Narrative Liminality and/in the Formation of American Modernities

这个网络提出了“叙事极限”的概念，作为研究美国美国文化的一个范畴。一方面，从最近的文化研究对象征形式概念的兴趣，以及另一方面，从对叙事的象征形式的压倒性关注，该网络要求了解发生在叙事象征形式边缘和之外的文化过程和谈判。它建议将重点放在我们所说的“叙事极限”的文化动态上--即尚未或不再(仅限于)叙事的话语和实践的一种性质；其符号形式需要某种程度的叙事性或被文化化为潜在叙事的档案或储藏库的话语和实践的属性。我们认为，这种叙事的局限性标志着形式的形式动态和文化工作，如数据库、游戏或仪式。该网络从叙事有限性在社会文化转型、活力和自我反思的背景下获得特定文化通货的假设出发，旨在探索叙事有限性如何成为美国现代性谈判中的一个关键习语。

This network proposes the notion of "narrative liminality" as a category for the study of US American culture. Taking its cues, on the one hand, from recent cultural-studies interests in the concept of symbolic forms and, on the other hand, from an overwhelming focus on the symbolic form of narrative in the wake of the "narrative turn" that has informed much recent American studies scholarship, the network asks for the cultural processes and negotiations that take place at the fringes and outside of the narrative symbolic form. It proposes to focus on the cultural dynamics of what we call "narrative liminality"--a property of discourses and practices that are not yet or not anymore (only) narrative; of discourses and practices whose symbolic forms entail some extent of narrativity or that are culturalized as archives or reservoirs for potential narratives. Such narrative liminality, we suggest, marks the formal dynamics and cultural work of forms such as the database, play, or ritual. Proceeding from the hypothesis that narrative liminality gains particular cultural currency in contexts of sociocultural transformation, dynamization, and self-reflection, the network aims to explore how narrative liminality has served as a key idiom in the negotiation of American modernities.