I am Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory at the University of Turku (Finland). My research is mainly in the fields of narrative theory, critical theory, narrative hermeneutics, ethical criticism and cultural memory studies. Much of my work explores the interrelations of literature, philosophy and history as well as the philosophical and historical underpinnings of different conceptions of narrative.
This chapter introduces the key terms of the edited volume: violence, interpretation, narrative, ... more This chapter introduces the key terms of the edited volume: violence, interpretation, narrative, hermeneutics, and ethics. It articulates how interpreting violence refers both to the process of meaning-making involved in understanding representations of violence and to the potential violence involved in interpretive acts themselves. Drawing on the distinction between understanding and explanation, it fleshes out the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, which emphasizes the unfinalizable nature of understanding and suggests that understanding guided by openness to the singularity of the other can be nonviolent.. The contributors of the volume discuss different forms and levels of violence and explore the possibility of nonviolent interpretation in relation to a range of different ways of narrating violence. The introduction lays out the three sections of the volume. The first, “Representing Violence,” deals with the various representations of violence in literature and discourse, with a particular focus on the ambiguousness involved in the act of representing and on how representation itself can be an act of violence. The second section, “Understanding the Violence of Perpetrators,” focuses on making sense of the acts of those who commit violence. The final section, “Articulating Inherent Violence,” explores different levels of violence with particular attention to the violence that inheres in systems of signification and social structures. Overall, the Introduction explains how the volume provides conceptual resources for thinking about violence in its many forms in times of global crises. Violence ranges from discursive and structural to concrete, embodied violence. In this volume, we explore the ethical potential of literature and other arts in processes of making mechanisms of violence visible while also acknowledging that often good intentions can mask complicity in social structures that perpetuate practices of oppression.
Representations of violence surround us in everyday life – in news reports, films and novels – in... more Representations of violence surround us in everyday life – in news reports, films and novels – inviting interpretation and raising questions about the ethics of viewing or reading about harm done to others. How can we understand the processes of meaning-making involved in interpreting violent events and experiences? And can these acts of interpretation themselves be violent by reproducing the violence that they represent? This book examines the ethics of engaging with violent stories from a broad hermeneutic perspective. It offers multidisciplinary perspectives on the sense-making involved in interpreting violence in its various forms, from blatant physical violence to less visible forms that may inhere in words or in the social and political order of our societies. By focusing on different ways of narrating violence and on the cultural and paradigmatic forms that govern such narrations, Interpreting Violence explores the ethical potential of literature, art and philosophy to expose mechanisms of violence while also recognizing their implication in structures that contribute to or benefit from practices of violence.
The proponents of the contemporary storytelling boom, such as professional business storytellers ... more The proponents of the contemporary storytelling boom, such as professional business storytellers and self-help coaches, urge individuals, groups, institutions, and corporations alike to find and tell their story. Social media as the predominant narrative environment for contemporary storytellers promotes the instrumentalization and commodification of stories of personal experience. Literary fiction as the primary locus for narrative experimentation finds itself conditioned and challenged by the story logic of social media, but it also possesses unique affordances for a critical engagement with the current celebration of narrative. How should a narrative theorist position oneself vis-à-vis these developments that are currently changing the public notions of what narratives are and what they can do? By drawing from narrative hermeneutics and cognitive and rhetorical narratology, this article outlines a “story-critical” approach to the current storytelling boom and provides examples of...
Literary trauma studies is a rapidly developing field which examines how literature deals with th... more Literary trauma studies is a rapidly developing field which examines how literature deals with the personal and cultural aspects of trauma and engages with such historical and current phenomena as the Holocaust and other genocides, 9/11, climate catastrophe or the still unsettled legacy of colonialism. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma is a comprehensive guide to the history and theory of trauma studies, including key concepts, consideration of critical perspectives and discussion of future developments. It also explores different genres and media, such as poetry, life-writing, graphic narratives, photography and post-apocalyptic fiction, and analyses how literature engages with particular traumatic situations and events, such as the Holocaust, the Occupation of France, the Rwandan genocide, Hurricane Katrina and transgenerational nuclear trauma. Forty essays from top thinkers in the field demonstrate the range and vitality of trauma studies as it has been used to fur...
