Narrative - What Is It? And What Is It's Function?

[ussusimiel]

I have been thinking about narrative a fair bit recently. I am coming to see it as both a container and a constrainer of meaning.

In some sense narrative is only something that can be applied after events have happened. As our lives are actually happening there is no 'narrative' being played out or followed. Afterwards we may look back and tell the story of what happened, but during the events themselves there is no script, as such.

Thie idea that narrative is always secondary to events has caused me to examine the concept more closely. Personally, I am always aware that I am creating a narrative when I tell people what I am doing or have been doing. I can always make the 'story' of my life sound more or less interesting or exciting. However, I am also aware of the huge gaps that the narrative skips over, the boring bits, the silent bits, the painful bits etc.

Our need for narrative seems to me to arise from our need for events to have some sort of meaning. In that sense narratives and stories act as containers of events and formulators of meaning. However, there is always a limit to how much any story can actually reflect what has happened, and, so stories, while conveying meaning, crucially can never fully capture the whole experience. In this way they constrain meaning to whatever form the story/narrative takes. They contain some of what happened (maybe what is deemed most important) and they also leave out a huge amount.

This awareness has led me to recognise that as human beings we do not live in a narrative, yet it is the most common way in which we transmit meaning. It is this disjunction between the actuality of our lives and the narrative of our lives that has caught my interest of late.

I have come to no conclusions about it yet (and may never), and I have found that this is the first time in my life when I have been able to question the concept. Up to now I have always take it for granted.

u.

[aliantha]

As our lives are actually happening there is no 'narrative' being played out or followed. Afterwards we may look back and tell the story of what happened, but during the events themselves there is no script, as such.

Speak for yourself. I remember a period when I was a kid -- maybe eight years old -- when I would narrate events in my head as they were happening around me, as if I were writing a memoir in real time. But I was kind of a weird kid. And as you rightly point out, I tended to leave the boring bits out of my narrative. I don't recall ever thinking, "And then I went to the bathroom."

Dunno whether this is exactly on point, but Brendan Myers talks about storytelling in The Other Side of Virtue. He sees it in relation to our relationships with others -- that the act of telling a story ties us to one another. And he sees it as a spiritual act:

As Paul Ricouer wrote, we identify ourselves, or recognise ourselves, in the stories told about our lives. Aladair MacIntyre wrote that through storytelling we render life intelligible, and at the same time this is possible because human life is naturally structured in a way that lends itself to representation in dramatic narrative. It is through storytelling that life can make sense: life as recounted in stories is intelligible, structured, unified, and one's own.

Second, as we make choices and decisions, so we become the directors and makers of our lives; so too, we become the authors of our stories. But even so, people are only ever the co-authors of their own stories. For the whole story of anyone's life always includes other people. It is entirely impossible for me to tell the story of my life without also telling part of the story of other people's lives.

As you say, when we tell stories about our own lives, we (usually) only tell them from one point of view: our own. That naturally constrains the narrative: we're only going to tell the points that we think are important, or the ones we remember best. I suspect we've all been in situations where we're telling a story involving another person to a third person who wasn't there; you begin telling your version of events, and your co-conspirator (if you will) butts in and says, "What he/she has left out is...."

(One interesting exercise in fiction writing is to write a scene from the point of view of more than one character in the scene. It's a good way to discover the real story. )

[Vraith]

Hee...the body of literature [in the broadest sense...material from philosophy, literary theory, literature as works, psychology and other social sciences, neurosciences, history, pretty much all the arts, etc] is endless.
Most recently, it's become an explicit/acknowledged part of politics. "Controlling the narrative." [[it's always been there, but more underground/hidden, and not as methodological/developed]].
I'm sure you know that...I'm fairly sure you must have read/studied at least some of it.

One thing you didn't explicitly mention, but may be implicit in a couple things you said, in making meaning and constraint, is how in so many ways what we are, our "selves," is far less what happened to us and far more the stories we tell ourselves about what happened to us.

There's a lot out there about memory and how unreliable it is...has been out there for a very long time.
That...heh...narrative...is problematic. Because it is true and false. Depending on the kind of information, and the environment/context of the information/event that one is trying to recall from memory.

But, thanks to fMRI's and such...there is a fair amount of evidence coming out that the "real" memories/observations/perceptions are in there.
Getting at them is very hard for certain varieties of experience.
And almost always disturbs the subject when they are brought out.
Because they disrupt/alter the narrative...threaten the persons integrity, identity.
[[this isn't the same as "repressed memory,"...which isn't as settled as media and TV dramas seem to think/show]]

[Vraith]

I remember a period when I was a kid -- maybe eight years old -- when I would narrate events in my head as they were happening around me, as if I were writing a memoir in real time.

