974. Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930–​1943). Hrsg. Adolf Frisé. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Musil, Robert. 1983. Tagebücher 2. Hrsg. Adolf Frisé. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Nehamas, Alexander. 1985. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Neumann, Birgit, & Nünning, Ansgar. 2012. “Metanarration and Metafiction.” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier, & Wolf Schmid. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. http://​wikis. sub.uni-​hamburg.de/​lhn/​index.php/​Metanarration_​and_​Metafiction. Newton, Adam Zachary. 1995. Narrative Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[ 324 ] References

Nielsen, Henrik Skov. 2013. “Naturalizing and Unnaturalizing Reading Strategies: Focalization Revisited.” In A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative, edited by Jan Alber, Henrik Skov Nielsen, & Brian Richardson, pp. 67–​93. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Nielsen, Henrik Skov, James Phelan, & Richard Walsh. 2015. “Ten Theses about Fictionality.” Narrative 23 (1), 61–​73. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann, translated by Walter Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1999a. “Nachgelassene Fragmente 1885–​1887.” In Kritische Studienausgabe. Bd. 12, edited by Giorgio Colli & Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: De Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1999b. “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, 1874). In Untimely Meditations, edited by Daniel Breazeale, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, pp. 57–​ 123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2001. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, edited by Raymond Geuss & Ronald Speirs, translated by Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2003. The Gay Science (1882), translated by Josefine Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nünning, Ansgar. 2015. “‘The Extension of Our Sympathies’: George Eliot’s Aesthetic Theory and Narrative Technique as a Key to the Affective, Cognitive, and Social Value of Literature.” In Values of Literature, edited by Hanna Meretoja, Saija Isomaa, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, & Kristina Malmio, pp. 117–​136. Leiden: Rodopi Brill. Nünning, Vera. 2015. “Cognitive Science and the Value of Literature for Life.” In Values of Literature, edited by Hanna Meretoja, Saija Isomaa, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, & Kristina Malmio, pp. 95–​116. Leiden: Rodopi Brill. Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1995. Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Oatley, Keith. 2011. Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Ochs, Elinor, & Lisa Capps. 2001. Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA, & London: Harvard University Press. Oksanen, Sofi. 2008. Puhdistus. Helsinki: WSOY. Oksanen, Sofi. 2010. The Purge (Puhdistus, 2006), translated by Lola Rogers. London: Atlantic Books. Panero, Maria Eugenia, Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Jessica Black, Thalia R. Goldstein, Jennifer L. Barnes, Hiram Brownell, & Ellen Winner. 2016. “Does Reading a Single Passage of Literary Fiction Really Improve Theory of Mind? An Attempt at Replication.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 111 (5), e46–​e54. Pappas, Robin, & William Cowling. 2003. “Toward a Critical Hermeneutics.” In Feminist Interpretations of Hans Georg Gadamer, edited by Lorraine Code, pp. 203–​227. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

References  [ 325 ]

6 2 3

Pavel, Thomas. 1986. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Payne, Martin. 2006. Narrative Therapy. 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. Pederson, Joshua. 2014. “Speak, Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma Theory.” Narrative 22 (3), 333–​353. Pettitt, Joanne. 2016. “Popular Pyschopaths and Holocaust Perpetrators: Fiction, Family, and Murder.” The Journal of Popular Culture 49 (6), 1301–​1319. Phelan, James. 2005. Living to Tell about It. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Phelan, James. 2007. Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Phelan, James. 2014. “Narrative Ethics.” Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid, & Jörg Schönert. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. http://​www.lhn.uni-​hamburg.de/​article/​narrative-​ethics. Phelan, James. 2017. “Narrative Fiction, the Short Story, and Life: The Case of Tobias Wolff’s ‘Bullet in the Brain.’” In Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience, edited by Brian Schiff, A. Elizabeth McKim, & Sylvie Patron, pp. 55–​72. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Phoenix, Ann. 2013. “Analysing Narrative Contexts.” In Doing Narrative Research, 2nd edition, edited by Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, & Maria Tamboukou, pp. 72–​87. London: Sage Publications. Polvinen, Merja. 2012. “Being Played: Mimesis, Fictionality and Emotional Engagement.” In Rethinking Mimesis. Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation, edited by Saija Isomaa, Sari Kivisto, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Sanna Nyqvist, Merja Polvinen, & Riikka Rossi, pp. 91–​110. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Popkin, Jeremy D. 2012. “A Historian’s View of The Kindly Ones.” In Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, edited by Aurélie Barjonet & Liran Razinsky, pp. 187–​200. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Raggatt, Peter T. F. 2006. “Multiplicity and Conflict in the Dialogical Self: A Life-​ Narrative Approach.” In Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative, edited by Ruth-​Ellen Josselson, Dan McAdams, & Amia Lieblich, pp. 15–​35. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rancière, Jacques. 2013. The Politics of Aesthetics (2000), translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Bloomsbury. Randall, William L. 2015. The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life: Tales from the Coffee Shop. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Randall, William L., & A. Elizabeth McKim. 2008. Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Razinsky, Lirian. 2008. “History, Excess and Testimony in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes.” French Forum 33 (3), 69–​87. Reading, Anna. 2002. The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture and Memory. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Reading, Anna, & Tamar Katriel. 2015. “Introduction.” In Cultural Memories of Non-​Violent Struggles, edited by Anna Reading & Tamar Katriel, pp. 1–​35. Basingtoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Reese, Elaine, Amy Bird, & Gail Tripp. 2007. “Children’s Self-​Esteem and Moral Self: Links to Parent–​Child Conversations about Emotion.” Social Development 16, 460–​478. Richardson, Brian. 2005. “Narrative Dynamics.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn, & Marie-​Laure Ryan, pp. 353–​ 354. London: Routledge.

[ 326 ] References

Ricoeur, Paul. 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1 (1983), translated by Kathleen McLaughlin & David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1985. Time and Narrative. Vol. 2 (1984), translated by Kathleen Blamey & David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1988. Time and Narrative. Vol. 3 (1985), translated by Kathleen Blamey & David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1991a. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II (1986), translated by Kathleen Blamey & John B. Thompson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1991b. A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, edited by Mario J. Valdés. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Ricoeur, Paul. 1992. Oneself as Another (1990), translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1999. “Memory and Forgetting.” In Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, edited by Richard Kearney & Mark Dooley, pp. 5–​11. London & New York: Routledge. Ricoeur, Paul. 2000. La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Seuil. Riessman, Catherine K. 2003. “Performing Identities in Illness Narrative: Masculinity and Multiple Sclerosis.” Qualitative Research 3 (1), 5–​33. Rigney, Ann. 2012. The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rimmon-​Kenan, Slomith. 2002. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Ritivoi, Andreea Deciu. 2006. Paul Ricoeur: Tradition and Innovation in Rhetorical Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ritivoi, Andreea Deciu. 2009. “Explaining People: Narrative and the Study of Identity.” Storyworlds 1, 25–​41. Roberge, Jonathan. 2011. “What Is Critical Hermeneutics?” Thesis Eleven 106 (1), 5–​22. Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2000. Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2011. “From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory.” Criticism 53 (4), 523–​548. Rothberg, Michael. 2014. “Trauma Theory, Implicated Subjects, and the Question of Israel/​Palestine.” Profession. https://​profession.commons.mla.org/​2014/​05/​02/​ trauma-​theory-​implicated-​subjects-​and-​the-​question-​of-​israelpalestine/​ Rothberg, Michael. 2017. “Notes on Historical Comparison in the Age of Trump (and Erdoğan).” Massachusetts Review, February 2. https://​www.massreview.org/​ node/​707. Ryan, Marie-​Laure. 2003. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ryan, Marie-​Laure. 2007. “Toward a Definition of Narrative.” In The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, pp. 22–​36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References  [ 327 ]

8 2 3

Saariluoma, Liisa. 1995. “Geschichte als Märchen: Der Butt von Günter Grass.” In Geschichte als Erfahrung und Literarische Form, edited by Liisa Saariluoma & Gerhard Schmitt, pp. 65–​90. Acta Universitatis Ouluensis. Humaniora B 21. Oulu: University of Oulu. Saariluoma, Liisa. 2004. Erzählstruktur und Bildungsroman. Wielands ‘Geschichte des Agathon,’ Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.’ Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Saariluoma, Liisa. 2007. “Narrativisation of Identity in the Novels of the 18th Century.” Interlitteraria 12, 111–​124. Salmi, Hannu. 2011. “Cultural History, the Possible, and the Principle of Plenitude.” History and Theory 50, 171–​187. Sanyal, Debarati. 2015. Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance. New York: Fordham University Press. Sarbin, Theodore R. (ed). 1986. Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Sartre, Jean-​Paul. 1965. Nausea (1938), translated by Robert Baldick. London: Penguin Books. Sartre, Jean-​Paul. 1978. La Nausée (1938). Paris: Gallimard. Sartwell, Crispin. 2000. The End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language and History. Albany: State University of New York Press. Saunders, Max. 2010. Self Impression: Life-​Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schade, Richard E. 2007. “Layers of Meaning, War, Art: Grass’s Beim Häuten der Zwiebel.” The German Quarterly 80 (3), 279–​301. Schechtman, Marya. 1996. The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Schechtman, Marya. 2007. “Stories, Lives, and Basic Survival: A Refinement and Defense of the Narrative View.” In Narrative and Understanding Persons, edited by Daniel D. Hutto, pp. 155–​178. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiff, Brian. 2017. A New Narrative for Psychology. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1843–​1864. “Entwurf eines Systems der Sittenlehre” (1835). In Sämmtliche Werke V. Berlin: Reimer. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1977. “Second Academy Address.” In Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts, translated by James Duke and edited by Heinz Kimmerle, pp. 195–​214. Missoula: Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion. Schnurre, Wolfdietrich. 1987. Mein Leben als Zeitgenosse. Stuttgart: Klett. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Semprún, Jorge. 2008. “Ohne die Literatur stirbt die Erinnerung.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 33, 35. Shen, Dan. 2013. “Unreliability.” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid, & Jörg Schönert. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. http://​www.lhn.uni-​hamburg.de/​article/​unreliability. Shotter, John, & Michael Billig. 1998. “A Bakhtinian Psychology: From out of the Heads of Individuals and into the Dialogues Between Them.” In Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words, edited by Michael Bell & Michael Gardiner, pp. 13–​29. London: Sage Publications. Shuman, Amy. 2005. Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy. Champain: University of Illinois Press.

