Talk by Hilde Lindemann: How to Counter a Counterstory (and Keep Those People in Their Place)

Hilde Lindemann (Professor of Philosophy and Associate in the Center for Ethics Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State University) will speak about the dynamics of narrative and identity.

Abstract: A counterstory, as I have developed the concept, is a story that is told for the purpose of resisting a socially shared narrative that purports to justify the oppression of a social group. The socially shared story—I call them master narratives—enters the tissue of stories that constitute the group’s identity, damaging that identity and so constricting group members’ access to the goods on offer in their society. In this talk, I explore some of the difficulties that arise when a counterstory sets out to repair that identity, and why the master narratives are so difficult to uproot. I’ll focus in particular on six narrative strategies people in dominant social positions use to counter a counterstory and thereby keep an oppressive social order in place.

Bio: Hilde Lindemann is Professor of Philosophy and Associate in the Center for Ethics Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State University. A Fellow of the Hastings Center and a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, her ongoing research interests are in feminist bioethics, feminist ethics, the ethics of families, and the social construction of persons and their identities. Her most recent book is Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities. Earlier books include An Invitation to Feminist Ethics and Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair. With James Lindemann Nelson, she also wrote The Patient in the Family: An Ethics of Medicine and Families. She is the former editor of The Hastings Center Report as well as of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. She was the coeditor of Rowman & Littlefield’s Feminist Constructions series and the general coeditor (with James Lindemann Nelson) of the Reflective Bioethics series at Routledge.