The Master Narrative and its Paradoxes

2021 ◽  
pp. 511-528
Author(s):  
Nicolò Crisafi
Keyword(s):  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Popular Image

The chapter explores alternatives to the uplifting linear narrative of progress that underpins Dante’s Commedia and can be regarded as its ‘master narrative’. It investigates three counter-narratives that stand in tension with, and often subvert, its teleological trajectory. These are enacted by (i) the poem’s representations of an uncertain, open-ended future; (ii) the alternative endings voiced by various characters who imagine how their lives might have turned out differently; and (iii) the paradoxes that resist the poem’s linear temporality and offer important illustrations of a more unresolved Commedia that does not always seek ‘total coherence’. The chapter concludes that alongside established notions of Dante’s plurilingualism and pluristylism, it is fruitful to think of the Commedia in terms of its narrative pluralism. Exploring counter-narratives balances a popular image of Dante as a carefully controlling author with that of a writer open to a more liberal and reciprocal relationship with his readers.

Counter-narratives: Rizpah and the ‘comfort women’ statue

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Joo
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Government ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Comfort Women ◽  
Current Event ◽  
King David ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
A Current ◽  
Critical Methods

Contextual hermeneutics allows interpreters to read the Bible from their location. However, interpreters not only read meaning into the text, as a number of scholars claim, but in the process, they actually illuminate the original context underlying the text. To demonstrate this point, I will be analyzing the story of Rizpah through the lens of a current event, the Japanese government’s efforts to remove the ‘comfort women’ bronze statues in Korea. The bronze statues embody counter-narratives that challenge and ultimately threaten the master narrative of the Japanese government. Likewise, Rizpah who stands on a boulder also functions as a counter-monument against King David. She resists the royal historian’s effort to whitewash David’s involvement in the murder of the Saulide descendants. However, to understand the specific way in which Rizpah challenges the royal court propaganda, it is necessary to engage critical methods of reading.

scholarly journals Framing the war in the post war era: Exploring the counter-narratives in frames of an Iranian war photographer thirty years after the ceasefire with Iraq

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-410
Author(s):  
Younes Saramifar
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Post War ◽  
At Home

The battle between Iran and Iraq ended with a ceasefire being signed in 1988 but the war continued for most Iranians and their leadership. Even today after three decades, the war continues for Iranians who live in the borderlands as they struggle with the landmines and left-overs of the battles. Mehdi Monem, a celebrated Iranian war photographer, frames the pain of Iranians in the borderlands as the counter-narrative that challenges the mainstream frames of propaganda. He challenges the master narrative of the Islamic Republic of Iran that generates meanings for the frames of the war through notions of martyrdom and sacrifice. Hence, I follow his work in the context of the visual culture of martyrdom via an ethnography that explains how Iranians receive the pain of others 30 years after the war at home and abroad.

Narrative inversion as a tactical framing device

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Acevedo ◽  
James Ordner ◽  
Miriam Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Nation Of Islam ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Racial Reconciliation ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

This paper will draw from recent work in the study of counter-narratives and will apply a sociologically informed perspective to the empirical analysis of discourse. By focusing on the Black Nationalist group The Nation of Islam (NOI) this article will introduce the counter-narrative strategy of “narrative inversion.” Based on discursive analysis of textual materials from early NOI speeches, recordings, and writings, we hope to show how the NOI employed a specific framing tactic of inverting American and Judeo-Christian master narratives to create a powerful ideological schema for attracting potential members. Our analysis demonstrates that early organizers of the NOI created counter-narratives by positioning themselves in direct opposition to the pervasive master narrative of white superiority. We will compare the NOI’s countering strategy to that of Martin Luther King’s moderate civil rights movement and show how the NOI was also able to capitalize on the more restrained messages of racial integration, non-violent protest, and racial reconciliation emanating from the moderate civil rights movement. The discursive process of inverting more moderate messages explains, to a great extent, the movement’s early success as a radical alternative to the mainstream civil rights movement.

scholarly journals The concept of heritage and the grammar of Islamic fundamentalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802092143
Author(s):  
Baudouin Dupret ◽  
Clémentine Gutron
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Operating Modes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Islamic Civilization

Islamic fundamentalism is a way to oppose the counter-narrative of an exclusive Islamic civilization to the universalist master-narrative of history’s pluralistic heritage. Two methods of reading the past collide here. One is a genealogical method, which values anything that relates the present to its historical roots. The other is a fundamentalist method, which relies on sacred scriptures in order to identify a founding age it arrogates to itself and to condemn anything that does not correspond to it. These two perspectives function in a conflicting yet interdependent manner. This article aims to describe the operating modes of these two narratives. First, it examines how the concept of heritage acquired new meanings and transformed into an evaluation table with which to assess past, present, and future collective identities. Second, it describes some audiovisual productions relating to the antique city of Hatra, to the destruction of its statues by Islamic State’s fighters, and to its symbolism. On this basis, it analyzes these productions in terms of heritage master- and counter-narratives. Third, it addresses, in relation to the issue of heritage, the fundamentalist discursive structure, its grammar, the entrenchment of its rules, and the demarcation it implies between the community of believers and everyone else.

Commemorating No-bodies – Christopher Columbus and the Violence of Social-forgetting

Somatechnics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Mahdis Azarmandi
Keyword(s):  
Master Narrative ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Spanish History ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Subjugated Knowledge ◽  
The Relationship

The Columbus statue in Barcelona is visited by millions of tourists each year and is one of the most well-known memorials dedicated to the “discovery” of the Americas. By looking at the productive nature of memorialisation, this paper questions this narrative of discovery. It looks at the history of the conquest of America as a moment of violence and massacre. Following the idea of coloniality of power and coloniality of being, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between coloniality and commemoration by analysing the different meanings of the statue of Columbus in Barcelona. I problematize and reconceptualise the monument from a decolonial perspective that highlights the subjugated knowledge of colonial conquest. I utilise the notion of epistemologies of ignorance to highlight how the statue is a representation of the master narrative of colonialism and consequently how this narrative acts to silence counter narratives of Columbus and Spanish history. Colonial monuments such as the Columbus statue are a tribute to on-going coloniality and the continuation of violence against racial ‘Others’. Thus, what is presented as a normative tribute to discovery is re-presented in this paper as a memorial to war and genocide.

Daily Fluctuations in Work Engagement

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 227-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold B. Bakker
Keyword(s):  
Job Performance ◽  
Work Engagement ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
Organizational Outcomes ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Proactive Behavior ◽  
Negative Events ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
Work Pressure ◽  
Diary Research

This article presents an overview of the literature on daily fluctuations in work engagement. Daily work engagement is a state of vigor, dedication, and absorption that is predictive of important organizational outcomes, including job performance. After briefly discussing enduring work engagement, the advantages of diary research are discussed, as well as the concept and measurement of daily work engagement. The research evidence shows that fluctuations in work engagement are a function of the changes in daily job and personal resources. Particularly on the days that employees have access to many resources, they are able to cope well with their daily job demands (e.g., work pressure, negative events), and likely interpret these demands as challenges. Furthermore, the literature review shows that on the days employees have sufficient levels of job control, they proactively try to optimize their work environment in order to stay engaged. This proactive behavior is called job crafting and predicts momentary and daily work engagement. An important additional finding is that daily engagement has a reciprocal relationship with daily recovery. On the days employees recover well, they feel more engaged; and engagement during the day is predictive of subsequent recovery. Finding the daily balance between engagement while at work and detachment while at home seems the key to enduring work engagement.

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