Yvonne Delhey, Rolf Parr and Kerstin Wilhelms (eds.), Autofiktion als Utopie // Autofiction as Utopia

This volume, emerging from a conference, brings into conversation research on the two title-words autofiction and utopia. It focuses on what the introduction defines as the point of convergence of these genres or writing modes: the desire to shape reality according to one’s individual vision, which, the editors note, can serve as critical commentary on society (1). In exploring this intersection, the volume takes up an important strand in the discussion on autofiction, namely the one about its potential functions both for individual authors and for society more broadly. Autofiction has been argued to not only allow individuals to express and transform themselves, but also to, for example, empower author and readers with narrative agency by challenging dominant cultural narrative models (Meretoja 2021) and work towards post-conflict reconciliation (Dix 2021).

TIKTOK’S ‘FOX EYE’ TREND AND EVERYDAY ACTIVISM: GEN Z AGENCY IN AN AUDIOVISUAL NARRATIVE CASE STUDY

This paper examines TikTok as an emerging activist space for Gen Z. It uses the ‘fox eye’ trend as a case study to illustrate how TikTok allows young people – Asian diasporic communities in particular – to create audiovisual narratives of personal experiences and stories to speak up against anti-Asian racism. Through a qualitative content analysis of 30 relevant TikTok posts, the paper argues for the platform’s distinct audiovisual features in enhancing users’ capacity for civic engagement. This paper generates three related findings. First, young Asian users have created TikTok videos featuring a variety of themes in relation to the fox eye trend. Some notable examples include historical popular representation of Asians, personal experiences of racism, impossible beauty standards, jokingly advocating for countertrends, among others. Collectively, these videos aim to emphasize the ‘problems’ associated with the trend – that is, it is racially insensitive and builds on cultural appropriation. The second finding suggests three main types of narratives constructed through the videos – historical, educational and affective. Each type is characterized by distinct narrative structures and strategies. Finally, the audiovisual functions of the platform in creating and amplifying the narratives. That is, the narratives on TikTok are powerful not only because of the rhetorical devices used, but also due to their audiovisual elements such as visual filters, audio memes, image and video compilations and non-verbal performance. Through these discussions of findings, we propose and explain the concept of ‘audiovisual narrative agency’ as an emerging lens to understand contemporary digital activism.

Seeking Justice Through Qanun Jinayat: The Narratives of Female Victims of Sexual Violence in Aceh, Indonesia

<p>This article examines the experience of Acehnese female victims of sexual violence seeking justice through Qanun Jinayat (Islamic criminal bylaw) in Aceh, Indonesia. The empirical data in this study were collected through in-depth interviews with the victims and families related to the cases of sexual violence. By employing the narrative agency, this article argues that telling the experience of seeking justice is a way female victims of sexual violence express their resistance to the implementation of Qanun Jinayat in Aceh. Regarding this, we will show that Aceh’s Qanun Jinayat, which was originally implemented to eradicate sexual violence, turns out to have limitations in realizing the desired goals. This finding ultimately confirms that the concept of legal pluralism adopted in Aceh, Indonesia, has liminality in facilitating justice for women and other marginalized communities.</p>

Lady in the Lake, Choral Voices, and Narrative Agency

A notable feature of the use of choral voices in cinema is the attenuation of language; singers hum, vocalise, and sing in invented or dead languages. Such an approach applies across genres and sees choruses used in two related ways: as evocations of human and inhuman collectives, and as celebrants of spectacle and narrative resolution. I argue that this approach is dictated by the particular implication of human agency that the voice, as opposed to the musical instrument, promotes. I sketch the ontological properties of choral voices in cinema and analyse Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947). As well as being a singular experiment in first-person camera, the film is significant for its a cappella score, the only one of its kind in classical cinema, motivated, I argue, by the film’s distinct narrative strategy.

Exploring the Interstices of Aging and Narrative Agency in M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea /

Indian Ocean literature has captured the porousness and fluidity that configure the Indian Ocean space through narrations in which history and memory, both individual and collective, blend to voice the uninhabited silence forged by unsettled colonialism. M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets (1994) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea (2001) are perspicuous exponents of the undertows that lurk behind the troubled existence of uprooted individuals for whom the act of telling stories becomes their means of survival. Given the old age of the protagonists of both novels, Pius Fernandes in The Book of Secrets and Saleh Omar in By the Sea, this article examines the power of narration from the perspective of narrative gerontology. Imbued with the spirit of Scheherazade’s The Arabian Nights, itself an Indian Ocean literary reference, Pius Fernandes and Saleh Omar biographical accounts become the source of their literal / literary survival.

