The Unreliable Narratee: A New Category for Analyzing Epistemic Gaps in Narratives and their Political Implications

Abstract

This paper proposes a new narratological category which I term the ‘unreliable narratee’; a fictive interlocutor who rejects or ignores the contents of a narrative out of dubious motives. As I will demonstrate, the concerns to analytically capture ignorance in narratives through such a category are relevant to the analysis of race, class, and gendered injustice in narratives. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s theory of ‘Epistemic Injustice’ (2007), where a speaker sustains a credibility deficit due to prejudices of the hearer, I will conceptualize the ‘unreliable narratee’ as a fictive interlocutor or implied reader who deliberately challenges, denies or ignores the truth claims of a narrative out of personal discomfort, the rejection of responsibility, or prejudiced bias. To illustrate my proposed category, I will draw on a reading of the novella “Er lasst die Hand küssen” (He kisses your hand) (1886) by the Austro-Hungarian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), in which a noble countess as the narratee rejects learning about the uncomfortable truth of her privilege as being based on the biopolitical exploitation of ethnic and lower-class “Others.” In closing, I will reflect on how the category of the unreliable narratee could be of wider narratological use.