scholarly journals ‘What happened to the truth is not recorded’: Anticipating the Shift from Postmodern Consumer Culture to Post-Truth in Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Ashely Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Postmodern Literature ◽  
Julian Barnes ◽  
Postmodern Consumer Culture ◽  
Historical Accounts

This paper will explore the concept of “fakeness” in Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot. Defining “fake” as something “formed by or adapted to an artificial or conventional standard,” I will show how Barnes’ novel exposes the “fakeness” of historical knowledge. Utilizing Linda Hutcheon’s theories regarding postmodern literature—as well has Hayden White’s theories regarding historiography—I will analyze how Flaubert’s Parrot fakes literary biography, historical documents, academic conventions, female voices, and even the novel itself. This paper shows how Flaubert’s Parrot exposes the weaknesses in our understanding of history, as well as our willingness to believe in problematic historical narratives. More than this, my paper will show how Barnes’ novel ultimately succumbs to the narrative conventionality that it claims to subvert—illustrating how it is impossible to escape factitious conventions if one wants to impart a sense of meaning. Flaubert’s Parrot serves as a case study within the fields of deconstruction, narrative theory, and historiography—showing how problematic historical accounts can easily mime conventional academic standards and be readily accepted by readers. My study of Flaubert’s Parrot is particularly relevant with regard to our “Post-Truth” political era, as it shows how the quest to include multiple truths in the historical narrative can be taken advantage of in order to include lies. Flaubert’s Parrot emphasizes Linda Hutcheon’s claim that our understanding of history is based upon unreliable “traces” and “relics,” and is susceptible to being radically altered by the addition or subtraction of historical “relics” (Hutcheon 119). Although Flaubert’s Parrot problematizes our system of historical knowledge, its ultimate submission to the conventional novel form shows that it may be impossible to escape from the factitious conventions that shape our modes of knowledge.

scholarly journals Características Enunciativas Presentes em Textos Históricos de Divulgação Científica e Possíveis Contribuições ao Ensino

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Filipe Silva de Oliveira ◽  
Edson José Wartha
Keyword(s):  
Science Teaching ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teaching History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Brazilian Science

ResumoHistória da Ciência e Ensino de Ciências são áreas do conhecimento com possibilidades de interface anunciadas e investigadas na atualidade, desse modo, produzindo conhecimento a comunidade de pesquisa interessada em encontrar caminhos didáticos para a sala de aula. Por meio de Narrativas Históricas (NHs), Estudo de Caso e sistematicamente Sequências Didáticas, essa interface tem sido desenvolvida. O estudo de textos históricos de divulgação científica auxilia a compreender a divulgação do conhecimento científico para o público comum no passado, acredita-se ser possível o uso desses textos na construção de materiais didáticos como Narrativas Históricas (NHs) e Estudo de Caso. Neste artigo discutimos características enunciadas em textos de divulgação científica escritos por um divulgador da ciência brasileiro, relacionando essas características na construção de Narrativas Históricas que venham a utilizar os textos desse divulgador. As características são conteúdo temático, composição do enunciado e estilo verbal. Essas características auxiliam na compreensão dos textos desse divulgador no processo de construção das Narrativas Históricas.Palavras-chave: Ensino de Ciências. História da Ciência. Divulgação Científica. Narrativa Histórica. AbstractHistory of Science and Science Teaching are areas of knowledge with possibilities of interface announced and investigated today, thus, producing knowledge to the research community interested in finding didactic paths for the classroom.  Through Historical Narratives (NHs) Case Study and systematically Instructional Sequences, this interface been developed. The study of historical texts of scientific popularization assist to understand the popularization scientific knowledge to the common public in the past, it is believed that the use of these is possible in the construction of instruction materials such as Historical Narratives (NHs) and Case Study. In this paper we discuss characteristics stated in scientific popularization texts written by a Brazilian science disseminator, relating these characteristics in the construction of Historical Narratives that come to use the texts of disseminator. Features are thematic content, statement composition and verbal style. These characteristics assist in the understand of the texts of this disseminator in the process of construction the Historical Narratives.Keywords: Science Teaching. History of Science. Scientific Popularization. Historical Narrative.

