It occurs to me that the term "narrative intent" sounds both titillating and vague. I'm afraid that the only way to clear this up is to wax theoretical for a moment. Skip the next few paragraphs and head to *** if you want to know what I'm up to without having it analyzed, theorized, dissected, and critiqued for you first.
Here goes: For me, the idea of intent is directly linked to the idea of creation. Intent is deliberate and premeditated: it is determined to evoke, direct, conjure, and/or bring about a purpose. I also believe, as pertaining to the human experience of the act of creating, that even the most spontaneous act of creation has at its core a very specific intent, regardless of how small or inconsequential that intent might seem. I even go so far as to suggest that some spontaneous creative acts are done for no greater or lesser purpose than to avoid boredom, which I believe to be the case every time one of my students doodles an Anime pirate figure in her notebook rather than take actual notes during a presentation. Creative, yes. Intentional, yes. But meaningful? Probably not.
This is where "narrative" comes in. Narrative is a product of creativity but what distinguishes it from spontaneous doodling is that narrative is intended to convey a story. Every narrative has a beginning, a middle, and an end, even up to and including those postmodern narratives that jumble these elements for artistic impact (or increasingly, entertainment value). There is always a plot of some sort, whether it is a knight's quest to find the Holy Grail, a junket of self-discovery that takes place while meandering Dublin all day, a young film production associate loosing his wrath and indignation upon his cruel and sadistic executive supervisor, or the absurd diversions of two men waiting ceaselessly and endlessly for the seemingly inevitable to arrive. There are plot twists. There is always at least one character, even when the narrator is relating a personal experience she has had, or one that her mother or father or friend has had. Stories are intentional arrangements of interesting elements related in such a way as to deliver a coherent account which the audience of the story can understand and appreciate.
How well the audience receives the story is directly related to the level and importance of meaning they can perceive in and/or derive from the narrative. In my opinion, meaning is not something that is predetermined and then executed by the narrator, but rather it is something that is co-created between the narrator and the audience, each of whom bring their own interests, ideas, experiences, beliefs, understanding, and tastes to the story. The repercussions of this idea are different for live/performed/evanescent narratives than for written/recorded/fixed narratives, but I think the fundamental point that meaning is co-created rather than imposed and received is valid in any case. Reader-response theory scholars such as Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Stanley Fish, Michael Riffaterre, and Gerald Prince have a lot more to say about the co-creation of meaning in a given text. If you're curious, go find out more. I'm moving on.
The idea of narrative as meaning-drenched and intentional act of creation doesn't only to apply to narrative texts imparted from narrator to audience. I'm in agreement with psychologist Jerome Bruner that the human mind structures its sense of reality by using different cultural products- language systems, symbols, and most significantly, narrative. Human beings understand reality primarily because we create an ordered, coherent, convincing story about what reality is, which in turn influences the reality we create through our actions and thoughts. We can only ascribe meaning to things that we can understand. Thus, our ability to make meaning influences our understanding of narrative texts, but narrative is the primary prerequisite human beings have for apprehending the meaning of reality and interpreting it as such in their daily lives. Bruner's essay The Narrative Construction of Reality is a much deeper explanation of this theoretical stance, if anyone wants to know more about it.
In the late 90's Australian psychologist Michael White and his New Zealander colleague David Epston wrote Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends which takes Bruner's ideas much farther. In their work, White and Epston demonstrate that when a person suffering from certain psychological conditions is lead through different layers of their experiences and encouraged to build a new narrative understanding of these experiences, they can release the more damaged and counterproductive identity, for example assault victim, and inhabit a more stable and productive identity- survivor. I am officially out of my theoretical depth at this point. I mention this because I think it's interesting that not only has the discipline of psychology begun to recognize the role that our ability to narrate plays in shaping out reality, but also the role that it can play in helping us reconstruct a less damaged and more stable reality.
***
The point of this blog is to create a space where we can explore and investigate the relationship between narrative and meaning, whereas narrative is recognized to be an intentional creative act, and meaning is recognized to be an interpretation that is co-created between narrators and those who attend their tales. Sometimes this means picking apart a given narative, and sometimes this involves relating one of my own, or one from a friend.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Narrative Intent- The Backstory
I started this blog over a year ago with a strong desire to blog my own narratives, things about narratives, things about thinking about narratives, etc. My initial posts were more or less fun experiments to get the hang of this blogging thingy. Then I got swept into the undertow of dissertation research, and all things beyond working on my dissertation and teaching a few classes got shoved into the background. I defended my dissertation June 11, thereby earning the title of PhD. After a monotonous and painful revisions process, I sent my final copies in to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Grad School last Thursday thereby finishing the process. Almost immediately my brain flooded with all the stuff I had wanted to do but put off. This blog was among the first things I remembered, and I knew I wanted to re-boot it. After careful consideration, I realized that I really want to better conceptualize what this blog is about and gear the writing toward that concept.
