Narratives
of Disorder - Disorders of Narrative, Fri., 10-11.45
Bent
Sørensen
[Go directly to course plan] [Go to project ideas]
What is order, what is
disorder? Consecution
of temporal events (things happen in sequences which are easy to
follow,
flashbacks and –forwards are clearly marked) and causality (cause
precedes
effect) is normally regarded as a prerequisite for understanding
narratives.
What happens when narratives become disorderly by violating the
principles of
consecution?
One approach might be to
look at
narratives about disorder, or narratives where protagonists
or narrators
suffer from disorders. Such disorders as amnesia, attention
deficiencies,
involuntary tics and compulsions (such as Tourette Syndrome symptoms),
and
other perception and communication related disorders, such as
autism/Asperger’s
syndrome or certain forms of schizophrenia all pose challenges to
narratives:
interruptions, lacunae, disruptions, inversions, surpluses can all
become
narrative manifestations of these disorders. Can non-sufferers of these
disorders still decode such disturbed narratives? (If so, why and how?)
Can we
even learn things from them that we cannot learn from more orderly
narratives?
A proposition
would be that by
reading both fictional and non-fictional disorder narratives, we might
gain
insights into both the orders and disorders of brains and psyches and
the workings of narratives as a medium of carrying meaning.
A
preliminary corpus of such
narratives would consist of at least the following books (an marks a book we shall read in
full for the course):
Oliver Sacks: The Man
Who Mistook His
Wife
for a Hat: Clinical Tales (1985) (excerpts)
Mark Richard: Fishboy: A
Ghost's Tale
(1993)
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club
(1996)
Gwyn Hyman
Rubio: Icy
Sparks (1998)
Jonathan Lethem: Motherless
Brooklyn
(1999)
Jonathan
Lethem (ed.): The Book of
Amnesia
(2000) (excerpts)
Alan Lightman: The
Diagnosis
(2000)
Myla Goldberg: Bee
Season
(2001)
Don
De Lillo: The Body Artist
(2001)
Craig
Clevenger: The
Contortionist's
Handbook (2002)
Nicholson
Baker: A Box of Matches
(2003)
Mark Haddon: The
Curious
Incident of
the Dog
in the Night-time (2003)
Theory:
Narrative theory, narratology: H. Porter
Abbott: The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative; Paul Cobley: Narrative;
Shlomith
Rimmon-Kenan: Narrative
Fiction: Contemporary Poetics;
Gerard Genette: Narrative
Discourse: An Essay in Method
Trauma theory: Cathy Caruth: Trauma:
Explorations in Memory; Geoffrey Hartman: “On Traumatic Knowledge
and
Literary Studies” in New Literary History 26.3 (1995) 537-563
Story telling and functional theory: Richard
Kearney: On Stories (Thinking in Action); Michael Roemer: Telling
Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative
There will be a course master box
with texts for photo-copying, available from the course shelf
Course plan:
3/2
1. Intro: Clinical Tales: Oliver Sacks: from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ,
pp. 3-22; Ally McBeal
Background: Laura Miller: “My Syndrome, Myself”; Bent
Sørensen: “Tourette in Fiction”
Theory: H. Porter Abbott: “Narrative and Life”, pp. 1-11, from The Cambridge
Introduction to Narrative [Notes]
Additional resources: Oliver Sacks official website; Article on
Sacks from Wired
10/2
2. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club
(1996)
Background: Kevin A. Boon: “Men and Nostalgia for Violence -
Culture and Culpability in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club”
Theory: H. Porter Abbott: “Three Ways to Interpret Narrative”, pp. 93-104, from The Cambridge
Introduction to Narrative [Notes]
Additional resources: Chuck Palahniuk official website; A Writer's
Cult website
17/2
3. Jonathan Lethem: Motherless
Brooklyn
(1999)
Background: Bent Sørensen: “Jewishness
and Identity in Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn”
Theory: H. Porter Abbott: “Character
and Self in Narrative”, pp. 123- 137, from The Cambridge
Introduction to Narrative
Additional resources: Jonathan Lethem official website; Lethem in
Landscape fansite;
Reading group guide
page
3/3
4. Don
De Lillo: The Body Artist
(2001). Special session taught by our guest professor, Paula
Martín
Salván
Background: Mark Osteen: “Echo Chamber -
Undertaking the Body Artist”
Theory: Shlomith Rimmon Kenan: “Narration:
Levels and Voices” & “Narration:
Speech Representation”, pp. 87-117, from Narrative Fiction
9/3
5. Alan Lightman: The
Diagnosis
(2000)
Background: Interview
with Lightman
Theory: H. Porter Abbott: “Narrative
Contestation”, pp. 138-155 & “Narrative
Negotiation”, pp. 156-175, from The Cambridge
Introduction to Narrative
Additional resources: Lightman's faculty homepage
at MIT; Reading group guide
page; Random House - publisher's author homepage
17/3
6. Myla Goldberg: Bee
Season
(2001)
Background: Dwight Garner: “Spellbound”
Theory: Cathy Caruth: “Introduction”, pp. 3-12, from Trauma:
Explorations in Memory; Geoffrey Hartman: “On
Traumatic Knowledge
and
Literary Studies”
Additional resources: Random House - publisher's
author homepage;
Reading group guide
page; salon.com review
of Bee Season
24/3
7. Mark Haddon: The
Curious
Incident of
the Dog
in the Night-time (2003)
Background: James A. Merikangas: Review in The American Journal of Psychiatry
Theory: Michael Roemer: “The Preclusive Form
of Narrative”, pp. 3-9 & “We Don't and Do Believe in
Stories”, pp. 177-183,
from Telling
Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative;
Richard
Kearney: “Where do Stories
Come From”, pp. 3-14, from On Stories
(Thinking in Action)
Additional resources: Mark
Haddon official homepage;
Powell's interview;
Reading group guide
page; Random House -
publisher's author homepage
31/3
8. Outro:
Amnesia: Steve Erickson: “Days Between
Stations”; Charlie Kaufman
& Michel Gondry: Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (This session will be partly
taught by Jesper Holmbach)
Background: The Amnesis
Art website
Theory: Richard Kearney: from “Narrative Matters”, pp. 125-156 On Stories
(Thinking in Action)
Additonal resources: Charlie Kaufman fansite; On Steve
Erickson's Days
Between Stations
Project
ideas:
Trauma and literature: How are traumatic events such as the Holocaust,
Hiroshima, 9-11 depicted in fiction, and what is the function of
fiction in connection with trauma? Memory, healing, transmission...
Why are there so many accounts of individual disorders in contemporary
literature, and what is the function of such fictionalized accounts?
Period and disorder: Why do certain disorder types dominate the
fictional discourse of specific periods? Paranoia and schizophrenia...
Anorexia and bulimia... Amnesia and aphasia... Tourettes and ADD...
Autism and Apergers...
Individual disorder narratives: One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Family
Life; Rain Man; Niagara; Icy Sparks; Amnesia Moon; Kathy Hoopman's An Asperger's Mystery series for
young adults, or Marvie Ellis' sequence: An Autism Story; all the novels and
films on the course plan....
Fictional disorders with a vengeance: invented disorders and syndromes
in fiction: The Time Traveller's Wife;
The Confessions of Max Tivoli