"Assumptional Dynamics: Experimental Narrative Progressions in Rhetorical Discourse"
A virtual event with Stefan Iversen, Aarhus University
Clashes between fiction and non-fiction are key components in a range of contemporary art practices such as autofiction and performances, hoaxes and satire, mockumentaries and experimental documentaries. Recently, however, experimental uses of fictionality have migrated into discourses invested in moving and motivating actual people about real issues such as political discourse, public debate and campaigning. This migration is beginning to be picked up in different strands of narrative theory (Brown, Gibbons, and Hatavara 2019; Mason 2019; Iversen 2017, 2021), but more conceptual and analytical work is called for in order to adequately understand what this phenomenon is and how it impacts our shared conversations. In this presentation, Iversen sets out to examine contemporary acts of public, narrative communication that are designed to be misunderstood. More precisely, they are designed to disrupts the audiences’ assumption of their status as either fiction or non-fiction, even as they still address specific exigences. Combining insights from pragmatic fictionality theory (Walsh 2019), rhetorical narrative theory (Phelan 2017) and rhetorical criticism (Ellwanger 2020), Iversen suggests analyzing these phenomena under the heading of assumptional dynamics, arguing that such disruptions produce a certain type of transformative reflexivity, referred to as metanoic reflexivity, that comes with a distinct, describable set of functions.
Please join using this Zoom meeting link.
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