Adaptation or Historical Anomaly?: Partition Narratives and Their Visual Counterparts

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (I) ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Ayesha Akram
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
Partition Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Subjective Meanings ◽  
Alternative Archives

This research accentuates the presence of multi-layered histories within partition literature and its adaptations as a historiographic mise en abyme— an interpretive multiplicity of historical narratives. The aim is to highlight, probe and eventually determine the significance of addressing multivocality within sensitive historical accounts when told through the aesthetic mediums of fiction and film. In the context of this research, the traditional narrative of the partition of the Subcontinent includes political and nationalistic attitudes on both sides of the divide. The research sets out to explore the extent to which these overreaching accounts and wide-ranging versions of the partition empower the concerned entities to give subjective meanings to their partition experiences. Gurinder Chadha’s film Viceroy’s House (2017), which is partly based on the memoirs of Louis Mountbatten, documented in Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (1976) is taken as the case study, with reference to its source text. The primary trigger of this research is the debate between the Traditionalist and Revisionist school of Historiography, as it seeks to examine the inherent problematic nature of revisionist partition history on text and on screen. This research presents the textual and film narratives of partition as alternative archives, whose authenticity and validity is yet to be established, in comparison with the historical documents/texts. It advocates the necessity to constantly re-evaluate and reinterpret history in the light of new facts; however, all attempts to revise history in the name of aesthetics, without merit and evidence, should be recognized as subjective versions.

Marginalized Memories and Multi-Layered Narratives of the Great War in Kamila Shamsie’s A God In Every Stone (2014)

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Tara Talwar Windsor
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Great War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Context ◽  
The Great War

Abstract Taking Kamila Shamsie’s 2014 war novel A God in Every Stone as its core case study, this article examines the development of increasingly complex, heterogeneous and inclusive understandings and memories of the Great War in the twenty-first century. It demonstrates how the novel’s complex and intricate narrative, as well as its paratextual framing and much of its reception, offer a timely engagement with a range of hitherto hidden or marginalized histories, particularly in relation to the role of women and experiences of South Asian soldiers, as well as with colonial violence and anti-colonial resistance in the war’s aftermath. At the same time, the novel underscores the ambivalences contained in those stories. Through this analysis, the article considers the extent to which A God in Every Stone can be seen as a ‘more expansive form of commemoration [...] with the scope for multiple narratives’.1 The novel is also ‘historically and ethically responsible’, not least in its critical reflection on the purposes, practices and power structures behind longer-standing historical narratives and cultural memories of the war itself and the (imperial) past in a post-colonial global context.

scholarly journals Entanglements of art and memory activism in Hungary’s illiberal democracy

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Reka Deim
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Civic Involvement ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Illiberal Democracy ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
The Core ◽  
Activist Group

This paper explores how art contributes to the articulation of memories that counter the official historical narrative of Hungary’s self-proclaimed political and ideological system, illiberal democracy. Amid deepening polarization between Europe’s post-colonialist and post-socialist countries, the Hungarian government promotes a Christian conservative national identity against the “liberal” values of Western Europe. Systematic appropriation of historical traumas is at the core of such efforts, which largely manifests in removing, erecting and reinstating memorials, as well as in the re-signification of trauma sites. Insufficient civic involvement in rewriting histories generates new ways of resistance, which I demonstrate through the case study of a protest-performance organized by the Living Memorial activist group as a response to the government’s decision to displace the memorial of Imre Nagy in 2018. I seek to understand the dynamics between top-down memory politics, civil resistance and art within the conceptual apparatus of the “memory activism nexus” (Rigney 2018, 2020) and “multidirectional memories” (Rothberg 2009). I argue that artistic memory activism has limited potential to transform the dynamics of memory in a context where a national conservative political force has gradually taken control over historical narratives, triggering inevitably polarizing responses in the society. Although profoundly embedded in local histories, the case-study may offer new ways of negotiating traumatic heritages through the entanglement of art and memory activism.

scholarly journals Bias in teachers' assessments of students' historical narratives

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Leonard Alvén
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
Knowledge Requirements ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Rhetorical Dimension ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Historical Methods

According to diverse research, historical thinking and historical accounts or narratives contain different dimensions. At least three such dimensions can be found: historical methods, rhetorical forms and ethical statements. The ethical dimension means that historical narratives contain ethical agendas; the rhetorical dimension implies that historical narratives consist of certain stylistic figures; the dimension of historical methods signifies that history is a science with certain methods that must be considered when constructing historical narratives. Although research on history teaching and assessment has made great progress in recent years, it almost exclusively deals with the dimension of historical methods. This is problematic as students' historical narratives, test responses or essays, contain all three dimensions, and all three dimensions seem to be taken into account when the students' narratives are assessed. This study problematizes what happens when teachers in Sweden are only required to assess the dimension of historical methods. The research is based on an empirical investigation where teachers, using the knowledge requirements from the syllabus in history, assessed four historical narratives with focuses on different dimensions of the three. The results suggest that teachers find it difficult to accept a historical narrative that, on the one hand, corresponds to the dimension of historical methods but, on the other hand, contains ethical statements that do not correspond with the assessor's own ethical understanding.

scholarly journals Colonial Politics and Precolonial History: Everyday Knowledge, Genre, and Truth in a Yoruba Town

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Insa Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Everyday Knowledge ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

AbstractThis article suggests that colonial African historiography was shaped both by the textual forms and conventions associated with local historical knowledge and by the complex political interests which emerged under colonial rule. Based on a case study of two linked debates in the small Yoruba town of Ode Remo, the article argues that beyond narratives, local historical knowledge was also contained, sometimes opaquely, in a variety of other genres and practices. During the colonial period, traditionally segmented and distributed forms of knowledge were brought together in civic debates to constitute a more general history. But while historical accounts could be inflected under political pressure or even to reflect widespread local ambitions, the enduring presence of historical knowledge in textual forms used in everyday life meant that there nonetheless remained an overall sense of what was true within the community.