My change in viewpoint is directly related to two important factors. The first and most important is my dissertation work. The dissertation I just defended analyzed the journal accounts and personal oral narratives of four Cajun women's experiences studying abroad in Italy in Summer of 2008. I met them because I was teaching both of the courses they all took. In all honesty, this was my third choice for a dissertation project. My first, intended to analyze the oral histories and personal experience narratives and folk belief of the people living in the Plaquemines Parish fishing village of Grand Bayou Louisiana, was destroyed right along with the village when Hurricane Katrina made landfall a few miles away in Venice, LA. The second, an analysis of the traditional narratives of the Evangeline story as related by five professional Cajun and Creole storytellers was obliterated by Hurricane Gustav, which displaced all of them as well as inundating the archive where much of the Louisiana-specific and Louisiana-generated Evangeline research and material was collected. Thankfully my students and their journals were interesting and available for research. The dissertation did take a very unexpected departure when it became clear that the study abroad experience actually served as a bona-fide rite of passage for the women, but that none of the current ritual theory currently in place was appropriate for discussing the experience as such. So the bulk of my dissertation actually was taken up with this very theory-heavy excursion into lived experience. When I am ready to foray back into my dissertation topic, I'll analyze their narratives. Until then, I'm working on other narrative stuff.
Nonetheless there is a thread running through all of my dissertation projects and that is the importance of oral narratives of personal experiences. This is as it should be, given that my primary research interest is Folklore, and my primary source-gathering methodology is ethnography. For a lot of people, the word "folklore" conjures some strange and exotic notions. Some imagine elderly rural denizens swapping stories, singing folk songs to a scratchy violin or accordion accompaniment; others think of the fairytale books of the Grimms, Perrault, and Anderson; some remember well-known stories of legendary and tangentially historical figures like Pecos Bill, Mike Fink, and Paul Bunyan; and still others think of folklore in terms of mythology, especially of the Greco-Roman variety. They are all correct. But they literally don't have the whole story. I regard folklore as the culturally-specific, tradition-defined, expressive culture of a specific folk group. This definition includes food, dancing, holidays, artifacts, games, holidays etc. but most importantly, it includes personal experience narratives that would otherwise go under-appreciated and under-recorded because they don't fit the easy and obvious categories of folk songs, myths, legends, and folktales. I am fairly committed to exploring the scope of these narratives and cultural expressions, and this is the factor that all three of my dissertation projects have in common.
On the other hand, I am FASCINATED by narratives of all kinds- books, films, video games, YouTube shorts, television programs, news articles, broadcast news pieces, graphic novels, emails and blogs, etc. to name a few. Which is why I figured my work would be a good fit for the International Society for the Study of Narrative. My convictions were so strong as to compel my attendance at the 2009 International conference held in Birmingham, UK. My work got mixed reception, because apparently I am the first folklorist working with ethnographically- gathered, minimally mediated personal oral narrative. I might as well have flown in from Mars., because almost everyone there was a a hard narratology theorist working with literary/print sources. Fortunately, some people were very curious about me and my work. These people are genre (specifically sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery) scholars, graphic novels/comics scholars, slash and fanfic scholars, music lyrics scholars, and media scholars. These people are studying the things I love most. But I was the only one working on oral narratives of any sort, much less personal narratives. Nobody in the narratology field had any notion of ethnography, nor any idea that ethnography has much to offer formal narratology. To be fair, few in my discipline are aware of the valuable insight that formal narratology can bring to our own studies.
Between my professional activity with personal narratives and my interest in all of the things my colleagues from the narrative conference study, I keenly feel a need to explore all of these things in an informed yet informal forum, so that interested and engaged parties can comment on, and contribute to ideas about narrative. With my dissertation project over and my degree finally won, I am branching out into a deeper exploration of all things narrative. Welcome to Narrative Intent.
