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  • Introduction:The Ideological Ramifications of Narrative Strategies
  • Jan Alber (bio)

This special section deals with the complex interrelationship between narrative strategies on the one hand and ideologies (or worldviews) on the other. The contributors are united in their opinion that there is no inherent or stable link between narrative techniques and ideological implications: one can always use the same strategy to make a different point or a different device to make the same point. At the same time, however, the link is not purely accidental: narratives always make points by using specific techniques. It is therefore important to address these choices, that is, the question of why a given narrative deploys the strategies it does (rather than different ones).

The articles collected here distance themselves from theoreticians who assume an inherent connection between narrative techniques and ideological points. John Bender (1987: 203; see also 1995), D. A. Miller (1988: 24), and Mark Seltzer (1984: 54), for instance, [End Page 3] posit an intrinsic link between the omniscient narrator in much realist fiction and the principle of surveillance in the plans for a Panopticon (1791). More specifically, the position of the omniscient narrator is argued to be analogous to that of the guard in the central watchtower of Jeremy Bentham's architectural setup. Seltzer puts this point as follows:

The most powerful tactic of supervision achieved by the traditional realist novel inheres in its dominant technique of narration—the style of "omniscient narration" that grants the narrative voice an unlimited authority over the novel's "world," a world thoroughly known and thoroughly mastered by the panoptic "eye" of the narration.

(1984: 54)

However, like all narrative strategies, omniscience may serve many functions. In some cases the narrator seeks to simply familiarize us with the thoughts of the characters and expresses a sympathetic rather than an authoritarian attitude regarding the figures.1 Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit (1855–57) also challenges the argument about the link between omniscience and prison-like surveillance by presenting us with an omniscient narrator who is highly critical of the prison as an institution (Alber 2007: 56).

Feminist critics have argued that the linear plots of realist narratives reinforce patriarchal structures because they align linearity with "a continuation of a destructive past" (Homans 1994: 12). However, as Rita Felski explains, there is no stable connection between linear event sequences and patriarchy: "those who drew on such plots could also question them or present them in an ironic light, smuggling in subversive messages" (2003: 106). Susan Lanser also highlights the fact that she focuses on the effects that a narrative technique "can generate" in a specific context (1981: 28; emphasis added): narrative strategies may be used to express an "ideological stance" (1992: 73), but there is no intrinsic relationship between the two. In more general terms, Brian Richardson puts the same point as follows: "no form has any inherent essence or tendencies. . . . Ideological stances are frequently enmeshed with practices of narration, but never in a way that can be reduced to an easy equation" (1994: 321).

This special section gravitates toward the so-called Proteus Principle, according to which there are "many-to-many correspondences between [End Page 4] linguistic form and representational function" (Sternberg 1982: 112). In other words, formal features can have a variety of functions, while individual functions may be met by various devices (see also Jahn 1997). Nevertheless, within the individual narratives under investigation the connections between form and function are not completely random. Certain narrative techniques seem to lend themselves to certain ideological agendas. For instance, both Uri Margolin (1996) and Brian Richardson (2011) have shown that we-narratives are frequently used to discuss postcolonial issues (although there is no inherent link between the two). Similarly, they-narratives often (but not necessarily) lead to the depersonalization of the characters: if this is the case, the figures are no longer seen as individual beings; rather, they are reduced to dehumanized members, for example, of a mob or a group of nameless victims (Alber 2018b: 134).

The articles that follow seek to zoom in on this element of "fit," that is, the question of which narrative strategies are particularly apt to enact certain ideologies...

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