Publication details
Zvíře, které vypráví příběhy
| Title in English | The storytelling animal |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Popularization text |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Popularization talk at the Tři ocásci café in Brno on May 26, 2022. One of the defining characteristics of human beings is the need to tell stories. We use stories to make sense of the world and our experience in it, to explain minor and major events, to cope with loss and failure. Stories are also a source of self-knowledge and self-definition: we form our identity largely through narrative. The small and big stories we tell about our lives seem to relate to an autonomous self, but is there a self outside the story? And given that narrative modes are culturally specific, to what extent are we even the authors of our own stories, and therefore our own identities? How do we manage the conflicting demands of contemporary Western society - to be unique and fit in at the same time? How do we relate to normative narratives and identities? How do we work with circulated patterns of identity based on culturally conditioned assumptions about, for example, gender, ethnicity, class or sexual orientation? Which stories are given voice and which are silenced? |