This article lays out the theoretical-analytic framework of narrative agency, three central dimen... more This article lays out the theoretical-analytic framework of narrative agency, three central dimensions of which are narrative awareness, narrative imagination, and narrative dialogicality, and presents a model of metanarrative reading groups, which aims at amplifying narrative agency. It argues that an important form of self-reflexivity in contemporary literary fiction is metanarrativity—self-aware reflection not only on the narratives’ own narrativity but also on the significance and functions of cultural practices of narrative sense-making. It analyzes how reading together metanarrative fiction, which critically engages with the roles of cultural narrative models in contemporary society, can shape narrative agency—that is, the ability to navigate narrative environments. The article illustrates the metanarrative reading-group model through the analysis of one reading-group session, which focuses on a metanarrative excerpt from Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries. The article sugg...
This article proposes the concept of implicit narrative as an analytic tool that helps to articul... more This article proposes the concept of implicit narrative as an analytic tool that helps to articulate how cultural models of narrative sense-making steer us to certain patterns of experience, discourse, and interaction, and the concept of narrative agency as an analytic tool for theorizing and evaluating the processes in which we navigate our narrative environments, which consist of a range of implicit narratives. As a touchstone for developing these theoretical concepts, which serve not only narrative studies but also overlapping fields such as memory studies and cultural studies, the article analyzes the implicit cultural narrative that has most strongly dominated public discourse on the coronavirus pandemic: the narrative of war. Thereby, the article also contributes to the analysis of pandemic storytelling and its effects on us, as the cultural memory of the pandemic is currently taking shape and affecting our orientation to the future.
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma, 2020
"Philosophy of trauma" is not a widely used concept, and the topic is rarely di... more "Philosophy of trauma" is not a widely used concept, and the topic is rarely discussed, despite the strong philosophical undercurrent of literary trauma theory and its genealogical link to poststructuralism. This is probably due to the fact that trauma is more commonly seen as a psychological or cultural rather than a philosophical concept. It could be argued, however, that precisely for this reason there is a need to explore the philosophical assumptions underlying trauma theory. These assumptions often remain unarticulated-they can be tacit and implicit-but they nevertheless structure different traditions of theorizing trauma. In this chapter, I approach philosophies of trauma precisely from the perspective of the philosophical assumptions undergirding different ways of engaging with trauma. These assumptions can take various forms depending, first, on how explicitly articulated they are and, second, on whether they emerge in the context of theoretical discourse or fiction. Drawing on these distinctions, I will sketch out four types of philosophies of trauma. In addition to this semantic categorization, I propose a substantial one, suggesting that the three main philosophical paradigms of trauma that underlie contemporary trauma theory can be called empiricism, poststructuralism and hermeneutics. I will then analyse in more detail the philosophical underpinnings of dominant literary trauma theory particularly concerning the concepts of experience and narrative understanding. The final part of the chapter elucidates these points through a discussion of Hanya Yanagihara's novel A Little Life (2015).
Chapter 6 addresses the ethical issues involved in engaging with the perpetrator’s perspective by... more Chapter 6 addresses the ethical issues involved in engaging with the perpetrator’s perspective by analyzing Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones). It discusses imaginative resistance, difficult empathy, and identification in relation to readerly engagement and perspective-taking. The chapter shows how the interplay between immersiveness and critical distance can produce a narrative dynamic that allows the reader to engage emotionally—but without uncritically adopting the protagonist’s perspective—with an ethically problematic life-world. It analyzes how the novel performatively shows, through the breakdown of narrative mastery, that no exhaustive comprehension is possible. In relation to different logics of narrative, the chapter articulates the ethical significance of self-reflexive narrative form and relates the hermeneutic notion of docta ignorantia—knowing that one does not know—to the novel’s way of dealing with the conditions of possibility of the Holoc...
