Collaborative Narratives

"Unlike the constructions generated by logical and scientific procedures that can be weeded out by falsification, narrative constructions can only achieve 'verisimilitude.' Narratives, then, are a version of reality whose acceptability is governed by convention and 'narrative necessity,' rather than by empirical verification and logical requiredness, although ironically we have no compunction about calling stories true or false."

The above is a quote from Jerome Bruner's The Narrative Construction of Reality, an article published in Critical Inquiry several years ago (and which I found via This Woman's Work a few weeks ago). The article is, on the whole, needlessly obtuse in the way academic articles often are, so just in case this quote reads as so much jabberwocky, let me translate: science and math and other 'hard' disciplines can be proven true or false because they deal in facts, but narratives--stories--can't, because they don't. They can only be true by seeming true, even though everyone who reads or hears one knows that it is false.

Further, "narratives" include not only those fictional forms you are probably already thinking of (novels, stories, TV shows, movies, etc.), but also memoirs, family histories, institutional traditions, mythology, and, uh, blogs. The last being an addition of my own.

This article lists out the ten features of narrative as defined by Bruner, and I'm going to inflict them on you. Partly because I think this stuff is fascinating, though I know most of you won't care; mostly because the ten features of narrative (as defined by Bruner) can easily, though not seamlessly, be transported over to blogging. And it's the non-seamlessness I think is interesting.

So:

1. Diachronicity. (What is with the ten-dollar words, Bruner? Translated: narratives contain events that occur over time. Stuff happens. Then more stuff happens. Eventually enough stuff has happened that you can stick "the end" on it and declare the story complete.)

This is obvious, yes? Blogs, with their dated entries and archives, are diachronistic even more than other forms of narrative, in which the telling occurs at a single point in time, no matter the duration of the events being told.

2. Particularity. (Narratives deal with a particular set of events, not a general set of events. That is, a narrative might be about John and Susan getting married, but it's not about marriages in general. Or it might be about the War of 1812, but it's not about War. Even if the particular instance is used to illustrate some general principle, a narrative or story is about a particular instance.)

Personal blogs, at least, achieve this in spades. My blog is my thoughts about my life. Even when I'm writing about the world, it's written from my perspective, making it particular by definition.

3. Intentional State Entailment. (!!! Meaning that the characters in the story have to have goals that they are working to accomplish. It's not enough that stuff happens to John and Susan; they have to want to get married and be actively trying to achieve it (or be trying very hard not to get married and somehow end up married anyway--but they need to have a goal that relates to the point of the story.))

This, I think, is perhaps one of the things that separates the superstars with thousands of readers from the rest of us: the superstars have A Point. The blogger has a goal (overcoming infertility, dealing with a diagnosis, etc.) which naturally coalesces into a narrative over time. The rest of us are in danger of producing "first I woke up, then I had toast for breakfast and brushed my teeth, and then I decided to wear the green shirt though at first I thought maybe the teal...." Eventually, if you have A Point, the blog will have a beginning, a middle, and an end, though it might be messy.

4. Hermeneutic composability. (This mouthful means that stories are not simply the product of the author or teller, but a joint product by the author/teller and the audience--that the meaning of the story is determined by the meaning given to it by the creator and by the receiver. It also means that stories consist of parts (words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, etc.) which have individual meanings themselves and which also contribute to the meaning of the whole, and that the creator must build a story out of these little parts with an eye to the meaning they will give to the piece.)

This is where we stop being seamless:

One of the most interesting things about blogs is how the blogger's life can be so variously interpreted. I can tell you all about Frances and our life together and the prenatal misdiagnoses and my thoughts about that etc. ad nauseum, and it is still possible for someone to come along and read it and decide that I am advocating terminations (or trying to stop other people from having terminations, as the case may be). What I've come to realize over the last few years is that I don't have a monopoly on the truthful interpretation of my own blog. I know what I mean to say, but other people bring their own experiences and viewpoints to what I write, which makes their interpretations valid in most cases as well. This is one reason I've not been trying to drill myself down to One Interpretation in my posts so much lately; ambiguity is fine. I'll put out what I think is what I mean and if it gets interpreted another way, then I think that gap is interesting. I can learn something from what I sent and what you received.

However, Bruner also argues that creators of narratives intentionally structure all the different pieces to contribute to the meaning of the whole, and it goes without saying that personal blogs don't and can't achieve this, because we as the creators are only discovering what it is we mean to say as we go. I wrote blog posts during Frances's first year that are diametrically opposed to my current stance on some parenting issues; I let them stand because change is a part of human nature, and the evidence of change is good. But I can't say that all the pieces of this blog add up into anything, unless it's Change is a Part of Human Nature.

5. Canonicity and breach. (There needs to be a set of rules--a canon--that is then breached. If John and Susan meet and get married and there are no barriers to be overcome, it's not a story. There has to be some barrier to their success.)

