Real fictions: fictionality, factuality and narrative strategies in contemporary storytelling

Narrative inquiry 2019, Vol.29 (2), p.245-267 https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19025.bro

 Autor: 

1. Sam Browse, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, Owen Building, City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK; s.browse@shu.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8709-5468
2. Alison Gibbons; Department of Humanities, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, Owen Building, City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK, a.gibbons@shu.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8912-9350
3. Mari Hatavara; Tampere University, Finland; mari.hatavara@tuni.fi  

Abstract: “In the fiction of the future”, writes Raymond Federman in the 1970s, “the distinction between the real and the imaginary, between the conscious and the subconscious, between the past and the present, between truth and untruth will be abolished” (Federman, 1981, p. 8). In the late 1990s, Marie-Laure Ryan spoke of a similar “crisis” whereby fiction dominated to the extent that non-fiction seemed less real. Certainly, in today’s post-millennial and so-called “post-truth” age, the boundary between reality and fiction seems increasingly hard to distinguish: politicians spin stories; everyday reality in (social) media is invested in live narratives; historical events are narrativized in literary texts; fantasy as a genre is more popular than ever; and new genres – such as autofiction and fanfiction – blur the boundaries between autobiography and artistic creation on the one hand and referentiality and readerly reception on the other. This post-truth sensibility reaches beyond the intentions of creators and beyond the fabric of texts, impacting the way people live their everyday lives together with and inspired by the stories that surround them. For all these reasons, stories as tools for making sense of human action in situated social realities are today more important than ever. Stories are, for example, one of the primary vehicles through which politics is articulated and debated (Andrews, 2014). In a study on a large, public deliberative forum, Polletta and Lee (2006) suggest that those who identify with minority opinions, prefer using personal stories as part of their argumentation, and so tend to get a more favorable response from those who have a different opinion. Moreover, the spread of new media affects the affordances and constraints available in interaction and interpersonal sense-making. These new media narrative forms and the hybrid ontologies of post-truth modes of storytelling in the twenty-first century make fictionality a more pressing critical concern. Stylistic and narratological tools and models must keep pace with the complexities of these narratives in order to remain relevant and to adequately elucidate their formal properties, the interpretive processes they involve, and the experiential effects they generate. 

Idioma: Inglés 

Publicación: 2019

Volumen: Narrative inquiry 2019, Vol.29 (2), p.245-267

Enlace Permanente

The Possibility of Empty Fictions: Wildman

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 77, Issue 1, February 2019, Pages 35–42, https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12620

Autor: Wildman, Nathan;  Department of Philosophy  Tilburg University  Tilburg  Noord‐Brabant  Netherlands; n.w.wildman@uvt.nl;  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3394-8028

Keyowrds: Empty fictions, fictions, method for producing fictions. 

Abstract: An empty fiction is a fiction with no content—that is, a fiction in which no propositions are (fictionally) true. The central question of this article is, are such fictions possible?Here, I argue that they are. More specifically, after first examining and rejecting five potential arguments for the possibility of empty fictions, I goon to develop a more successful argument. Along theway, Iintroduce a new method for producing fictions via complementation functions. 

Idioma: Inglés 

Publicación:  12 February 2019 

Volumen:  The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,Volume 77, Issue 1, Winter, February 2019. 

Enlace Permanente

African cyborgs: females and feminists in African science fiction film.

Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol 22, issue 5, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659155 

Autor: Lizelle Bisschoff, University of Glasgow; lizelle.bisschoff@glasgow.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5820-0377 

Keywords: Cyborg, African science, fiction film, Donna Haraway, African feminism, Wanuri Kahiu, Frances Bodomo . 

Abstract: African feminist writers argue that black female bodies should be understood as interactions between materiality and the symbolic constructions of the body embedded within a given culture. They caution that an overemphasis on corporeality and embodiment denies subjectivity to black women. Responding to such concerns, contemporary African cultural and creative practitioners offer alternatives to continuing objectification and bodily stereotyping. In this article, I am particularly interested in the alternative visions of black female bodies presented in African speculative and science fiction film, visions which, I argue, engage colonial histories and local traditions in order to imagine a future inclusive of empowered female protagonists. I explore how the fictional configurations and cyborg imaginations of African sci-fi deconstruct and subvert the fixity, corporeality, fragility and captivity of the black female body. Drawing on African feminism and feminist science fiction in particular, I attempt to construct a theoretical framework through which to approach the representation of female bodies in sci-fi film from Africa. In the work of filmmakers such as Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Bekolo (Les Saignantes, 2005 and Naked Reality, 2016), Ghanaian filmmaker Frances Bodomo (Afronauts, 2014), Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu (Pumzi, 2009) and South African filmmakers Michael Matthew (Sweetheart, 2010) and Amy van Houten (Elf, 2015), we find femalecentred fantastical narratives that recast African women as futuristic cyborgs. Reminiscent of Donna Haraway’s cyborg feminism of the late 20th century, these filmmakers adapt the genres of fantasy and sci-fi to speculate about alternative African pasts and futures. 

