Re: [xmca] Against Narrativity!?!

The May 2007 edition of the journal Qualitative Inquiry has a focus on
Narrative inquiry

Mary van der Riet; School of Psychology; University of KwaZulu-Natal
Private Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209

email: vanderriet@ukzn.ac.za
tel: 033 260 6163; fax: 033 2605809

>>> Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> 2007/05/11 08:02 AM >>>
Well it's an interesting read, Mike, and certainly flies in the face of

everything I think about the topic. - which can't be bad. In fact, my
suspicion is that the article is consciously intended as a challenge.
I was permanently affected by Alasdair MacIntyre's material about
narrative, I think it was in "Beyond Virtue", but what I notice is
absent
from this article which clearly intends itself to be a comprehensive
overview of positions on this topic, is any sense that the narrative in

question is *larger than the individual, personal, biography*, that
begins
somewhere about your date of birth. The point about MacIntyre's version
is
that one may gradually come to discover oneself as a player in a much
larger narrative, which perhaps began before human history began - and
it's
this, IMHO, which is particularly important to Ethical Narrativism.
Also, I am not convinced that GS is arguing *against* fashion. When I
formed my view on this topic, in favour of ethical narrativism, I was
aware
that I was flying in the face of "postmodern" fashion, which has a
narrative about narratives being oppressive, exclusionary and so on,
and GS
refers to this view in his own argument.
Although it is a clever and challenging article, I think it is very
undialectical in its conceptions. It is not just A and not-A, but it is

difficult to argue against this kind of black-and-white argument. He
says a
lot of true things, but he hasn't changed my belief that grasping one's
own
narrative is important to leading a good life.
Andy
At 08:41 PM 10/05/2007 -0700, you wrote:
>Check out the following paper at
>http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/reviews/against_narrativity.pdf
>
>So many xmca-o-philes and many others are convinced of the centrality
of
>narrative
>in human life that this critique ought to provide some food for
thought. Or
>anger. Or.......
>
>We have a big backlog of MCA issues coming along, but in the meantime,
this
>seems worth
>checking out.
>
>mike
>_______________________________________________
>xmca mailing list
>xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

Andy Blunden. The Subject -
http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/the-subject.htm

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Received on Fri May 11 02:31 PDT 2007