El escenario social, local y móvil (SoLoMo)

The aim of this section is to explore the narrative fabric of our social and cultural lives through the tension that I argue exists between the “constructive powers of narrative” (Squire, 2013: 66) and the limiting, restrictive or sometimes destructive powers of narratives. To do so, I look at four main functions of narratives: the cognitive function, the communicating function, the remembering function, and the identity production function, and consider the role of culturally dominant narrative in each of those to highlight the inherent ambivalence of narratives within these functions.

a – The cognitive function: making sense of the world

First, narratives allow us to make sense of the world at a personal level. Sarbin (1986) explains that as an “organising principle,” narratives “impose a structure on our flow of experiences.” (9) There is an assumption that the human self needs a degree of coherence and that storying one’s experience is a way of achieving this (Sarbin, 1986). But individual coherence is relative to the self’s social context and thus, the process of meaning-making draws widely on cultural knowledge. As Bruner (1990) argues, we create meaning within a cultural context. As we are socialized within a culture, we learn this stock of culturally resonant stories and learn to construct stories about ourselves and our own experience. For example, I interpret my own experience of studying for a PhD in those terms. Within the specific culture of professional academia in the social and human sciences, there are culturally resonant stories about doctoral research. The process is often understood as a quest, with the expectations that it will be a long and challenging test, which will result in “giving birth” to a thesis. As I was socialised within the academic culture, I learnt to construct my experience in terms of the heroic struggle of completing a PhD.

Then, our worldviews are moulded by culturally dominant storylines. Through myths and culturally available stories, values are communicated to us, ideas of what is “normal,” “good” or “bad.” It provides guides to behaviour, tools for interpretation of our own and others’ experiences, as we have already seen when addressing the issue of the normativity of culturally dominant stories. A piece of research on lone motherhood in the nineteenth century by Carabine (2001) shows how a “discourse of bastardy” constructed unmarried mothers in a specific way –

“as immoral and as undeserving of poor relief” (269) – conveying a message about good and bad, moral or immoral behaviours, notably in terms of sexuality. Thus, we live “storied lives,” (Rosenwald and Ochberg, 1992) as narrative thinking allows us to organise our experiences and to understand them in relation to our own actions and to those of others by linking between individual narratives and societal ones.

b – The communicating function: Interacting with others

Not only do we create meaning through stories, we also “communicate meaning”

(Riessman, 2008: 11) through them. According to Riessman, narratives can be used to “argue, justify, persuade, engage, entertain, and even mislead an audience,”

(2008: 8) all of which aim to communicate a message. From this short list, the positive-negative duality of narratives transpires. On the one hand, the art of storytelling has entertained generation after generation. On the other hand, stories have been used to disseminate ideas that may serve one group and discredit another. For example, Jacobs writes about the “narrative struggles” in public communication:

Public actors engage in competitive and conflictual narrative struggles, trying to circulate stories that ‘purify’ themselves and their allies, and ‘pollute’ their enemies. In order to narrate themselves as powerful and heroic, they describe their enemies as dangerous, foolish, weak, irrational, deceitful or antiheroic in some other way; by contrast, they describe themselves and their allies as rational, reasoned and straightforward. (Jacobs, 2004:

24)

In turn, this raises the issue of “truth” and narratives. Indeed, “truth” is deeply subjective as an individual or a group’s experience depends on their cultural reality and historical narrative. Interestingly, “the truth” can be manipulated through narratives to serve a political agenda. Stories can be used in the interest of those in power and narratives can be a potent tool of propaganda, as illustrated by Zipes (2009) in his review of Christian Salmon’s 2007 book Storytelling: La machine à fabriquer des histoires et à former les esprits.⁵ According to Zipes, Salmon’s argument is that contemporary politicians such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy “have employed spin doctors to control the media, and [...]

storytelling and propaganda have become key to obtaining and maintaining power.” (Zipes, 2009: 138) In addition, Riessman uses the case of the Iraq war to

5My translation: “Storytelling: the machine to create stories and form minds”

demonstrate the potential of stories to mislead. According to her, the justification for invading Iraq in 2003 is an example of a misleading story used by those in power to persuade their audience: “the Bush and Blair governments cobbled together a storylines from problematic ‘facts’ that persuaded a fearful population – for a time.” (2008: 9)

c – The remembering function: Accessing and organising experience At the individual level, narratives facilitate our remembering. Indeed, they allow us to access our memories, make sense of the past, and also of the present, but also constitute the past. Theoretically, Riessman observes that “There is [...] a complicated relationship between narrative, time, and memory for we revise and edit the remembered past to square with our identities in the present. In a dynamic way then, narrative constitutes past experience at the same time as it provides ways for individuals to make sense of the past.” (2008: 8) For example, in life writing and therapeutic settings (Riessman, 2008), individuals organise their experience and tell the story of their life to others and to themselves. Thus, they reconstitute in the present a version of their past. Doing so, what we remember has an impact on our identity formation. Indeed, Misztal claims that “in sociology it is commonly assumed that telling stories about our past and making sense of that past is the main source of the self.” (2003: 133)