OK, so here's an example, because I think this one might be tricky: Mommybloggers often fuel their blogs on the canon of either The Good Mother or What Mothering is Supposed to be Like. The Good Mother as posited by any particular mom blogger might be, say, a stay-at-home Attachment Parent who spends her free time pureeing homemade organic meals into perfect babyfood for child #5. What Mothering is Supposed to be Like might be all about the Hallmark Halos, the cuddles and snuggles and notable lack of shit and vomit. Then the blog is about the breach, or all the ways that the mom blogger in question does not meet that canon--that she gives her baby formula, lets her baby cry, and intends to stop at 1/2 because OH MY GOD I CAN'T TAKE TEN MORE YEARS OF THIS (though I love my children very much, thank you); or what the hell, and where did all this shit and vomit come from? What makes the blog interesting in that case, what drives it, is how the blogger breaches the canon, or defies expectations.

6. Referentiality. (The story needs to refer to real life somehow.)

One can only hope that any self-proclaimed personal blogger is writing entries that are related at least tangentially to his or her own actual life.

7. Genericness. (It needs to have a genre, even if only to flout it, to tell us how to interpret or make sense of the story.)

Blogs are a genre. A genre-in-progress, to be sure, but a genre, with plenty of genre conventions.

8. Normativeness. (The norms of a culture, group or family will be in some way highlighted by the story.)

Personal bloggers, in writing about who they actually are, will without thinking about it, make clear who it is they think they are supposed to be. As in the above example, a mom blogger who writes about her own life and all the ways she is not the Good Mother or how her experience doesn't match up, even if she never names or describes those stereotypes, in the process of writing about her own perspectives or experiences those stereotypes will be detailed. "I use formula, and I don't feel guilty about it!" makes it pretty clear that someone out there thinks she ought to--and there is the Norm.

9. Context sensitivity and negotiability. (We assume what the author's background knowledge might have been, the society they lived in, and what their intentions likely were; we assume what the audience's knowledge is likely to be; and then the author/teller and the audience meet somewhere in the middle in some spirit of charity.)

When that mom blogger says "I use formula, and I don't feel guilty about it!" we know she's not talking about math, but about commercial infant food. She assumes a contemporary audience who will be familiar with her vocabulary; we as her readers assume a contemporary blogger who is writing from this context. If this blogger had been writing in 1273, we might have stopped to wonder--formula for what?

For a literary example, think of Shakespeare: he was anti-semetic and sexist to the core, but it doesn't detract from what most people think of his genius because we assume that the context he wrote in shaped his views. Someone writing The Merchant of Venice today would not have such a sympathetic reception.

10. Narrative accrual. (Over time, stories add together into something called a tradition, a history, or a culture.)

This is also an example of non-seamlessness, because in oral storytelling, the narrative accrual is more a case of narrative replacement: earlier versions of the story are forgotten as the story develops. In literary narrative, the narrative accrual is a process of reference and allusion, as when Zadie Smith wrote On Beauty based on Howard's End. There are plenty of clues in On Beauty that she based the whole thing on a particular classic, but there's nothing direct in the text. You have to have read Howard's End to get it, or have someone tell you.

But when it comes to personal blogs, narrative accrual is visible and fixed, much like the fossil record fixes and makes visible the evolution of some particular organism in sedimentary layers of rock. The creator and the audience visibly negotiate the meaning of the text together, and part of this negotiation is in visibly adding to the narrative, in comments and links and blog posts and social networking sites. And this all adds up, just as Bruner said, to a tradition, a history, and a culture.

Not all of the examples Bruner provided were high-minded. For instance, a company's annual spring softball game is a tradition that probably built up around A Story: once upon a time they had a softball game, and hey! It was lots of fun! Let's do that again--so now they do it every year. The End. Or a family tradition: One year at Thanksgiving Mom burned the turkey and Dad went to get take-out, and we liked it better because it was easier, so now every year we have chinese food instead. So a narrative accrual that results in a tradition or a culture doesn't have to be cerebral or even important.

I think my favourite evolving example of this in the blogosphere might be Jen and Mad's Social Justice Roundtable series. It has a founding myth (the group wedding); and it has creators and audiences who jointly create the meaning together; and it has all of the other ten features of narrative--occuring over time, being particular, having goals, canonicity and breach, referring to real life, norms, context sensitivity and negotiation, and narrative accrual. Especially the last, as the series consists largely of narrative glue designed to hold dozens or hundreds of other narratives together (and I'll bet lots of you thought it was just a big list of links and a short op-ed). Together it's all adding up into at least a new tradition, and possibly a culture.

Bruner's point was that while we discover the physical world through trial and error, experimentation, observation, and other methods of gathering objective knowledge, we learn about people and societies and our place in the world through narrative--stories. We tell stories about ourselves and our families and our homes and our people, we tell stories about parenting and marriages and friendships and teams and castes and classes, we tell stories about men and women and children, we tell stories about work and play and faith and meaning and loss and growth and hope and achievement and despair and failure and all the rest of the panoply of human experience, because by doing so we both create the social reality we inhabit and learn how to navigate it.

The problem comes when we realize we cannot fit ourselves into the narratives, and as a result, can't fit into the culture either.

As you can tell, I find this pretty interesting. I will probably write about it again. Maybe a few more times. You've been warned. Feel free to use the comments section to complain.

Posted by Andrea at October 25, 2007 6:00 AM under The World , Web , Wordsmithery

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