My change in viewpoint is directly related to two important factors. The first and most important is my dissertation work. The dissertation I just defended analyzed the journal accounts and personal oral narratives of four Cajun women's experiences studying abroad in Italy in Summer of 2008. I met them because I was teaching both of the courses they all took. In all honesty, this was my third choice for a dissertation project. My first, intended to analyze the oral histories and personal experience narratives and folk belief of the people living in the Plaquemines Parish fishing village of Grand Bayou Louisiana, was destroyed right along with the village when Hurricane Katrina made landfall a few miles away in Venice, LA. The second, an analysis of the traditional narratives of the Evangeline story as related by five professional Cajun and Creole storytellers was obliterated by Hurricane Gustav, which displaced all of them as well as inundating the archive where much of the Louisiana-specific and Louisiana-generated Evangeline research and material was collected. Thankfully my students and their journals were interesting and available for research. The dissertation did take a very unexpected departure when it became clear that the study abroad experience actually served as a bona-fide rite of passage for the women, but that none of the current ritual theory currently in place was appropriate for discussing the experience as such. So the bulk of my dissertation actually was taken up with this very theory-heavy excursion into lived experience. When I am ready to foray back into my dissertation topic, I'll analyze their narratives. Until then, I'm working on other narrative stuff.
Nonetheless there is a thread running through all of my dissertation projects and that is the importance of oral narratives of personal experiences. This is as it should be, given that my primary research interest is Folklore, and my primary source-gathering methodology is ethnography. For a lot of people, the word "folklore" conjures some strange and exotic notions. Some imagine elderly rural denizens swapping stories, singing folk songs to a scratchy violin or accordion accompaniment; others think of the fairytale books of the Grimms, Perrault, and Anderson; some remember well-known stories of legendary and tangentially historical figures like Pecos Bill, Mike Fink, and Paul Bunyan; and still others think of folklore in terms of mythology, especially of the Greco-Roman variety. They are all correct. But they literally don't have the whole story. I regard folklore as the culturally-specific, tradition-defined, expressive culture of a specific folk group. This definition includes food, dancing, holidays, artifacts, games, holidays etc. but most importantly, it includes personal experience narratives that would otherwise go under-appreciated and under-recorded because they don't fit the easy and obvious categories of folk songs, myths, legends, and folktales. I am fairly committed to exploring the scope of these narratives and cultural expressions, and this is the factor that all three of my dissertation projects have in common.
On the other hand, I am FASCINATED by narratives of all kinds- books, films, video games, YouTube shorts, television programs, news articles, broadcast news pieces, graphic novels, emails and blogs, etc. to name a few. Which is why I figured my work would be a good fit for the International Society for the Study of Narrative. My convictions were so strong as to compel my attendance at the 2009 International conference held in Birmingham, UK. My work got mixed reception, because apparently I am the first folklorist working with ethnographically- gathered, minimally mediated personal oral narrative. I might as well have flown in from Mars., because almost everyone there was a a hard narratology theorist working with literary/print sources. Fortunately, some people were very curious about me and my work. These people are genre (specifically sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery) scholars, graphic novels/comics scholars, slash and fanfic scholars, music lyrics scholars, and media scholars. These people are studying the things I love most. But I was the only one working on oral narratives of any sort, much less personal narratives. Nobody in the narratology field had any notion of ethnography, nor any idea that ethnography has much to offer formal narratology. To be fair, few in my discipline are aware of the valuable insight that formal narratology can bring to our own studies.
Between my professional activity with personal narratives and my interest in all of the things my colleagues from the narrative conference study, I keenly feel a need to explore all of these things in an informed yet informal forum, so that interested and engaged parties can comment on, and contribute to ideas about narrative. With my dissertation project over and my degree finally won, I am branching out into a deeper exploration of all things narrative. Welcome to Narrative Intent.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Phantom Twin Christ Adventures
Ah, the best laid plans. I had intended to keep writing each week. Then the semester hit me like a crosstown bus at rush hour. Thankfully, that is all over and I have a few weeks before summer semester crashes down upon me. I'm taking advantage of this time to finally get some uninterrupted diss research in.