[ 328 ] References

Silver, Eric. 2006. “Grossman Expresses His Despair at Israel’s ‘Hollow’ Leadership.” Independent, November 6. http://​www.independent.co.uk/​news/​world/​middle-​ east/​grossman-​expresses-​his-​despair-​at-​israels-​hollow-​leadership-​423170. html. Silverman, Max. 2013. Palimpsestic Memory. London: Berghahn. Simon, Claude. 1958. L’Herbe. Paris: Minuit. Simon, Claude. 1960. The Grass (L’Herbe, 1958), translated by Richard Howard. New York: George Braziller. Sklar, Howard. 2013. The Art of Sympathy in Fiction: Forms of Ethical and Emotional Persuasion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, Ali. 2013. Artful. London: Penguin Books. Sontag, Susan. 1966. “Against Interpretation” (1964). In Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Sools, Anneke. 2016. “Constructing Future Selves: Imagining, Writing and Sharing ‘Everyday Fiction.’” Keynote at the Symposium Narrative Selves in Art and the Everyday. May 12–​13, 2016. The Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus, Denmark. Steiner, George. 1967. Language and Silence: Essays 1958–​1966. London: Faber and Faber. Stone-​Mediatore, Shari. 2003. Reading Across Borders: Storytelling and Knowledges of Resistance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stotland, Ezra. 1969. “Exploratory Investigations of Empathy.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, edited by Leonard Berkowitz, pp. 271–​313. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Strawson, Galen. 1999a. “The Self.” In Models of the Self, edited by Shaun Gallagher & Jonathan Shear, pp. 1–​24. Thorverton: Imprint Academic. Strawson, Galen. 1999b. “The Self and the SESMET.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (4), 99–​135. Strawson, Galen. 2004. “Against Narrativity.” Ratio 17 (4), 428–​452. Strawson, Galen. 2012. “We Live Beyond Any Tale That We Happen to Enact.” The Harvard Review of Philosophy 18 (1), 73–​90. Strawson, Galen. 2015. “The Unstoried Life.” In On Life-​Writing, edited by Zachary Leader, pp. 284–​301. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sugarman, Jeff. 2013. “Persons and Historical Ontology.” In The Psychology of Personhood: Philosophical, Historical, Social-​Developmental, and Narrative Perspectives, edited by Jack Martin & Mark H. Bickhard, pp. 81–​100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. 2009. “When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the Holocaust: On Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes.” New German Critique 36 (1), 1–​20. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. 2012. “Performing the Perpetrator as Witness: Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes.” In After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future, edited by Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, & James Phelan, pp. 99–​119. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Taberner, Stuart. 2008. “Private Failings and Public Virtues: Günter Grass’s Beim Häuten der Zwiebel and the Exemplary Use of Authorial Biography.” Modern Language Review 103 (1), 143–​154. Taberner, Stuart. 2009. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Günter Grass, edited by Stuart Taberner, pp. 1–​9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References  [ 329 ]

0 3

Tamboukou, Maria. 2013. “A Foucauldian Approach to Narratives.” In Doing Narrative Research, edited by Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, & Maria Tamboukou. 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. Tamm, Marek. 2013. “Beyond History and Memory: New Perspectives in Memory Studies.” History Compass 11 (6), 458–​473. Taylor, Charles. 1985. “Self-​interpreting Animals” (1977). In Human Agency and Language. Philosophical Papers I, pp. 45–​76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1991. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvad University Press. Terdiman, Richard. 1993. Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. Ithaca, NY, & London: Cornell University Press. Tolstoy, Leo. 1995. What Is Art?, translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. London: Penguin Books. Tournier, Michel. 1970. Le Roi des Aulnes. Paris: Gallimard. Uni, Assaf, & Jonathan Littell. 2008. “The Executioner’s Song [Jonathan Littell’s interview].” Haaretz, May 29. http://​www.haaretz.com/​ the-​executioner-​s-​song-​1.246787. Vasterling, Veronica. 2003. “Postmodern Hermeneutics? Toward a Critical Hermeneutics.” In Feminist Interpretations of Hans-​Georg Gadamer, edited by Lorraine Code, pp. 149–​180. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Vassilieva, Julia. 2016. Narrative Psychology: Identity, Transformation and Ethics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Velleman, J. David. 2003. “Narrative Explanation.” Philosophical Review 112 (1), 1–​25. Villon, François. 2005. Oeuvres complètes: Les Lais, le Testament, Poésies diverses, Jargon et Jobelin, edited by C. Pinganaud. Paris: Arléa. Wajnryb, Ruth. 2001. Silence: How Tragedy Shapes Talk. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Walker, Margaret Urban. 2007. Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-​Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wajcman, Judy. 2015. Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Warnke, Georgia. 2002. “Hermeneutics, Ethics, Politics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, edited by Robert Dostal, pp. 70–​101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, Hayden. 1981. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” In On Narrative, edited by William Mitchell, pp. 1–​23. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, Michael. 1997. Narratives of Therapists’ Lives. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. White, Michael. 2007. Maps of Narrative Practice. London: Norton. White, Michael, & David Epston. 1990. Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. London: Norton. Wickert, Ulrich, & Günter Grass. 2006. “It Was Always on My Mind: Interview with Günter Grass.” Spiegel Online, August 21. http://​www.spiegel.de/​

[ 330 ] References

international/​spiegel/​interview-​with-​guenter-​grass-​it-​was-​always-​on-​my-​ mind-​a-​432594.html Wiesel, Elie. 1990. From the Kingdom of Memory. New York: Summit Books. Winterson, Jeanette. 2001. Sexing the Cherry. London: Vintage. Winterson, Jeanette. 2004. Lighthousekeeping. London: Fourth Estate. Winterson, Jeanette. 2016. “We Need to Build a New Left: Labour Means Nothing Today.” Guardian, June 24. https://​www.theguardian.com/​politics/​2016/​jun/​ 24/​we-​need-​to-​build-​a-​new-​left-​labour-​means-​nothing-​jeanette-​winterson. Wood, Nancy. 1999. Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. Oxford: Berg. Wyschogrod, Edith. 1998. An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology and the Nameless Others. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Zahavi, Dan. 2014. Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxfod: Oxford University Press. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2006. The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zetterberg Gjerlevsen, Simona. 2016. “Fictionality.” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid, & Jörg Schönert. Hamburg: Hamburg University. http://​www.lhn.uni-​hamburg.de/​article/​ fictionality.

References  [ 331 ]

2 3

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by the letter n indicate material found in endnotes. Abbott, H. Porter, 51 actor-​network theory, 77, 144n8 actual/​possible dichotomy, 14–​17, 96, 181, 182, 218, 219 Adams, Jenni, 218, 233, 252n31 Adorno, Theodor W., 38n7, 188, 201, 215n37, 215n43 aesthetics of existence, 13, 69, 278 affective hermeneutics, 46, 77, 85n4 affective identification, 68, 87n26, 93, 207, 235 affective responses, 129, 132, 133, 225, 235, 246, 275 affectivity, 46, 76, 118, 133, 135, 279, 295 “Against Interpretation” (Sontag), 7, 43 “against narrativity” movement, 1–​2, 38n1, 57 age of terror, 25, 125, 304. See also terrorism Allen, Amy, 81 All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) (Remarque), 203, 300 America First narrative, 22, 113, 121, 124, 133 amnesia, cultural, 95, 180, 201, 202, 204, 211 Anderson, Benedict, 120 Andrews, Molly, 20, 32, 52 animals, 100. See also nonhuman (actors) anti-​mimetic narrative, 218, 227, 239 antinarrativists, 51, 84, 108 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 69 appropriation, narrative as, 51, 107–​108, 110–​113, 116, 145n27, 171, 243, 248–​249, 305 Arendt, Hannah

on the banality of evil, 189–​190, 221, 225 Benjamin and, 117 on capacity to act, 53–​54, 125–​126 on idealism, 193 on ideological thinking, 214n25 on in-​between, 117, 120 Kant and, 145n22 narrative approach/​view of, 54, 107, 111–​112, 117, 156 on narrative identity, 65, 70–​71, 111 on Nazi perpetrators, 217, 244 on the plurality of unique beings, 125–​126 on sharing “words and deeds,” 159 on totalitarian ideologies, 191–​192, 225 on understanding others, 111 Aristotle, 14, 17, 29, 135–​137, 139–​140, 141, 181 Assmann, Aleida, 129 Auschwitz, 4, 22, 190, 200, 201, 206, 209, 210, 215n43. See also the Holocaust; Nazi Germany; Nazis/​ Nazism/​National Socialism Auster, Paul, 1–​2 authorship thesis, 68, 69, 70 autobiographical memory, 66, 205 autobiographical narratives accuracy of, 183–​184, 205 cultural memory and, 95 as ethical inquiry, 303 ethics of, 204–​210, 212 in everyday interactions, 101 fictional narratives and, 35, 179, 181, 195, 205, 211

