23 February 2011

Abstract and disjointed meta-narrative

"... the disconnected left hemisphere could not engage with narrative, for two main reasons: it lacked concreteness and specificity in its relation of the story, and became abstract and generic; and it got time sequences wrong and conflated episodes that were separate in the story because they looked similar (in other words, it categorised them, and therefore put them together, even though in the lived world their meaning was destroyed by being taken out of narrative sequence). In place of a narrative, it produced a highly abstract and disjointed meta-narrative." (The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist, 2009; page 191). 
This disconnection of the left hemisphere resembles what happened to religious exegesis after the Temple's destruction and ChZL took over. The narrative structure became impoverished and was replaced by a seemingly random sort of meta-narrative that was largely abstract and had a disjoint character about it. 

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