Sorry for double post, but...

I did that ALL THE TIME for a couple years. I'd even speak it sometimes [if no one was around.] Right around the same age, too.
[[on the speaking...even today, though people tend not to believe it, or at least think I'm odd...I can't really think completely or deeply unless I'm talking. I guess you were practicing a written tradition, but my mind is an aural society].

[aliantha]

I remember a period when I was a kid -- maybe eight years old -- when I would narrate events in my head as they were happening around me, as if I were writing a memoir in real time.

Sorry for double post, but...

I did that ALL THE TIME for a couple years. I'd even speak it sometimes [if no one was around.] Right around the same age, too.
[[on the speaking...even today, though people tend not to believe it, or at least think I'm odd...I can't really think completely or deeply unless I'm talking. I guess you were practicing a written tradition, but my mind is an aural society].

You did that? Really? I figured I was the only one. Another personal narrative blasted to bits.

I don't think I ever had the temerity to speak my running commentaries out loud. So yeah -- my tradition is pretty clearly a written one.

Not long ago, I ran across a folder on my hard drive that I'd forgotten existed at all. It was a journal/memoir I'd begun writing, and never finished, during the period when my mother's mind began failing. In rereading it, I was surprised by some of the links between events that I had made back then, as I remember those things differently now. Yet I'm sure my original observations -- made, as they were, so much closer to the events -- are probably more accurate than the narrative I've constructed since then. The brain is sure a funny thing....

[ussusimiel]

One thing you didn't explicitly mention, but may be implicit in a couple things you said, in making meaning and constraint, is how in so many ways what we are, our "selves," is far less what happened to us and far more the stories we tell ourselves about what happened to us.

This is interesting in itself, the implication of our Selves in/as narrative. Lacan and co. have shown that the idea of a central, unified Self is inaccurate. As you say, it is a combination of the stories we tell about ourselves in our different roles and moods. It isn't close to complete even in its multiplicity as it cannot, by definition, include the unconscious material, (and also tends to give reduced importance to our physical/animal nature). This is one of the reasons why I am so suspicious of ideas/ideologies/positions that are based solely on the Ego (e.g. Ayn Rand).

One of the reasons I am interested in narrative is that I believe that a very important skill necessary for the contemporary world is becoming comfortable with uncertainty. Needing to be able to make sense out of something, and rushing to do so, because I can't bear the uncertainty/lack of sense, reduces my openness to the world and 'reality'. Needing quick and solid answers may trump actually getting closer to the truth/reality of a situation.

Becoming aware of the omnipresence of narrative in my life is another step in the direction of being comfortable with uncertainty. (I suppose it also is quite helpful when writing as well.)

u.

[Vraith]

is that I believe that a very important skill necessary for the contemporary world is becoming comfortable with uncertainty.

Becoming aware of the omnipresence of narrative in my life is another step in the direction of being comfortable with uncertainty. (I suppose it also is quite helpful when writing as well.)

u.

on those...it's a bit tangential as a topic/subject. Yet I mention it cuz you mentioned Lacan...and that has all sorts of associations...and you mention multiplicity...have you looked at all at metamodernism?
[[There is a helluva lot going on in the narrative of narrative as a thread through modernism, postmodernism into metamodernism. And of course along with those go structuralism post-structuralism...and meta-structuralism? I don't know if anyone's coined that term/works in that realm explicitly. But it's gonna happen...kinda gotta.
Anyway...carry on with your narration. ]

Yes, Ali, I really did that. And...heh, this is kinda meta, though I didn't know it at the time [I don't think I knew what meta MEANT at the time]...in a class called "Performance and Presentation" I did a recitation of a story about walking through a snowstorm telling myself a story about surviving the snowstorm. Which was loosely based on "real life" walking through snowstorm [though the real life one was in no way a threat. It was just some fun I was having on my walk to my grandmothers house to shovel her walk and driveway].

[aliantha]

I'm writing a snowstorm into my WIP as we speak. Get out of my head, Vraith!

[lorin]

I am not 'up there' at the level you guys (and gals ) are speaking of, but I can tell you one thing I have learned recently -

I hide behind my narrative. I have come to call it my stories. Only recently has it become clearer to me that I use my stories as a way of diverting attention, (mine and others) from what is going on in my life and in my head. It is a way of defending against my present feelings.