4 3

autobiographical narratives (cont.) historical imagination and, 179, 190, 195, 210–​212, 300 the Holocaust and, 22, 301 interactional approaches to, 124 narrative identities and, 34, 100 narrative imagination and, 206, 211 paradoxical status of, 36, 205 of perpetrators, 246–​247 as self-​reflection, 100, 303 sense of the possible in, 35, 181, 211, 300 significance of, 299, 301, 303 as taking responsibility, 180, 200, 204 autobiographical storytelling, 34, 101, 200, 204–​212 Back to Back (Rücken an Rücken) (Franck), 152 Badiou, Alan, 156 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 11, 47, 62, 74, 77, 79, 82, 87n33, 88n38, 95, 121, 197, 270–​271 banality of evil, 189–​191, 221, 225 Barnwell, Ashley, 165 Bar-​On, Dan, 122 Barthes, Roland, 12, 51, 108, 245 Batson, Daniel, 128, 132, 146n39, 234 Baudelaire, Charles, 228 Beauvoir, Simone de, 158 Beevor, Antony, 218 Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (Peeling the Onion) (Grass) confession in, 180, 209 cultural amnesia and, 204 doubt theme within, 193, 201–​202 memory and storytelling in, 204–​206 moral agency in, 189, 191, 207 moral witness in, 188–​189 narrative dynamic in, 184, 186 narrative strategies of, 186 the past self and, 199, 206–​208 the role of narrative fiction in, 202–​204 space of possibilities in, 35, 184, 189, 205–​206, 211 time and temporality in, 198–​199, 209–​210 Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) (Heidegger), 6

[ 334 ] Index

Benhabib, Seyla, 75, 80, 81, 88n39 Benjamin, Walter, 117 Bennett, Jill, 14 Berger, Peter, 99 Berlant, Lauren, 93 Bildung, concept of, 129 Bildungsroman, 147n50, 180 Binswanger, Ludwig, 58 blindness, theme of, 69, 144n17, 153, 157, 160, 164, 169, 196, 238–​239, 244, 253n46, 305 The Blind Side of the Heart. See Die Mittagsfrau (The Blind Side of the Heart) (Franck) Booth, Wayne C., 28, 134, 230 Borradori, Giovanna, 125 Boyd, Brian, 134 Braidotti, Rosi, 20 British “leave” campaign/​Brexit, 25, 85n2, 102–​103, 123–​124 Brockmeier, Jens, 11, 20, 32, 52, 53, 58, 60, 66, 100–​101, 124, 280 Brown, Laura S., 151–​152 Browning, Christopher, 217, 244 Bruchstücke: Aus einer Kindheit 1939–​1948 (Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood) (Wilkomirski), 183 Bruner, Jerome, 9, 17, 32, 52, 59, 95 Butler, Judith, 23, 31, 37, 81, 281–​283, 293–​294, 305 capacity to be affected, 46, 170, 199 Caracciolo, Marco, 229, 233 Carr, David, 59, 60 Carroll, Noël, 38n6, 133, 134, 236 Caruth, Cathy, 114 Castano, Emanuele, 3–​4 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 20 Cat and Mouse (Katz und Maus) (Grass), 180 causality (narrative), 7, 49–​51, 53, 233, 242 Cavarero, Adriana, 73, 111, 117, 159 Cavell, Stanley, 13 Céline, Louis-​Ferdinand, 199 climate change, 106, 123 co-​authorship (of lives/​identities), 71–​72, 75, 106, 124 co-​emergence/​co-​poiesis, 279 cognitive narratology, 8, 24, 33

Cohn, Dorrit, 15, 17, 54, 181–​182, 212n5 “common world,” 117, 120 Communist terror, 161–​162, 167, 188 complicity fiction, 23, 185. See also perpetrator fiction Coplan, Amy, 126, 132 co-​telling, 73, 75, 87n34, 156, 280, 284 counter-​narratives, 93, 113, 123, 163, 172, 202–​203, 212 Critical Excess (Davis), 29 Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) (Kant), 107 cruel optimism, 93 Culler, Jonathan, 7 cultural amnesia, 95, 180, 201, 202, 204, 211 cultural history, 16, 33, 37, 215n42 culturally mediated narrative practices, 2, 7, 12, 13, 19, 47–​48, 50, 62, 90, 171, 259, 299, 302, 303 cultural memory, 24, 25, 42n46, 95, 120, 149, 181–​183, 215n42, 248 cultural memory studies, 33–​34 cultural models of narrative sense-​ making, 11, 48, 61, 67, 79, 82, 259, 275 cultural narrative imagination, 305 cultural narratives. See also narrative sense-​making affective structures and, 93 dialogic relationship with, 41n43, 44, 62, 84, 99 dominant, 93, 94, 304 double/​triple hermeneutics and, 62, 164 engagement with, 264, 307 as interpretative models, 48 narrative psychology and, 32 narrative therapy and, 18 narrative unconscious and, 91, 94 narrative understanding and, 66 normativity in, 83 reification of, 40n27 reinterpretation of, 62 self-​reflection and, 99, 103 stereotypes and, 50 subjects of experience and, 84 in To the End of the Land, 264–​265 cultural narrative unconscious, 82, 91, 231, 307

cultural trauma, 24, 121–​122, 146n33 Currie, Gregory, 51, 86n13 Danzig trilogy (Grass), 180, 184, 186, 189, 196, 216n62 Davis, Colin, 29, 223 Deleuze, Gilles, 5, 14, 38n8 democracy, 3, 25, 125–​126, 132, 134, 136–​138 Dennett, Daniel C., 70 “Der Erzähler” (“The Storyteller”) (Benjamin), 117 Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities) (Musil), 90 Derrida, Jacques, 105, 108, 109–​110, 138, 145n23, 147n51 Der Vorleser (The Reader) (Schlink), 150 Dewey, John, 19 “Diachronics,” 55 dialogical conception, of narrative and subjectivity, 74–​83 dialogical intertextuality, 62 dialogicality, 21, 69, 74, 255, 259, 263, 265, 266, 272, 278, 296, 303 dialogical self, 37, 78, 87n35, 269, 272, 278 dialogical subjectivity, levels of, 75–​83 dialogic narrative agency, 173 dialogic narrative imagination, 35, 118, 156, 172, 270, 306–​307 dialogic narrative in-​between, 155, 280 dialogic storytelling ethical potential of, 36–​37, 113, 116, 264–​266, 268, 278, 284–​285, 294, 296, 301–​302 Grossman and, 255 in Die Mittagsfrau (The Blind Side of the Heart), 156 in narrative hermeneutics, 84–​85 narrative in-​between and, 37, 124, 259, 263, 268, 302 non-​subsumptive, 113, 116, 265, 268, 278 otherness and, 113, 156, 265–​266, 294, 296 power of, 116, 259, 264 sense of the possible and, 284 space of possibilities and, 278, 301–​302 temporal dimension of, 156

Index  [ 335 ]

6 3

dialogic storytelling (cont.) in To the End of the Land, 258–​264, 284–​285 transforming intersubjective reality, 264 (transformative) ethical potential of, 36–​37, 278, 285, 294, 296, 301 unity and, 284 dialogism, 74, 269, 270 dialogue. See ethos of dialogue Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) (Grass), 180, 185 Die Mittagsfrau (The Blind Side of the Heart) (Franck) abandonment in, 150, 152, 157, 160, 162–​167, 169, 172–​173 culture of silence and, 165–​170 dialogical logic of, 168–​169 dialogic narrative imagination in, 156–​157, 168, 171 from dialogue to muteness in, 157–​165, 168 ethical inquiry in, 172–​173 gender system/​roles in, 153–​154 historical situation of, 167, 170 intersubjective/​shared space (narrative in-​between) in, 153, 155–​156, 160, 167, 172 loss of father in, 154 mythical narrative/​mythologies in, 153 narrative imagination in, 69, 72, 153, 155–​157, 163 perspective-​taking in, 156, 160, 166–​167, 169, 170, 172 shifting possibilities in, 150–​157 subsumptive narrative practices in, 157, 160, 171–​172 trauma/​traumatic experience in, 151–​152, 161–​162, 165, 167, 169, 171 difficult empathy, 36, 234 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 120, 129 docta ignorantia, 36, 244 Dog Years. See Hundejahre (Dog Years) (Grass) Doležel, Lubomír, 15 double hermeneutic, 61, 164 “double wall” of silence, 122, 165 Duuren, Thom van, 229, 233

[ 336 ] Index

Eakin, Paul John, 183 Eichmann, Adolf, 189, 193, 222, 225 Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt), 244 emotional engagement, 20, 46, 138, 219, 222, 232, 246, 302 empathetic identification, 19, 104, 121, 137 empathetic perception, 58 empathetic perspective-​taking, 3, 89, 126, 233 empathy Assmann on, 129 as complicating factor, 237 Coplan on, 146n39 ethos of dialogue and, 113, 290 existential identification and, 235–​236 fiction and, 3–​4, 26, 29, 33, 146n38, 218 in first-​person narrative, 233 focalization and, 186 mourning and, 290 non-​subsumptive narrative practices and, 113, 116 perpetrator fiction and, 218, 234 perspective-​taking and, 126, 132, 146n39, 186, 235–​236 Shuman on, 166 empiricism, 8, 39n11, 57, 59 emplotment, 49, 120 encounter-​event, 37, 279, 285, 296, 297n10, 302, 303 Ende, Michael, 118 engagement. See emotional engagement; interpretation; readerly engagement “Episodics,” 55 epistemic injustice, 91–​92, 152, 159 Epston, David, 18 The Erl-​King (Le Roi des Aulnes) (Tournier), 238 Erpenbeck, Jenny, 95, 106 ethical evaluation of narrative practices, 14, 31, 33–​35, 89–​144, 179, 180, 184, 235 ethical identity, 32, 246. See also narrative ethical identity ethical imagination, 4, 21, 93–​94, 97, 132, 139, 141–​143, 172, 232, 246, 248 ethical inquiry autobiographical narratives as, 303

literature/​narrative as, 5, 14, 28, 133–​142, 143 moral agency and, 133–​135 narrative imagination and, 91 narrative knowing and, 244 the novel as, 172, 285 professional philosophers and, 41n40 sense of the possible and, 142–​143 ethics of implication, 36, 179, 200–​201, 204, 208, 209, 211, 282, 301 ethics of memory, 200, 210 ethics of relationality, 37, 282 ethos of dialogue dialogicality and, 74, 255 dialogic storytelling and, 285, 294, 296, 307 in historical worlds, 290 narrative hermeneutics and, 30, 301, 303–​304, 306 non-​subsumptive narrative practices and, 36–​37, 110, 113, 294, 295, 306 questions and, 271 sense of the possible and, 284 in To the End of the Land, 269–​270 transformative potential of, 270, 279 vulnerability and, 303, 307 Ettinger, Bracha L., 37, 279, 281, 293, 297n10, 305 European humanism, 1, 22, 122 evil, banality of, 189–​191, 221, 225 existence, aesthetics of, 13, 69, 278 experience empiricist-​positivistic conception of, 8, 39n11, 57, 59 hierarchical models of, 54–​58 historical, 8, 24, 39n11, 194, 195, 196 interpretative structure of, 6, 45–​46 as mediated/​mediatedness of, 8–​9, 45–​61, 83–​84 raw, 8, 39n11, 56, 84 storytelling/​narrative as sharing/​ exchange of, 89, 103, 117, 119, 153, 159, 172 temporality of, 57, 60 unmediated, 56–​57 “experiencing I,” 185–​186, 199, 241, 243 experiencing self/​selves, 55, 59, 259, 263 experientiality, 7, 39n14, 185 experientially driven storytelling, 106, 126, 232

