Published papers in English by Samuli Björninen
Dangers of Narrative and Fictionality: A Rhetorical Approach to Storytelling in Contemporary Western Culture, 2024
We intuitively know that fictions are often instructive, either in the moral or more broadly epis... more We intuitively know that fictions are often instructive, either in the moral or more broadly epistemological sense, but what are the implications of instructivity for the fictionality of fictions? The chapter looks into the uses of lectures in fiction. The lecture, a real-life instructive and non-fictional form, is contextualized within theories of fictional instructivity, and the embedment of lectures in fiction is theorized within the rhetorical accounts of fictionality and factuality. One of the key arguments in the rhetorical theory of fictionality is that fictional communication has no direct informative relevance. The case of the fictional lecture allows us a look behind the apparent simplicity of this claim and also to think about the question of instructivity in fictionality theory more broadly. The chapter also presents three distinct functions that lectures can have in novels. The different functions of lectures are illustrated in analyses of three contemporary novels: The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (2011), Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt (2018/ 2015), and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016). The analyses also show that there is more theoretical work needed on the diverse ways in which fictional and factual genres interact within the frame of fiction. A deeper understanding of these interactions will also help us articulate why fictions are capable of spreading misinformation and how they may contribute to the contemporary epistemological crises. Inversely, increased awareness of fictional and factual registers, genres and rhetoric will help us navigate the epistemologically precarious contemporary culture.
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Routledge eBooks, May 26, 2022
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Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas
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Narrative , 2021
The current storytelling boom across various spheres of life encourages actors from individuals t... more The current storytelling boom across various spheres of life encourages actors from individuals to businesses and institutions to instrumentalize stories of personal experience, but the search for a "compelling story" is often blind to the possible downsides of experientially and emotionally engaging narratives. This article presents key findings of the project Dangers of Narrative that has crowdsourced examples of instrumental storytelling via Facebook and Twitter. We focus on three cases of political storytelling on social media, which foreground certain problems of using narrative in the public sphere: Donald Trump's anecdote about "Jim who stopped going to Paris"; a viral Facebook story by a Finnish MP about an encounter with a drug addict; and the social media controversy around the alleged confrontation between Covington High School students and Indigenous People's March attendants at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019. Based on the idea in cognitive narratology of the experiential narrative as prototypical and on Caroline Levine's influential theory of colliding representational and social forms, we formulate a theory of how viral, affective storytelling may distort the intended rhetoric and ethics of narrative. We demonstrate how the prototypical narrative form, in collision with the formal affordances of social media, ends up contradicting the political or social forms that the teller or sharer of the narrative advocates. We describe the social media logic that creates a chain reaction from narrative experientiality to disproportionate and uncontrolled representativeness and normativity created by affective sharing, and we conceptualize this contemporary narrative phenomenon as the "viral exemplum."
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International Journal of Social Research Methodology , 2020
Many sociologists have called for analytical rigor in the study of narrative while maintaining th... more Many sociologists have called for analytical rigor in the study of narrative while maintaining that narrative should be viewed as a form of social action. We argue that the narratological story-discourse distinction together with positioning theory provides a theoretical basis for such rigor. In narratology, story denotes the events in the world of the narrative, while discourse is the text that communicates them. This distinction helps us see how storytellers take positions on three levels: the story, the communicative (inter)action (discourse), and the level of norms. The third level derives from Michael Bamberg’s positioning theory, which offers a frame of understanding social situatedness of storytelling. Narratological analysis of linguistically discernible voices on the story and discourse levels offers methodological refinements for analysis, finally allowing for a focus on positioning on the third, normative level. The theoretical and methodological arguments are illustrated through analyses of Finnish politicians’ stories.
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Narrative Inquiry, 2019
The article presents a method for studying the factuality of narrative as a rhetoric. The need fo... more The article presents a method for studying the factuality of narrative as a rhetoric. The need for such a method is apparent in the so-called post-truth climate, which sees us witnessing debates about semantic chimeras like "alternative facts" and "fake news." The article arrives at its method by tackling challenges arising both in narrative theory and in fictionality studies. This involves developing models that let us take into account both the effects of local discursive features and the "macrogeneric" and "generic" frames guiding expectations about how communication is meant to work. The method is used in analysis of one of the controversial stories by the journalist Claas Relotius, who is currently being investigated in the forgery scandal of the magazine Der Spiegel.
