Assmann / Rupp / Schwanecke The Transformative Power of Literature and Narrative: Promoting Positive Change

A Conceptual Volume in Honour of Vera Nünning
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-8233-0389-3
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 86, 283 Seiten

Reihe: Mannheimer Beiträge zur Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft

Narrative plays a central role for individual and collective lives - this insight has arguably only grown at a time of multiple social and cultural challenges in the 21st century. The present volume aims to actualize and further substantiate the case for literature and narrative, taking inspiration from Vera Nünning's eminent scholarship over the past decades. Engaging with her formative interdisciplinary work, the volume seeks to explore potentials of change through the transformative power of literature and narrative - to be harnessed by individuals and groups as agents of positive change in today's world. The book is located at the intersection of cognitive and cultural narratology and is concerned with the way literature affects individuals, how it works at an intersubjective level, enabling communication and community, and how it furthers social and cultural change.

Corinna Assmann ist Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Anglistischen Seminar der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Jan Rupp ist apl. Professor am Anglistischen Seminar Heidelberg und Koordinator des Research Centre for the Study of Culture (RCSC) an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Christine Schwanecke ist Professorin für Englische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Assmann, Corinna

Rupp, Jan

Schwanecke, Christine

Leseproben

2. Locating Positive Change: Towards a Definition of a Transdisciplinary Concept

Over the past few decades, ‘positive change’ has emerged as a truly transdisciplinary or ‘travelling concept’ (see Bal). Its application in literary and cultural studies is arguably less pronounced than in other fields, leaving a research gap that we hope this volume will work towards filling. Notable recourse to positive change comes in Elizabeth Ammons’s . In this book-length study, Ammons confronts questions of relevance and the humanities’ increasingly embattled status quo by pointing out their embeddedness in real-world concerns: “Liberal arts faculty need to own the fact there real-world purpose to our teaching” (32, emphasis in original). As she insists, “we need to link our work to the progressive antiracist, feminist, materialist, gay and lesbian, and anti-imperialist work of the last half century” (ibid.). By drawing on or restoring these connections, Ammons pays homage to a long “activist tradition in American literature” (ibid. 38), in which she assembles writers as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Toni Morrison: “a tradition of profound hope and idealism, belief that people can and will hear, think, and take action to bring positive change” (ibid.). In the humanities and beyond, this is a “paradigm [which] believes human beings have the power to create fundamental positive change and will take action in the service of social justice and planetary health” (ibid. 169) – a hope that Ammons rearticulates with a particular view to 21st-century US-American culture wars.

While Ammons makes a powerful case around the activist tradition of liberal arts in the US, we suggest that there is much more to say about the role of literature and culture for positive change, even (or especially) from a more philologically grounded and less overtly political stance that we seek to explore by engaging with Vera Nünning’s work. Before fleshing out these perspectives on positive change in literary and cultural studies, however, we first want to look further afield at where the concept has travelled and how it is used in pertinent contexts.

Across a broad disciplinary spectrum from psychology to economics and sports, positive change is variously discussed as personal growth, corporate and collective values, global competence, sustainable life, and cultural participation. Mapping the most recent academic monographs and articles, one realizes that the topic features especially in three fields: first, economics, finance, and technology; second, education, psychology, and the behavioural sciences; third, environmental research and sustainability studies. Many studies have in common that they are not interested in change in general (in the sense that things become or can become different); but all are interested in phenomena that change or can be changed for the better – to the benefit of an individual or a collective.

