The Instrumentalization of Fictional Narrative in Relation to Architecture-Urban Environment: The Example of “Laughable Places” Workshop

Interdisciplinary approaches and distinctive representation methods are needed to expand the range of meaning in the architecture and to consider the design process in unique frameworks. Literature disrupts the static images produced for the city in the context of the imaginative weight and the various dynamics it makes with the reader also uses the city, space, and architecture to create a different dimension of representation. This situation, which is inspected in the article regarding the relationship between literature, city, and architecture, will be examined through the "Laughable Places" workshop, that is part of the e-workshop days held at Gebze Technical University in February 2021. In this sense, firstly the relationship between literature and architecture and the revealing of their potentials are handled through the imaginative, representational and textual dimensions. Than through various workshops where the relationship between fictional narrative and architecture is applied, it is reviewed in which contexts fictional narrative can be included in the intellectual process of design. This review has been grouped according to the method in the workshop setups, using the fictional narrative based on literary works or the writing fictional narratives by participants. The workshop process was interpreted through the hybridity of the two approaches.

Slasher therapy: the slasher movie as an allegory for uncovering trauma

This study aims at analyzing slasher films as potential allegories for the therapeutic process of uncovering trauma, proposing a reading of the slasher killer as a metaphor for the trauma. To perform this analysis, the plots of the movies A Nightmare on Elm Street (Bayer, 2010) and Final Girls (Schulsson, 2015), were read as possible allegories for a psychoanalytical process in which their final girls come to terms with trauma as they face the killers. This analysis is performed based on the slasher film structure as composed by Final Girl versus Slasher killer, as defined by Carol Clover (1992), and, as their confrontation takes place in what Clover calls the Terrible place, that is compared to the unconscious and its dynamics, as proposed by Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id (2019). The correlation of trauma and fictional narratives is performed based on Cathy Caruth’s (1996) studies of trauma and the construction of narratives.

Migration Trail: Exploring the Interplay Between Data visualisation, Cartography and Fiction

This chapter focuses on the interplay between data visualisation, fiction and cartography in the context of migration. It revolves around a case study of Migration Trail, a website that attempts to provide an original portrayal of human mobility. First, it explores recent literature on each of the three elements interacting on the site. This is followed by an in-depth investigation of their interplay in the overall experience. The study employs a multi-method approach to the content, combining multimodal analysis, that is further validated with a semi-structured expert interview. The research thoroughly maps Migration Trail’s functions, including the dynamic interplay of its different multimedia elements. Ultimately, the chapter reflects on the question: To what extent can fictional narratives and the multimedia approach in a fictional production like Migration Trail successfully challenge stereotypical portrayals of migrants? The analysis shows that there is potential to go beyond the dichotomous, typical representation of migrants, but that it can also fall into the trap of repeating the “deservingness” trope that is part of common imaginaries of migration into Europe.

Fictional Narratives as a Laboratory for the Social Cognition of Behavioral Change: My Ajussi

Fictional narratives cannot be considered as mere escapist entertainment, and have a significant social cognition potential. Their study is also important in understanding the mechanisms of behavioral change, as many fictions focus on processes of personal transformation of the main characters. Romantic fictions are of special interest in this regard, as the formation of a new couple entails negotiation and mutual adaptation between partners, with possible transformation of personal attitudes, value orientations, and behaviors: ‘marrying’ a new idea or cause is, tellingly, the strongest possible metaphorical statement of adoption. Korean TV series (K-dramas) are a particularly interesting source of case studies in this regard due to the specific characteristics of their production system. We analyze a K-drama, My Ajussi, where the lead characters go through a complex process of personal change, through the lens of the so-called Tie-Up Theory, which has proven useful in the analysis and interpretation of fictional representations of human mating processes, and show how the context provided by the potential formation of the couple between the two main characters provides us with valuable insights about human behavioral change and for policy design strategies to tackle societal challenges.

Anticolonial Visions and Fictional Versions: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Postcolonial Novels

The research juxtaposes two of the prominent postcolonial literary discourses produced by the nations that resisted the colonial encroachments militarily and, ultimately, gained their independence from the British imperial clutch, America and India. The selected literary works are replete with retrospective representations of the historical landmarks and laden with future ideological aspirations regarding national glory. Remaining awake to the perplexing verisimilitude of postcolonial works of literature, the study aims to explain the pivotal nexus that links the divergent discourses, that is, the anti colonial élan.For the accomplishment of the comparative analysis, two of the novels have been chosen, one for each country, to represent the respective version of resistance: Jeff Shaara's The Glorious Cause (2002) from an array of the American fictional narratives and Basavaraj Naikar's The Sun behind the Cloud (2001)from the Indian anglophone fiction. After outlining the belligerent disposition of these novels, their thematic schemas have been compared and contrasted to make the post coloniality of these polemical fictions manifest. It has been made explicit that the novels are essentially similar in their counter-discursive character and dissemination of the anti colonial sentiment despite some peripheral differences. Thus, these novels contribute to the broader postcolonial continuum that comprehensively accommodates varying versions of the textual resistance.

