Why Wounded Storytellers Need to be Vulnerable Readers

Abstract

The essay examines the interdependences between experience, narration, and dialogue. I begin by reflecting on my early work, The Wounded Storyteller, and progress to my current work on vulnerable reading. Questions raised include the extent to which people can tell stories they call their own, and where people acquire the resources to tell stories. Responses to these issues depend on the distinction between stories as particular, local, and contingent, and narratives as generally available cultural resources. Shared background knowledge of narratives makes specific stories tellable and recognizable. Experience, I argue, is given shape as it is articulated in stories, but it always exceeds what a story can tell.