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At first glance, Wolfgang Iser seems to share little ground with pioneers of poetics like Tzvetan... more At first glance, Wolfgang Iser seems to share little ground with pioneers of poetics like Tzvetan Todorov and Benjamin Harshav, who explicitly excluded interpretation from the province of poetics. Indeed, if Iser has any connection with poetics, and this article argues that he does, it is via the critical fringes of poetics, where excluding interpretation from systematic study of literature was never seen as an option one could choose. Although poetics versus hermeneutics was one of the major theoretical themes of the late 1970’s, Iser can be better understood in the context of critical thought aiming to avoid the strict opposition between the two. Delving in turn into Iser’s theory, his analytical practice, and theory of poetics, this essay points out several points where dialogue between Iser’s work and the endeavor of systematic poetics can be productive.
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Published papers in Finnish by Samuli Björninen
Hallinnon tutkimuksen tulevaisuus, Oct 25, 2022
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Tiede & edistys, 2021
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Avain, 2021
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ProComma Academic, 2020
Tarinankerrontaan kannustetaan nyt kaikenlaisessa viestinnässä. Kertomuksen viestinnälliset tehot... more Tarinankerrontaan kannustetaan nyt kaikenlaisessa viestinnässä. Kertomuksen viestinnälliset tehot tunnetaan hyvin, mutta eri ammattiryhmien ja yleisöjen ymmärrys kertomusmuodon varjopuolista on usein heikommissa kantimissa. Tyypillinen kertomus on ihmisen kokoinen, kokemusta painottava ja samastuttavaa tarinamaailmaa rakentava, ja sellaisena se on omiaan tuottamaan hallinnan tunnetta keskellä hallitsematonta informaatiovirtaa. Kertomustutkimuksen näkökulmasta katsottuna tarinankerrontaoppaiden ja kertomuskonsulttien metsästämä mukaansatempaava kertomus sisältää kuitenkin myös viestinnällisiä riskejä. Hallitsemattomimmillaan vetävä kokemuskertomus on sosiaalisessa mediassa, jossa se kollektiivisen tekijyyden saattelemana voi muuttua yhtäkkiä kohtuuttoman edustavaksi ja normatiiviseksi. Silti laajaan somelevitykseen tähtääviä tunnepitoisia kertomuksia käyttävät nyt jopa viranomaiset. Tarinankerronnan pesiytyminen lähes kaikille elämän osa-alueille on johtanut myös kertomusajattelun epämääräistymiseen: jos kaikella on “tarina” ja toisin ajattelevien argumentit ovat “narratiiveja”, samoilla käsitteillä on vaikea jäsentää viestinnän kenttää ja kehittää sitä. Artikkelissa erittelemme kertomusmuodon ja kertomusympäristöjen hallitsemattomuuden elementtejä sekä ehdotamme joitakin keinoja hallittuun ja vastuulliseen tarinallistamiseen.
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Tiede & edistys, 2019
Facts and Narratives: Conceptualizing Narrative in Postmodern Critiques of Knowledge and Contempo... more Facts and Narratives: Conceptualizing Narrative in Postmodern Critiques of Knowledge and Contemporary Science Debates
The article asks what it means to claim that science is (a) narrative or produces narratives. Specifically, it focuses on the rhetorical move that dismisses scientific theories or results as narratives, laden with ideological purposes. This rhetoric is traced to two theoretical battlegrounds of the 1980’s and the 1990’s. Firstly, to the polarized positions of the science wars, which pitted “scientific realists” against “postmodern” thinkers. Secondly, this rhetoric often operates with a conception of narrative derived from Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern critique of “grand narratives.” In addition to these historical lines, the article analyzes some of the less polarizing ways in which sciences are said to involve narrative practices.
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Avain, 2018
Kertomuksen vaarat -projektin esittely Kirjallisuudentutkijain seuran Avain-aikakauslehdessä 1/20... more Kertomuksen vaarat -projektin esittely Kirjallisuudentutkijain seuran Avain-aikakauslehdessä 1/2018, s. 90-93.
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niin & näin, 2017
Kirjallisuushistoriassa uudelleen ja uudelleen artikuloituva romaanin tehtävä näyttää olevan koet... more Kirjallisuushistoriassa uudelleen ja uudelleen artikuloituva romaanin tehtävä näyttää olevan koetun todellisuuden ja elämän pohjimmaisen problematiikan tavoittaminen.
Siksi realismin todenkaltaisuus määritellään aina uudelleen suhteessa ihmiskäsityksen ja maailmankuvan muutoksiin. Jaakko Yli-Juonikkaan Neuromaani-romaanin (2012) realismi voidaankin liittää aivotieteen ajan ihmiskuvaan – erityisesti neurorealismiksi kutsuttuun ajatusmalliin, jonka mukaan kokemukset ovat todellisia vain, jos niille voidaan löytää aivokuvassa havaittavat korrelaatit.
