Title: Social imaginary of the just world : narrative ethics and truth-telling in non-fiction stories of (in)justice
Source document: Pro-Fil. 2023, vol. 24, iss. 2, pp. 30-42
Extent
30-42
-
ISSN1212-9097 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/pf23-2-36882
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.79843
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights access
open access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The paper focuses on the issue of truth telling in non fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials' decision making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis.
References
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[2] Ankersmit, F. (1983): Narrative Logic. A Semantic Analysis of the Historian's Language, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
[3] Aradau, C. (2008): Rethinking Trafficking in Women. Politics out of Security, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[4] Bar-On, D. (1999): The Indescribable and the Undiscussable. Reconstructing Human Discourse After Trauma, Budapest: Central European University Press.
[5] Bohmer C., Shuman A. (2013): Narrating Atrocity: Obstacles to Proving Credibility in Asylum Claims, Refugee Law Initiative Working Paper 7, available at https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4851/1/RLI_Working_Paper_No._7.pdf
[6] Bohmer, C., Shuman A. (2018): Political Asylum Deceptions. The Culture of Suspicion, Macmillan: Palgrave.
[7] Bolen, D. M.–Adams, T. E. (2018): Narrative Ethics, in Goodson, I.(ed.) The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History, London and New York: Routledge, 618-629.
[8] Booth, W. C. (1988): The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, Berkeley: University of California Press.
[9] Brockmeier, J., Carbaugh, D. (eds.). (2001): Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.
[10] Brooks, P. (2005): Narrative in and of the Law, in Phelan, J. –Rabinowitz, P. J. (eds.), A Companion to Narrative Theory, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 415-426.
[11] Caruth, C. (ed.) (1995): Trauma. Explorations in Memory, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
[12] Cook, E. A., Walklate, S. (2019): Excavating Victim Stories: Making Sense of Agency, Suffering and Redemption, in Fleetwood, J. –Presser, L. –Sandberg, S. –Ugelvik, T. (eds.) The Emerald Handbook of Narrative Criminology, 239-257.
[13] Dalbert, C., Donat, M. (2015): Belief in a Just World, International Encyclopedia of the Social& Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition): 487-492, available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780080970868240439
[14] De Angelis, M. (2017): Narratives of Human Trafficking: Ways of Seeing and Not Seeing the Real Survivors and Stories, Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations, &Interventions7(1),44-63, available at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151156023.pdf
[15] Gilmore, L. (2017): Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives, New York: Columbia University Press.
[16] Gregory, M. W. (1998): Ethical Criticism: What It Is and Why It Matters, Style2 (32), 194-220, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/42946423
[17] Herman, D.–Jahn, M.–Ryan, M.-L. (eds.). (2010): Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London and New York: Routledge.
[18] Herman, J. L. (2022): Trauma and Recovery. The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, New York: Basic Books.
[19] Lerner, M. J. (1980): The Belief in a Just World. A Fundamental Delusion, New York: Springer Science + Business Media.
[20] Meretoja, H.–Davis, C. (eds.) (2018): Storytelling and Ethics. Literature, Visual Arts and the Power of Narrative, New York and London: Routledge.
[21] Nussbaum, M. C. (1989): Reading for Life, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 1 (1), 165-180, available at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/72832495.pdf
[22] Pemberton, A., Mulder, E., Aarten, P. G. M. (2019): Stories of injustice: Towards a narrative victimology, European Journal of Criminology 16(4): 391-412, available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1477370818770843
[23] Phelan, J. (2014): Narrative Ethics, the living handbook of narratology [online] 21.11.2013, rev.9.12.2014 [accessed 13.08.2023], available at https://www-archiv.fdm.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/node/108.html
[24] Ricoeur, P. (1984): Time and Narrative, Vol. 1, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
[25] Ricoeur, P. (1994): Oneself as Another, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
[26] Russell, D. (2010): Master Narrative, The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory [online], 24.12.2010 [accessed 13.08.2023], available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781444337839.wbelctv2m003
[27] Searle, J. R. (1975): The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse, New Literary History 6 (2), 319-332, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/468422
[28] Serisier, T. (2015): How Can a Woman Who Has Been Raped Be Believed? Andrea Dworkin, Sexual Violence and the Ethics of Believe, Diegesis. Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Narrative Research 4 (1), 68-87, available at https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/15896256/Serisier_diegesis_published.pdf
[29] Shuman A., Bohmer C. (2004): Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative, The Journal of American Folklore 117 (466), 394-414, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/174512
[30] Taylor, Ch. (2004): Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
[31] Trinch, S. (2007): Deconstructing the "stakes" in high stakes gatekeeping interviews: Battered women and narration, Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1895-1918, available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378216607001257
[32] White, H. (1973): Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.