Alterity And Narrative

Drawing from the fields of rhetoric, cultural studies, literature, and folkloristics, Kathleen Glenister Roberts argues that identity and the history of alterity in the West can be understood more clearly through narrative motifs. She provides analyses of these motifs including infanticide, universalism, the Tower of Babel, the warrior Other, the noble savage, entropology, and the trickster. With current intellectual conflict as its subtext, this book posits that identity is always negotiated toward Otherness. Roberts interrogates narrative constructions of Western biases toward non-Western Others, with each chapter addressing a Western historical moment through an exemplary narrative. This process shows that by imagining and objectifying Others, Western cultures were creating their own Selves. In confronting the ethnocentrism of past historical moments, Roberts invites us to recognize it in the present—in a new way. Alterity and Narrative asks that we afford Others the ability to transcend their own ethnocentrism, and therefore avoid well-meaning but naïve calls for "cultural sensitivity."

This book introduces a simple idea: when we tell a story, we tell a story and at the same time create the world where this story takes place. Narration creates environments, spaces and, in a certain sense, gives symbolic meanings and values to the identities by which people interact in their daily experiences. Set in the multicultural and multireligious Taiwanese environment, this book describes the interactions, and above all the narrations, linked to a Catholic village located in the Taiwanese countryside. Catholicism in Taiwan is a minor religion (around 2% of the population), and considered a foreign and heterodox religion, something different and "other" from the Taiwanese mainstream religious environment. It is this sense of alterity that creates the stories about this place and, as a consequence, creates this place and its special identity.

This book examines how Asian American authors since 1945 have deployed the stereotype of Asian American inscrutability in order to re-examine and debunk the stereotype in various ways. By paying special attention to what narrative theorists have regarded as one of the most extraordinary aspects of fiction—its ability to give (or else deny) readers a remarkably detailed knowledge of the inner lives of their characters—this book explores deeply and systematically the specific ways Asian American narratives attribute inscrutable minds to Asian American characters, situating them at various points along a spectrum stretching between alterity and empathy. Ultimately, the book reveals the link between narrative form and larger cultural issues associated with the representation of Asian American minds, and how a nuanced investigation of narrative form can yield insights into the sociocultural embeddedness of Asian American literature under the case studies—insights that would not be available if such formal questions were by passed.

""Every other is truly other, but no other is wholly other." This is the claim that Aspects of Alterity defends. Taking up the question of otherness that so fascinates contemporary continental philosophy, this book asks what it means for something or someone to be other than the self." "After a thorough assessment and critique of otherness in Levinas's and Marcel's work, including a discussion of the relationship of ethical alterity to theological assumption, Aspects of Alterity traces the transmission and development of these two conceptions of otherness. Ultimately, Aspects of Alterity makes a case for a hermeneutic account of otherness."--Jacket.

L'’ouvrage aborde la question de la relation entre le soi et l’autre. Il rassemble des contributions proposées par des chercheurs dans les domaines de la philosophie, de la littérature et des sciences humaines. Ce livre soulève plusieurs questions telles que : Est-il toujours possible de comprendre la personne individuelle sans la référence aux autres personnes ? Dans quelle mesure l’identité personnelle dépend-elle des différences entre les personnes ? L’interprétation de l’Autre est-elle toujours complète ? etc. L’ouvrage offre une discussion scientifique originale qui s’adresse tout particulièrement aux enseignants, aux chercheurs et aux étudiants intéressés par cette question de l’Ipséité et de l’Altérité.

Making use of postclassical narratology this book proposes a reading experience of the Apocalypse that underlines the role of the reader or listener for meaning creation and interpretation, based on their own life experiences and the imagistic quality of the text.

This book focuses on the extension of realist writing toward alterity, toward otherness, in its ongoing efforts to enable individuals to speak and be heard correctly. Through a series of close readings of six authors from Balzac to Proust, the author shows the ways realist narrative engages the problem of bringing the other into the realm of the discursively representable. The acts of representation involved in that development were not necessarily coterminous with either the representation of the exotic and its attendant stereotypes or with the representation of individuals themselves. The representation of the other was the extension of discourse to what was previously unrepresentable. The author argues that the unrepresentable is often perceived as oppositional because of the structuring of discourse by hierarchies and metaphysics, whereby any bivalent pair is made into an oppositional pair.

The Cambridge Companion to Narrative provides a unique and valuable overview of current approaches to narrative study. An international team of experts explores ideas of storytelling and methods of narrative analysis as they have emerged across diverse traditions of inquiry and in connection with a variety of media, from film and television, to storytelling in the 'real-life' contexts of face-to-face interaction, to literary fiction. Each chapter presents a survey of scholarly approaches to topics such as character, dialogue, genre or language, shows how those approaches can be brought to bear on a relatively well-known illustrative example, and indicates directions for further research. Featuring a chapter reviewing definitions of narrative, a glossary of key terms and a comprehensive index, this is an essential resource for both students and scholars in many fields, including language and literature, composition and rhetoric, creative writing, jurisprudence, communication and media studies, and the social sciences.