ethics of storytelling, and of listening

PUBLIC LECTURE BY MIKA HANNULA
Feb. 5, 2008, 19.30h

Location: Piet Zwart Institute, Mauritsstraat 36, 3012 CJ Rotterdam

Ethics of Storytelling

According to the Aristotelian idea of seeing life as a narrative, a good life of a human being is spent searching for the good life of a human being. This is not an empty tautology. Rather, it forces us to provide contextualized versions for what it means to be an active, critical and self-reflective human being. The idea of seeing life as a narrative also points directly to the obvious consequence: if and when it is a narrative, there are always plural, contested and conflictual ways to describe yourself.

Two writers that have articulated the power of self-definition through narratives are Albert Camus and Salman Rushdie. They describe the power to be able to participate in the production of meanings as situated and embedded selves.

For Paul Ricoeur, the core of ethics of narratives is our ability and responsibility to tell time-
and place-bound as well as value-laden stories - stories that push forward alternatives and different viewpoints. But is this enough? Mika Hannula claims that we ought to demand more from the idea of ethics of storytelling, and to pay attention to the dual character of storytelling. For any kind of story, we need the ones who tell it, and the ones who listen to it. Thus, we need a context, and we need a reciprocal relationship. We require not only the ethics of telling the story, but also the ethics of listening.

A lecture in the framework of the thematic seminar "One-Eye, Two-Eyes,
and Three-Eyes - On the Notion of Storytelling" held at the Piet Zwart
Institute by the UQBAR FOUNDATION

www.uqbarfoundation.org
www.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl