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From Event to Node: How Nodal Structures Impact on Teaching and Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

Christoph Bode
Christoph Bode*
Affiliation:
Institut für Englische Philologie, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, Schellingstr. 3 RG, 80799 München, Germany. E-mail: Christoph.Bode@anglistik.uni-muenchen.de
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Abstract

While Past Narratives have events as their basic units, Future Narratives characteristically operate with nodes. A node is a situation that allows for more than just one continuation. Therefore, by definition, Past Narratives are uni-linear, while Future Narratives are multi-linear. Thus, by operating with nodes, Future Narratives cannot only talk about the future, but they perform aspects of futurity that seem essential: its openness, its contingency, and the fact that behind each present moment there opens up a space of possibilities that has not yet coagulated into actuality. Since Future Narratives can be found in all genres and media and, what is more, bridge the fiction/non-fiction divide, the impact of Future Narratives and their conceptualization is across the board and of greatest importance not only to media studies and teaching, but also to any kind of communicating about the future.

Type
Tsinghua–Academia Europaea Symposium on Humanities and Social Sciences, Globalization and China
Information
European Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 277 - 284
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2016 

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References

References and Notes

1.Research into Future Narratives (FNs) was supported by a €900,000 Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 229135. The results of our research in the Narrating Futures (NAFU) project were published in a five-volume book series: Vol. 1 – C. Bode and R. Dietrich (2013) Future Narratives: Theory, Poetics, and Media-Historical Moment (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter); vol. 2 – F. Meifert (2013) Playing the Text, Performing the Future: Future Narratives in Print and Digiture (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter); vol. 3 – S. Schenk (2013) Running and Clicking: Future Narratives in Film (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter); vol. 4 – S. Domsch (2013) Storyplaying: Agency and Narrative in Video Games (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter); vol. 5 – K. Singles (2013) Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). This article is based on the theoretical outline given in volume 1.Google Scholar
2.Gilbert, D. (2006, 2007) Stumbling on Happiness (London/New York: Harper Perennial), p. 15.Google Scholar
3.Quoted from D. Dennett (1996) Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (New York: Basic Books), in: D. Gilbert (2006, 2007) Stumbling on Happiness (London/New York: Harper Perennial), p. 5.Google Scholar
4.Bode, Cf. C. and Dietrich, R. (2013) Future Narratives: Theory, Poetics, and Media-historical Moment (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter), pp. 162–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar