Telling Matters : Narrative, Authenticity, Cultural Legitimacy
Providence, Rhode Island
Brown University
2006
Ph.D. diss.
This dissertation explores how narrative and argument shape the development of cultural identity through public discourse. The concept of narrative is the methodological focus of the dissertation: I want to demonstrate that narratives, broadly defined, are the most coherent, meaningful forms of the pervasive textuality that mediates our lives and constitutes our culture. In so doing, I argue that narrative as a discursive mode is the primary means by which we establish authenticity of self and community, and consequently that narrative is how we most effectively legitimize our cultural identities. Conversely, I argue also that narrative is the primary means by which we reinforce conventional categories of thinking and resist novel or subversive ones. To demonstrate the capacity of narrative both to reinforce "fundamentalist" (categorical, morally simplistic) structures of thought and to create "literary" (open-ended, morally complex) ones, I focus this discursive analysis topically on two scenes of identity struggle in American cultural history: the political controversy over Mormon polygamy in the late nineteenth century and the emergence of a discernible gay narrative in the late twentieth century. Through these discussions I pursue questions about the normative, "morally syllogistic" properties of various kinds of public discourse, including the religious sermon, the political speech, the memoir, the essay, and the judicial opinion. Ultimately, I probe the densely layered rhetorical strategies that shape the movement and impact of public discourse as to controversial issues of identity and cultural legitimacy, and in so doing I seek to illuminate---and interrogate---foundational themes and tensions of liberal democracy and its struggles with postmodern thought: the coherence and authenticity that are possible for the liberal humanist subject; the elusive processes and purposes of persuasion; and the ever-vibrant paradox of community and autonomy in modern life. [Author's abstract]