Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Writing a narrative of one’s own life has often been balanced on a thin thread between craft and art. Yet, the nature of a person’s being is revealed through the production of their rhetoric, one that discloses an epistemological reflection of the individual’s identity. This articulation of reflection through writing a literary narrative allows for the subject to produce an ontological analysis of the self, while transforming the self to be culturally consumed. Literary narratives, then, are a unique form of art, as the process creates an identity for the individual and transforms their narrative as knowledge. In Eric D. Pritchard’s work, “Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy,” the onto-epistemological application of normative literary practices results in violent constructions of identity for Black/LGBTQ individuals. To reimagine the community, the concealment of literature and narrative literacies of “kinship” and “ancestors” are used to deconstruct the perpetrators of violence and reconstruct identity with restorative literary practices. This allows the individual to reconstitute their own identity, what Paul de Man labels as “syntagmatic narratives.” How does the aesthetics of a narrative ratify an individual’s epistemology and in what way does their “abstract” rhetoric inform the literary art form? By focusing on Pritchard’s grounded systematic methodological theory, and Paul de Man’s “The Epistemology of the Metaphor,” we interpret literary narratives as a form of art and paint its use for future academic circles as an alternative way to understanding forms of knowledge and rhetoric.