At this point, it is important to note that just as we do not tell stories in a vacuum, we do not remember in a vacuum. There is a “social dimension of human memory”

(Misztal, 2003: 5), that is, “we remember as members of social groups, and this means assuming and internalising the common traditions and social representation shared by our collectivities.” (Misztal, 2003: 12) This observation puts forth again the importance of culture, this time in our remembering. Here, we may draw on the myths and traditions that permeate our culture to frame our memories, an illustration of how culturally dominant narratives impact on this function of narrative. For example, in her study of narratives of patriotism in the United States, Andrews (2007) discusses the framework created by the Bush administration, at the

same time ahistorical and influenced by collective memories, within which people would remember and interpret the events of 9/11. She argues that on the one hand, there was no effort made to contextualise historically the motivations of the terrorists. She states, “oral histories of that day typically begin the chronicle with accounts of bystanders observing the planes travelling unusually low in Manhattan as they made their way towards the towers,” (2007: 198) which impacts on individuals’ understanding of the event. On the other hand, an analogy was made with the December 1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor, drawing on the collective memories of the American people. This was highly significant, as Andrews explains:

“The choice of Pearl Harbor as the key memory referent for the processing of the events of 9/11 meant that the patriotism and heroism associated with the Second World War were immediately galvanised as part of the national artillery, and helped significantly in preparing the country for war.” (2007: 110) Again, this element of collective memory, mobilised at the particular time of the 9/11 attacks, would have framed individuals’ experiences and stories.

The previous paragraph goes some way towards establishing that there is a relationship between individual and collective memories, and that they can be expressed through stories, between individual and collective stories. I would now like to explore this further, starting with Misztal’s statement that “remembering is more than just a personal act.” (2003: 6) It is also a collective act. At the collective level, the stories we tell in the present shape the past we remember as communities. Doing so, it shapes our collective identities. This raises again the question of truth and narratives, in that as some stories are chosen and remembered, and others are not, history can be viewed as a social construct, and one version of many possible truths. Once again, Andrews’ research (2007) illuminates this point. In post-apartheid South Africa, Andrews observes that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a bid to “remake national identity through gathering and weaving together individual stories,” (148) highlighting the relationship between individual and collective stories. In addition, it shows that at a collective level, the South African state had an agenda to transform the national

identity, from the “truth” in the country during apartheid of White supremacy to a new “truth” of reconciliation post-apartheid, encapsulated in the political narrative of “the birth of the new South Africa.” (Andrews, 2007: 151) Through individual and collective stories, a new collective identity and collective memory were being made.

d – Identity production function: Creating individual and social identity

First of all, the relationship between narrative and identity is of a dynamic nature.

We become who we are through the stories we tell, and our narrative identity evolves with each version of our personal story that gets told. Theoretical examples supporting this claim include writing by Andrews et al. (2004), Crossley (2002), Hinchman and Hinchman (2001), Mayer (2006), and perhaps is best summed up in this quote from Yuval-Davis’ research: “Identities are narratives, stories people tell themselves and others about who they are (and who they are not). [...] [Identity is]

always producing itself through the combined processes of being and becoming, belonging and longing to belong. This duality is often reflected in narratives of identity.” (2006: 201, as cited in Andrews, 2007: 9) But how much control the individual has over this process is debated. Going back to Smith and Sparkes’

spectrum of narrative identity (2008) can help here. At one end of the spectrum, the self is at the centre of the identity formation process. In this view, “identities are considered to be an internalized life story that develops over time through self-reflection” (8) and narratives are a means to access our selves and identities. At the other end of the spectrum, “social relatedness completely precedes individuality”

(24) and the individual is far from coherent and unified. Instead, “narrative identities are viewed as multiple, fragmentary unfinished, always changing,” (24) and the constitution of selves and identities relational, which affords less agency to the individual.

Beyond the individual level, at the collective level, our storied self is also

“embedded in social networks.” (Seale, 2004: 41) Then, narratives serve as an organising principle to situate our selves within a community and collective identity.