Against the backdrop of the polarized debate on the ethical significance of storytelling, this bo... more Against the backdrop of the polarized debate on the ethical significance of storytelling, this book develops a nuanced framework for exploring the ethical complexity of the roles narratives play in human lives. Focusing on how narratives enlarge and diminish the spaces of possibilities in which people act, think, and reimagine the world, it proposes a theoretical-analytical framework for engaging with both the ethical potential and the risks of storytelling. It elaborates a narrative hermeneutics that treats narratives as culturally mediated interpretative practices that can be oppressive, empowering, or both, and argues that the relationship between narrative unconscious and narrative imagination shapes one’s sense of the possible. Its hermeneutic narrative ethics differentiates between six dimensions of narratives’ ethical potential: they can cultivate a sense of the possible; promote self-understanding; enable understanding other lives non-subsumptively in their singularity; tran...
Chapter 3 explores the ethical implications of the hermeneutic approach to narrative. It proposes... more Chapter 3 explores the ethical implications of the hermeneutic approach to narrative. It proposes a framework for analyzing and evaluating narrative practices from an ethical perspective by differentiating between six aspects of their ethical potential. (1) It argues that the power of narratives to cultivate and expand one’s sense of the possible is ethically crucial. In relation to this key point, it suggests that narratives can (2) contribute to personal and cultural self-understanding; (3) provide an ethical mode of understanding other lives and experiences “non-subsumptively” in their singularity; (4) create, challenge, and transform narrative in-betweens; (5) develop one’s perspective-awareness and capacity for perspective-taking; and (6) function as a mode of ethical inquiry. The chapter develops a non-subsumptive model of narrative understanding and shows how the hermeneutic approach allows one to go beyond the dichotomous question of whether narratives are good or bad, towar...
This chapter introduces the key terms of the edited volume: violence, interpretation, narrative, ... more This chapter introduces the key terms of the edited volume: violence, interpretation, narrative, hermeneutics, and ethics. It articulates how interpreting violence refers both to the process of meaning-making involved in understanding representations of violence and to the potential violence involved in interpretive acts themselves. Drawing on the distinction between understanding and explanation, it fleshes out the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, which emphasizes the unfinalizable nature of understanding and suggests that understanding guided by openness to the singularity of the other can be nonviolent.. The contributors of the volume discuss different forms and levels of violence and explore the possibility of nonviolent interpretation in relation to a range of different ways of narrating violence. The introduction lays out the three sections of the volume. The first, “Representing Violence,” deals with the various representations of violence in literature and discourse, with a particular focus on the ambiguousness involved in the act of representing and on how representation itself can be an act of violence. The second section, “Understanding the Violence of Perpetrators,” focuses on making sense of the acts of those who commit violence. The final section, “Articulating Inherent Violence,” explores different levels of violence with particular attention to the violence that inheres in systems of signification and social structures. Overall, the Introduction explains how the volume provides conceptual resources for thinking about violence in its many forms in times of global crises. Violence ranges from discursive and structural to concrete, embodied violence. In this volume, we explore the ethical potential of literature and other arts in processes of making mechanisms of violence visible while also acknowledging that often good intentions can mask complicity in social structures that perpetuate practices of oppression.
Representations of violence surround us in everyday life – in news reports, films and novels – in... more Representations of violence surround us in everyday life – in news reports, films and novels – inviting interpretation and raising questions about the ethics of viewing or reading about harm done to others. How can we understand the processes of meaning-making involved in interpreting violent events and experiences? And can these acts of interpretation themselves be violent by reproducing the violence that they represent? This book examines the ethics of engaging with violent stories from a broad hermeneutic perspective. It offers multidisciplinary perspectives on the sense-making involved in interpreting violence in its various forms, from blatant physical violence to less visible forms that may inhere in words or in the social and political order of our societies. By focusing on different ways of narrating violence and on the cultural and paradigmatic forms that govern such narrations, Interpreting Violence explores the ethical potential of literature, art and philosophy to expose mechanisms of violence while also recognizing their implication in structures that contribute to or benefit from practices of violence.
