Buchcover Spaces of Dissension

Knowledges and Contradictions in Premodern Narratives.

Contribution

Elisabeth Lienert

2019

Contradiction is not just a (post-)modern phenomenon. In premodern narratives, conflicting concepts and logical inconsistencies are omnipresent. This paper focuses on contradictions interdependent with knowledge: Traditional narratives may aggregate different versions of matters rooted in collective memory (heroic epic) or authoritative sources (romances of antiquity), sometimes without concern for the consistency of their own story. Narrative texts may use contradiction for didactic purposes. Contradictions may result in both construction and deconstruction of knowledge. Strategies of irritation and ambiguity involve recipients in the production of meaning. Thus, the concept of contradiction is apt to redefine premodern narrative strategies.

In Lossau, Julia, Daniel Schmidt-Brücken, Ingo H. Warnke (eds.) Spaces of Dissension. Towards a New Perspective on Contradiction (Reihe Contradiction Studies). Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 19-37.

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ISBN: 978-3-658-25989-1

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ISBN: 978-3-658-25990-7

Back to overview
space

“According to Niklas Luhmann, space is a ‘special facility to negate contradictions’”.

Julia Lossau
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

Martin Nonhoff
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
limits

“Resistance is a democratic right, sometimes a duty. With literature we can find models for this right and think about its limits.”

Gisela Febel