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Books by Samuli Björninen
Kertomus postmodernismin jälkeen (Narrative After Postmodernism) , 2021
Narrative After Postmodernism takes a critical and practical look at the cultural theories of wha... more Narrative After Postmodernism takes a critical and practical look at the cultural theories of what comes after postmodernism or the postmodern. Alongside contemporary literary authors, the anthology studies diverse contemporary textual phenomena from TV shows to online fan theories and survivalist blogs. The essays compiled in this anthology tentatively apply the theories of the post-postmodern to contemporary texts to see how they might open up for analysis within their new theoretical frameworks or challenge them. The introduction, co-written by all the authors of this volume, introduces the most influential theories of post-postmodernism and contextualizes them within broader intellectual trends of the early 21st Century. The three essays comprising the first part of the volume discuss some of the theories of the postmodern in relation to contemporary works that seem to challenge them. Yet they also strive to clarify and sharpen some of the ideas proposed in the theories of the p...
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This PhD thesis focuses on the relations between literary poetics, theories of reading, and the i... more This PhD thesis focuses on the relations between literary poetics, theories of reading, and the interpretive criticism of an author's work. My approach to this field is through the abundant scholarly writings on the American author Thomas Pynchon, and, in particular, academic readings of his novels. I am trying to study the protocols of reading involved in literary study by mapping out the space between the individual and often idiosyncratic scholarly interpretations and the theories of literary poetics. To this end, poetics is reframed in this work as a theory of reading. In this I am taking my cue from Jonathan Culler, literary phenomenology, and Reader-Response critics. Thus understood, poetics studies those processes of perception, understanding and cognition that underlie textual interpretation and analysis. Within this orientation, the questions of poetics closely resemble those that are today posed in cognitive literary studies, the empirical studies of reading, and postclassical narratology.
The present study rereads the theory of poetics and shows that many devices and textual strategies it describes can be usefully understood as procedures of reading. This is done by looking at the analytical choices made in readings of Pynchon and describing them in terms of reader-oriented poetics. This method zones in on the empirical observation made by many Pynchon scholars. While we generally consider the author’s thematic scope as singularly eclectic as his repertoire of literary means, time and time again we seem to reach the same conclusions: the same themes emerge as crucial, the same devices are regarded as significant, and the same passages from the novels are cited because of their capability to encapsulate something of the elusive whole. But what makes certain themes more or less central? How do some of Pynchon’s structural experiments become so decisive in determining what the novels mean or what they are about? Why are certain key passages so crucial to interpreting the novels?
In answering these questions, the study toes the line between conventions of reading and the cognitive processing of texts. It is discovered that the procedures of reading identified as structural metaphor, miniature analogy, and thematization straddle the heuristic divide. These procedures are, on one hand, institutional and cultural, in how they appeal to convention and tradition. Yet, on the other hand, they contain a component that can be only described as cognitive or perceptual.
The latter part of the study focuses more firmly on Pynchon’s debut novel V. (1963) and its scholarly readings. The theoretical interest in the protocols and procedures of reading is employed as a method for reading the novel and studying how it has been read. As literary scholar Robert Scholes has written, our protocols of reading will yield to methodization only up to a point. This study approaches that point through terrain on which the reading procedures of literary scholarship are entangled with the more general processes of cognition, perception, and interpretation.
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Book Reviews by Samuli Björninen
The content of the journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.... more The content of the journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC BY 3.0.
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Review of Baroni, Raphaël and Françoise Revaz, eds. Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratolog... more Review of Baroni, Raphaël and Françoise Revaz, eds. Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2016.
Published in Enthymema No. 14 (2016).
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Projects by Samuli Björninen
Poster: overview and method of PhD Thesis
Presented at University of Tampere 20 oct 2014.
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A research consortium between the Universities of Tampere, Helsinki and Turku, directed from the ... more A research consortium between the Universities of Tampere, Helsinki and Turku, directed from the University of Tampere by Consortium PI Maria Mäkelä. This abstract includes a short description of the Tampere subproject as well.
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Published papers in English by Samuli Björninen
Published papers in Finnish by Samuli Björninen
The article asks what it means to claim that science is (a) narrative or produces narratives. Specifically, it focuses on the rhetorical move that dismisses scientific theories or results as narratives, laden with ideological purposes. This rhetoric is traced to two theoretical battlegrounds of the 1980’s and the 1990’s. Firstly, to the polarized positions of the science wars, which pitted “scientific realists” against “postmodern” thinkers. Secondly, this rhetoric often operates with a conception of narrative derived from Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern critique of “grand narratives.” In addition to these historical lines, the article analyzes some of the less polarizing ways in which sciences are said to involve narrative practices.