The proponents of the contemporary storytelling boom, such as professional business storytellers ... more The proponents of the contemporary storytelling boom, such as professional business storytellers and self-help coaches, urge individuals, groups, institutions, and corporations alike to find and tell their story. Social media as the predominant narrative environment for contemporary storytellers promotes the instrumentalization and commodification of stories of personal experience. Literary fiction as the primary locus for narrative experimentation finds itself conditioned and challenged by the story logic of social media, but it also possesses unique affordances for a critical engagement with the current celebration of narrative. How should a narrative theorist position oneself vis-à-vis these developments that are currently changing the public notions of what narratives are and what they can do? By drawing from narrative hermeneutics and cognitive and rhetorical narratology, this article outlines a “story-critical” approach to the current storytelling boom and provides examples of...
Literary trauma studies is a rapidly developing field which examines how literature deals with th... more Literary trauma studies is a rapidly developing field which examines how literature deals with the personal and cultural aspects of trauma and engages with such historical and current phenomena as the Holocaust and other genocides, 9/11, climate catastrophe or the still unsettled legacy of colonialism. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma is a comprehensive guide to the history and theory of trauma studies, including key concepts, consideration of critical perspectives and discussion of future developments. It also explores different genres and media, such as poetry, life-writing, graphic narratives, photography and post-apocalyptic fiction, and analyses how literature engages with particular traumatic situations and events, such as the Holocaust, the Occupation of France, the Rwandan genocide, Hurricane Katrina and transgenerational nuclear trauma. Forty essays from top thinkers in the field demonstrate the range and vitality of trauma studies as it has been used to fur...
This article lays out the theoretical-analytic framework of narrative agency, three central dimen... more This article lays out the theoretical-analytic framework of narrative agency, three central dimensions of which are narrative awareness, narrative imagination, and narrative dialogicality, and presents a model of metanarrative reading groups, which aims at amplifying narrative agency. It argues that an important form of self-reflexivity in contemporary literary fiction is metanarrativity—self-aware reflection not only on the narratives’ own narrativity but also on the significance and functions of cultural practices of narrative sense-making. It analyzes how reading together metanarrative fiction, which critically engages with the roles of cultural narrative models in contemporary society, can shape narrative agency—that is, the ability to navigate narrative environments. The article illustrates the metanarrative reading-group model through the analysis of one reading-group session, which focuses on a metanarrative excerpt from Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries. The article sugg...
This article proposes the concept of implicit narrative as an analytic tool that helps to articul... more This article proposes the concept of implicit narrative as an analytic tool that helps to articulate how cultural models of narrative sense-making steer us to certain patterns of experience, discourse, and interaction, and the concept of narrative agency as an analytic tool for theorizing and evaluating the processes in which we navigate our narrative environments, which consist of a range of implicit narratives. As a touchstone for developing these theoretical concepts, which serve not only narrative studies but also overlapping fields such as memory studies and cultural studies, the article analyzes the implicit cultural narrative that has most strongly dominated public discourse on the coronavirus pandemic: the narrative of war. Thereby, the article also contributes to the analysis of pandemic storytelling and its effects on us, as the cultural memory of the pandemic is currently taking shape and affecting our orientation to the future.
