Narrative Strategies

In this article, we approach narrative strategies as a way to theorize the aesthetic formation and effect of both cultural narratives and narrative cultures from a cognitive perspective. Predictive processing-based models of story processing allow us to rethink the role of narration in religious discourse. Based on these models, we suggest a nar-ratologically informed cognitive theory of religious perception, according to which religious worldviews can be understood as specific 'augmented realities', blends of narrative and experiential reality created by immersion into a narrative culture. In a first step, we argue that attracting attention is the most fundamental narrative strategy in that it is the requirement for all other cultural, partisan, or individual storytelling strategies to develop their potential. After giving a limited account of the predictive processing framework's concept of attention, we illustrate means and devices by which cultural narratives gain access to the mind. In a second step, we discuss imaginative strategies that further immersion into storyworlds. In the final step, we exemplify implementation strategies used for a lasting augmentation of reality with elements from these storyworlds

Religiöse Identitätsbildung

Religionen setzen Imaginationspraktiken voraus, mit denen Wirklichkeit transformiert wird. Dem Erzählen kommt dabei eine besondere Rolle zu. Erzählungen haben zugleich modellierende und plausibilisieende Funktion: Sie vermitteln zwischen Sinneswelten und Sinnsystemen. Sie machen das Nicht-Präsente anwesend und modelieren damit religiöse Wirklichkeiten, in denen sinnlich Gegebenes als Ausdruck von etwas anderem erscheint (Traut/Wilke 2015, 18). Zugleich werden diese transformierten Wirklichkeiten durch Erzählungen plausibilisiert (Grieser 2013, 322f.). Erzählen ist somit ein notwendiger Teil religiöser Praxis; erst im Akt des Erzählens konsolidieren sich religiöse Identitäten, die ebenso dynamisch sind wie die Erzählkulturen , in denen sie sich ausbilden

Narrative Strategies

In this article, we approach narrative strategies as a way to theorize the aesthetic formation and effect of both cultural narratives and narrative cultures from a cognitive perspective. Predictive processing-based models of story processing allow us to rethink the role of narration in religious discourse. Based on these models, we suggest a nar-ratologically informed cognitive theory of religious perception, according to which religious worldviews can be understood as specific 'augmented realities', blends of narrative and experiential reality created by immersion into a narrative culture. In a first step, we argue that attracting attention is the most fundamental narrative strategy in that it is the requirement for all other cultural, partisan, or individual storytelling strategies to develop their potential. After giving a limited account of the predictive processing framework's concept of attention, we illustrate means and devices by which cultural narratives gain access to the mind. In a second step, we discuss imaginative strategies that further immersion into storyworlds. In the final step, we exemplify implementation strategies used for a lasting augmentation of reality with elements from these storyworlds