Stories We Tell Ourselves about Ourselves

• Autores: Margaret Carlisle Duncan
• Localización: Sociology of sport journal, ISSN 0741-1235, Vol. 15, Nº. 2, 1998, págs. 95-108
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper I explain the scholarly role of stories and argue for their power and efficacy in creating a particular kind of truth. Drawing on philosopher Richard Rorty’s insights about the “narrative turn,” I describe the importance of stories in particular and the imagination in general as tools for increasing our sensitivity to the pain of others. Stories convey the suffering of those whom we might be tempted to dismiss as having nothing in common with us. Stories allow us to re-envision ourselves as the marginalized Other, and thereby offer us the possibility of moral behavior. The measure of truth in stories is not a standard of objectivity, but rather their power to evoke the vividness of experience. Throughout this discussion, I weave my own stories about stigmatized bodies to illustrate how one might use the narrative turn in sport sociology.