Narratology and the New Social Dimension of Narratives
Conference organised by the Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL)
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
Paris – Tuesday 02 February 2010
In connection with the theme of for the seminar “Narratologies contemporaines” for the academic year 2009/10, this conference will be devoted to the new social uses of narratives. Although analysis of the specificity of narrative remains at the heart of our research program, we consider, unlike the positions held by classical narratology, that cognitive and social parameters form an integral part of narrative discourse, both fictional and factual. For this reason, the postulate will be re-examined according to which narrative is a form of socially shared cognition. Neglect of the social dimension filled by narratives, rarely acknowledged by earlier theories, played no negligible role in their decline and thus needs to be introduced once again into current methods of analysis.
Without renouncing use of the tried and proven analytical methods set up by earlier narratological theories, the development over time, circulation and changes due to recent technological developments require that the symbolic and social functions of narrative discourse understood as a form of semiosis be taken more carefully into account
Without seeking to establish an exhaustive list of the questions raised by this approach, the issues involved are as follows:
- Interfaces between narratology and the cognitive science
- Narrative as a form of socially shared cognition
- Narrative as a form of knowledge and semiosis
- The role of interpretative practices in the definition of narrative
- New media and new forms of narrative
- New social roles of narrative (narrative and politics, narrative and the business world,
- narrative and social control, etc.)
- Narrative, interactivity, and transmediality
More Information and complete call for papers here
Ciao Simone,
ti scrivo perché anche io bolognese di formazione, e anche io a Parigi. Oltre al sospetto di avere qualche amico in comune (un mio caro compagno di Università bolognese, Enrico Liverani, un paio di anni fa a Parigi, mi parlava di un Simone forte in semiotca…), ho visto che curi il sito dell’EHESS e che ti occupi, tra le tante cose, anche di narratologia cognitiva. Io sto svolgendo una tesi di dottorato sul concetto di Dialogismo di Bakhtin e di Negatività di Iser, a partire dalla narrativa di Beckett (passando per Gadda, Agota Kristof e Auster). Tutto questo per dirti che magari, se avrai tempo, possiamo prenderci un caffé, magari in una pausa dai seminari all’EHESS, che sicuramente verrò a seguire.
A presto, spero, allora,
e buone feste,
Marco.