Facebook, 102. See also social media Façons de lire, manières d’être (Macé), 29 factuality (tacit theory of), 15, 182 Falke, Cassandra, 29 Falling Out of Time (Nofel mi-​huts la-​ zeman) (Grossman), 23, 36, 255–​ 256, 285–​295 family history, 150, 151, 160, 165, 167 family mythology, 156, 164 fascism, 22, 108, 133, 146n34, 192, 212, 213n21, 248 Felski, Rita, 6–​7, 29, 30, 46–​47, 77, 85n4, 97, 104, 119, 144n8, 146n30 fiction. See complicity fiction; perpetrator fiction; reading fiction fictionality (theories of), 15, 96, 182–​183 first-​person narrative in autobiographical writing, 180, 204 empathy and, 233 identification and, 246 interpretation and, 48 in perpetrator fiction, 185, 218, 230, 232–​233 perspectives and, 73 reading strategies and, 239 reification and, 222 reliability of, 229 self-​encounter and, 101, 202 Fludernik, Monika, 7, 8, 39n11, 189 focalization, 131, 167, 186, 218, 229 Foucault, Michel, 11, 13, 16, 31, 47, 69, 70, 81, 85n6, 213n7, 213n21, 278, 297n9 Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood (Bruchstücke: Aus einer Kindheit 1939–​1948) (Wilkomirski), 183 Franck, Julia. See also Die Mittagsfrau (The Blind Side of the Heart) (Franck) historical worlds and, 300, 305 Jewish background of, 24, 165 mother figures in novels of, 152 muteness/​silence in novels of, 162, 165, 196, 305 Frank, Manfred, 80, 87n25 Freeman, Mark on experience and narrative, 60, 86n17 on life without narrative, 168 on narrative and imagination, 20

Index  [ 337 ]

8 3

Freeman, Mark (cont.) on narrative psychology, 32 on narrative reflection, 53, 100–​101 on narrative unconscious, 18, 20, 100, 276 on the Other, 266, 282, 296 Frege, Gottlob, 15 Frey, James, 183 Fricker, Miranda, 91, 92, 112, 128, 152 Frie, Roger, 18, 32, 58, 146n29 futurity, 53, 153 Gadamer, Hans-​Georg affectivity and, 46 on application of rules, 88n36 Aristotle and, 139–​141 on becoming, 47 on concepts/​language, 109–​110 on “consciousness of being affected by history,” 196 Derrida and, 105 on dialogism, 77, 80, 87n32, 110, 271 on dialogue/​language, 77, 79, 87n32, 110, 271 on docta ignorantia, 244 on encounter of the other, 103 on experience (Erfahrung), 45, 57, 85n1, 263 on Heidegger, 6 on hermeneutics, 6, 28, 39n17, 46, 85n3, 86n11, 99, 244 on history, 10, 16, 212n5 on interpretation, 10, 45, 87n24n99, 212n5 ontological turn of, 5–​6 on perspective-​taking, 129 Ricoeur and, 105 on self-​understanding, 45, 103, 144n11 temporality of experience and, 57 on truth, 213n6 on understanding, 10, 45, 109–​110 Gehen, ging, gegangen (Go, Went, Gone) (Erpenbeck), 95, 106 German literature, Second World War and, 149–​150 Giddens, Anthony, 61 Girard, René, 223 global warming, 304, 306

[ 338 ] Index

Go, Went, Gone (Gehen, ging, gegangen) (Erpenbeck), 95, 106 Goffman, Erving, 72, 76, 87n31 Goldie, Peter, 8, 86n7, 86n8, 87n30, 127, 132 Gottschall, Jonathan, 134, 146n32 Grass, Günter on ability to doubt, 193, 201–​202 Beim Häuten der Zwiebel and, 22–​23, 35, 180, 183–​186, 188–​189, 191–​ 193, 196, 198–​199, 202–​212 confession of, 180, 209 cultural amnesia and, 204 on idealism, 192, 201 the past self and, 206–​208 Grossman, David on demonstrations in Jerusalem, 296n1 ethos of implication of, 247 Falling Out of Time, and, 285–​294 on families and war, 264 on grief, 288–​289 Jewish background of, 24, 40n32 moral/​narrative agency of, 258, 278, 305 narrative imagination and, 300 on novelist’s task, 277 perpetrator fiction and, 23 on poetry, 286 son’s death, 257–​258 survival theme of, 281 To the End of the Land, 258–​285 Guaraldo, Olivia, 117 Habermas, Jürgen, 61, 125 Hacking, Ian, 31 Hämäläinen, Nora, 135, 147n49 Hawthorn, Jeremy, 27 Heavey, Emily, 76 Heidegger, Martin, 5–​6, 16, 38n7, 45, 46, 57, 65, 98, 105, 192, 214n26 Hermans, Hubert J. M., 77, 78, 272 hermeneutic circle, 47, 51, 62, 85n5, 91, 109 hermeneutic imagination, 52, 86n11 hermeneutic justice/​injustice, 91–​92, 128, 146n41 hermeneutic narrative ethics, 2, 13, 89–​144, 299, 303, 306 hermeneutic psychology, 58, 146n29

hermeneutic resources, 52, 92, 93, 104, 119, 128, 199, 290, 304, 307 hermeneutics, origination of, 5–​6. See also narrative hermeneutics; phenomenological hermeneutics; philosophical hermeneutics hierarchical models, in narrative studies, 54–​58 Hirsch, Edward, 286 historical experience, 8, 24, 39n11, 194, 195, 196 historical imagination, 32, 35, 93–​94, 179, 190, 195, 210–​211, 300 historical ontology, 31, 88n41 historical world(s) artwork in, 105–​106 breakdown of, 290 engagement with, 10, 127 fiction and, 15–​17, 105, 141, 181–​182 in Franck’s novels, 150, 160, 167, 171, 173 in Hundejahre, 193, 210–​211 identity in, 159 individual experience in, 32, 58, 159 individual lives in, 32, 74, 128, 130, 141, 300 insights into, 94 limits of, 130 metaphysic underlying, 16 in the modern novel, 141 narrative ethical identity in, 102 narrative imagination and, 128 of Nazi Germany, 159, 160, 167, 179, 185–​186, 193, 210, 219, 300 of Nazi-​occupied Europe, 23–​24, 219 of 1930s Danzig, 184 perspective-​taking and, 127–​128, 167 of the present, 25, 102, 303 resistance in, 276 self-​reflexive narratives in, 300, 303 sense-​making in, 2, 143 as space of possibilities, 2, 16, 58, 94, 150, 167, 171, 182, 183, 189, 190, 210, 211, 219, 222, 300 webs of violence in, 173 historiography/​history-​writing, 25, 96, 182, 214 history “big,” 167

conceptions of, 8, 16, 167, 191–​192, 198, 201, 211 cultural, 16, 33, 37, 215n42 family, 150, 151, 160, 165, 167 narrative/​fiction and, 1, 5, 35, 218 nature of, 15, 16, 23, 35, 94, 95, 181, 183, 193–​194, 211, 222, 238 Nietzsche on, 149, 170 philosophies of, 194, 212n5, 226 repeating itself, 123, 195, 201, 210 sense of, 13, 32, 35, 94, 179, 184, 190, 193, 210, 248, 304 history/​literature relationship, 14, 15, 181–​183, 218, 225, 248 history/​time, experience of, 190–​195, 211 Hitler, Adolf, 22, 184, 187, 273 Hitler Youth, 184, 188 the Holocaust. See also Auschwitz; Nazi Germany; Nazis/​Nazism/​National Socialism art and, 201 autobiographical narratives and, 22, 301 conditions of possibility for, 36, 190, 201, 211, 220, 232, 237, 248 cultural memory and, 24, 248 empathy and, 166 ethical imagination and, 21 eyewitness perspective of, 220 focalization of novels about, 131 gendered experience of, 162 Grossman on, 40–​41n32 identification and, 235 implication of, 209, 231 instrumental rationality underlying, 213n21, 237 legacy of, 165, 231, 273, 301 in Les Bienveillantes, 224, 225, 227, 253n44 literature/​fiction and, 4, 37, 149–​150, 232 narration/​explanation of, 241–​242 narrative imaginary of, 195, 223 perpetrators and, 22, 41n32, 122, 185, 217–​218, 227 power of storytelling in, 21 realist/​antirealist studies of, 244–​245, 248, 254n52 receiving narratives about, 129

Index  [ 339 ]