I feel sad because...........story.
I feel angry because.........story.
I get lost in the stories of my past and it is like a numbing agent.

It's like I am worthless without my stories to justify my existence. Ok, I'm a bit tangled up in explaining these recent discoveries, but its the best I can do.

[Vraith]

I am not 'up there' at the level you guys (and gals ) are speaking of, but I can tell you one thing I have learned recently -

I hide behind my narrative. I have come to call it my stories. Only recently has it become clearer to me that I use my stories as a way of diverting attention, (mine and others) from what is going on in my life and in my head. It is a way of defending against my present feelings.

I feel sad because...........story.
I feel angry because.........story.
I get lost in the stories of my past and it is like a numbing agent.

It's like I am worthless without my stories to justify my existence. Ok, I'm a bit tangled up in explaining these recent discoveries, but its the best I can do.

I don't think that's tangled up at all.
It makes complete sense, and is very familiar.

And no one cares if you are "up here, at our level" or not.
[[and I'm not sure level is even real. Well...it is. Just not the way people think. For instance, I know several people personally who can talk all day, all semester, all their lives so far on the "level" you put us guys and gals on,..and never once know/feel it, come to the recognition that you posted]]

[TheFallen]

..and another thing, lorin.

Just because certain posters insist upon posting everything in indigo...

Just because certain posters compulsively hit the return key at the end of every single freaking sentence...

Just because certain posters clearly wouldn't know what a paragraph was if it hit them round the back of the head...

Just because certain posters are obsessed with needlessly sprinkling their posts with ever-increasing numbers of nested square brackets...

...doesn't mean that they're in any way more intelligent than you, me or anyone else.

[Vraith]

...doesn't mean that they're in any way more intelligent than you, me or anyone else.

Well...maybe more than you, but not me or anyone else.

[aliantha]

What the guys said. lorin. Stop putting yourself down, dammit.

It's like I am worthless without my stories to justify my existence.

Or, as Brendan Myers says in his book -- which I quoted above -- your stories help you understand your existence.

We all tell ourselves stories about what's happened in our lives. So if you look at it the way you've phrased it, then we're *all* worthless without our stories. And I don't think that's true at all. Our stories clarify our experiences in a way we can understand.

Do you think *I'd* be worthless without my personal stories? Or Vraith, or TheFallen, or u.? No? Then what makes you different?

[Frostheart Grueburn]

From a chapter I wanted to dissect but which sickness hindered:

Knowing both life and death, we endeavor to impose worth and meaning upon our deeds, and thereby to comfort our fear of impermanence. We choose to imagine that our lives merit continuance. Mayhap all sentience shares a similar fancy. Maybe the Earth itself, being sentient in its fashion, shares it. Nonetheless it is a fancy. The larger turth is merely that all things end. By that measure, our fancies cannot be distinguished from dust.

For this reason, Giants love tales. Our iteration of past deeds and desires and discoveries provides the only form of permanence to which mortal life can aspire. That such permanence is a chimera does not lessen its power to console. Joy is in the ears that hear.

[. . .] Life merely is what it is, neither more nor less. We do what we must so that we may find worth in ourselves. We do not hope vainly that we will put and end to pain, or to loss, or to death.
We were not promised ease. The purpose of life--if it may be said to have purpose--is not ease. It is to choose, and to act upon the choice. In that task, we are not measured by outcomes."

[lorin]

What the guys said. lorin. Stop putting yourself down, dammit.

It's like I am worthless without my stories to justify my existence.

Or, as Brendan Myers says in his book -- which I quoted above -- your stories help you understand your existence.

We all tell ourselves stories about what's happened in our lives. So if you look at it the way you've phrased it, then we're *all* worthless without our stories. And I don't think that's true at all. Our stories clarify our experiences in a way we can understand.

Do you think *I'd* be worthless without my personal stories? Or Vraith, or TheFallen, or u.? No? Then what makes you different?

I am not making it clear. I know we all have our narratives. I don't deny mine (or devalue anyone else's story). What I am trying to say is there comes a point when I began to use my stories/narratives as a diversionary tactic. It becomes (for me) a reason not to deal with my here and now. I am new to this concept so I have difficulty explaining it. It is easy to hide in our pasts. My stories can easily become the sum of me and there would be no present me.

I am trying to stop the looping of narratives that seem to invade my thoughts. I acknowledge my past, but I have to stop telling those stories and deal with the present. I may be going off topic here.

[Vraith]

I am trying to stop the looping of narratives that seem to invade my thoughts. I acknowledge my past, but I have to stop telling those stories and deal with the present. I may be going off topic here.

