Narrative companionship: philosophy, gender stereotypes, and young adult literature
Name:
Van_Dyk_Tricia_Kay_201603_PhD_ ...
Size:
1.264Mb
Format:
PDF
Description:
Dissertation
Authors
Van Dyk, Tricia KayAdvisors
Zuidervaart, LambertMusschenga, A. W.
Affiliation
Institute for Christian StudiesIssue Date
2016-03Keywords
Moral philosophyGender stereotypes
Young adult literature
Plurality
Philosophical fiction
Form and content
Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 1947-
Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975
Zuidervaart, Lambert
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This dissertation contends that North American culture is in the grip of a reductionism that neglects plurality while seeking after pseudo-universality and pseudoindividuality, exemplified by the apparently contradictory tendencies to take as normative what can be generalized and to deny universally applicable normativity. I pay special attention to gender stereotypes, in which the particular (individual) becomes irrelevant, ignored, or perceived as a threat unless it can be treated as part of the general (stereotype). I argue that philosophical fiction—and, in particular, young adult fiction— contributes to a principled plurality in both lived and academic philosophy. It does so through its imaginative power to enlarge perspectives, criticize from the margins, and galvanize readers to engage with injustice. I focus on young adult fiction because of its wide reach, relevance for ethical formation, and exceptional tendency to question stereotypical understandings of human existence. After explicating the distinction between lived and academic philosophy and situating my project in the larger conversation about fiction and philosophy, I argue for the ethical significance of philosophical interaction with story. In conversation with Martha C. Nussbaum and Hannah Arendt, I draw together three themes—the integrality of form and content, the ability of storytelling to act as critical thinking in context, and the key role of particularity in the context of plurality—in order to emphasize the need to approach fiction in its intrinsic plurality without losing the possibility of shared criteria. A causal model is insufficient in this regard. Drawing on Lambert Zuidervaart’s conception of imaginative disclosure, I show that art both suggests and requires interpretation and that fiction’s ethical contribution to philosophy needs to be understood as thoroughly hermeneutical. I settle on “narrative companionship,” a variation of Wayne C. Booth’s metaphor of stories as friends, as a helpful noncausal metaphor for interaction with fiction. Then I seek to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this metaphor, in contrast to academic philosophy’s traditional approaches to fiction as either a tool or an example, by commenting on several stories that have informed my own lived philosophy.Citation
Van Dyke, Tricia Kay. Narrative companionship: philosophy, gender stereotypes, and young adult literature. Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 2016Publisher
Institute for Christian StudiesAdditional Links
http://hdl.handle.net/1871/54141Type
ThesisLanguage
enRights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Rights holder
This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner.Degree Title
Conjoint Ph.D. by the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto and the VU University AmsterdamCollections
The following license files are associated with this item:
- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.