0 4 3

the Holocaust (cont.) representations of, 149, 166, 245, 248 silence and, 196–​197 Steiner on, 4 trauma of, 122, 169 understanding of, 36, 150, 237, 239, 241–​242, 244–​245, 248 Holocaust studies, 22, 217, 235, 252n36, 254n52 Holzkamp, Klaus, 11 Hopkins, Brent, 72 Horace, 137 horizon of expectation, 16, 154, 194, 220–​221 Horkheimer, Max, 188 The Human Condition (Arendt), 65 Hundejahre (Dog Years) (Grass), 35, 180, 186–​189, 192–​194, 196–​199, 201–​ 202, 205–​206 Husserl, Edmund, 44, 57 identification affective, 68, 87n26, 93, 207 as appropriation, 252n36 concept of, 235–​237 empathy and, 233 habits of, 301 identity and, 146n30 minimum, 246 recognition as, 104 “identifications-​with” process, 65, 66, 119, 236 identities, as co-​authored, 75 identity, 26, 41n42, 60, 63, 65, 66, 68, 72, 75–​76, 81, 100, 103, 111, 116, 121, 146n30, 158, 236, 248. See also narrative ethical identity; narrative identity identity categories, 10, 154, 166, 172, 266 identity power, 112, 171 imagination. See ethical imagination; historical imagination; narrative imagination imaginative resistance, 33, 36, 232 imaginative variations, 5, 79, 96, 142, 215n42, 307 imagine-​other perspective-​taking, 126–​127, 146n39

[ 340 ] Index

imagine-​self perspective-​taking, 126–​127 immersion (narrative), 24, 36, 130–​131, 185–​186, 191, 219, 222, 227–​228, 231–​232, 247, 302 implicated subject, 23, 25, 71, 81, 102, 165, 190, 196, 200, 231, 272, 299, 305 implication, ethics of, 36, 179, 200–​201, 204, 208, 209, 211, 282, 301 Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) (Remarque), 203, 300 indeterminacy (of action/​life/​future), 53, 95, 166, 191, 192, 251n24 injustice, epistemic, 91–​92, 152, 159 instrumental rationality/​reason, 138, 189, 200, 225, 237 internal dialogue, 49, 75, 79, 259, 263, 265, 268, 271, 274, 297n3 internarrativity, 62 interpretation. See also narrative interpretation(s) as engagement, 6, 7, 10, 46, 47 hermeneutic conception of, 2, 6–​7, 9–​10, 43, 44 hermeneutic-​Nietzschean conception of, 34, 43–​53 literary, 9, 28, 47 in medias res, 84–​85 narrative as, 19, 44 of others, 73 Sontag on, 43–​44 interpretative continuum, 54–​62 intersubjectivity, 14–​15, 26, 34, 50, 54, 69, 117–​119, 124, 143, 153–​155, 159, 169, 172, 183, 264–​265, 278, 282 intertextuality, 62, 87n21, 227–​229, 238, 251n24 Isha Borachat Mi’bsora. See To the End of the Land (Isha Borachat Mi’bsora) (Grossman) Israel-​Palestine conflict, 23, 36, 256, 259, 272–​278, 285 Iversen, Stefan, 239–​240 Jameson, Fredric, 19 Jaspers, Karl, 200 Johnson, Mark, 60 Josselson, Ruthellen, 72

Kant, Immanuel, 13, 40n22, 107, 145n22, 240 Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse) (Grass), 180 Kearney, Richard, 120 Keen, Suzanne, 4, 127 Kempen, Harry J. G., 78 Kidd, David Comer, 3–​4 The Kindly Ones. See Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) (Littell) Knausgård, Karl Ove, 22, 246, 247 Korthals Altes, Liesbeth, 7, 212n1, 252n35 Koselleck, Reinhart, 16, 194, 198–​199 Krimmer, Elisabeth, 167, 176n42 Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) (Kant), 107, 145n22 LaCapra, Dominick, 163, 177n50, 177n59, 237, 251n24 Lacoste, Charlotte, 233 Lacoue-​Labarthe, Philippe, 187 Lagerfeuer (West) (Franck), 167 language conceptions of, 108 as dialogical, 79–​80, 271 nature of, 86n10, 271 non-​subsumptive model of, 80, 110 in social contexts, 80 systems, 79–​80 as violent, 108–​110 Lanzmann, Claude, 108, 217, 244, 245 Latour, Bruno, 77, 144n8 Laub, Dori, 115, 168–​169 Leake, Eric, 233–​234 Le Doeuff, Michèle, 20 Le Roi des Aulnes (The Erl-​King) (Tournier), 238, 249n1 Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) (Littell) dimension of the possible in, 219–​226 empathy/​identification/​perspectivetaking in, 232–​239 multilayered readerly contract in, 226–​231 narrative perspective-​taking in, 245–​248 questions without answers in, 239–​245 social diagnostics of, 237

Les fleurs du mal (Baudelaire), 228 Leuveren, Bram van, 229, 233 Levinas, Emmanuel, 13, 40n23, 41n37, 51, 86n10, 107, 108–​109, 111, 224, 250n10, 250n13, 250n14 life/​lives. See also possible lives as interpretative process, 63–​64 living and telling of, 8–​9, 27, 54–​74, 263 performative dimension of, 73 life-​story theory of identity, 70 life-​writing, 68, 101, 103, 301 The Limits of Critique (Felski), 29 Lindemann, Hilde, 13, 76, 101, 125 Lissa, Caspar J. van, 229, 233 literature/​history relationship, 14, 15, 181–​183, 218, 225, 248 Littell, Jonathan background of, 252n35 Les Bienveillantes and, 23, 36, 217–​248 minority status of, 24 moral implication and, 231 perpetrator fiction and, 185, 227, 247 realist tradition and, 244–​245 Locke, John, 66 logics of narrative, 12, 36, 301 Lothe, Jakob, 27, 230 Luckmann, Thomas, 99 Macé, Marielle, 29, 46 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 13, 26, 63, 71–​73, 98, 133 Mackenzie, Catriona, 11 male perspective, in German literature, 149–​150 Mann, Thomas, 200 The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) (Musil), 90 Margalit, Avishai, 188, 210 Markus, Hazel, 67 McAdams, Dan P., 70, 87n23, 145n28 McGlothlin, Erin, 150, 233–​236, 253n46 McKim, Elizabeth, 60, 70, 106 McLean, Kate, 71, 75 mediatedness of experience, 8–​9, 45, 56–​61, 83–​84 memoir, 183, 228–​229 memory, cultural, 24, 25, 33, 34, 42n46, 95, 120, 149, 181–​183, 215n42, 248 memory, ethics of, 200, 210

Index  [ 341 ]

2 4 3

memory fiction, 122 Merkel, Angela, 123 metanarrativity, 24, 41n33 migrant/​refugee crisis, 25, 45, 58, 60, 85n2, 95–​96, 106, 123, 167, 247 A Million Little Pieces (Frey), 183 mimesis, 17, 62, 87n20, 239, 252–​253n41 mimetic/​anti-​mimetic dichotomy, 218, 227, 239, 252–​253n41 mimetic desire, 223 Min kamp (My Struggle) (Knausgård), 22, 246 Momo (Ende), 118 moral agency Arendt on, 159 in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, 172 conditions of possibility for, 14, 31, 35, 46, 169, 173, 300 development of, 41n43, 101–​102 ethics and, 4, 13–​14 in Franck’s novels, 35, 166, 168–​170, 300 in historical worlds, 16 imagination and, 96, 128 in literary worlds, 21, 169 narrative for, 133, 170, 172 narrative imagination and, 3 in narrative therapy literature, 41n43 narrative unconscious and, 276 Nussbaum on, 135–​136 perspective-​awareness and, 4 role of reason in, 139, 141 self-​interpretation and, 11 social embeddedness of, 26 as survival, 281 temporal process of change and, 130 Morson, Gary Saul, 5, 50, 95, 193 motherhood capacity for, 150, 160, 162, 168 as socially conditioned, 152 storytelling and, 160–​161, 169 Musil, Robert, 90, 141 My Struggle (Min kamp) (Knausgård), 22, 246 myths/​mythical narrative/​frame, 12, 20–​ 21, 99, 107, 118, 120, 124, 153, 197, 227, 229, 237–​239, 245, 251n24, 264, 286, 296, 300. See also family mythology; Nazi mythology

[ 342 ] Index

Nancy, Jean-​Luc, 187 “narrating I,” 185–​186, 199, 241, 243 narrating self/​selves, 55, 59, 263 narrative agency autobiography and, 212 co-​authorship and, 71 conditions of possibility for, 31, 173, 305 cultural meaning and, 11–​12 dialogical subjectivity and, 75 ethos of dialogue and, 306 literature and, 106 in Die Mittagsfrau, 170–​171, 173 in narrative hermeneutics, 97, 100, 306 narrative identity and, 66 narrative webs and, 14 notion/​concept of, 11–​12 in perpetrator fiction, 305 power dynamics and, 81 sense of (the possible) and, 14, 91, 276 socio-​historical webs and, 272, 283 struggles over, 299 in To the End of the Land, 276, 283 narrative appropriation, 51, 107–​108, 110–​113, 116, 145n27, 171, 243, 248–​249, 305 narrative dynamic, 36, 41n36, 124, 135, 166, 177n58, 184, 186, 218–​219, 225–​227, 231–​232, 237, 241, 245, 247, 251n19, 266, 294, 312 narrative empathy, 218 narrative ethical identity, 102, 106, 128, 133 narrative ethics field of, 26–​28, 94 hermeneutic narrative ethics, 2, 13, 89–​144, 299, 303, 306 of implication, 36, 179, 200–​201, 204, 208, 209 Phelan’s subfields of, 27 narrative experiences, 60–​61 narrative hermeneutics author’s development of, 2–​3, 6–​11, 15, 17, 43–​144, 303 conception of literature in, 28, 30, 239 critical theory/​literary narrative studies and, 6–​7, 28–​30 cultural memory studies and, 33–​34

