Descripción del proyecto
Las narraciones plurales ofrecen una imagen unificadora de la humanidad
El proyecto Minor Universality, financiado con fondos europeos, se basa en la afirmación de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie de que una sola historia conduce a interpretaciones erróneas. En su conferencia TED, la escritora nigeriana respaldó la idea de que las narraciones plurales ofrecen una imagen más justa y unificadora de la humanidad. En su charla sobre la repercusión del universalismo occidental en las culturas, cuyo concepto considera las ideas occidentales como universales, la escritora subrayó la infrarrepresentación de muchas culturas. El objetivo del proyecto Minor Universality es contribuir al diálogo sobre la universalidad tras el universalismo occidental. Estudiará la función que desempeña la narración en los imaginarios colectivos, además de centrarse en expresiones culturales como la literatura, el cine y los medios de comunicación social.
Objetivo
In her TED Talk 2009 the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made an argument on „the danger of a single story“. She maintained that only plural narrations do justice to the complexity of humankind: „Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.“ Thus narrations have the power to produce a unifying experience of equal humanity. Minor Universality aims to make a substantial contribution to the debate on the problem of universality after Western universalism. Indeed, the question of how universality can be produced is crucial in times characterised by a double relativistic signature: the necessary critique of Occidental universalism, and identitarian assertions. But how can a shared human horizon be addressed? Here general narratology provides a crucial twist: if it is an anthropological characteristic of the narration to make a claim about the world as a whole starting from a singular setting, narrations create ways of extending concrete contexts towards universality. This can be analyzed in literature, in an epistemic field beyond the book and in social practices being part of global migrations. In contrast to the conceptual debate on World Literature, which addresses the question through canons and legitimacies, this project shifts the debate to narratological problems of world production: with which aesthetic means do contemporary cultural productions such as literatures, films and social media, literary festivals, architectures and museums, open up local settings so as to produce a new sensuous, embodied or intellectual awareness of universality?
Re-expanding the material and medial turns to processes of consciousness and agency, the project is set to have a general impact in comparative literature and cultural studies. It will explore new literacies about the role of narration for civil imaginaries of our world and provide ways to address universality in debates about justice and legitimacy within world society.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
66123 Saarbrucken
Alemania