Handbook of Narrative Analysis by Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck

Author:Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT006000 Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory, Literary Criticism, Semiotics & Theory, General, LIT000000 Literary Criticism / General
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2019-12-15T00:43:26.161000+00:00

3.2. Feminist and Queer Narratology

Narrative ethics is not the most famous example of the ideology-related developments in contemporary narrative theory. Undoubtedly, feminist narratology can lay claim to that status. It is also one of the most influential approaches: there is probably no other postclassical narrative theory that has analyzed, influenced, and modified so many aspects of narratology.402 Since the 1980s it has been investigating the relationship between narrative texts and narratological theories on the one hand and sex, gender, and sexual orientation on the other. “Sex” is the term used for the biological distinction between men and women, while “gender” refers to the social construction of the sexes. This construction is most often related to sexual orientation. The traditional construction of the roles of men and women includes a heterosexual preference. Gender cannot be disconnected from sex and sexuality even if it does not coincide with them.

Feminist narratology shows that gender, sex, and sexuality play a central role in the construction and interpretation of narrative texts, while classical narratology excludes these three aspects. As Susan Lanser observes in her influential essay “Toward a Feminist Narratology,” this exclusion is related to the gender of canonized narratologists and of the texts used by them.403 It usually involves not only male theoreticians (Stanzel, Genette, Chatman, Prince) but also male writers. Many so-called universal concepts from classical narrative theory and many allegedly universal characteristics of literary texts are in fact typical of a specific period—for narratology this is usually structuralism, while for literature this means mostly fiction up to and including modernism—as well as a specific culture and a specific (predominantly male) population.

Narratology is not universal or neutral. It is colored by the context in which it functions, and this context consists of a whole series of factors, such as social class, sex, age, economic and professional position, physical condition, and education. Every narratological concept bears traces of this context, and feminist theoreticians argue that these traces are ideological to the extent that they express the power relations of that context. The structuralist desire to classify, survey, and master, for instance, is the expression of a typically Western and male view of knowledge. More generally, Lanser says in her fundamental Fictions of Authority “that even the broadest, most obvious elements of narration are ideologically charged and socially variable, sensitive to gender differences in ways that have not been recognized.”404 By paying attention to the more general and ideological context, feminist narratology is part of the expansion that is typical of nearly all postclassical forms of narratology. Feminist narratologists such as Robyn Warhol and Kathy Mezei join forces with “contextualist narratology,” which has to complement and correct classical narratology.405

It is obviously impossible to map the entire context of a text and a theory. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, following Louis Althusser, talks about an “overdetermination” (surdétermination) of contextual factors: human beings are influenced by so many factors that they can never have a complete picture of them, let alone systematize them.406 This blindness may lead

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