1.Tell us a bit about the essay you wrote for JNT.
Under-narration is a narrative mode that has not been studied very much so far. It can be roughly defined as ‘hinting at a story without fully telling it’. It struck me that undernarration has its counterpart in conspiracy theorizing. If undernarration is not telling the whole story, conspiracy theorizing is assuming you’re not being told the whole story. My essay is about the relationship between these two sides of the same narrative mode. I explore this in a discussion of three texts: Thet Oera Linda Bok, a fake ancient manuscript in a fake language – supposedly Old Frisian – that ‘proofs’ that the Frisians, a minority from the Northern Netherlands, are the oldest civilization in the world; The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a cult classic from 1970s American counterculture written from the perspective that all conspiracy theories are true; and 2023: A Trilogy, a novel published in 2017 written from the perspective that everything you read on the internet is true.
2. What inspired you to research this topic?
Conspiracy theories are becoming more and more disruptive and there is a need for more resilience towards them. People need to be able to resist the ‘mind candy’ offered by conspiracy theories: the gratifying feeling that ‘it all makes sense!’ I started my research with the hypothesis that artworks that experiment with undernarration are good training grounds for such resilience, or narrative literacy as I call it.
3. What was the most exciting thing about this project for you?
The topic of the special issue that this paper is part of, narrative literacy, is extremely important. Because of the central role of narrative in human cognition, we constantly make sense of the world around us by use of stories. We need to be aware, however, that the stories we make out of reality are not reality itself – especially in our current times, facing the wicked problems we do, the shortcuts offered by narrative understanding are tempting, but not always for the best. Narrative literacy is an extremely important skill to develop in this context.
5. Has your research on this topic changed the way you see the world today?
Absolutely. A lot of attention has gone to the need for citizens to become better at fact checking when facing fake news and conspiracy theories. That is very important, but without narrative literacy – the capacity to recognise when we are being manipulated by use of storytelling – we wouldn’t even know that there are facts that need checking.
6. What’s next for you?
I’m starting a research project in which educational tools for narrative literacy are to be developed, which builds on my findings presented in this and other recent publications.
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