"Instead of Tombstones - a Tree, a Garden, a Grove": Early Israeli Forests as Environmental Memorials

"Instead of Tombstones - a Tree, a Garden, a Grove": Early Israeli Forests as Environmental MemorialsThe article adds a material-semiotic memory studies perspective to the discussion on the two largest afforestation projects of early Israeli statehood: Ya’ar HaMeginim (Defenders’ Forest) and Ya’ar HaKedoshim (Martyrs’ Forest). Considering the multiplicity of contexts related to mass tree planting practices conducted by the Jewish National Fund in Israel, the article analyses the two arboreal complexes as environmental memorials. As such, they are attributed with narrative agency that strongly associates the object of commemoration with socially constructed pastoral features of nature. Moreover, due to their organic substance, they hold affective and material capacities that significantly influence the commemorative after-effects. The two Israeli mnemonic assemblages are examined, and conclusions are drawn on the possible outcomes of environmental memorials for collective memory processes. „Zamiast nagrobków – drzewo, ogród, gaj”. Wczesne izraelskie lasy jako środowiskowe upamiętnieniaPoniższy artykuł dodaje perspektywę materialno-semiotycznych badań nad pamięcią zbiorową do dyskusji na temat dwóch największych leśnych kompleksów wczesnego państwa Izrael – Ya’ar HaMeginim (Las Obrońców) i Ya’ar HaKedoshim (Las Męczenników). Biorąc pod uwagę wielość kontekstów związanych z praktykami masowego zalesiania w Izraelu prowadzonymi przez Żydowski Fundusz Narodowy, artykuł rozważa te lasy jako środowiskowe upamiętnienia. Jako takie posiadają one sprawczość narracyjną, silnie wiążącą obiekt upamiętnienia ze znaczeniami przypisywanymi naturze w ramach jej społecznej konstrukcji. Co więcej, ze względu na swój organiczny budulec, wykazują możliwości afektywne i materialne, które aktywnie wpływają na pamięciowy przekaz tych kompleksów. Na podstawie analizy obu izraelskich lasów pamięci wyciągane są wnioski na temat możliwego udziału upamiętnień środowiskowych w procesach pamięci zbiorowej.

Odysseus’s Lies

This chapter explores the creation of narrative agency by examining Odysseus's lies in the second half of the Odyssey from a perspective informed by correspondence and coherence in memory. The lying tales offer a continuing although coded probing of the relationship between the self, internal motivation, external action, and an evaluation of consequences. Odysseus's storytelling changes from reflective of his own experiences to manipulative of his addressees and, finally, in addresses to the suitors in particular, predictive of future actions. In an important way, this pattern continues the process of Narrative Therapy, as Odysseus continues to re-author his past in order to predict and act in the future. But this process also entails a complex negotiation between the correspondence of narrative details, which may be shared by a community, and the agent's need for coherence. The chapter's reading of the lies echoes what others have said — that they are instruments by which he achieves his psychological homecoming — but also argues that they have other functions as well in helping to distinguish Odysseus's character further and in providing insights for the Homeric understanding of the interdependence between storytelling and the working of human minds.

Reconsidering Autistic Narrative Agency and the Autobiography: The Curious Case of Tito Mukhopadhyay’s Beyond the Silence: My Life, the world and Autism

The primary purpose of this paper will be to investigate whether in narrativizing the subtleties of shame and stigma into the form of a coherent autobiography, the autistic autobiographer, Tito Mukhopadhyay, intentionally or unwittingly, explores different avenues regarding the types of autobiographical accounts, which causes us to re-imagine our understandings of autism and numerous other forms of cognitive impairment, and move past excessively deterministic and essentialist/normalizing biomedical discourses of cure and care. The study shall work within theories of postcolonialism, phenomenology, narrative theory, trauma studies and life writing studies. A literature review based on the extant scholarship in the field of life writing studies, health humanities and other disciplines has been conducted and after the identification of the research gap, this study chiefly seeks to purport that the lived experience of autism can be at variance with the prevalent biomedical and neurological understanding of this condition. By taking into cognizance the various material realities of the patients as evinced in their autie-biographies, I maintain that this information can come to the aid of medical practitioners, psychologists and psychoanalysts in considering the subjective dimensions of experience of autism apart from the monolithic and monolingual truth as evidenced by a scientific enquiry of autism spectrum disorder. This also suggests some appropriate conversation starters about the crossing points between a debilitating condition and the act of composing one’s life narrative with such a debilitating condition.

Quartet’s Modernist Muddles

The triangulation of masochistic desire that takes center stage in Jean Rhys’s Quartet attests to the self-aware participation of all parties involved, an overt acknowledgement of a developing collective consciousness suddenly more informed by psychoanalysis and sexology. The popularity of sexology and psychoanalysis during the 1920s allows readers to understand that seemingly helpless Marya and apparently predatory duo, the Heidlers, are all aware of masochistic possibilities and the consequences of their sexual and romantic decisions. Given narrative authority to ascribe thoughts and emotions to other characters, Marya takes such as opportunities to abuse and humiliate herself, hiding her active power under the projected opinions of others. Marya is complicit in the crafting and unfolding of her masochistic fantasies, however hurtful and upsetting they may be, ultimately exposing the surprising but telling amount of personal and narrative agency ascribed to her.