Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis innovative collection brings together experts from a range of fields including literature, psychology, philosophy, education, and medicine to explore the dangers of narrative and the recuperative possibilities of a narrative hermeneutics. Timely, and wide-ranging in scope, this book will be of great value to scholars and practitioners who want to understand why stories are so pervasive in a 'post-truth' era and how they may yet spark our political imagination. * Sujatha Fernandes, author of Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling (Oxford, 2017) *
This is a necessary book for these times. Amid darkness, suspicion, and cold estrangement come searchers to shed light on our shipwreck. These essays clear an intellectually rigorous path from post-truth to reciprocal solicitude for the Other. Authentic dialogue and relation are again within reach. * Rita Charon, author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness *
We human beings are hopelessly hermeneutical beings. We can't help but make up stories-be they 'true' or 'false' or somewhere in between-to make sense of our lives, ourselves, our worlds. This volume, an impressive collection of solid and wide-ranging scholarship, constitutes a searching, sorely-needed meditation on the role of the narrative turn itself in both contributing to-and countering-the emergence of our so-called 'post-truth' age. It's a book which narrativists in every field, not to mention politicians of every stripe, should take seriously indeed. * William L. Randall, author of The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life: Tales from the Coffee Shop *
How can we humans live amid increasingly violent conflicting interpretations of our world and each other? These essays allow readers to judge how far narrative hermeneutics can help with this troubling problem. * Arthur Frank, author of Letting Stories Breathe and King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Challenges and Prospects of Narrative Hermeneutics in Tumultuous Times Hanna Meretoja and Mark Freeman Part I: Politics of Storytelling Chapter 1: The Inevitability, and Danger, of Narrative Mark Freeman Chapter 2: Testimony: Truth, Lies, and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion Colin Davis Chapter 3: Hermeneutic Awareness in Uncertain Times: Post-truth, Narrative Agency, and Existential Diminishment Hanna Meretoja Part II: Understanding the Self Chapter 4: Verstehen and narrative Jens Brockmeier Chapter 5: "Be Loyal to the Story": Sorrow, Narrative, and Truth-telling Molly Andrews Chapter 6: Narrative as an Interpretation of Self-Pattern Shaun Gallagher Chapter 7: Speaking of Elves, Dragons, and Werewolves: Narrative Hermeneutics and Other-than-Human Identities Clive Baldwin, Lauren Ripley, and Shania Arsenault Part III: Understanding the Other Chapter 8: Identity, Understanding, and Narrative Georgia Warnke Chapter 9: Found in Translation: Solicitude and Linguistic Hospitality in Storytelling Andreea Deciu Ritivoi Chapter 10: The Hermeneutics of Darkness: Interpreting Perpetrators on their Crimes Brian Schiff, Kaylee Altimore, and Genevieve Bougher Chapter 11: Perpetrator Histories, Silencing and Untold Stories: A View from Contemporary Psychoanalysis Roger Frie Part IV: Narrative Practices Chapter 12: Literary and Film Narratives Jakob Lothe Chapter 13: Queer Perspectives on Narrative Practices in Asylum Politics Ada Schwanck Chapter 14: Narrative Medicine: The Book at the Gates of Biomedicine Danielle Spencer Chapter 15: Psychiatric Truth and Narrative Hermeneutics Bradley Lewis Index