Collective narratives make possible our belonging to a community by imagination.

Indeed, we will never meet everyone in our community but we share collective myths and stories with them, which allows us to identify with an imagined community (Anderson, 2006). We gain membership into a community through identifying to its master narrative. However, there are more complex mechanisms at play than personal narratives merely reproducing and being produced by the collective narrative. There can be a two-way interaction in which “personal stories impact back on the culture.” (Andrews et al., 2004: 5) I will illustrate this argument only briefly at this point as it is at the heart of the third section on the contestation of the culturally dominant narrative. Riessman (2008) provides us with an interesting example. According to her, individual stories have the power to mobilize groups into action as they generate group belonging. She cites the examples of civil rights, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements as being “born as individuals sat together and told stories about small moments of discrimination.” (9) More concretely, she writes that “oral testimonies got facts out in Latin American contexts regarding state-sponsored violence, helping to form revolutionary movements.” (9)

e – Ambivalence within the functions of narratives

Having emphasised the constructive power of narratives in human lives, I now turn towards the potentially destructive side of narratives and consider the role of culturally dominant storylines within it.

I start with examining this ambivalence regarding the cognitive function of narratives. Culturally dominant storylines may be negative in their meaning making function, thereby limiting and constraining our individual stories in a damaging way.

This argument is supported theoretically by Freeman: “Narrative [...] is not only a vehicle of articulation and expression; it is potentially stifling as well, serving to constrict and delimit the scope of meaning.” (2004: 91) For example, it does so through processes of stereotyping or simplifying and dehumanising the other.

Indeed, if a dominant narrative articulates a stereotype or a simplified story about

something or someone, due to the nature of dominant narratives, individuals are very likely to reduce this something or someone to the stereotype and not be able to consider the complexity of it or their being. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie encapsulates this with her idea of “the danger of the single story.” (2009) She says:

“To insist on only [my] negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” (2009) Thus, narratives can enable the production of negative meaning and its dissemination with stereotypes that exaggerate and exacerbate differences (Andrews et al., 2004).

Adichie also relates her own experience with the simplified narratives that are present in our daily lives. She tells of how, on a visit to Mexico from the United States where she lives, she walked around Guadalajara and “I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrants.” (2009)

Picking up on the issue of truth, the remembering function of narrative can also have a darker, more restrictive side than some of the positive examples detailed above. Already with Andrews’ study of narratives of patriotism, there is a sense that collective memories and stories can be selective. In the same way as in the communicating function certain narratives can be chosen to assert power and justify wrong doings, establishing a historical truth that can be a potent weapon to justify violence and maintain power. There is a risk that history, through the narratives that disseminate it, becomes restrictive and even destructive. For instance, in the case of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, research found that Israeli history textbooks were rife with polarized stories of Jews and Arabs, which the authors argue may contribute to fuelling the conflict (Hammack and Pilecki, 2012).

In addition, the restrictive powers of narrative can be at play within the identity production function of narratives. Here, narrative identity, especially at a collective

level, can be used to create a system of insiders (those who belong to a group) and outsiders (those who do not), a dichotomised view of a population opposing “us”

and “them.” Jabri conceptualises this idea with her notion of “discourse of exclusion” based on “exclusionist identities” (1996: 131) constructed on strong oppositions between the self and the other. Although Jabri’s research is mainly about violent conflicts, she emphasises that exclusionist discourses are not found exclusively in context of direct violence. Rather, they are also characteristic of contexts of structural violence expressed against such groups as refugees, immigrants and foreign workers (Jabri, 1996). A problem arises when the insider/outsider categories become legitimate and institutionalised, and can be used to discriminate against the outsiders on the basis of identities. An exclusionist discourse reifies “a singular way of knowing,” (Jabri, 1996: 140), “an asymmetry in the production of dominant discourses on social identity formations” (Jabri, 1996:

133) and narratives become part of the domination process.

In this section, I have highlighted the role of narratives in our individual and collective lives through meaning-making, communicating, remembering and producing identity. Whereas for the presentation of the argument, it was useful to distinguish between those functions, in reality, we must recognise that they overlap and influence each other. When it was relevant, I have also sketched out the impact of culturally dominant narratives within the various functions. I closed the section with a consideration of the negative or ambivalent side of narratives by highlighting the potential of culturally dominant narratives to limit individual narratives in such a way that situations of inequality or violence are perpetuated. In the next section, I intend to question the determining power of culturally dominant narratives by exploring conceptualisation and examples of the resistance of master narratives.