Narrative in Question Guest Lecture

"On time: Narrative, apology and forgiveness"

It is commonly posited that there is a strong relationship between time and narrative – narratives are constructed in, through, and often around time. But narratives are not constant; ‘windows of opportunity’ exist for narratives, and sometimes those windows close, and articulations which were once not only possible but also even desired, are no longer so. Nowhere is this more true than in contemplating the role of forgiveness in politics.  Using examples from East Germany, Nicaragua,  and South Africa, this paper will explore the question of whether there exists a statute of limitations for the confession of wrong-doing, and what the implications of this are for the preservation of the moral order.

Molly Andrews is Professor of Political Psychology, and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London. Her research interests include political narratives, the psychological basis of political commitment, political identity, and patriotism. Her books include Lifetimes of Commitment: Aging, Politics, Psychology and Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change (both Cambridge University Press), and Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life  (Oxford University Press). She has over 50 publications in international refereed journals and edited books, and translations of her work have appeared in Chinese, German, Swedish, Spanish, French, Czech and German.

Narrative in Question is an ICNS research programme for Spring and Summer terms 2017, bringing together visiting speakers and York researchers with narrative-related interests. The core events are a series of seminars and guest lectures, and a culminating workshop featuring international contributors and a workshop focussed upon developing an interdisciplinary research project.

The idea for the programme is that the question of narrative provides a conceptual hub for dialogue amongst participants with widely divergent individual research agendas. The seminars will feature individual research projects in which the issue of narrative is fundamentally at stake. All project participants share a concern to put narrative in question, whether as a theoretical concept, as a mode of discourse or cognition, as a particular corpus or tradition, as a set of formal devices and techniques, as a use of specific media, or as a research methodology.

See the full programme of events