Fact, Fiction, and Everything in-between: Strategies of Reader Activation in Postcolonial Graphic Narratives
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Sandra Heinen
Abstract
This essay deals with recent postcolonial graphic narratives which address social ills, such as discrimination and violence based on gender, ethnicity or caste, or the horrors of genocide and war. To achieve their unambiguous communicative goals, the most urgent of which are to convey a political stance, to stimulate readers to take sides, and to encourage active engagement in the cause they represent, these graphic narratives blur, undermine or transgress in different ways the border between factual and fictional storytelling. The strategic - and media-specific - combination of factual and fictional modes investigated here thus plays a pivotal role in the endeavor to influence readers’ attitudes and consequent behavior.
Abstract
This essay deals with recent postcolonial graphic narratives which address social ills, such as discrimination and violence based on gender, ethnicity or caste, or the horrors of genocide and war. To achieve their unambiguous communicative goals, the most urgent of which are to convey a political stance, to stimulate readers to take sides, and to encourage active engagement in the cause they represent, these graphic narratives blur, undermine or transgress in different ways the border between factual and fictional storytelling. The strategic - and media-specific - combination of factual and fictional modes investigated here thus plays a pivotal role in the endeavor to influence readers’ attitudes and consequent behavior.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter i
- Contents v
- A Tale of Two Concepts: Ansgar Nünning at Sixty 1
- Stories of Dangerous Life in the Post- Trauma Age: Toward a Cultural Narratology of Resilience 15
- Mind the Narratives: Towards a Cultural Narratology of Attention 37
- The End of the World (as We Know It)? – Cultural Ways of Worldmaking in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Narratives 57
- Plumbing Distant Spatiotemporal Scales: Towards an Econarratology of Planetary Memory in Narratives of the Global South 75
- Narrative Forms in the Age of the Anthropocene: Negotiating Human-Nonhuman Relations in Global South Novels 91
- Fact, Fiction, and Everything in-between: Strategies of Reader Activation in Postcolonial Graphic Narratives 109
- ‘It’s Not Our Opinion, It’s the Opinion of Our Roles’ – Fremdverstehen Revisited or: Where Foreign Language Education and Narratology Can Meet 129
- Narrative and Visual Resources of Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Children’s Books from Australia 149
- Troubling Justice: Narratives of Revenge 165
- Erin Burnett in Mali: Bardic Television and the Genealogy of Cultural Narratology 185
- New Media Narratives: Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy and Identity in the Digital Age 199
- The ‘Death’ of the Unreliable Narrator: Toward a Functional History of Narrative Unreliability 215
- Odyssean Travels: The Migration of Narrative Form (Homer – Lamb – Joyce) 241
- A European Storyteller? Collective Narration in John Berger’s Into Their Labours 269
- Brexit as Cultural Performance: Towards a Narratology of Social Drama 293
- Contributors 321
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter i
- Contents v
- A Tale of Two Concepts: Ansgar Nünning at Sixty 1
- Stories of Dangerous Life in the Post- Trauma Age: Toward a Cultural Narratology of Resilience 15
- Mind the Narratives: Towards a Cultural Narratology of Attention 37
- The End of the World (as We Know It)? – Cultural Ways of Worldmaking in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Narratives 57
- Plumbing Distant Spatiotemporal Scales: Towards an Econarratology of Planetary Memory in Narratives of the Global South 75
- Narrative Forms in the Age of the Anthropocene: Negotiating Human-Nonhuman Relations in Global South Novels 91
- Fact, Fiction, and Everything in-between: Strategies of Reader Activation in Postcolonial Graphic Narratives 109
- ‘It’s Not Our Opinion, It’s the Opinion of Our Roles’ – Fremdverstehen Revisited or: Where Foreign Language Education and Narratology Can Meet 129
- Narrative and Visual Resources of Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Children’s Books from Australia 149
- Troubling Justice: Narratives of Revenge 165
- Erin Burnett in Mali: Bardic Television and the Genealogy of Cultural Narratology 185
- New Media Narratives: Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy and Identity in the Digital Age 199
- The ‘Death’ of the Unreliable Narrator: Toward a Functional History of Narrative Unreliability 215
- Odyssean Travels: The Migration of Narrative Form (Homer – Lamb – Joyce) 241
- A European Storyteller? Collective Narration in John Berger’s Into Their Labours 269
- Brexit as Cultural Performance: Towards a Narratology of Social Drama 293
- Contributors 321
