1.1 Introduction
The remarkable growth of narrative inquiry over the course of recent decades is a cause for both celebration and caution. Outstanding work has been carried out across a wide range of fields, and the result has been an extraordinary surge of intellectual energy and momentum. Indeed, in the eyes of some, the “narrative turn” in the social sciences reflects nothing less than a paradigmatic shift in thinking about the human condition and how it is best explored. At the same time, there has emerged some concern about narrative inquiry overextending its reach and thereby losing some of its specificity and value as a tool for thinking. More troubling is the notion that the narrative turn may be little more than an intellectual fad, here today but more than likely gone tomorrow. Perhaps most troubling, however, is the possibility that the narrative turn, particularly as applied to the domain of self-understanding, is simply misconceived, serving to undermine the very efforts it was thought to support.
My primary aim in the present chapter is to respond to these criticisms and the larger issues they raise by offering a defense of narrative as a mode of understanding. Acknowledging that the narrative turn has numerous sources, I will focus mainly on those sources that have sought to provide a philosophical rationale for the movement at hand. Foremost among them is the work of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose groundbreaking scholarship on narrative provided fertile ground for future research in the social sciences and beyond. Of special importance in this context was Ricoeur’s exploration of the interrelationship of time and narrative, which, drawing on such varied fields as psychoanalysis, historiography, and literary theory, underscored the necessity of narrative understanding in comprehending certain fundamental features of the human realm (e.g., 1981b, 1984, 1985, 1988). Following Ricoeur in broad outline, this necessity is threefold: methodological, theoretical, and practical. In speaking of the methodological necessity of narrative understanding, I shall advance the deceptively simple idea that there is no more appropriate vehicle for studying human lives than through narrative inquiry. In speaking of the theoretical necessity of narrative understanding, I shall examine the relationship between time and narrative, focusing especially on the phenomenon of hindsight, the process of looking backward over the terrain of the personal past. In speaking of the practical necessity of narrative understanding, finally, I shall attempt to show the myriad ways in which narrative is woven into the fabric of life itself. Highlighting this threefold necessity of narrative as a mode of understanding will serve to underscore the pivotal role of narrative analysis in exploring the human realm.
1.2 Narrative Mania
“Narrative,” Roland Barthes wrote nearly 50 years ago, “starts with the very history of mankind” (1975: 237). From other quarters entirely, we have been told that man is essentially “a story-telling animal” (MacIntyre 1981: 201; see also Gottschall 2012). According to Paul Ricoeur, “The form of life to which narrative discourse belongs is our historical condition itself” (1981a: 285). Peter Brooks would seem to concur, especially with regard to the kinds of narratives found in the study of human lives, for “telling the self’s story remains our indispensable thread in the labyrinth of temporality” (1985: 285). Given such pronouncements about narrative from such notable figures, it might be assumed that the “narrative turn” (or “turns,” see Hyvärinen 2010) in the social and human sciences would be beyond dispute. Remarkably enough, this would seem to be so on three distinct fronts. Narrative can be, and often is, a method, a mode of inquiry into the human realm. In addition, the idea of narrative can be employed in the context of theory about some aspect of the human condition, for instance cognition or personal identity. Finally, it can be considered in the context of practice, that is, the various human “doings” that are part of everyday life. In view of this threefold utility and value, one might ask, how could the idea of narrative not be at the very center of the social and human sciences?
But of course things often don’t turn out quite as one might expect. One reason, it seems, has to do with the very utility and value just referred to. Here, I am referring to what might be considered narrative fatigue due to overkill. None other than Peter Brooks makes this point loudly and clearly in a short article entitled “Stories abounding.”
Barthes and company were therefore quite right about the ubiquity of narrative. Little did they know, however, just how ubiquitous the idea would become. Brooks goes on to refer to George W. Bush’s (brief) inaugural address, which used the word “story” some ten times; to Ronald Reagan’s clear understanding of the fact that “the concrete particulars of storytelling will always be more vivid than compilations of fact”; to pharmaceutical companies wanting us to know the story of their drugs; to the many public events – for instance, the death of Princess Diana – that cry out for “a reconstruction of its story, complete with plot outlines and diagrams and restagings”; and, not least, to countless academic discourses, including some of those “traditionally held to be governed by logic, syllogism, or mathematical formula” (2001).
Isn’t all this a good thing, particularly for those of us wishing to carry the narrative torch forward? Shouldn’t Brooks himself be pleased with just how far the idea has come?
Barthes and others, including Brooks, had issued a plea for narratology, for a “serious, disciplined study” of the many forms of storytelling, one that “would analyze their design and intention, how their narrative rhetoric seeks a certain result, an effect on the reader, a change in reality.” Narratology, of course, remains alive and well. But it “has not penetrated into other disciplines – or into the public discourse” (Brooks 2001). We therefore have “promiscuity” but without the sort of rigorous, incisive analysis that narratology can provide. The implication: narrative as method has fallen short of the mark.
1.3 Narrative Excess
At around the same time Brooks was lamenting the too loose use of the idea of narrative, in academics and beyond, Crispin Sartwell was penning End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language and History (2000). Sartwell adduces numerous reasons for casting into question the narrative turn. If for Brooks wanton sex seemed an apt metaphor for thinking about narrative’s overuse, Sartwell turns instead to death: “The discourses that grow out of the obsession with discourse,” he writes, “occasionally bloat language into something really hideous, like a corpse that has floated two weeks in the East River.” Indeed, he continues,
Thus far, Sartwell has only referred to “discourse,” linguistic articulation. But it is not only discourse that Sartwell is after, but narrative discourse; for it is precisely when discourse assumes narrative form that it becomes most pernicious. “Narrative,” Sartwell continues, “has become a sort of philosophical panacea.” It has been used “to explain the human experience of time” and “the personal existential p...
