Name: Shahnawaz Syed
What exactly is Narrative and why are we wasting time studying it? Well, Narrative is a word which holds a different meaning from person to person; generally speaking it can be anything from a story told by an individual to the aura given out by the statue of liberty. Narrative is present in almost all forms of art; such as writing, drawing, sculpture, painting and building architecture. It does not even have to be art; it can be a mere traffic signal or a street light. A wise man once said; everything that a man or woman does tells a story about him, just like that, narrative is something which is being emitted, released or given out by not only every single of our actions as a species, but also by everything that has been created throughout human history. If it wasn’t for narrative; a child would not be able to communicate with his mother, if it wasn’t for narrative; a detective would never find the real killer, and if it wasn’t for narrative; I’d never be able to learn anything due to lack of communication.
Just like life itself, humans rely on narrative to survive. We need to hear, read and write narratives in order to learn things and progress in life, at the same time creating narratives for others to see and read not only helps us survive in the form of objects and ideologies, but also performs simple tasks such as stress relief or increasing fitness (A science term used to represent reproductive success). As Potter Abbot mentions in his book; “Simply put, Narrative is representation of an event or series of events”.
According to dictionary.com, Even though people usually associate the term with a story or a piece of writing, its capabilities are far beyond, making it impossible to tie the term to such a short or narrow description, ultimately escaping the clutches of uniformity. This is why the term often goes against the functionality of culture industry, because no matter how strict quality control could be; there will always be someone or something with a new and unique story to tell.
I used Roland Barthes’s definition from his essay on narrative (1966).
Citation (MLA)
1- Porter, Abbot. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative: Second Edition. Cambridge,New York: Cambridge University Press,2002.Book
Dear Shahnawaz,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your reference to Barthes - with the core human concept of narrative, how come narratives can function as a "tabula rasa" for different readings?
How we perceive a select piece of writing depends on what we have learned from our experiences and knowledge gained from our environment(Tabula Rasa). And since current day text books are mainly books written by people and basically their narratives, these narratives told by others form the basis of what we learn as a child and during higher levels of education.
ReplyDeleteIn a way it is a good thing because we have a reference point to judge readings in the future, but the same time it adds bias into our reasoning and thinking process, eternally plaguing us and preventing us from ever becoming an unbiased judge or reader.