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma, 2020
"Philosophy of trauma" is not a widely used concept, and the topic is rarely di... more "Philosophy of trauma" is not a widely used concept, and the topic is rarely discussed, despite the strong philosophical undercurrent of literary trauma theory and its genealogical link to poststructuralism. This is probably due to the fact that trauma is more commonly seen as a psychological or cultural rather than a philosophical concept. It could be argued, however, that precisely for this reason there is a need to explore the philosophical assumptions underlying trauma theory. These assumptions often remain unarticulated-they can be tacit and implicit-but they nevertheless structure different traditions of theorizing trauma. In this chapter, I approach philosophies of trauma precisely from the perspective of the philosophical assumptions undergirding different ways of engaging with trauma. These assumptions can take various forms depending, first, on how explicitly articulated they are and, second, on whether they emerge in the context of theoretical discourse or fiction. Drawing on these distinctions, I will sketch out four types of philosophies of trauma. In addition to this semantic categorization, I propose a substantial one, suggesting that the three main philosophical paradigms of trauma that underlie contemporary trauma theory can be called empiricism, poststructuralism and hermeneutics. I will then analyse in more detail the philosophical underpinnings of dominant literary trauma theory particularly concerning the concepts of experience and narrative understanding. The final part of the chapter elucidates these points through a discussion of Hanya Yanagihara's novel A Little Life (2015).
Chapter 6 addresses the ethical issues involved in engaging with the perpetrator’s perspective by... more Chapter 6 addresses the ethical issues involved in engaging with the perpetrator’s perspective by analyzing Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones). It discusses imaginative resistance, difficult empathy, and identification in relation to readerly engagement and perspective-taking. The chapter shows how the interplay between immersiveness and critical distance can produce a narrative dynamic that allows the reader to engage emotionally—but without uncritically adopting the protagonist’s perspective—with an ethically problematic life-world. It analyzes how the novel performatively shows, through the breakdown of narrative mastery, that no exhaustive comprehension is possible. In relation to different logics of narrative, the chapter articulates the ethical significance of self-reflexive narrative form and relates the hermeneutic notion of docta ignorantia—knowing that one does not know—to the novel’s way of dealing with the conditions of possibility of the Holoc...
Against the backdrop of the polarized debate on the ethical significance of storytelling, this bo... more Against the backdrop of the polarized debate on the ethical significance of storytelling, this book develops a nuanced framework for exploring the ethical complexity of the roles narratives play in human lives. Focusing on how narratives enlarge and diminish the spaces of possibilities in which people act, think, and reimagine the world, it proposes a theoretical-analytical framework for engaging with both the ethical potential and the risks of storytelling. It elaborates a narrative hermeneutics that treats narratives as culturally mediated interpretative practices that can be oppressive, empowering, or both, and argues that the relationship between narrative unconscious and narrative imagination shapes one’s sense of the possible. Its hermeneutic narrative ethics differentiates between six dimensions of narratives’ ethical potential: they can cultivate a sense of the possible; promote self-understanding; enable understanding other lives non-subsumptively in their singularity; tran...
Chapter 3 explores the ethical implications of the hermeneutic approach to narrative. It proposes... more Chapter 3 explores the ethical implications of the hermeneutic approach to narrative. It proposes a framework for analyzing and evaluating narrative practices from an ethical perspective by differentiating between six aspects of their ethical potential. (1) It argues that the power of narratives to cultivate and expand one’s sense of the possible is ethically crucial. In relation to this key point, it suggests that narratives can (2) contribute to personal and cultural self-understanding; (3) provide an ethical mode of understanding other lives and experiences “non-subsumptively” in their singularity; (4) create, challenge, and transform narrative in-betweens; (5) develop one’s perspective-awareness and capacity for perspective-taking; and (6) function as a mode of ethical inquiry. The chapter develops a non-subsumptive model of narrative understanding and shows how the hermeneutic approach allows one to go beyond the dichotomous question of whether narratives are good or bad, towar...
