Una propiedad en particular

With the strategic aim of letting the different narratives in society be highlighted, the inspiration from theory about narrative was of crucial importance. It was most specifically used for the analysis of the ethnographic fieldwork amongst the youth about how events during the past five years could potentially have affected the category of being an activist in Jordan. This is consistent with the overall anthropological approach of understanding people through their storytelling.

One of the main reasons behind the importance to focus on intersubjectivity through this thesis is the issue of perceiving that a human life is essentially as individual life. Instead, stories are a result of ongoing dialogue and redaction within the fields of intersubjectivity, viewed as how storytelling is creations of a social relation between self and others. This is among other reasons rooted in how lives are depicted in inevitably social, political and historical affairs. Specifically will be shown that narratives are under transformation when being retold and reconstructed in relation to the intersubjectivity (Jackson, 2002: 22-23).

Here, the human need to feel rooted as a social factor, and the feeling of belonging contributing to the sense of fitting with a wider field of being, links to the person’s participation in a community with others. In that way, the relation between micro and macro, and even between the visible and invisible take place (Jackson, 2002: 12). This was highlighted throughout the analysis in how the informants’ narratives show a need to be part of something bigger, overall being the development of

Jordan in corporation with others, but in different ways. Inspired by that, interactions individuals have with others make everyone both an actor and acted upon, a ‘who’ and a ‘what’, a subject who actively participates in the making of one’s world and one subjected to actions by others and uncontrolled circumstances. This will be expressed in the analysis that will be divided into the active and more passive approaches. This intersubjective life in that way consists of this ongoing struggle to negotiate one’s being and subjectivation. Additional to this, how abstract ideas and ideals can become parts of the subject (Ibid: 12-13). For this case of Jordanian youth how regional chaotic circumstances reflecting how the abstract level of relations between the global and local events appear as cultural encounters effecting the activists and political awareness.

Moreover was noticed how the informants at times described the regime in harsh ways, related to the point that enemies may be portrayed as subhuman without moral. This is in the aim of achieving some sense of security and viability since the social and physical circumstances affect the being of an individual in an either reduced or flourishing way leading to a strategic struggle to sustain oneself as a subject. This seen in relation to how being is thus not a belonging but a becoming (Jackson, 2002: 13) where I will argue how this is partly the case for some of the informants but that belonging also plays a big part for others.

Jackson points out that the ‘existential imperative’ is the fundament for strategies to understand the crossings between the informants and their interactions with the world around them. The existential imperative, including the need for human beings to have choices and understanding, in order to have control over their own lives, is defined as a ‘sense of agency’. This includes a focus on the person’s imagination of belonging to something bigger than oneself, where his or her words and actions matter and can make a difference. Here the important point is not about whether human freedom of action actually exists but whether people imagine having it since the idea of freedom can be seen as a motivation for the informants and their struggles. This will especially be shown in how informants use the strategies behind storytelling, including transforming private into public, and the more existential approach that sees storytelling as a human strategy for maintaining a sense of agency in confrontation with disempowering circumstances (Jackson, 2002: 14-15). In that way, by telling their narratives, it will be shown how it enabled the informants to regain some footing over the events surrounding them and in that way recreated faith in the world. In this context, storytelling is viewed as a coping strategy where words are manipulated to change one’s experience

of the world meaning that speech is a supplement to action rather than a replacement, often caused by a crisis (Ibid: 17-18).

This should be seen in relation to how people can feel they are actively participating via storytelling in an otherwise oppressive world, by reconstructing events they have experienced. This can change our experience of the events by either confirming the otherness we had in mind or making us question what we have been taking for granted in a more critical way (Jackson, 2002: 25).

Therefore all stories are grounded in the existential imperatives and the analytical focus must be on the lived patterning of intersubjective life since this highlights the transformation whereto the existential imperative that makes people transform the world in a more bearable way is the energy that motivates people to feel that they play a part in their lives. In that way, the dialectic between people only has meaning in relation to intersubjectivity, defined as the relation to the dynamic interplay of self and not-self (Ibid.: 29-30) as also reflected in the activists’ narratives.

Since most of the informants described Jordan as a suppressive setting we should note that under authoritarian regimes, people’s ability to speak and act openly is violated which can make storytelling evanescent (Jackson, 2002: 34). This will be shown throughout the analysis the way several informants highlighted marginalization as an issue in Jordanian society. This reflects the point that marginalization is a result of economic divide between those who have and those who do not have and often leads to existential crisis for the ones that feel powerless. Here storytelling can be seen as a mediator between private and public spheres where the suppressed can gain some sense of control of their lives and a feeling of collective belonging. The storytelling by the informants therefore gives some crucial insights into the struggles they are facing in trying to defeat the suppressing between two counterpoints; first focusing on the self and second focused on not-self of all considered foreign to oneself (Ibid: 35). This leads to the final comment that life is a road and in travelling it we both follow the tracks of those who have gone before and leave traces of ourselves which become (Ibid.: 32) which will be important to have in the back of the mind in the analysis to gain more insights about what happened during the Jordanian uprisings.