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Narrative Experiences of History and Complex Systems

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Narrating Complexity

Abstract

This chapter considers elements at play in the establishment of our current historical knowledge. Looking at past events as complex adaptive systems, it demonstrates why the current mediation of history is oversimplified. By formulating the possibility of a complex narrative matrix (environment), it explores its potential in offering both an archive of evidence drawn from multiple agents, and presenting the evolving relationship between them in time. This matrix aligns itself with a simulation of a CAS, the primary interest being the VR matrix’s ability to be both an interactive interface enabling exploration of the evidential material from different points of access, and a construction able to reveal its procedural work; a dynamic that elicits the creation of meaning by including the reasoning behind the chosen archival material, the product of the process, and the process itself.

Historical distance emerges as a complex balance that has as much to do with the emotional or political uses of the past as with its explanatory functions or its formal design.

(Phillips 2013, p. 5)

The ‘before now’ doesn’t have in it a shape of its own.

(Jenkins and Munslow 2004, p. 3)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Marc Bloch (1965, 1967), and Lucien Febvre (1925, 1929).

  2. 2.

    Postmemory is a concept established by Marianne Hirsch (2012), which is positioned within the study of the trauma derived from the experience of the Holocaust. It is related to Eva Hoffman’s conceptualization of the second generation as a ‘hinge generation’ (Hoffman 2004).

  3. 3.

    Post-memory indicates an expansion of Hirsch’s concept, as in Löschnigg and Sokołowska-Paryż (2014). It represents the study of how and why subsequent postmemory generations come back to the representation of specific historical moments.

  4. 4.

    See A. J. Greimas (1966, 1979), Lucien Tesnière (1966), Mieke Bal (1985).

  5. 5.

    A deterministic algorithm produces the same output, given a particular input. Examples include Turing machines.

  6. 6.

    A seed number is a number that is used to start a pseudorandom generation of numbers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York, York, UK

    Romana Turina

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  1. Romana Turina
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Correspondence to Romana Turina .

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  1. Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, York, UK

    Richard Walsh

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Susan Stepney

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Turina, R. (2018). Narrative Experiences of History and Complex Systems. In: Walsh, R., Stepney, S. (eds) Narrating Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64714-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64714-2_11

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