Why we read literature and why we should read literature are age-old questions that have, in rece... more Why we read literature and why we should read literature are age-old questions that have, in recent years, gained unprecedented scope and intensity, against the backdrop of what has been perceived as a world-wide crisis in the humanities. While scholars frequently discuss different types of value separately, in this volume values of literature are approached in the plural: we argue that the ethical, aesthetic, cognitive, affective, social, historical, and existential values of literature should be explored in connection with each other. The three parts of the book explore the relationship between ethics and aesthetics; the cognitive, affective, and social values of literature; and the construction and questioning of literary values in society. Throughout the book, we discuss the different things literature can do – ranging from affirmation of social dogmas to its capacities for self-questioning and challenging of moral certainties – through the dynamic interplay of its ethical and aesthetic, cognitive and affective aspects. Literature not only reflects and draws on the values of the historical world from which it stems; it also actively addresses, challenges, and transforms those values and explores new ways to understand value. Through these complementary processes, literature engages in its own distinctively literary forms of value inquiry.
The Narrative Turn in Fiction and Theory relates the recent theoretical surge of interest in narr... more The Narrative Turn in Fiction and Theory relates the recent theoretical surge of interest in narrative to the revival of storytelling in fiction, particularly perceptible in France, where the preceding crisis of storytelling was exceptionally intense. It analyses the philosophical and historical underpinnings of the postwar crisis and return of storytelling, and shows how fiction explored ideas integral to the ongoing discussion of the significance of narrative for human existence, in advance of their theoretical articulation. While the nouveaux romanciers and postwar intellectuals believed that narratives violently impose order on the disorder of experience, the return of storytelling entails critical reflection on the ethical potential and dangers in our inevitable entanglement in cultural narratives. Hanna Meretoja contributes to contemporary narrative studies by developing a narrative hermeneutics which envisages storytelling as a process of reinterpreting experiences in a dialogical relation to cultural models of narrative sense-making. By bringing theory and fiction of the narrative turn into a dialogue, she proposes a framework for a historically sensitive study of the philosophical (ontological, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic) dimensions of different conceptions of narrative and suggests how to tie more intimately narrative theory to the study of narrative in literary history.
Primary and Secondary Objectives: The primary objective of this project is to promote new researc... more Primary and Secondary Objectives: The primary objective of this project is to promote new research on ethics in relation to the narrative form of literature, film and journalism portraying violence, particularly violence performed with political or symbolic goals such as war and terrorism. Our focus will be on interpretive acts involved in the contemporary production and reception of these narratives. The main researchers involved represent four universities in Sweden, Finland and Norway and will be working as a group for the first time. Having written individually about love, terrorism, memory and hermeneutics, each scholar brings unique qualifications to this new field of inquiry. Together we will ask: How can violence be narrated, read or viewed in a way that encourages mutual recognition, even love, rather than indifference or hatred? This question assumes new urgency with violence against non-combatants increasing and narrativés role in motivating both violence and reconciliation becoming clearer. The expanded network of scholars participating in the workshops includes twenty-four researchers from ten countries. Seven of the researchers are quite early in their careers. Our second objective is to strengthen cooperation within this Nordic-based, international network of junior and senior scholars. Based on the strength of this research network and the relevance of our topic for counter-terrorism and media policies, a group of scholars within this network will submit an ERC application in 2020. Abstract: The representation of violence in literature, film and journalism is an inherently ethical issue because it invites readers or viewers to imagine someone else´s pain. A story may encourage a reader/viewer to place herself in the position of victim, perpetrator, witness or rescuer. She may imagine the events narrated in the manner invited by the text or in a resistant fashion, but by engaging a depiction of violence at all, she deems it a pleasant or ethically worthwhile use of time and thought. The project Interpreting Violence: Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics will investigate this phenomenon in two workshops, and two subsequent publications. The first workshop, to be held at Uppsala University in September 2018, will focus on "The Joys
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Hanna Meretoja contributes to contemporary narrative studies by developing a narrative hermeneutics which envisages storytelling as a process of reinterpreting experiences in a dialogical relation to cultural models of narrative sense-making. By bringing theory and fiction of the narrative turn into a dialogue, she proposes a framework for a historically sensitive study of the philosophical (ontological, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic) dimensions of different conceptions of narrative and suggests how to tie more intimately narrative theory to the study of narrative in literary history.