Caged Bodies, Raging Minds, Dissident Voices: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and Taslima Nasreen

This paper aims to analyse the mental state of Taslima Nasreen and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, writers that are primarily celebrated for their rich casket of fictional narratives, through poems written at a juncture in their lives when they were dealing with the pain of separation and displacement from home and country. As a consequence of defying their respective governments through their revolutionary writings, such a separation is accompanied by the loss of a stable identity. Although they do not share the socio-political context that resulted in exile, the commonly felt strains and fissures of exile have guided their perspectives through particularly intimate landscapes, so that it is possible to describe their poems’ meaning in a wholly decontextualised manner. They both are, in a way, separated from conventional contexts: exile is an alienating experience, and home, no longer homelike, is perhaps an even more estranging place.

The Correlation between Enjoying Fictional Narratives and Empathy in Japanese Hikikomori

Background: Hikikomori is a Japanese social withdrawal phenomenon which, in recent years, is spreading in western developed countries as well. Spending a lot of time secluded indoors, watching and playing with fictional narratives may be relatively common for Hikikomori people and may represent a protective factor for their psychological well-being. Method: We evaluated the role of enjoying fictional narratives on empathy, relaxation, depression, and anxiety in people with Hikikomori experience, in relation to their daily consumption of fictional narratives and their emotional transportation toward fictional narratives. Hikikomori from one psychiatric clinic and three different support facilities were enrolled in this study. Multidimensional empathy scale, CES-D, STAI questionnaire, and relaxation inventory self-report scale were used as outcome measures. Results: We found a significant correlation between empathy and emotional transportation toward fictional narratives and between relaxation during watching and reading fictional narratives and consumption frequency of fictional narratives. We failed, however, to find any significant correlation with depression and anxiety. Conclusions: These findings suggest a possible correlation between fiction and empathy/relaxation response; however, any causal relationship is not proven, consequently we deem that further investigations with a larger sample size are required for a better understanding.

Myth as a Historical Resource : The Case of Orgain Denna Ríg (The Destruction of Dinn Ríg)

This article examines how mythology and fictional narratives in medieval Irish literature were used to communicate important societal ideas and to encode political messages. It is a commonplace that stories about the past were re-used, re-cycled and re-interpreted in order to justify the present. These sources were utilized by the ruling classes in medieval Ireland to help explain the status quo on the one hand and to justify emerging change on the other. As the preference of the medieval Irish was ‘to take their history in the form of fiction’, many stories like Orgain Denna Ríg (The Destruction of Dinn Ríg) are extant from this period, stories which provide us with an important perspective on the growth and articulation of a significant facet of medieval Irish historiography.

The Language of Partition: A Study of the Narrative Structures of Selected Stories

The Partition of India in 1947 that resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people continues to inhabit the cognizance of the people of South Asia as a historical phenomenon laden with violence. Although the bequest of the Partition is palpable in episodes of religious tension, discourses on minority belonging, secularism, nation and nationalism in India, critical exploration of the phenomenon as a tension-ridden historical episode has largely been restricted. The present research paper deals with the stylistic aspects of a series of seven short fictional narratives from Bengal and Punjab. In this paper, the scholar talks about how the creative-imaginative representation of Partition has till date remained confined to the discussion of thematic aspects with the result that the elements of narration have remained insignificant in critical mediation. As such, the scholar addresses the gap in the genre of Partition studies by critically reading and stylistically scrutinizing the narrative elements of a series of selected Partition narratives to see how violence as a leitmotif in these seven selected fictional texts is documented.

An Experiential Study of ‘Conditional Agency’ of Bengali Widows with Reference to the Autobiographies of Saradasundari Devi and Rassundari Devi

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Bengal emerged a new batch of educated widows who were distinguishable from the traditional Bengali Hindu widows because of their remarkable self-consciousness about their peripherality within the social order. The intention of my article is that of disputing the prevalent assumption of the homogeneity of the widowed experience in Bengal society by drawing attention to the heterogeneous individualities resulting from stratifications within these emergent widow populations, owing to different lifestyles, varying degree of access to education, diverse social standings, and various forms of suppression. Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jibon (1876) and Saradasundari Devi’s Atmakatha (1913) are accounts of the experience of widows who were marginalized by society, handed the bare minimum necessities for their existence, and deprived of the pleasures of the traditional experiences of motherhood. I propose the term ‘New Widows’ to highlight how the effects of education modified their individuality in unconventional directions, as reflected in the fictional narratives by Rabindranath Tagore and others. Close attention to the texts shows that the disparity between the aspirations of the New Widow, and her limited reach and frustration results in an acute self-awareness.