The chapter argues that underlying different ethical
stances towards storytelling is a crucial difference in their conception of
understanding, which can be best understood in terms of the difference between subsumptive
and non-subsumptive conceptions
of (narrative) understanding. While poststructuralist thinkers tend to conceive
of all understanding in terms of a subsumption model that links understanding
to appropriation and assimilation, the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics
explores the possibility of non-subsumptive understanding. The ethical
potential of certain forms of storytelling, she argues, depends on such a
possibility. While subsumptive narrative practices tend to reinforce cultural
stereotypes and explain singular events in terms of general cultural narrative
scripts, non-subsumptive narrative practices tend to question such general
scripts and challenge our categories of appropriation. The chapter develops a
non-subsumptive model of storytelling—and provides a differentiating continuum
for the ethical evaluation of narrative practices—in dialogue with Jeanette
Winterson’s novel Lighthousekeeping,
which shows how storytelling can function in the mode of dialogic exploration.