dialogical conception of narrative and subjectivity in, 74–​83, 303 interrelations of interpretative practices in, 43–​44 narrative ethics and, 26–​28, 89–​144 narrative philosophy and, 30–​31 narrative psychology and, 32–​33 narrative understanding and, 111, 244 non-​subsumptive model of, 111–​112, 115, 301 perspectivism in, 9–​10 toward a, 5–​11 narrative identity Arendt on, 70 autobiographical storytelling and, 34 breakdown of, 170 in children, 75–​76 construction of, 67, 75–​76, 91, 169 development of narrative competence in, 76 dialogical approach to, 13, 74–​75, 77, 83, 156, 171, 202, 280–​281 ethical identity and, 32 exploration of, 31 identification-​with and, 65 as interactional, 66 intersubjective dimension of, 69 narrative imagination and, 21, 248 narrative unconscious and, 21 in narrative webs, 66 in Nazi Germany, 160, 187, 189–​190 performances of, 76 as a process of reinterpretation, 65–​66 Ricoeur on, 64 self-​responsibility and, 99, 133 sense of the possible/​spaces of possibilities and, 67–​68, 171 social media and, 103 subjectivity and, 65 in To the End of the Land, 281 narrative imaginary, 20–​21, 24, 79, 82, 92, 133, 163–​164, 189, 190, 192, 195, 201, 220 narrative imagination of author/​narrator/​protagonist, 25 in autobiographical narration, 206, 211 in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, 197 Brockmeier on, 20, 52

dialogic (cultivation of), 35, 118, 156–​157, 169, 172, 266–​267, 270, 302, 306–​307 ethical dimensions of, 94, 128, 131, 139, 306–​307 futurity of, 53, 153 as hermeneutic imagination, 52 historical dimensions of, 94, 182–​183 historical worlds and, 128, 131, 180, 182–​183, 300, 302 of the Holocaust, 23, 248 indoctrination and, 184 “master narratives” and, 120 moral agents/​moral agency and, 133, 141 narrative identity and, 21, 23, 141 narrative in-​betweens and, 35, 118 in narrative psychology, 32 narrative unconscious and, 18–​21, 83, 91, 100, 155, 184, 307 Nazi ideology and, 223 Nussbaum’s approach to, 3, 19, 138 the past and, 180, 206, 211, 291 perpetrator-​victim dichotomy in, 217, 305 possible selves and, 163 post-​Holocaust, 217 sense of the possible and, 20, 157, 220 shame and, 163 in shaping values, 128 strain of, 267 as subversive, 201 temporality/​temporal multidirectionality of, 20, 139 of the young, 202 narrative in-​between affective fabric of, 281 construction of, 123, 125, 223 cultural memory and, 120 cultural silence and, 167 cultural trauma and, 122 dialogic, 155, 280 dialogue/​dialogic process of, 120, 124, 155–​156, 255–​256, 259, 268 disruption/​erosion of, 122, 124, 167 ethically problematic/​exclusive, 125, 160, 172 ethical potential of storytelling and, 117–​125, 172, 259

Index  [ 343 ]

43

narrative in-​between (cont.) expansion/​enrichment of, 125, 156, 240, 285 fragility of, 274 mythologies and, 118, 153, 265 narrative agency and, 21, 54 narrative identity and, 172, 263 of Nazi Germany, 172, 223 official stories of, 160 sense of connection and, 119 as shared intimacy, 118 of socially progressive forces, 124 space of possibilities of, 117, 143, 284–​285, 302 storytelling and, 117 transformation of, 119, 123–​124, 223, 263, 268, 280–​281, 284, 307 trans-​subjective, 37, 278–​280, 290, 296, 302, 307 narrative interpretation(s) acts/​activity of, 47–​49, 61, 73, 264 agency in, 12 complex examples of, 45 continuum of, 61 double hermeneutic and, 61 of experiences, 48, 59, 61, 84, 187, 198–​199 as interpretative practice, 44 in life-​storying, 205 narratives as, 15, 44, 52, 285 narrative unconscious and, 83 past/​present/​future shaping in, 59, 95, 205, 211 performative dimension of, 11, 64, 82, 264 in process of constituting reality, 51–​52 representation in, 50–​51 situation and, 73 as social acts, 47 specificity of, 48 term usage, 49 in To the End of the Land, 264, 285 traumatic experience and, 114 narrative mastery, 36, 241–​242, 245, 248, 253n44, 253n46, 293, 302 narrative order history and, 238 imposition of, 1, 68, 306 representation of, 51

[ 344 ] Index

narrative philosophy, 30–​31 narrative psychology, 9, 25, 32–​33, 38n2, 42n44, 42n47, 59, 72, 86n13, 116, 296 narrative reflection, 53, 100 narrative(s) as an account, 48–​49, 59, 60, 61, 72, 100, 114 as culturally mediated interpretative practice, 7, 10, 12–​13, 44, 47–​48, 50, 53, 57, 81, 85 dialogical dimension of, 50, 64, 74–​83 ethical evaluation of the potentials and dangers of, 14, 84, 89–​144, 265 explanatory force of, 49, 109, 111, 114 future-​oriented aspect of, 34, 53 hermeneutic conceptualization of, 43–​44, 47–​50 hierarchical models of, 8, 31, 54–​58 imposition of order in, 8, 57, 277, 306 interactional approaches to, 65, 101, 124 logics of, 12, 36, 48, 301 performative character of, 47, 76, 82 as practices of sense-​making, 2–​3 relation of life to, 9, 62–​74 representational accounts of, 7, 53, 54 narrative self-​reflection, 55, 98–​104, 107, 144n17, 157, 196, 243, 269. See also self-​reflexive narratives narrative sense-​making. See also cultural narratives as collaborative and dialogical, 75 as (connection-​creating) activity, 49, 264 cultural models of, 11, 48, 61, 79, 84 everyday, 53 futurity of, 53 as harmful or beneficial, 84, 265 limits of, 295 lost capacity for, 241 as process of sharing experiences, 153 storytelling and, 49, 265 narrative therapy, 18–​19, 32, 41n43, 101, 113, 116, 145n28 narrative turn, 1, 38n3 narrative unconscious (socio)cultural, 91, 231, 307 affective responses and, 275–​276 awareness of, 83, 94

blind perpetuation of, 91, 106, 265, 301 of a certain historical world, 200 concept of, 17–​19 critical engagement with, 100 cultural models/​mechanisms in, 19, 82, 90–​91, 99 of the current world, 231 horizon of expectation and, 220 individual, 82, 83 indoctrination and, 184 literature and, 19, 106 in narrative identity, 21 narrative imaginary and, 20–​21, 163 narrative imagination and, 18–​21, 25, 91, 155, 157, 307 narrative webs and, 265, 307 of petit bourgeois characters, 193, 195 present consciousness of, 199 reflection and, 25, 100 repression of, 198 sense of the possible and, 220 shame and, 163 (socio)cultural, 82 narrative voice, 202, 233 narrative webs awareness of, 12, 14, 100, 307 as constitutive of ethical universe, 14 dialogical storytelling and, 255, 307 in historical worlds, 58, 210, 304 individual interpretations of, 74, 80 life-​writing and, 301 as mediating experience, 60, 62 narrative agency and, 12, 81 in narrative hermeneutics, 62, 97, 164 narrative identity and, 21, 102 in narrative in-​betweens, 119, 265 narrative interpretation and, 57, 84, 265 narrative self-​reflection and, 14, 23, 100, 104 in narrative unconscious, 18, 83 power relations and, 171 relationship between individual subjects and, 44, 74–​84 self-​interpretation and, 66 space of possibilities and, 58, 98 temporality of experience and, 57, 60 understanding of, 82, 102, 301

as webs of violence, 23, 97, 100, 173, 273 narrativist thesis/​contention, 2, 55, 63, 68, 84, 299 narrativity Braidotti on, 20 for/​against arguments on, 1, 38n2, 55, 57, 143 identity and, 171 masking of, 245 Ricoeur on, 141–​142 Strawson on, 2, 55, 69, 86n7, 86n14 narratology cognitive, 8, 24, 33 distancing from interpretation, 7 experience and, 54, 59 history/​past worlds and, 183 humanist ethics and, 28 moral values and, 30 “non-​naturalizing,” 252–​253n41 rhetorical, 30, 39n13 unnatural strand of, 239–​240 nationalist narrative, 22, 107, 192 naturalizing narratives/​narrative strategies, 12, 36, 80, 113, 131, 187, 245, 300, 302–​304 La Nausée (Nausea) (Sartre), 1 Nazi Germany in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, 180, 184, 188, 204, 206–​208 historical world of, 209–​210, 219, 300 in Hundejahre, 187–​189, 192–​194, 196, 198 mechanisms of, 247 narrative in-​between of, 302 ordinary Germans in, 122 sense of inevitability in, 191, 194 as space of possibilities, 35, 184–​190, 211, 248 Nazi mythology, 171, 173, 187 Nazis/​Nazism/​National Socialism. See also the Holocaust; Nazi Germany; perpetrator’s perspective ability to doubt and, 193, 203 in Les Bienveillantes, 218, 221, 226–​228, 237 complicity with, 164, 176n44, 185 Heidegger and, 214n26 historical world of, 24, 159–​160, 186 homosexuality in, 220

Index  [ 345 ]

6 4 3

Nazis/​Nazism/​National Socialism (cont.) in Hundejahre, 187–​189, 192–​194, 196–​198 ideology of, 192, 223–​224 individuals in, 225 in Lagerfeuer, 167 in Die Mittagsfrau, 158–​160, 163–​164, 167, 169, 171 narrative identity of, 99, 172 narratives/​narrative imaginary of, 171, 195 in post-​Holocaust narrative, 217 readerly engagement with, 246 responsibility (collective) for, 200 in Le Roi des Aulnes, 238–​239 silence and, 122, 158 social reality of, 222 state violence and, 245 storytelling of, 21 Nehamas, Alexander, 9 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 139 Nielsen, Henrik Skov, 15 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 13, 69, 87n24, 108–​109, 149, 170 Nietzschean-​hermeneutic approach, 9, 11, 34, 43, 44–​54, 84 Nofel mi-​huts la-​zeman. See Falling Out of Time (Nofel mi-​huts la-​zeman) (Grossman) nonhuman (actors), 39, 40, 125, 224, 304 nonreferential narrative/​fiction, 15, 17, 179, 188, 227 non-​subsumptive ethos, 36, 110, 116, 306 non-​subsumptive model of (narrative) understanding, 49, 80, 110–​113, 145n21, 145n22, 145n25, 301 non-​subsumptive narrative practices. See also subsumptive narrative practices in dialogic storytelling, 91, 112–​113, 116, 278, 294–​295, 305–​306 in Die Mittagsfrau, 171–​172 language systems and, 80, 110 as a mode of understanding others, 13, 35, 107–​116, 301 narrative hermeneutics and, 301–​302 political affects and, 113 in self-​reflexive narratives, 12–​13, 302 storytelling and, 111