Idioma: English 

Publicación: 19 de septiembre 2019 

Volumen: Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 22 Issue 5, 2020

Enlace permanente

Exploding stories and the limits of fiction

Philosophical Studies; Vol 178, issue 3 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01451-w

Autor: Michel-Antoine Xhignesse; Department of Philosophy, Capilano University, Fir 404, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver; michelxhignesse@capilanou.ca. 

Keywords: Auctorial say-so, contradiction, interpretation, story-telling, says-is gap, truth in fiction, universal fictions. 

Abstract: It is widely agreed that fiction is necessarily incomplete, but some recent work postulates the existence of universal fictions—stories according to which every thing is true. Building such a storyis supposedly straight forward: author scan either assert that every thing is true in their story, define a complement function that does the assertoric work for them, or, most compellingly, write a story combining a contradiction with the principle of explosion. The case for universal fictions thus turns on the intuitive priority we as sign to the law of non-contradiction. My goal in this paper is to show that our critical and reflective literary practices set constraints on story-telling which preclude universal fictions. I will raise fours tumbling blocks for universal fictionalists: (1) the gap between say in gand making true, (2) our actual interpretive reactions to story level contradictions,(3) the criteria we accept for what counts as a story in our literary practices, and (4) the undesirability of the universal fictionalist’s closure principles.

Language: English 

Publication: 20 abril 2020 

Volumen: Philosophical Studies; Vol 178, issue 3 (2021)

Enlace permanente

Art films foster theory of mind

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Vol. 8, N° 119 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00793-y

Author: Castano, Emanuele; University of Trento, Trento, Italy & National Research Council, Rome, Italy; emanuele.castano@unitn.it;  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1709-590X

Keywords: literary theory, film theory, theory of mind, fiction, social cognition. 

Abstract: Research shows that reading literary but not popular fiction enhances the Theory of Mind (ToM). This article builds on the symmetry between literary theory and film theory and investigates whether exposure to art films, but not Hollywood films, enhances ToM. Participants (N = 232) were randomly assigned to view either art or Hollywood films and then answered questions about the film and its characters before completing two separate measures of ToM (the Read the Mind in the Eyes Test and the Moral Judgement Task). Results showed that art film viewers scored higher on both ToM measures and that the effect was sequentially mediated by perception of complexity and predictability of the characters. The findings are discussed in the context of the emerging literature on the impact of fiction on social cognition.

Language: English 

Publication: 25 May 2021 

Volumen: Humanities and Social Science Communications 8, Article number: 119 (2021)

Enlace permanente

Some like it bad: testing a model on perceiving and experiencing fictional characters

Media Psychology; Vol 7, issue 2 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0702_1

Author: 

1. Konijn, Ellie A.; Department of Communication Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, De Boelelaan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; elly.konijn@vu.nl;  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6134-8700 
2. Hoorn, J.F; Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, De Boelelaan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; j.f.hoorn@vu.nl; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3427-5681

Keywords: Readers of fiction, spectators of motion pictures, affective relationships, fictional characters, media exposure.  

Abstract: We developed an encompassing theory that explains how readers of fiction and spectators of motion pictures establish affective relationships with fictional characters (FCs). The perceiving and experiencing fictional characters (PEFiC) theory is anchored in art perception, psychological aesthetics, and social and emotion psychology and addresses both the complexity and intrinsic affectivity involved in media exposure. In a between-subject design (N = 312), engagement and appreciation were measured as a function of the ethics (good vs. bad), aesthetics (beautiful vs. ugly), and epistemics (realistic vs. unrealistic) of eight protagonists in feature movies. The PEFiC model best fit the data with a unipolarity of factors and outperformed traditional theories (identification, empathy): The trade-off between involvement and distance explained the appreciation of FCs better than either distance or involvement alone. The mediators similarity, relevance, and valence exerted significant (interaction) effects, thus complicating the results. Furthermore, the effects of mediated bad persons differed strongly from ethically good ones.

Language: English 

Publication: 17 Nov. 2019 

Volumen: Media Psychology; Vol 7, issue 2 (2005) 

Enlace permanente