The Use and Abuse of Stories by Mark P. Freeman

Author:Mark P. Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gadamer also refers to this process as a “fusion of horizons” (p. 306). If horizons reflect the general frameworks our identities make available to us, then the fusion of horizons suggests they need not be limited to those with which either our conversation partners or we begin. Indeed, in first defining a horizon as “the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point,” Gadamer adds that “we speak of narrowness of horizon, of the possible expansion of horizons, of the opening up of new horizons” (p. 302). To be sure, expanding our horizons does not mean abandoning them in an effort to transpose ourselves into the horizon of others or to reexperience their experiences. Even if we try to reexperience their experience or, to put it otherwise, to walk in their shoes, it will always be we who are walking in those shoes. At the same time, however, horizons can expand by fusing with vistas available from other positions. Indeed, a fusion of horizons reflects the resources of different perspectives and their reciprocal development. To the extent that we are open to experiencing others and they to experiencing us, both horizons can expand to take account of what they learn from each other. What we mutually learn is precisely the fusion of the two horizons, or “the logos which is neither mine nor yours.”

In this way, Gadamer’s account of understanding offers an alternative to the idea reflected in recent claims about identity-related portrayal in the arts and literature, according to which legitimate narratives and depictions of others depend on an understanding linked to shared or shareable experiences and according to which this understanding is a consequence of sharing their identities or some part of their identities. If we take our cue from Gadamer, we can see that this assumption about understanding is actually rather incurious and even arrogant: it denies others the otherness of their experiences and narrative self-understanding and presumes to know already whatever they might teach us. To take the opposite tack is to be sensitive and open to differences, even in those we think are similar to ourselves. Moreover, the condition of sensitivity to such differences is openness to the claims others make, whether in their speech or in their actions and practices. The merit of such openness is that it allows for negative experience; it lets us be pulled up short in a way that exposes our own assumptions and expectations, and it lets us assess the challenges that the perspective of others may present to them.

What this interest in difference means for our third-person narratives is that, to the extent that these narratives have value, that value does not rely on the sameness of the narrator’s experiences with those of the person or people they are depicting or whose stories they are telling. Rather, it depends on the depth of fused horizons. We cannot expect to understand the lives and experiences of others in just the way they

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.