[ 346 ] Index

vs.subsumptive narratives, 12, 107, 110–​113, 112, 171, 295, 301–​302 in therapeutic process, 115–​116, 145n27 in To the End of the Land, 265, 268, 270–​272, 277, 279 not-​knowing, 244, 293, 294 not-​yet(-​real)/​yet-​to-​be, 5, 16, 38n7, 52, 194, 248, 280, 307 nouveau roman, 51, 216n59 Nünning, Vera, 186 Nurius, Paula, 67 Nussbaum, Martha, 3, 13, 19–​20, 26, 29, 93, 126, 127, 132, 134–​139 Oksanen, Sofi, 161, 162 One Thousand and One Nights (Scheherazade), 1, 168, 264 On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (Nietzsche), 170 ontological assumptions, 15, 27, 34, 56–​ 57, 67, 84, 181–​182 optimistic attachment, 93 oral testimonies, 119 Ordinary Men (Browning), 244 Orestes myth, 227, 237–​238, 300 Oz, Amoz, 257 past/​present/​future (Vergegenkunft), 195–​200 Pavel, Thomas, 182 Payne, Martin, 18 Peeling the Onion. See Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (Peeling the Onion) (Grass) perpetrator fiction, 23, 36, 185, 213n12, 218, 230, 234, 235, 236, 238, 249n1 perpetrator’s perspective, 217–​219, 228, 232, 245, 248 perpetrator-​victim dichotomy, 21–​25, 149, 173, 273, 305 perspective-​awareness, 4–​5, 35, 90, 125, 128, 131–​132, 302–​303 perspective-​sensitivity, 4, 128, 131–​132 perspective-​taking affective dimension of, 132 as a condition for dialogue, 126 as dialogic engagement, 20, 24, 125, 174, 302 empathy and, 126, 233, 236

ethical potential of, 89–​90, 132–​133, 172, 245–​246 in hermeneutics, 129, 131. See also imagine-​other perspective-​taking; imagine-​self perspective-​taking identification and, 236 imagination and, 125, 127–​128, 131–​133, 267 mediatedness of, 127–​129, 132, 236 moral reasoning and, 133 narrative fiction and, 126, 128, 130–​132, 246 Nussbaum on, 3, 20, 132 other-​oriented, 126–​127, 132, 146n39 in perpetrator fiction, 219, 235–​236, 246 perspective-​awareness and, 125 in psychological literature, 126 storytelling as, 270, 285 perspectivism, 9–​10, 167 Phelan, James, 15, 27, 28, 41n36, 183, 226, 251n19, 294 phenomenological hermeneutics, 44–​45, 109 phenomenological selves, 207–​208 The Phenomenology of Love and Reading (Falke), 29 philosophical hermeneutics, 6, 10–​11, 29, 38n5, 46, 74, 77, 80, 85n3, 98, 129, 139, 144n8, 244 philosophical imaginary, 20 Phoenix, Ann, 9, 39n18 phronesis, 38n5, 139–​141 Plato, 135–​136, 139 The Political Unconscious (Jameson), 19 Polvinen, Merja, 131 Popkin, Jeremy D., 227 populism, 25, 123, 134, 248, 296, 304 positioning theory, 78–​79 positivism, 6, 8, 39n11, 57, 59, 182 possibility relationship, 11, 80 the possible. See sense of the possible; space of possibilities possible/​actual dichotomy, 14–​17, 96, 181–​182, 218 possible lives, 9, 49, 67 possible selves, 67, 77–​79, 83, 93, 154, 163, 172, 301 postclassical narratology, 7, 10

power (social), 10–​11, 16, 19–​20, 23, 25, 29–​30, 44, 47, 71, 81–​82, 84, 88n37, 92, 97, 109, 119, 125, 130, 143, 145n27, 160, 169, 171, 187, 189, 273, 278, 282 presentism, 195, 214n31 psychological narrativity thesis, 55 psychology of reading, 33, 126 Puhdistus (Purge) (Oksanen), 146n35, 161–​163 questioning/​question-​asking, 9, 142, 252n31, 270–​272 questions without answers, 239–​245 racism, 88n43, 121, 124, 151, 159, 176n42, 212, 223, 248, 296 Raggatt, Peter, 67, 78 Rancière, Jacques, 5, 16, 31 Randall, William L., 40n24, 58, 60, 70, 87n29, 106, 146n32 raw experience, 8, 39n11, 56, 84 Razinsky, Lirian, 224, 226 The Reader (Der Vorleser) (Schlink), 150 readerly dynamic, 130, 177n58, 219, 225–​226, 228, 251n19 readerly engagement, 27, 36, 172, 217, 218, 221, 236, 246, 252n35, 264 reading fiction, 3–​4, 6, 19, 27, 29–​30, 39n13, 97, 104, 106, 118, 132, 134, 137, 203, 228, 235, 247, 300 realist/​anti-​realist positions, in Holocaust studies, 244, 254n52 realist readings (of Les Bienvaillantes), 227, 229, 240 referentiality, 15, 17, 179, 181, 183, 205, 225 refugee/​migrant crisis, 25, 45, 58, 60, 85n2, 95–​96, 106, 123, 167, 247 reification, 19, 40n27, 74, 82, 95, 99, 222, 302 relationality, 13, 21, 32, 37, 65, 73–​74, 117, 155, 272, 281–​282, 296, 299, 303, 306 reliability (of the narrator), 184–​185, 228–​230, 251n22. See also unreliable/​ unreliability Remarque, Erich Maria, 199, 203, 300

Index  [ 347 ]

8 4 3

resistance, 20, 25, 34, 100, 103, 119, 189, 190, 201, 203, 211, 217, 276, 299, 300, 303 responsibility, collective, 14, 102, 106, 122–​123, 125, 185, 189, 200, 237, 296 responsibility, taking, 63, 98–​99, 180, 185, 195, 200–​201, 204, 208–​209, 223–​224, 226 retelling/​reinterpretation of narratives, 11–​12, 34, 44, 55, 62, 64–​65, 80, 82, 84, 115–​116, 168–​169, 172, 199, 265, 301, 303–​304 Richardson, Brian, 225 Ricoeur, Paul on cultural memory, 215n42 on “duty to remember,” 96 on the ethical potential of literature, 104–​105, 138, 217, 232 on ethics of memory, 200 on experience as mediated, 45–​47 on fiction as laboratory, 141 on functions of narrative/​storytelling, 3, 17, 52, 133 on futurity, 53 hermeneutics of, 28, 45–​46, 47, 85n3, 105 on Holocaust fiction, 232 on horizon of the present/​future, 57 “imaginative variations” notion of, 5, 79, 96, 98 key metaphors of, 144n9 on mimesis of, 17, 62 moral/​social frameworks and, 13 on narrated life, 1, 98, 156 on narrative identity, 64, 65 narrative imagination and, 20, 138, 144n7 on narrative order, 68 narrative/​self-​responsibility link and, 133 on past/​present linkage, 199–​200 on possibilities in text, 52–​53, 104–​106 on the reality relationship of, 182 Riessman, Catherine K., 76 Ritivoi, Andreea, 86n15, 101, 119, 121 Rorty, Richard, 13, 26, 120–​121 Rothberg, Michael, 22, 23, 33, 113, 144n4, 244, 245, 254n52

[ 348 ] Index

Rücken an Rücken (Back to Back) (Franck), 152 Ryan, Marie-​Laure, 51, 131 Sanyal, Debarati, 217, 231, 250n13, 251n29, 252n35 Sartre, Jean-​Paul, 1, 51, 52 Saunders, Max, 183 Schechtman, Marya, 36, 56, 86n14, 87n26, 87n28, 206–​208, 289 Scheherazade, 1, 168, 281 Schiff, Brian, 32 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 69, 85n5, 129 Schlink, Bernhard, 150 Schnurre, Wolfdietrich, 201 Second World War cultural memory and, 95, 217–​218 as cultural trauma, 21, 122 culture of silence and, 122, 165 displacement and, 95 in German literature, 149–​150 novels in response to, 150, 206, 216n59 perpetrator fiction and, 217–​218 perpetrator-​victim dichotomy and, 21–​24 representations of, 22, 122, 146n35, 150, 218, 226 storytelling after, 12 traumatic legacy of, 21, 23–​24, 146, 165, 206 Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) (Heidegger), 6 self-​alienating narratives, 276–​277 self-​interpretations, 11, 18, 66, 68, 83, 98, 103, 164, 284 “self-​interpreting animal,” 3, 66 self-​reflexive narratives, 12, 36, 94, 131, 180, 185–​186, 202, 206, 219, 227, 245–​246, 300, 302–​303, 307. See also narrative self-​reflection self-​responsibility, 99, 133 self-​understanding autobiographical storytelling and, 101 cultural, 4, 27, 90, 106, 239, 282, 301 culturally available narratives and, 171 European, 209 Holocaust and, 209, 239 literature and, 29, 103–​104, 106 narrative hermeneutics and, 98–​99

