Re: [xmca] Against Narrativity!?!

Andy,
   
  Do you know George Orwell's essay about Henry Miller:
   
  http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/inside-the-whale3.htm
   
  If there ever was an episodic, I think Miller would qualify.
   
  Orwell, on the other hand, was totally involved with the parameters of narrativity. Nevertheless, he made the curious statement that all of the goals towards which his commitment (ethical responsibility?) aspired, especially in this period when folks were still fighting Franco and hadn't quite kicked the euphoria of the Bolshevik revolution, were actually being lived by Miller. Miller's freedom (episodic and narrative free) being the goal to which all the movement aspired. Even Marx said that the point was to end history.
   
  Paul
   
  Paul
   
   
   
  

Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
  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
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Andy Blunden. The Subject - http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/the-subject.htm

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Received on Fri May 11 14:17 PDT 2007