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Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces: Gwen Johns Letters and Paintings (review)

Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces: Gwen Johns Letters and Paintings (review) 364 Biography 34.2 (Fall 2011) terrible experiences, but also run the risk of destroying the narrators’ indi- viduality by transforming them into symbols of collective experiences. In her view storytelling should not be seen as a tool for healing traumas or giving coherence to lives, but as a communicative act that gives the narrators an op- portunity to share their experience with others who have lived similar ones and to realize that they are not alone. In his excellent afterword, Mark Freeman summarizes the main themes of the collection, pointing both to contradictions and strengths in the contribu- tions. He notes (and I agree with him on this point) that, even though the au- thors vow to show the inadequacies of a conception of narrative that rests on coherence, most of them ultimately seem to suggest that “behind the manifest in-coherence or ‘a-coherence’ of the narratives in question a latent coherence lurks” (167). He goes on to argue that narrative is not defi ned by chronology and linearity in the classical sense, but rather by an “‘after-the-factness-’, a looking-backward, that somehow binds together, however loosely” (185) the heterogeneous elements that characterize human experience. In his view, this process is http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Biography University of Hawai'I Press

Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces: Gwen Johns Letters and Paintings (review)

Photiou, Maria.
Biography , Volume 34 (2) – Nov 23, 2011
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Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © Biographical Research Center
ISSN
0162-4962
eISSN
1529-1456

Abstract

364 Biography 34.2 (Fall 2011) terrible experiences, but also run the risk of destroying the narrators’ indi- viduality by transforming them into symbols of collective experiences. In her view storytelling should not be seen as a tool for healing traumas or giving coherence to lives, but as a communicative act that gives the narrators an op- portunity to share their experience with others who have lived similar ones and to realize that they are not alone. In his excellent afterword, Mark Freeman summarizes the main themes of the collection, pointing both to contradictions and strengths in the contribu- tions. He notes (and I agree with him on this point) that, even though the au- thors vow to show the inadequacies of a conception of narrative that rests on coherence, most of them ultimately seem to suggest that “behind the manifest in-coherence or ‘a-coherence’ of the narratives in question a latent coherence lurks” (167). He goes on to argue that narrative is not defi ned by chronology and linearity in the classical sense, but rather by an “‘after-the-factness-’, a looking-backward, that somehow binds together, however loosely” (185) the heterogeneous elements that characterize human experience. In his view, this process is

Journal

Biography – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Nov 23, 2011

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