narrative’s contribution to, 4, 35, 77, 98–​107, 301 narrative self-​reflection and, 99, 103–​104 narrative unconscious and, 18 possibilities and, 45 storytelling and, 98–​107 Strawson on, 2, 55–​56 traumatic experience and, 114, 121 understanding the other and, 268–​269 Semprún, Jorge, 218 sense-​making practice(s), 2–​3, 12, 48, 53, 82, 93–​94, 107, 111, 112, 144n11, 223, 304, 307 sense of the impossible, 280, 287, 293, 296, 306 sense of the possible as an aspect of ethical, narrative and historical imagination, 93–​96 culture of silence and, 171 (dialogic) storytelling/​narrative practices and, 2, 52, 93, 96–​97, 170, 259, 284–​285, 302 differences of (within social worlds), 16–​17 diminishing/​expansion of, 2, 4, 14, 35, 37, 89, 90–​91, 97, 105, 119, 142–​ 143, 154, 156, 157, 167, 171, 266, 278, 284–​285, 300, 302, 306–​307 ethical potential of narratives and, 14, 89, 90–​97, 142–​143, 170 in historical/​actual worlds, 17, 94, 179, 181, 183 identity and, 14, 32, 67–​68, 119 imagining the perspective of the other and, 220 of moral agents, 4, 16 Morson on, 5 ontological, epistemological, ethical, and social aspects of, 91 perspective-​awareness and, 302 “possibilitarians” and, 90 real possibilities and, 5 relationship between narrative unconscious and narrative imagination in, 18–​20, ​91 sense of history as, 13, 35, 179, 184, 210, 248

as sense of the impossible, 287, 296, 306 as situational, 67 sense perception, 5, 44–​45, 57, 58, 61, 108 Shuman, Amy, 166 sideshadowing, 50, 193, 222, 251n24 “Signposts of Fictionality” (Cohn), 181 silence culture of, 35, 161, 165–​170, 171, 196, 208 “double wall” of, 122, 165 in Falling out of Time, 286, 293 (his)stories of, 37, 112, 305 victims/​victimizers and, 112, 196 Silverman, Max, 33 Simon, Claude, 94 Smith, Ali, 118 social imaginary, 20 social interaction Brockmeier on, 124 dialogic process of, 75 narrative identity and, 67 narratives in, 49, 117, 295 self as performed in, 72, 73, 76 in social media, 102 storytelling as, 117, 294 social media, 59, 73, 100, 102–​103 Socrates, 98 Sontag, Susan, 7, 43–​44 Sools, Anneke, 67 space of experience, 16, 33, 58, 94, 128, 184, 189, 194, 198–​199, 209–​210, 303 space of possibilities autobiographical narratives and, 205 in Les Bienveillantes, 220 culturally mediated narratives and, 171 dialogical, 2, 278, 296 for different parts of population, 300 ethical universe as, 14 expansion and diminishing of, 2, 15, 35, 293, 299, 302 gender system and, 153 historical world as, 2, 16, 94, 150, 167–​168, 182–​183, 211, 219, 222 intersubjective world as, 90 moral agents in, 149, 194, 304 “moral space” as, 98

Index  [ 349 ]

0 53

space of possibilities (cont.) narrative in-​betweens and, 302 narratives in, 2 Nazi Germany as, 179–​180, 185, 189–​ 190, 211, 219–​220, 248 for non-​subsumptive dialogue, 272 the other’s world as, 132, 143 past/​present/​future and, 95, 183–​184, 194, 206 past world as, 181, 183–​184, 206, 248, 300 of the present, 94, 95, 211, 307 question-​asking and, 272 relational space as, 117 silence and, 167 storytelling and, 293, 299 transformation of, 155–​156 Steiner, George, 4 “The Storyteller” (“Der Erzähler”) (Benjamin), 117 storytelling as art of survival, 1, 35–​36, 157–​ 166, 168, 177n64, 256, 260, 264, 280–​281, 285 autobiographical, 34, 101, 200, 204–​212 community creation in, 4, 82, 93, 97, 117–​118, 120–​122, 124, 172, 307 as cultural self-​reflection, 282 dangers of, 1–​2, 12, 14, 27, 89, 97, 112, 116, 125, 131, 133–​134, 142–​143, 258 developmental dimension of, 75–​76, 100–​102 evaluating the ethical potential/​ problems of, 3–​4, 12, 37, 89, 144, 156, 170–​173, 219, 285, 295, 300 as experientially driven, 106, 126, 230, 232 as form of agency, 292 as integral to motherhood, 160–​161, 168 limits of, 37, 156, 245, 256, 260, 285, 300, 303 as a mode of ethical inquiry, 133–​142 narrative-​in-​between and, 117–​125 perspective-​taking/​awareness in, 125–​132 self-​understanding and, 98–​107 sense of the possible in, 90–​97

[ 350 ] Index

understanding others through, 107–​116 Strawson, Galen approach to narrative of, 2, 8, 38n2, 64, 86n7, 99, 196 Currie on, 86n13 on experience as unmediated, 56, 64 life/​narrative relationship and, 8, 31, 68 on narrative self-​reflection, 99, 196 narrativity thesis of, 55–​56, 68, 86n7 Ritivoi on, 86n15 Schechtman on, 86n14 subjectivity dialogical conception of, 13, 74–​76, 79, 83, 269, 272, 278, 303–​304 Foucault on, 16 hermeneutic approach to, 43–​44, 46 narrative (and), 20, 41n42, 60, 65, 78, 81 relationality of, 272, 282, 303 subsumptive narrative practices. See also non-​subsumptive narrative practices in the Israel-​Palestine conflict, 36, 277 the logic of, 12, 306 monological, 116 naturalizing strategies of, 113 in the Nazi mythology, 171 non-​subsumptive interpretation of, 295 non-​subsumptive narrative practices and, 12, 112, 116, 302 as violent practices of appropriation, 112–​113, 160, 277 Sugarman, Jeff, 31, 88n41 Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 185–​186, 213n13, 216n60, 233, 253n44 Taberner, Stuart, 209 taking responsibility, 63, 98–​99, 180, 185, 195, 200–​201, 204, 208–​209, 223–​224, 226 Taylor, Charles, 13, 20, 26, 63, 66, 75, 98, 133 temporality of dialogic process, 170 ethical reasoning and, 141 of experience, 57, 60

in hermeneutic tradition of thought, 198 of reader engagement, 138–​139 of understanding, 109 Terdiman, Richard, 33 terror, age of, 25, 125, 304 terrorism, 45, 58, 125, 131, 133, 147n44, 231, 277, 305 textual dynamics, 177n58, 226 theory of mind, 3, 38n5 third-​person narrative, 48, 73, 197, 202, 209, 218, 229, 232, 259, 261, 263 Time and Narrative (Ricoeur), 17 time/​history, experience of, 60, 114, 157, 190–​195, 198, 211, 285 The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) (Grass), 180, 185 Tolstoy, Leo, 118 To the End of the Land (Isha Borachat Mi’bsora) (Grossman) as an antiwar novel, 283 dialogic storytelling in, 258–​264, 284–​285 ethics of relationality in, 282 ethos of dialogue in, 284–​285 Israel-​Palestine conflict in, 272–​278 narrative agency in, 283–​284 non-​subsumptive understanding in, 265–​272 storytelling as survival in, 282–​283 trans-​subjective becoming-​together in, 278–​281 writing of, 23, 256, 258 Tournier, Michel, 238 trans-​subjective space, 37, 124–​125, 278–​280, 284, 290, 296, 302, 307 trans-​subjectivity, 37, 279 trauma studies, 113–​115, 151, 177n50 traumatic experience, 114–​115, 151, 161–​162, 168, 242, 261, 271, 279, 287 traumatic past, 162, 180, 196, 198, 219, 243–​244, 262, 291, 305 traumatic realism, 245, 254n52 triple hermeneutic, 62, 87n20, 103, 164, 265 Trump, Donald, 22, 25, 103, 113, 121, 124, 133 truth value, 15, 181–​182, 183–​184, 205

understanding, affective dimension of, 46 understanding others, through storytelling, 107–​116 unequal distribution of agency/​ possibilities/​vulnerability, 10, 34, 40n20, 50, 52, 299, 305 unmediated experience, 56–​57, 84 unnatural narratology, 239–​240, 252n41 unreliable/​unreliability, 228–​230 Uses of Literature (Felski), 29 utilitarian approach, to ethics, 13, 26, 40n22, 147n49 Van Loom, Rens J. P., 78 Vassilieva, Julia, 19, 116, 145n28 Velleman, J. David, 49, 109 Vergegenkunft (past/​present/​future), 195–​200 victims/​victimizers dichotomy, 273. See also perpetrator-​victim dichotomy Villon, François, 228 violence circle of, 122, 238, 276 colonial/​racialized, 217, 231 of concepts/​language, 108, 109, 145n19, 145n23 conditions of possibility for, 23, 249 destructability and, 37, 282 emotional, 173 experience of, 115 histories/​legacies of, 24, 34, 37, 113, 149, 209, 272–​273, 275, 301, 305 mimetic desire and, 223 narrative mastery and, 248 in present world, 247–​248 sexual, 150, 162 state, 245 structural, 23, 114, 195 structures of, 50, 81, 96, 100, 102, 112, 138, 248 webs of, 23, 173, 204, 282 vulnerability, 10, 17, 34, 37, 50, 71, 97, 136, 234, 255, 262, 281–​283, 291, 294, 295–​296, 299, 302–​306 Wajnryb, Ruth, 122 Walker, Margaret Urban, 13, 26, 147n47 Walsh, Richard, 15 Warnke, Georgia, 99

Index  [ 351 ]

2 5 3

Weber, Max, 138 West (Lagerfeuer) (Franck), 167 White, Hayden, 8, 57, 72, 94, 212n5 White, Michael, 18 Wiesel, Elie, 196 Wilkomirski, Binjamin, 183 Winnicott, Donald, 136 Winterson, Jeanette, 2, 123–​124 women. See also Die Mittagsfrau (The Blind Side of the Heart) (Franck) experience of trauma by, 151–​152

[ 352 ] Index

in representations of war, 149–​150, 161–​162, 166 sexual violence and, 92, 162 Women’s March, 103, 144n14 working through (of traumatic experience), 33, 115, 121, 163, 177n50, 280 Yehoshua, A. B., 257 Zerubavel, Eviatar, 122