Abstract
Under what conditions can works of fiction serve counter-narrative aims? If the reified claims of a national narrative purport to be grounded in fact, can they be successfully challenged or dismantled by works of admittedly imaginative status? This essay singles out five strategies that occur with particular frequency in novels and stories that manifestly push back against a national Israeli narrative: multiple and variable focalization, analepsis, doubling, chiastic or conversion plots, and negative or counterfactual plotting. I argue, however, that adherence to fact is the necessary grounding for realist fiction to succeed as counter-narrative, though speculative and counterfactual novels offer their own path toward upending a master text. Ultimately, of course, the success of counter-narrative fiction will depend on the response of its readers. The counter-narrativity of fiction might therefore be best understood as a reading effect rather than as a textual quality. The testimony of readers does, however, provide ample evidence that fiction has rich counter-narrative capabilities.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Interview
- “Every war is a war of words and images”: an interview about Gaza with W.J.T. Mitchell
- Special Issue: Counter-narratives: A concept for narratology and the study of fiction?; Guest Editors: Per Krogh Hansen, Matti Hyvärinen and Sylvie Patron
- Introduction: counter-narratives: a concept for narratology and the study of fiction?
- Vicarious voices and positioning in marking counter-narratives in fiction
- Roadmaps for saving the world? Construction and use of master and counter-narratives in programmatic climate fiction
- Analyzing master and counter-narratives in the multilayered narrative communication of literary fiction
- Novel/nation: counter-narrative fiction, Israel-Palestine, and the politics of form
- Doubly hidden, doubly exposed: master-narratives, counter-narratives, and the ethics of “passing” in The Human Stain
- Generation storytelling: (Counter-)narrative identity in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
- Narratives of excision: master- and counter-narrative in Ahmadou Kourouma’s The Suns of Independence
- The counternarratives of Ulysses
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Interview
- “Every war is a war of words and images”: an interview about Gaza with W.J.T. Mitchell
- Special Issue: Counter-narratives: A concept for narratology and the study of fiction?; Guest Editors: Per Krogh Hansen, Matti Hyvärinen and Sylvie Patron
- Introduction: counter-narratives: a concept for narratology and the study of fiction?
- Vicarious voices and positioning in marking counter-narratives in fiction
- Roadmaps for saving the world? Construction and use of master and counter-narratives in programmatic climate fiction
- Analyzing master and counter-narratives in the multilayered narrative communication of literary fiction
- Novel/nation: counter-narrative fiction, Israel-Palestine, and the politics of form
- Doubly hidden, doubly exposed: master-narratives, counter-narratives, and the ethics of “passing” in The Human Stain
- Generation storytelling: (Counter-)narrative identity in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
- Narratives of excision: master- and counter-narrative in Ahmadou Kourouma’s The Suns of Independence
- The counternarratives of Ulysses