Notable Narratives
Five meaningful quotes on narratives that nobody has read by Affiliated Scholar Ajit Maan, Ph.D.
It is especially important to emphasize that narrative is not an alternative to truth and reality, rather, it is the mode in which, inevitably, truth and reality are presented. We have only versions of the true and the real. Narratively unmediated, definitive access to truth and reality cannot be demonstrated.
Schafer, Roy. Retelling a Life: Narrative and Dialogue in Psychoanalysis. Basic Books. 1992.
There are some general rules we employ in going about making up stories we tell ourselves, and a few, to our credit, are principles of aesthetics; for we are, none of us, completely indifferent to the claims of Beauty in the telling of our tales. Take, for example, the profound pleasure we derive in the apprehension of a whole, which is, as Aristotle tells us in the Poetics, with staggering simplicity, ‘what has a beginning, a middle, and an end.’ The aesthetic preference for wholeness will lead us to actions we would not otherwise undertake.
Goldstein, Rebecca. The Late Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1989.
Once one takes a narrative view, one can ask why one story rather than another. And just such questioning soon led to the suspicion that “official” or “enforced” conceptions of Self might be used to establish or hegemonic control by one group over another.
Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Harvard UP, 1990.
Strategic narratives have a two-fold power effect. Strategic narratives are an instrument of power…of shaping behavior in an observable way…. but strategic narratives are also an instrument of power by constituting the meaning of the system.
Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, Roselle. Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order. Routledge. 2013.
Remember early in the Global War on Terror when our national leaders talked about bringing democracy to the Middle East and Afghanistan? This was a terrible Western master narrative that actually gave fuel to the extremist flame. It failed to consider Islamic culture and history. It also completely ignored the cultural values of clan society of the group vs. individual. Most troubled areas have never been fond of central government, and it takes time to build this confidence. This should be done locally — another area where the game changers of storytelling and going local come together.
Mann, Scott. Game Changers: Going Local to Defeat Violent Extremists. Tribal Analysis Publishing. 2015.
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