Narrative(s) in Conflict

Description

Narrative/s in Conflict presents the proceedings of an international workshop, held at the Trinity Long Room Hub Dublin in 2013, to a wider audience. This was a cross-disciplinary cooperation between the comparative research network 'Broken Narratives' (University of Vienna), the research strand 'Identities in Transformation' (Trinity College Dublin) and the Graduate Center for the Study of Culture at the University of Giessen. What has brought this informal network together is its credo that theories of narrative should be regarded as an integral part of cultural analysis. Choosing exemplary case studies from early Habsburg days up to the the wars and genocides of the 20th century and the post-9/11 'War on terror', our volume tries to analyze the relation between representation and conflict, i.e. between narrative constructions, social/historical processes, and cultural agon. Here it is crucial to state that narratives do not simply and passively 'mirror' conflicts as the conventional ‘realistic’ paradigm suggests; they rather provide a symbolic, sense-making matrix, and even a performative dimension. It even can be said that in many cases, narratives make conflicts.       Table of Contents Preface by the Editors Broken Narratives: Modernism and the Tradition of Rupture Discourses on the Ottomans in Old Hungarian Literature: Observations on a Volatile Image Ivan Mažuranić’s The Death of Smail-aga Čengić (1846): The Controversial Reception of an Epic Poem Conflicting Narratives: Notes on the Compositional Nature of Poems in Prose Conflict, Narration, and Satirical Violence in Karl Kraus’ Die Fackel Peace Talks Between Image and Word: Carl Einstein’s Struggle for a Non-Totalizing Ekphrasis The Importance of Conflict Elsewhere: Francis Stuart’s and Hugo Hamilton’s Literary Engagements with Germany and the Second World War Damaged Words and Closed Houses: Everyday World and Memory Narratives in Georges Perec The Sovereign’s Broken Voice: On the Cinematic Politics of Representation “Hurt Identities?” The Postwar Bosnian Narrative of Self-Victimization Collateral Roadkill: The Conflicted Death of “Central Europe” en route to Sarajevo and Brussels Stories as “Weapons of Mass Destruction”: George W. Bush’s Narratives of Crisis as Paradigm Examples of Ways of World- and Conflict-Making (and Conflict-Solving?) Index