# On the Concept of Narrative ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/bCXWGkcuv243sQhmeU1xalw-z8ps6P-T3iWGOocQoIY-cove_ariF6Kf.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Anaïs Giannuzzo]] - Full Title: On the Concept of Narrative - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: This paper explores different uses of the term "narrative" and argues for a unified theory of narrative concepts. The author discusses how narratives can represent temporal succession, causality, and change, as well as how they shape perceptions and worldviews in various contexts. The paper also highlights the need for a comprehensive account of narratives that can address both traditional and modern uses of the term. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891 - Source File: On the Concept of Narrative by Anaïs Giannuzzo (draft).pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > In this paper, I will argue that we can account for both uses of the term with one theory of the concept of narrative. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtxxf67gdhp6gabmzhx4n00)) > Narratives are in some contexts a rep- resentation of «temporal succession, causality and change»; in other contexts, narratives portray > [«how the world is both seen and represented».](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark1)2 [Philosophers (e.g., Noël Carroll](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark2)3[) have tradi- tionally been interested in the first use of «narrative», while the second is the culturally-tainted use which journalists, politicians, and podcasters employ.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark3)[4](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark3) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtxy4t6155damz44akecz7h)) > The second use of «narrative» refers to what is in people’s minds: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtxz4bt66ns445grvezq8c3)) > Besides its assimilation into various fields, it is perhaps the rise of new media – mainly videogames and virtual reality – that may have encouraged a wider and looser use of the term «narrative», since these media add an interesting component: in videogames and in virtual reality, narratives are interactive. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtxzysnew3da1bb2s7z5ca9)) > The theo- retical question thus is whether this expanded use of the term reflects two different concepts of > «narrative» or whether it rather illuminates properties of the concept of narrative that were not salient when the focus was exclusively on novels and movies. I argue for the latter. My aim is to show that both uses mentioned by Mäkelä and Björninen refer to the same concept, and that the properties of narrative that were previously not apparent are interactivity, immersion, and appropriation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxty0p27s0qn5616mwnkcwq9)) > Using the notion of narrative, Marshall explains how Jim Jones’s followers, the so-called *Peo- ple’s Temple*, adopted a narrative in which they are the victims, Jim Jones is their saviour, and some others, such as people who thought differently, governments and capitalism, are the vil- lain. This third party, the «others», is a danger from which Jim Jones would save them, or so the narrative goes. The *Jonestown Massacre* case offers an example of the way in which a > «narrative» can be connected to our life by guiding our thoughts and behaviours. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxty2we6vtvhn3f5dhjw25dn)) > Marshall probably uses the term «narrative» because, first, what she identifies is too com- plex to be called a belief. It may rather be described as (say) a complex discourse or a shared, elaborate point of view – or even better: a shared *imaginative representation*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxty3aps3sdb46p4mp3zq3sb)) > [Every variety of what I call the «literary account» of narrative has its own particularities. Greg- ory Currie (2010), for example, considers a narrative to be «the means by which someone com- municates a story to someone else», thus offering a concept of narrative as a communicative act.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark10)11 [Peter Lamarque (2014) offers a structural account in which narratives organise and struc- ture events with one another from a certain point of view.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark11)12 [Carroll (2001) regards the narrative connection of events and states of affairs as essential.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark12) 13 [Still, I subsume various accounts of narratives under the term «literary account», because all of them focus on literary narratives.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark13)14 The literary account generally conceives of narratives as *representations*: examples include movies, novels, and daily conversations about things that have happened. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxty8mgafxtm89t04ckewq0z)) > Narratives represent at least more than one *event* and/or *state of affairs*. More specifically, narratives *recount* [past events and/or states of affairs.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark14)15 These recounting representations are artefacts whose function is to communicate a story to an audience – whether the story is written down, spoken out loud to a person or to a group of people, or communicated through pointing at objects: a narrative is ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxty9d39mqmmf9btddad9187)) > What is peculiar to narratives – and distinguishes them from annals and chronicles – is that the events or states of affairs built into them are not merely retold as a list, but linked together by certain *relations*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtyawxyg2ce5wrd0zak931s)) > If someone says that the bald tire was the cause of the crash, another says that the driver ’s drunkenness was the cause, and still another says that the cause was the bad upbringing which made him so reckless, I do not think any of them disagree with me when I say that the causal history includes all three. *They disagree only about which part of the causal history is most salient for the purposes of some particular inquiry.* [They may be looking for the most remarkable part, the most remediable or blameworthy part, the least obvious of the discoverable parts, … . Some parts will be salient in some contexts, others in others.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark19)[20](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark19) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtyeyec8r6sf34psrpby1w3)) > However, the literary account of narrative cannot explain cases such as the *Jonestown Mas- sacre*[. The main issue is that it considers literary narratives to be either the only narratives or at least the prototypical and more interesting ones.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark24)25 [Daily talk and related phenomena are narra- tives depending on their resemblance to literary narratives. What is more, non-literary narra- tives are generally viewed as uninteresting, and only literary ones are really worthy of our the- oretical attention.