I
really enjoyed the framing and stories lecture and how the way we
communicate our messages can define how our receptors perception of
the content of them. In the De Young & Monroe article about the
fundamentals of engaging stories, the authors highlight how
considering some elements (coherence, problem resolution, mystery,
characterization, concreteness, imageability, challenging previous
knowledge) when building stories to frame environmental messages can
help to create interestingness and "hook" readers or
listeners (De Young & Monroe, 1996). Since fictional literature
is what got me interested in environmental studies in the first place
and we didn't had much time to talk about stories, i want to talk to
you about two significantly different writers, how they framed
environmental messages in their writing and my personal
interpretations of their work.
Alejo Carpentier, was a cuban writer
and he is significant to latin american literature for creating the
concept of "lo real maravilloso" (the marvelous reality),
that eventually evolved into the Magic Realism sub-genre. Most of his
work revolves around the cultural gap of Latin America's indigenous
and euro-western worldviews. To make the gap more concrete and
coherent, he applies "lo real maravilloso" knowing that we
as readers (and he as writer, for that) see indigenous civilizations
as a mixture of myth and magic so he shrouds the interaction of the
outside man (the characters but also the readers) with magic and
mystery. Gabriel Garcia Marquez use the same device in the
sub-genre’s most popular novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude
(that probably some of you read) where the Buendia
family’s interaction with the gypsy Melquiades and other external
and mystical characters usually have supernatural connotations. As
with Carpentier’s work, when a magical phenomena happens the
characters do not recognize it as magical even if they don’t
understand it. It’s magical or marvelous, but it is also real.
Carpentier invites the reader to
reflect on our relationship with nature and with other civilizations.
This is most notably clear on his novels The Lost Steps and
The Kingdom of this World). In the first one a bored and
depressed European music historian travels to Venezuela to find some
native music instruments, is enchanted by the indigenous way of life
and by an indigenous woman named Rosario, abandons his wife, his
mistress and his European life only to miserably lose Rosario and the
tribe not being able to find them again. The second one is a
fantastical work of historical fiction about the Haitian Revolution,
where the narrator's perception of reality is constantly mutating
when history is moving forward, taking into account Haitian culture
changes and hybridization with the arrival of Europeans and Africans.
On the other hand Nicanor Parra, a
chilean poet that frames himself as an antipoet, while constantly
gives environmental messages does not tell them in stories but frames
them in a very unique way. He started his career with 1956’s Poems
and Antipoems a three part collection that slowly deconstructs the
concept of a poem and ends with what the birth of the antipoem: a
poem deprived of solemnity, written in colloquial language and full
of irony, humor and contradictions. This deconstructive path ends
with 1972’s Artifacts a work that was presented as a box
containing cards with a drawing and a small text that could be
considered at the same time a poem, a joke and a meme predecessor. In
the 80's Parra's work started to reflect an evident ecological message, including a collection called Ecopoemas(Ecopoems)that
mixed beautiful short poems that invite solemn reflection like:
El error consistio
en creer que la tierra era
nuestra
cuando la verdad de las cosas
es que nosotros somos de la
tierra
The mistake consisted
in believing that the Earth
belonged to us
when the truth of all
is that we belong to the Earth
with ridiculous ones whose objective
is to function as satirical jokes:
Recuerdos de infancia:
los arboles aun no
tenian forma de muebles
y los pollos circulaban
crudos x el paisaje
Childhood memories:
trees were not yet
shaped like furniture
and chickens circulated
raw in the landscape
How about you? Any fiction authors,
books or stories that really influenced or "changed" you in
some way?
References
De Young, R., Monroe, M.C. (1996).
Some Fundamentals of Engaging Stories. Environmental Education
Research, 2, 171-187.
Carpentier, A. (1956): La Guerra del
Tiempo, Madrid; Alianza Editorial, 1995
Carpentier, A.
(1953): Los pasos perdidos, México: Cía. General de ediciones,
1970
Carpentier, A.
(1949): El reino de este mundo; Santiago: Universitaria, 1971
Parra, N.
(2006): Obras completas y algo + (1935 - 1972); Santiago: Galaxia
Gutemberg, 2008
Parra, N. (2011): Obras completas y
algo + (1975 - 2006); Santiago: Galaxia Gutemberg, 2012
Because of the double meaning of the spanish word "gratuito", the text of the image in the top can be read as:
ReplyDeleteFree act:
milk a cow
and throw the milk away
or as
Pointless act:
milk a cow
and throw the milk away
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that fiction (and undoubtedly the masterful use of allegory in magical realism) have a huge potential to engage individuals in drawing parallels about society and often awaken a critical eye in the reader about how current issues have come about and their potential trajectories. This is certainly the case with a lot of dystopic science fiction that frames anthropogenic alterations of the environment as precipitating collapses of societies and cultures. Framing environmental issues can even be seen in children’s books, as I’m sure that many of us can relate views of environmental exploitation and conservation to what we read in Dr. Suess’s The Lorax. The possibilities of well-crafted fiction to spur a change in the way a reader views a theme can definitely have great potential for causing an individual to reframe an issue. However, I think that for a lot of the present-minded folks in the world we need to have more well-crafted, easily accessible non-fiction that draws a keen vision to our current situations so that individuals have the opportunity to frame issues in a real context that may have more salience than stories that might otherwise be brushed off as purely fantasy.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking a lot lately about the power of storytelling to incite action and motivate behavior change. I tend to agree with Cassidy that it is more effective to use nonfiction to root the reader in reality rather than allow him/her to dismiss the scenario as fabricated. Where I think storytelling is really powerful, though, is in its ability to create a relationship between the audience and the protagonist that fosters empathy and an appreciation for that person or character's point of view. I think this is true whether the story is fiction or nonfiction and can be an incredibly effective tool for facilitating understanding of a problem that feels very distant from the reader. When it comes to behavior change, the power of stories to create that empathy and understanding can influence a person's feelings of personal responsibility for the problem as well as his/her feelings about the importance of the problema and the notion of whether s/he "should" care enough to change behaviors.
ReplyDelete