The contrast, indeed the opposition, between art and life, which is often in fact the premise rather than the conclusion of such theorists, provides a way of exempting art—including narrative—from its moral tasks. And the relegation of art by modernity to the status of an essentially minority activity and interest further helps to protect us from any narrative understanding of ourselves. Yet since such an understanding cannot be finally and completely expelled without expelling life itself, it continuously recurs within art: in the realistic novels of the nineteenth century, in the movies of
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