This volume
explores the ethical potential and risks of storytelling from an
interdisciplinary perspective. It stages a dialogue between contemporary
literature and visual arts across media (film, photography, performative arts),
interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives (debates in narrative studies,
trauma studies, cultural memory studies, ethical criticism), and history
(traumatic histories of violence, cultural history). The collection analyses
ethical issues involved in different strategies employed in literature and art
to narrate experiences that resist telling and imagining, such as traumatic
historical events, including war and political conflicts. The chapters explore
the multiple ways in which the ethics of storytelling relates to the
contemporary arts as they work with, draw on, and contribute to historical
imagination. The book foregrounds the connection between remembering and
imagining and explores the ambiguous role of narrative in the configuration of
selves, communities, and the relation to the non-human. While discussing the
ethical aspects of storytelling, it also reflects on the relevance of artistic
storytelling practices for our understanding of ethics. Making an original
contribution to interdisciplinary narrative studies and narrative ethics, this
book both articulates a complex understanding of how artistic storytelling
practices enable critical distance from culturally dominant narrative
practices, and analyzes the limitations and potential pitfalls of storytelling.
It argues that narrative is bound up with power in both positive and negative
ways. While some storytelling practices perpetuate oppressive forms of power,
others have empowering significance. Instead of idealizing or demonizing
narrative, it provides analytical tools for engaging with the ethically complex
ways in which the power of storytelling is used and abused.