Yes. That is what I meant to be getting at.
People (according to some people) might have been daunted by my indigo intellect...or have their opinions colored by it. [Maybe I'll ask Hashi to ban someone from the 'Tank for his prejudice against colored text. I'm sure he'll be sympathetic to the identity politics].
But I was trying to focus/reflect on...
The step forward...
you started with "not up there"...but ended the sentence including TELL you what I have LEARNED.

You [almost] end with 'It's LIKE I am worthless..."
NOT---I AM worthless.

I was trying to acknowledge the successful parts.
" I have to stop telling and deal with the present"
PROVES you've begun to do that.
[[and uncomfortably personal [though still...you'll notice..."general" and "talking about"] revelation: you're a fuckload better than I am at it...I don't think anyone with half a brain could read Lorin's posts in a order and NOT see change/progress]].

Sorry for the square bracketing...though to be fair, as if The Fallen ever cared about fair... I ALSO use other un-, non- or dis-approved markers. And NONE are "needless." They have content/context/meaning/purpose.

[aliantha]

What I am trying to say is there comes a point when I began to use my stories/narratives as a diversionary tactic. It becomes (for me) a reason not to deal with my here and now. I am new to this concept so I have difficulty explaining it. It is easy to hide in our pasts.

Ah, okay. Sorry for misunderstanding you.

I think there's a real temptation for most, if not all, of us to use our personal stories about our pasts as justification for our current behavior (which, I think, is another way to say what you're saying -- please correct me if I'm wrong). I went through a period of about five years in the late '90s in which it seemed as if every move I made -- both career-related and with relationships (both friendships and romantic relationships) -- was wrong, even disastrous. So I basically went into isolation in a lot of ways. And even now, my reactions are designed to protect myself from the kind of stuff that happened back then. It's a hard habit to break.

[TheFallen]

Yes. That is what I meant to be getting at.
People (according to some people) might have been daunted by my indigo intellect...or have their opinions colored by it. [Maybe I'll ask Hashi to ban someone from the 'Tank for his prejudice against colored text. I'm sure he'll be sympathetic to the identity politics].

Coloured schmoloured. It's meretricious, I tell you, damnably meretricious. Dress a pig in horn-rimmed glasses and it's still a pig in horn-rimmed glasses.

But I was trying to focus/reflect on...
The step forward...
you started with "not up there"...but ended the sentence including TELL you what I have LEARNED.

You [almost] end with 'It's LIKE I am worthless..."
NOT---I AM worthless.

I was trying to acknowledge the successful parts.
" I have to stop telling and deal with the present"
PROVES you've begun to do that.
[[and uncomfortably personal [though still...you'll notice..."general" and "talking about"] revelation: you're a fuckload better than I am at it...I don't think anyone with half a brain could read Lorin's posts in a order and NOT see change/progress]].

For all the indigo text, needless nested square brackets and - worst of all - line breaks in the middle of clauses, let alone at the end of sentences, that's a very astute point, V... it must be accidental. BTW, where the Hell does your paragraphophobia come from?

Sorry for the square bracketing...though to be fair, as if The Fallen ever cared about fair...

Hey, there's a clue in the name, you know?

[lorin]

What I am trying to say is there comes a point when I began to use my stories/narratives as a diversionary tactic. It becomes (for me) a reason not to deal with my here and now. I am new to this concept so I have difficulty explaining it. It is easy to hide in our pasts.

Ah, okay. Sorry for misunderstanding you.

I think there's a real temptation for most, if not all, of us to use our personal stories about our pasts as justification for our current behavior (which, I think, is another way to say what you're saying -- please correct me if I'm wrong). I went through a period of about five years in the late '90s in which it seemed as if every move I made -- both career-related and with relationships (both friendships and romantic relationships) -- was wrong, even disastrous. So I basically went into isolation in a lot of ways. And even now, my reactions are designed to protect myself from the kind of stuff that happened back then. It's a hard habit to break.

aha! now we are on the same wave length. This kind of thought process is so new for me that I have a hard time explaining it. Easy to misunderstand me.

[Frostheart Grueburn]

Hey, there's a clue in the name, you know?

Shhhh...divulge this not to a soul, but I have gained secret information that TheFallen is actually Tenderheart Bear posting through an intrawebzdimensional portal. After a day rife with rainbows and cloying pastel colors, he wants to do something a wee bit badarsy.



PS. You did not recount who was on the cover of Sixty Shades of Tenebrousness. I voted for Ananda, but cannot in good sooth be ascertained of the solution to this conundrum!