By way of a brief review, we will single out current academic research in the above domains to illustrate how they conceptualize and make use of positive change. Within the first field, that of economics, finance, and technology, the concept is often used to demarcate strategies of successful leadership, to guide effective business transformations, or to enhance strategies of re-structuring teams and companies. Within the realm of management, it has been defined as a leader’s “successful transformation” within companies (Tkacyk 38) with the aim to “change teams, increase [their] change friendliness and readiness, overcome resistance, promote resilience, develop change agents, and lead an agile culture” (ibid. 35). Studies and guidebooks like the one just quoted seem to have rather limited concerns, their interest being predominantly quantitative and intra-sectorial in that they pertain exclusively to business matters. Positive change, brought about by a certain kind of leadership and coaching, is to increase a company’s efficiency, perhaps at the cost of individual concerns (e.g., resistance on the part of teams) and of ignoring extra-sectorial matters (beyond the world of economics). It may also mean to follow through with one’s own agenda, by way of effective communication strategies (“leading by listening”, Levine 102) and successful advertising (e.g., urban renewal projects; see ibid.). In these uses, the qualifier ‘positive’ does not define specific values pursued through change, meaning it does not primarily describe or relate to the aspired outcome of change, but it refers to the ways in which change is carried through, enforced, and communicated. There are, however, business studies framing positive change in a more qualitative and socially considerate manner. Even though they do not put principles before profit, either, they manage not to completely exclude the former: they at least link potential positive changes within an organization to a CEO’s “integrity” and concern for “human, environmental, social, cultural and political” issues (Smith 1).

Within the second field, the realm of education, psychology, and the behavioural sciences, positive change is neither framed as a change of people, their opinions, or of infrastructure, nor as an increase of efficiency; rather, it is conceptualized as a matter of perspective, experience, and/or cognition. The concept, in this context, is situated within the larger field of positive psychology, which presents a shift in 20th-century psychology away from a focus on “repairing damage using a disease model of human functioning” towards “the idea of a fulfilled individual and a thriving community” (Seligman 3). Such an understanding sees the possibility of change not only in “pathological situations” that need repair or healing, but also in “virtuous situations and situations of development” (Inghilleri et al. 6) more generally, which entails a much broader vision of both the beneficiaries and the contexts of positive change. In a study on adversity in sports and the resulting effects on individuals, teams, and cultures, for instance, psychologists explore how defeats or other unfavourable experiences in sports can be a repository of personal growth and institutional development. For example, they study how, on the basis of negative experiences, “individuals can become more resilient, relationships can strengthen, teams can develop a more positive identity, organizations can improve their policies and practices, […] and countries can bring about greater social justice” (Wadey et al. xvi). On a more general level, the behavioural sciences have explored what people may experience as positive change in everyday life, for instance, in education, therapy, or political participation. They have located the roots of such change in four areas – “personal characteristics, everyday experience, psychological well-being and elements of the socio-relational and environmental context” (Inghilleri et al. 1) – and they relate occurrences of such a transformation to experiences of flow “as a driving force for the subjective development” (ibid.). A central concept of positive psychology, flow is intricately connected to well-being: “” (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 89, emphasis in original). In contrast to the streamlining endeavours of the economic sector, in which unwanted or unnecessary elements are reduced or removed to promote positive change, the behavioural sciences explicitly expect positive change to make individuals and institutions more complex and creative (see Inghilleri et al. 4).

To define the ‘positive’ element of change in more detail, we can draw on fields of research and practice that use similar concepts and provide more concrete ideas of what qualifies as objectively positive. Two areas seem particularly pertinent in order to gauge positive change in its individual, intersubjective/social, and collective dimension: psychology and sociology. As mentioned above, the field of positive psychology can be regarded as a disciplinary anchor for some of the main uses of the concept. Although not an established concept per se in the field, positive change is alluded to and implied in its basic tenets surrounding the question of “[w]hat constitutes a good life” (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 89). The founder of the field, Martin Seligman, sets out what constitutes positive experience on the level of the individual as well as that of the group:

[T]he subjective level is about positive subjective experience: well-being and satisfaction (past); flow, joy, the sensual pleasures, and happiness (present); and constructive cognitions about the future – optimism, hope, and faith. At the individual level it is about positive personal traits – the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future-mindedness, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic (3).

These two levels are closely intertwined, with the social level feeding back into the level of subjective experience, as, for instance, research on the positive effects of enhanced empathy on personal well-being shows (see Bauer; Shanafelt et al.). The interconnectedness of the individual and the social level is important in order to delimit the concept of positive change, even if the outcome does not necessarily incorporate all aspects contained in the three main fields of...