Global Anglophone / World Literatures (non-European Languages)

Areej AlQowaifly (Binghamton University, SUNY)

Scholars of postmodern philosophy have developed a notion that “narration constitutes an act of forming identity further and suggests that a human being needs a life story in order to develop fully as a person” (Meyers 2018). Postmodern literature challenges traditional narrative conventions by embracing a more fragmented, non-linear, and self-referential narrative style (Zaidi & Khurram (2020). This shift can be viewed as a revolutionary dissent against modernism's emphasis on coherence and narrative closure or evolving narrative forms to reflect changing temporal experiences.
The author’s strategic use of various narrative techniques is key to unlocking the door for other voices and the possibilities of perspectives that blur the boundaries between the real and the told, fiction and reality, and facts and fabricated truth. This blurring not only allows narratology to draw insights from interdisciplinary fields like psychology, neuroscience, and history but also complicates each narrative and challenges the understanding to embrace a fragmented, self-reflexivity approach.

This panel seeks contributions analyzing the functions of postmodern narrative in prose or cinema. Topics may include narrative hermeneutics, ethics of storytelling, the relationship between narrative and identity, narrative and distorted memories, interrogating narratology’s foundations and literature’s role in shaping subjective experiences of history, selfhood, and reality through narrative.

This panel seeks contributions analyzing the functions of postmodern narrative in prose or cinema. Topics may include narrative hermeneutics, ethics of storytelling, the relationship between narrative and identity, narrative and distorted memories, interrogating narratology’s foundations and literature’s role in shaping subjective experiences of history, selfhood, and reality through narrative.