1st Edition
Political Narratosophy From Theory of Narration to Politics of Imagination
Political Narratosophy offers a critically subversive rethinking of the political and philosophical significance of narrative, and why feminist epistemology and feminist social theory matters for the meaning of the ‘self’ and narrativity.
Through a re-examination of the notions of democracy and emancipation, Senka Anastasova coins the term ‘political narratosophy’, a unique interpretation of the philosophy of narrative, identification, and disidentification, developed in conversation with philosophers Jacques Rancière, Nancy Fraser, and Paul Ricoeur. Utilizing the author’s own identity as a feminist philosopher has lived in socialist Yugoslavia, post-Yugoslavia, and Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Anastasova explores the fluctuating and disappearing borders around which identity is situated in a country that no longer exists. She expertly reveals how the subject finds, makes and unmakes itself through narrativity, politics, and imagination.
Political Narratosophy is an important intervention in political philosophy and a welcome contribution to the historiography on female authors who lived through twentieth century communism and its aftermath. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of political theory, philosophy, women’s studies, international relations, identity studies, (comparative) literary studies, and aesthetics studies.
Introduction: Toward the Epistemology of Political Narratosophy and Narratofemosophy. From Theory of Narration to Politics of Imagination. Ricoeur, Fraser, Rancière (Feminist Interpretations)
1 Political Narratosophy and Narrative – in – Progress: Life as Narrative/ Narrative Identity Thinking Between Discourse Theories and Political Narratosophy
2 Politics of Narrative Structures as Chiasmus Between Fiction and History: Overlapping the Methodology, Interweaving of Fiction, Historiography, Metahistory
3 From Politics of Aesthetics to the Social of Artistic Practices: In Women’s Writing from East Germany and Former / Post-Yugoslavia)
4 Conclusion: Political and the ‘Political’ Beyond the Narratosophy
Biography
Senka Anastasova is a philosopher, university professor of philosophy and aesthetics, and one of the leading young generations of feminist political philosophers from post-Yugoslavia. With her international work in the fields of political philosophy, feminist political philosophy and epistemology, and philosophy of arts, she holds the position of full professor of philosophy at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. Anastasova is a director and founder of the Research Centre of Social Sciences and Arts. She is an International Board Member of Hypatia: a Journal of Feminist Philosophy and is an author (together with Bonnie Mann and Brooke Burns) of the new Hypatia feminist documentary Gathering Feminist Voices in Time of Covid-19 (2021). She is an associate scientific delegate at the National Institutes of Health in America, and a member of the American Philosophical Association and American Political Science Association. She lives between South East Europe and California.
"After a breathtaking look at the way that narrativity is thought about in critical western philosophy and feminism, using Rancière, Fraser, and Ricoeur’s work in particular, Senka Anastasova subversively juxtaposes these concepts to critical theory and feminist political philosophy in the context of the former and post-Yugoslavia. Anastasova explores how losing the country and political system that gave birth and life to her as an author, offers a radically different perspective on thinking about narrative and identity in the present. Coming from a country that doesn’t exist anymore, will by definition create very different understandings of narrativity than from anyone from a country whose existence was never in doubt. In this highly original and deeply thoughtful book, Anastasova questions hegemonic understandings of narrativity and identity, offering that both have forms that resist rather than reproduce political power systems. As an author who lives between South Eastern Europe and California, Anastasova in Political Narratosophy is looking for a form of narrativity that is called for by critical theory from Western Europe and North America, and practiced in the East. In doing so, she includes her own powerful and subversive narrating voice which is perforce in motion."
James Martel, Professor of Political Theory and Anarchist Politics, San Francisco State University
"How do we narrate identity, experience, and life in a world we are never sure is real? Whether grappling with epistemological concerns in post-structuralist aesthetic theory or political memory in post-socialist Macedonia, Senka Anastasova never flinches from the challenge of thinking through and beyond the challenges to narrativity."
Jodi Dean, author of Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging
"Senka Anastasova’s Political Narratosophy brilliantly explores the "transit zone" between the worlds of fiction and history, text and context, subject identification and disidentification. These transit zones are full of violence, relations of domination, and historical trauma, but also processes of resistance and emancipation. This book traces the fraught borderline between work and world in the writings of female authors living through the period of 20th century communism and its aftermath."
Cristian Sorace, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
