Abstract:
The article analyzes three cases through which the avoidance of stigmatization is revealed in very different modes of auto-narration. Each case suggests that the narrators intuitively use a strategy of modal shift: they find ways to resist the metaphorization or universalization of their lives by highlighting the modality of contingency. The article draws primarily on phenomenological narratology (Wolfgang Iser, Roman Ingarden, David Carr, Paul Ricoeur), whose theories are combined with ideas from poststructuralist theorists (Giorgio Agamben, Paul de Man, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau). The common denominator of these three women’s stories is the applied modality of contingency and attempts to disrupt a predestined order of their life flow. Contingency, as a direction taken by the narrator, is an attempt to avoid situations in which an individual life is transformed into a common pattern or a metaphor, or in which an individual person becomes a symbol of a certain lifestyle or social group.
Keywords:
modality, auto-narrative, stigmatization, narrative totalization
How to cite:
Jonutytė, Jurga. “Modality Against Stigmas: Avoidance of Totalization in the Self Narratives.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 9, no. 4 (2025): 117-140. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0037.
Author:
Jurga Jonutytė
Department of Folk Songs, Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore
Antakalnio g. 6, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8532-6349
jonutyte@llti.lt
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