Please tell us about your research at LCE, Regina.
My research will be about the relationship between grief and self-narrative. Recently, several philosophers have made bold and sweeping claims about the role of self-narrative for the unfolding of grief. They have argued that narratives can help navigate and negotiate a lifeworld that has been substantially disturbed by the irreversible loss of a significant person. However, it remains unclear how and to what extent self-narratives can play this role. Furthermore, existing philosophical work lacks a systematic, narratologically informed analysis of the possibilities and limitations of certain narrative forms and practices for representing – and potentially influencing – grief experiences.
To start closing this gap, I will be developing an account of grief memoirs, a particular kind of self-narrative, which brings together research in philosophy of mind and cognitive narratology. I am interested in two questions: first, what textual properties, for example narrative perspective and stylistic devices, can help represent and communicate grief experiences? Second, how can embodied readers engage with the possibilities and limitations of the narrative representation of grieving? In exploring these questions, I will focus on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking as a case study.
What is your favourite kind of reading experience? Are there any specific literary works that you would like to recommend to us?
I value reading novels and memoirs that explore, negotiate, and interrogate transformative experiences. I am interested in the many ways in which narrative forms can help us understand how bereavement, illness, sexual assault, war, climate change, or immigration transform us and our relationship to other people. And which aspects of our transformative experiences cannot be properly expressed, communicated, narrativised. There are many literary works that explore these complex issues in unique and deeply fascinating ways, including Antje Rávik Strubel’s Blaue Frau (Blue Woman), Siri Hustvedt’s Memories of the Future, Hilary Mantel’s Giving up the Ghost, and Kate Rossmanith’s Small Wrongs.