A novel method for the determination of linting propensity of paper

TAPPI Journal ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
ALESSANDRA GERLI ◽  
LEENDERT C. EIGENBROOD
Keyword(s):  
Ash Content ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Offset Printing ◽  
Excellent Correlation ◽  
End Conditions ◽  
Bottom Side ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Total Fraction

A novel method was developed for the determination of linting propensity of paper based on printing with an IGT printability tester and image analysis of the printed strips. On average, the total fraction of the surface removed as lint during printing is 0.01%-0.1%. This value is lower than those reported in most laboratory printing tests, and more representative of commercial offset printing applications. Newsprint paper produced on a roll/blade former machine was evaluated for linting propensity using the novel method and also printed on a commercial coldset offset press. Laboratory and commercial printing results matched well, showing that linting was higher for the bottom side of paper than for the top side, and that linting could be reduced on both sides by application of a dry-strength additive. In a second case study, varying wet-end conditions were used on a hybrid former machine to produce four paper reels, with the goal of matching the low linting propensity of the paper produced on a machine with gap former configuration. We found that the retention program, by improving fiber fines retention, substantially reduced the linting propensity of the paper produced on the hybrid former machine. The papers were also printed on a commercial coldset offset press. An excellent correlation was found between the total lint area removed from the bottom side of the paper samples during laboratory printing and lint collected on halftone areas of the first upper printing unit after 45000 copies. Finally, the method was applied to determine the linting propensity of highly filled supercalendered paper produced on a hybrid former machine. In this case, the linting propensity of the bottom side of paper correlated with its ash content.

A Study of Memory and Psychological Defense Mechanism in Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Aliakbari Harehdasht ◽  
Zahra Ekbatäni
Keyword(s):  
Defense Mechanisms ◽  
Defense Mechanism ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Psychological Defense ◽  
Julian Barnes ◽  
Self Image

In The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes portrays the mysterious workings of the human mind as it distorts facts towards the end of a self-image that one can live with. The protagonist in the novel deploys certain psychological defense mechanisms in order to protect himself from feelings of anxiety, only to experience even more profound anxiety due to his excessive use of them. The significance of the present paper lies in its novel view of the book. So far, the critique on the novel has mainly been focused on the workings of time on memory; however, the present paper investigates how psychological defense mechanisms blur the protagonist’s perception of reality and distort his memories. This paper also attempts to attract scholarly interest in the study of psychological defense mechanisms in the study of The Sense of an Ending which has so far been to the best of our knowledge overlooked

V.S. Naipaul, Caribbean Writing, and Caribbean Thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Derek Walcott ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kamau Brathwaite ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Principal Subject ◽  
Intellectual Formation

This book presents a new portrait of V.S. Naipaul, one of the twentieth-century’s most controversial writers about colonialism and its aftermath, by looking at his relationship with the Caribbean, the region of his birth. It argues that whilst Naipaul presented himself as a global public intellectual—a citizen of nowhere—his writing and thought was shaped by his Caribbean intellectual formation, and his investment in Caribbean political debates. Focusing on three key forms of Caribbean writing—the novel, the historical narrative, and the travel narrative—it shows how the generic, stylistic, and formal choices of writers had great political significance. Telling the story of his creative and intellectual development at three crucial points in Naipaul’s career, it offers a new intellectual biography of its principal subject. By showing Naipaul’s crucial place in the history of Caribbean ideas, it also provides new perspectives on a number of major writers and thinkers from the region, including C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, George Lamming, Derek Walcott, Maryse Condé, and David Scott.

scholarly journals Becoming a Crorepati: From Glocal TV Game to Grobal Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-520
Author(s):  
Nicola Pozza
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Slumdog Millionaire ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Tv Show ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

AbstractNumerous studies have dealt with the process of globalization and its various cultural products. Three such cultural products illustrate this process: Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A (2005), the TV quiz show Kaun banega crorepati? (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), and Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The novel, the TV show and the film have so far been studied separately. Juxtaposing and comparing Q and A, Kaun banega crorepati, and Slumdog Millionaire provides an effective means to shed light on the dialogic and interactive nature of the process of globalization. It is argued through this case study that an analysis of their place of production, language and content, helps clarify the derivative concepts of “glocalization” and “grobalization” with regard to the way(s) contemporary cultural products respond to globalization.

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