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark25)26 [The reason is that the «minimal conditions for narrative are easily met [and] most narratives are ephemeral, insignificant and, in the long term, without interest or value».](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark26)27 One might want to argue that the literary account offers the features that are central to non- literary narratives such as the *Jonestown Massacre* [case. This is not the case, however, because the criteria it offers are simultaneously too difficult to meet and not explanatory enough. The criteria are too difficult to meet because the literary account conceives of narratives as artefacts that have to be communicated to an audience (since narratives are always told stories).](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark27)28 How- ever, it seems clear from our case that narratives can remain untold and simply exist in the form > of imaginative representations. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtykra360f27y5z14tb5swc)) > The literary account of narrative is also too restrictive to explain the *Jonestown Massacre* case. A first issue is that it views narratives to be retellings of past events. This neither accounts for counterfactual narratives – for example, an answer to the question: «Had I been ill yesterday, what would I have told her?»; nor for narratives about the future – such as the narrative resulting from thinking about wishes or plans like «When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut». ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtynq19p1t60f4d40mvythc)) > [The second account I will consider is represented by Peter Goldie’s theory of narrative, which views narratives as coherent structures. This kind of account can also be found in other fields such as sociology.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark29)[30](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark29) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtyrg17hyfz894ccspycjr5)) > According to the coherence account, narratives can take a variety of forms: they can be > [«spoken, written down, drawn, acted, sung, mimed, danced, filmed, or communicated through some combination of these».](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark30)31 [But they can also remain untold: «Narrative thinking is narrata- ble, communicable, but need not be publicly narrated or communicated to another person».](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark31)32 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtyrpq8qev8me287zsptax5)) > Narrative structure is determined by three features: *coherence*, *meaningfulness*, and [emo- tional and evaluative import](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark34)[.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark34)35 The *coherence* [of the narrative is not solely dependent upon causal and temporal structure, because, according to Goldie, we also need room for «coinci- dence» in narratives.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark35)36 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtyvee1q23232pm1w3s1c6j)) > The coherence account is more comprehensive than the literary account. First, the form a narrative takes is not relevant in the coherence account: a narrative can be a novel, a movie, a dance recital, a discourse, or a thought. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtyzvx3x52h3ykyka0kdq1q)) > In the case of the *Jonestown Massacre* narrative, a narrative representa- tion was, it seems, formed collectively so as to guide actions, find meaning in one’s life, or cope with the situation one is in (I address collective narratives below). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtz6f0bvrqptzr5ahnah0rh)) > The application of the narrative is not being accounted for in the coherence account: Goldie focusses on agency within the process of developing a narrative. The applied *Jonestown Mas- sacre* narrative reveals agency in relation to the narrative as a product. To explain the ‘inner workings’ of the narrative applied, I will refer to the notion of *interactivity*[. Interactivity has mainly been discussed in the context of the philosophy of videogames: it means that the player can participate and contribute to the fiction.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark50)51 [Interactivity is what distinguishes videogames from other kinds of fictions.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark51)52 In novels and movies, readers and viewers interact in a minimal way by forming hypotheses and imaginative representations. In videogames, which are rather ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtza3vm03pn9sj6fk396gbw)) > [«strongly interactive», players are expected to be active.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark52)53 [However, neither videogames nor novels and movies give completely free reign to the audience.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark53)54 Videogames offer a set of puz- zles the player has to solve, labyrinthic environments that they have to escape from, powers they must acquire to advance in the game. In this way, the game sets boundaries, offering a direction and meaning to the decisions of the player. Analogously, the narrative *guides* the un- derstanding and actions of members of the *People’s Temple*: the narrative offers a structure, and highlights certain elements as belonging to it. This structure interacts with our perceptions: either the perceptions will change the content of the narrative (for instance according to Jim Jones’s latest preaching), or the content of the narrative will impact the content of the perception (as when one perceives oneself as a victim). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtza8hshbzynketdmmjjvt7)) > According to Grant Tavinor (2009), the interactivity of videogames causes the player to have an *experience of immersion*. By this, he means (among other things) that one is absorbed in the «*flow*[» of the fictional world.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark54)55 Psychologists Bob Witmer and Michael Singer (1998) also describe immersion in this sense as «a psychological state characterized by perceiving ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtzb9j4v01q03shey5a03dp)) > [oneself to be enveloped by, included in, and interacting with an environment that provides a continuous stream of stimuli and experiences».](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173003891/#bookmark55)56 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxtzbftw93wspy8mwsa4qbjr)) > The theoretical question thus is whether this expanded use of the term reflects two different concepts of «narrative» or whether it rather illuminates properties of the concept of narrative that were not salient when the focus was exclusively on novels and movies. I argue for the latter. My aim is to show that both uses mentioned by Mäkelä and Björninen refer to the same concept, and that the properties of narrative that were previously not apparent are interactivity, immersion, and appropriation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxstyy9e7dhf5m7djbf63vkt)) > Currie mentions that narratives have this potential: «Narratives … may, in some circumstances and for some people, guide our ac- tions and contribute to the worth of what we are and what we do».29 However, none of the defenders of the literary account offers an explanation of how this may happen. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxvfj995yapq651q5czbd8bm))