My two favorite news items this week involve the British guy who expressed his embryonic twin brother from his belly button. Apparently he'd absorbed the twin in utero, and it took 30 years for the little bastard to worm its way out into the open. The man, called Gavin, has named the embryo Little Gav and keeps it in a plastic jar. He shows the plastic jar to company when they visit. The story itself is grotesque and enthralling, but I take most amusement in the mundane aspect of the story. Keeping your absorbed embryonic twin in a jar and showing it to company is SUCH a guy thing to do. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2420523.ece
I also read about a woman whose stroke left her left side paralyzed and yet newly possessed of a phantom third arm. They did brain scans on her whilst putting her through some basic hand and arm movements to chart her brain activity. Attempts to move each of her real arm resulted in brain activity in the proper sectors. Requests that she move her phantom arm ALSO resulted in brain activity that exactly resembled what had previously been recorded. Apparently she can scratch itches with this arm. http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/Doctors_confirm_woman_s_imaginary_third_arm.html?siteSect=105&sid=10522330
Sometimes it's really hard not to laugh at someone, no matter how much you love him. For example, I was talking to Sean about the afterlife the other day. I find him frustratingly naive even at the best of times, but last week takes the cake. Sean is a devastatingly sincere and depressingly naive born again christian. He believes that the Bible is the perfect and infallible received word of God. It is my strong suspicion that while many christians use their bible as a reference guide, Sean wields his like a riot shield to protect him from life. This suspicion became stronger when in discussing our beliefs he said that he is looking forward to going to dwell with Jesus in the afterlife, because Jesus was going to take him on adventures. Yes, you read that right. Jesus is going to take Sean on adventures. I bit my lip, smiled, took a deep breath, and then asked, What sort of adventures? Sean explained, "We'll talk about why he made the ocean like that, what he meant when he created giraffes, you know, adventures." Apparently the sort of adventures you encounter at the local library during story time. I wanted to scream Where in the hell did you come up with that? It's not in any bible I've ever read and I've read five different English translations of it, several times apiece. But I didn't. I also wanted to guffaw. I held my tongue. You should see the dent left in it from my teeth clamping down on it to keep from saying something nasty. But as he doesn't read this post, I feel free to vent here. I've dealt with a lot from Sean, in particular his intentional denseness if failing to admit that while he claims to honestly hold no romantic interest in me, his body language and actions scream otherwise. His extreme curiosity about life as defeated by his intense fear of living, his desire to defeat all his hideous anxieties stumped by the comfortableness and familiarity of them, leave me both amazed and dumbfounded. But his adventures with Jesus thing now makes it hard for me to even respect him. Which, I think, is actually the worst thing that can happen to a friendship. Not sure what I am going to do here....
My two favorite news items this week involve the British guy who expressed his embryonic twin brother from his belly button. Apparently he'd absorbed the twin in utero, and it took 30 years for the little bastard to worm its way out into the open. The man, called Gavin, has named the embryo Little Gav and keeps it in a plastic jar. He shows the plastic jar to company when they visit. The story itself is grotesque and enthralling, but I take most amusement in the mundane aspect of the story. Keeping your absorbed embryonic twin in a jar and showing it to company is SUCH a guy thing to do. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2420523.ece
I also read about a woman whose stroke left her left side paralyzed and yet newly possessed of a phantom third arm. They did brain scans on her whilst putting her through some basic hand and arm movements to chart her brain activity. Attempts to move each of her real arm resulted in brain activity in the proper sectors. Requests that she move her phantom arm ALSO resulted in brain activity that exactly resembled what had previously been recorded. Apparently she can scratch itches with this arm. http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/Doctors_confirm_woman_s_imaginary_third_arm.html?siteSect=105&sid=10522330
Sometimes it's really hard not to laugh at someone, no matter how much you love him. For example, I was talking to Sean about the afterlife the other day. I find him frustratingly naive even at the best of times, but last week takes the cake. Sean is a devastatingly sincere and depressingly naive born again christian. He believes that the Bible is the perfect and infallible received word of God. It is my strong suspicion that while many christians use their bible as a reference guide, Sean wields his like a riot shield to protect him from life. This suspicion became stronger when in discussing our beliefs he said that he is looking forward to going to dwell with Jesus in the afterlife, because Jesus was going to take him on adventures. Yes, you read that right. Jesus is going to take Sean on adventures. I bit my lip, smiled, took a deep breath, and then asked, What sort of adventures? Sean explained, "We'll talk about why he made the ocean like that, what he meant when he created giraffes, you know, adventures." Apparently the sort of adventures you encounter at the local library during story time. I wanted to scream Where in the hell did you come up with that? It's not in any bible I've ever read and I've read five different English translations of it, several times apiece. But I didn't. I also wanted to guffaw. I held my tongue. You should see the dent left in it from my teeth clamping down on it to keep from saying something nasty. But as he doesn't read this post, I feel free to vent here. I've dealt with a lot from Sean, in particular his intentional denseness if failing to admit that while he claims to honestly hold no romantic interest in me, his body language and actions scream otherwise. His extreme curiosity about life as defeated by his intense fear of living, his desire to defeat all his hideous anxieties stumped by the comfortableness and familiarity of them, leave me both amazed and dumbfounded. But his adventures with Jesus thing now makes it hard for me to even respect him. Which, I think, is actually the worst thing that can happen to a friendship. Not sure what I am going to do here....
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