Siksi realismin todenkaltaisuus määritellään aina uudelleen suhteessa ihmiskäsityksen ja maailmankuvan muutoksiin. Jaakko Yli-Juonikkaan Neuromaani-romaanin (2012) realismi voidaankin liittää aivotieteen ajan ihmiskuvaan – erityisesti neurorealismiksi kutsuttuun ajatusmalliin, jonka mukaan kokemukset ovat todellisia vain, jos niille voidaan löytää aivokuvassa havaittavat korrelaatit.
Books by Samuli Björninen
The present study rereads the theory of poetics and shows that many devices and textual strategies it describes can be usefully understood as procedures of reading. This is done by looking at the analytical choices made in readings of Pynchon and describing them in terms of reader-oriented poetics. This method zones in on the empirical observation made by many Pynchon scholars. While we generally consider the author’s thematic scope as singularly eclectic as his repertoire of literary means, time and time again we seem to reach the same conclusions: the same themes emerge as crucial, the same devices are regarded as significant, and the same passages from the novels are cited because of their capability to encapsulate something of the elusive whole. But what makes certain themes more or less central? How do some of Pynchon’s structural experiments become so decisive in determining what the novels mean or what they are about? Why are certain key passages so crucial to interpreting the novels?
In answering these questions, the study toes the line between conventions of reading and the cognitive processing of texts. It is discovered that the procedures of reading identified as structural metaphor, miniature analogy, and thematization straddle the heuristic divide. These procedures are, on one hand, institutional and cultural, in how they appeal to convention and tradition. Yet, on the other hand, they contain a component that can be only described as cognitive or perceptual.
The latter part of the study focuses more firmly on Pynchon’s debut novel V. (1963) and its scholarly readings. The theoretical interest in the protocols and procedures of reading is employed as a method for reading the novel and studying how it has been read. As literary scholar Robert Scholes has written, our protocols of reading will yield to methodization only up to a point. This study approaches that point through terrain on which the reading procedures of literary scholarship are entangled with the more general processes of cognition, perception, and interpretation.
Book Reviews by Samuli Björninen
Published in Enthymema No. 14 (2016).
Projects by Samuli Björninen
The article asks what it means to claim that science is (a) narrative or produces narratives. Specifically, it focuses on the rhetorical move that dismisses scientific theories or results as narratives, laden with ideological purposes. This rhetoric is traced to two theoretical battlegrounds of the 1980’s and the 1990’s. Firstly, to the polarized positions of the science wars, which pitted “scientific realists” against “postmodern” thinkers. Secondly, this rhetoric often operates with a conception of narrative derived from Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern critique of “grand narratives.” In addition to these historical lines, the article analyzes some of the less polarizing ways in which sciences are said to involve narrative practices.
Siksi realismin todenkaltaisuus määritellään aina uudelleen suhteessa ihmiskäsityksen ja maailmankuvan muutoksiin. Jaakko Yli-Juonikkaan Neuromaani-romaanin (2012) realismi voidaankin liittää aivotieteen ajan ihmiskuvaan – erityisesti neurorealismiksi kutsuttuun ajatusmalliin, jonka mukaan kokemukset ovat todellisia vain, jos niille voidaan löytää aivokuvassa havaittavat korrelaatit.
The present study rereads the theory of poetics and shows that many devices and textual strategies it describes can be usefully understood as procedures of reading. This is done by looking at the analytical choices made in readings of Pynchon and describing them in terms of reader-oriented poetics. This method zones in on the empirical observation made by many Pynchon scholars. While we generally consider the author’s thematic scope as singularly eclectic as his repertoire of literary means, time and time again we seem to reach the same conclusions: the same themes emerge as crucial, the same devices are regarded as significant, and the same passages from the novels are cited because of their capability to encapsulate something of the elusive whole. But what makes certain themes more or less central? How do some of Pynchon’s structural experiments become so decisive in determining what the novels mean or what they are about? Why are certain key passages so crucial to interpreting the novels?
In answering these questions, the study toes the line between conventions of reading and the cognitive processing of texts. It is discovered that the procedures of reading identified as structural metaphor, miniature analogy, and thematization straddle the heuristic divide. These procedures are, on one hand, institutional and cultural, in how they appeal to convention and tradition. Yet, on the other hand, they contain a component that can be only described as cognitive or perceptual.
The latter part of the study focuses more firmly on Pynchon’s debut novel V. (1963) and its scholarly readings. The theoretical interest in the protocols and procedures of reading is employed as a method for reading the novel and studying how it has been read. As literary scholar Robert Scholes has written, our protocols of reading will yield to methodization only up to a point. This study approaches that point through terrain on which the reading procedures of literary scholarship are entangled with the more general processes of cognition, perception, and interpretation.
Published in Enthymema No. 14 (2016).