Certainty and Uncertainty in Pandemic Storytelling: Tales from the US, the UK, and Beyond

Molly Andrews; Mark Freeman

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Chapter 5 Certainty and Uncertainty in Pandemic Storytelling: Tales from the US, the UK, and Beyond

于Pandemic Storytelling

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Molly Andrews

Molly Andrews
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Mark Freeman

Mark Freeman
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类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 99–112

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004716681_007

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Narrating the pandemic has been notoriously difficult for multiple reasons: the uncertainty of its origin, the unpredictability of its course and consequences, the impossibility of determining when, and even whether, it will be over. This has resulted in narrative anxiety—the fear of not knowing the plot, or the ending, of the story-in-the-making. This anxiety has, in turn, generated a narrative vacuum, which world leaders and others with vested interests have sought to fill in some way, often through a strategic mix of information and disinformation, and often in the service of providing an illusory certainty to those in need. This chapter explores such delusional storytelling from two different geographic vantage points, the United States and the United Kingdom, focusing on the following questions: What can narrative scholars contribute to address and perhaps alleviate the anxiety at hand? To what extent is it possible to narrate experiences of ‘I don’t know,’ balancing agency and desire for narrative closure with patience and acceptance of the unknown?

For all that life is intrinsically unstable, there have generally been regular markers serving as reassurance that, barring any large and significant intrusions, things will continue apace. That reassurance, that border, has been breached, and so too has the narrative order. With the emergence and continuation of the pandemic, there was no closure to be had, and no certainty. This kind of narrative open-endedness is bound to be painful for many, perhaps leading people to redouble their convictions, their insistence on this or that story, whether issuing from the right, the left, or somewhere in-between. The vacuum is large, and the pressure to fill it is mighty. Is it possible to endure the emptiness, the open-endedness, and uncertainty? This chapter takes as its starting point this interpretive challenge and issues a plea for accepting and including a degree of ‘messiness’ in the tales we tell and thereby resisting those forces that might seek to lead us illusorily astray. The stakes are high. For the task before us demands not only a rethinking of narrative, but a reimagining of our very selves and the uncertainty that permeates us through and through.

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Pandemic Storytelling

丛编： Narratives and Mental Health, 卷： 3

ISBN:: 9789004716681

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 18 Dec 2024

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 5 Certainty and Uncertainty in Pandemic Storytelling: Tales from the US, the UK, and Beyond

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Pandemic Storytelling

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