Matti Hyvärinen School of Social Sciences and Humanities , University of Tampere, Finland

1. Symposium on narrative research, 31st March 2011, The University for Humanistics, Utrecht, The NetherlandsDiverse concepts, diverse narratives, diverse turns: travelling with narratives Matti Hyvärinen School of Social Sciences and Humanities , University of Tampere, Finland

2. The narrative turns: • (1) In literature: in the1960s • (2) The narrativist turn in historiography: on the 1970s • (3) The narrative turn in social sciences; from the 1980s. • (4) Societal turn to narratives (in the 1990s?)

3. (1) The Proppian dilemma • - > abstract and general concept • -> narrow genre as an example • -> narrative as a sequence of events • (2) Diverse attitudes • - (anti)positivism, scientism; • - neutral, negative & celebrated narrative • (3) Travelling concepts or metaphors?

4. If you look closer at Morphology of the folktale, you will hardly find any explicit theory of narrative from the book. To put it more precisely, the term ‘narrative’ only has a secondary position among the ‘wonder tale’, functions, roles, and the theory of fairy tale. Morphology firstneeded a radical conceptual translation before turning into a classic of narrative theory (Propp 1984).

5. The dilemma of the universal narrative • Ronald Barthes, in his celebrated 1966 article “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives”, gave an impressive list of the instances of narrative. Narrative can be found in novels, paintings, news reports, gossip, and everyday discussions – you name it. Barthes and other structuralist narratologists, in other words, boldly declared the abstract and universal character of narrative. The formation of this inclusive and abstract notion or idea of the universal narrative was, I think, the decisive push and generator of the later narrative turn in the social sciences.

6. Particular model genre: • The Russian wonder tales were transmitted orally and conventionally. As examples of the most conventional popular art, they were exceedingly sequential, chronological and closed. A wonder tale simply cannot leave the end of a story hanging; a wonder tale simply cannot experiment with the form, content or the way the story ends. The limits of complexity are equally strictly set since the story must be easily remembered and recounted, once and again.

7. Definitions of narrative: • Most structuralists defined narrative more or less in terms of a sequence of events; claiming that a representation of two separate events in a temporal order constitutes a narrative. • While Aristotle quite obviously discussed good and well-drafted tragedy, the triad of the beginning, middle and end was soon transposed to narrative theory as the supposedly universal core of all narrativity – again an unwarranted move between distinct speech genres

8. Experiential turn? • Monika Fludernik (1996) makes two bold claims. She firstly suggests that the ephemeral and partly chaotic nature of the ‘naturally occurring’ everyday narratives must be taken seriously as a key building block of the narrative theory. Secondly, she suggests that experientiality rather than the sequence of events should be taken as the key defining feature of narrative.

9. Diverse attitudes The literary narratology was thought to be a more rigorous, scientific and objective perspective into the study of novels and short stories. Narratology was thought to be the scienceof narrative, and the way of elevating literature onto the level of the serious disciplines.

10. The narrativist turn (1970s) When the narrativist turn in historiography begins in the 1970s, Hayden White largely shares this positivist rhetoric and invests much energy into demonstrating that historiography is not a proper science. Hayden White instead introduced a distinctly critical, even hostile attitude towards narratives in life and historiography.

11. Essential narrativity? White says, “narrative is not merely a neutral discourse form that may or may not be used to represent real events in their aspect as developmental process but rather entails ontological and epistemic choices with distinct ideological and even specifically political implications” (White 1987, ix, italics added)

12. In social sciences… • Mark Freemanoutlines narrative research as an existentialist counter-force to positivism. • Jerome Bruner (1986, 1990) similarly criticizes the cognitive science for focusing on information processing and ignoring the culturally working human mind, and posits his narrative approach as an alternative to this narrow cognitivism.

13. Brockmeier & Carbaugh: • “…we can conceive of this anti-Cartesian [narrative] orientation as part of an even more general post-positivist movement”.

14. Atkinson and Delamont: • Celebration vs analysis? • Healing, benevolent narratives? • Story-telling is always a good thing? • As they say, “(n)arratives are social phenomena. […] Our stance towards such forms and genres of social life should be analytic, not celebratory” (2006, 165).

15. Travelling metaphor? • MacIntyre: the narratives we ”live out” • Bruner: Life as Narrative • Rosenwald & Ochberg: storied lives • Walter R. Fisher: homo narrans [metonymy] • Hänninen: Inner narrative • Herman: storied minds • Schechtman: to have a narrative • Vs. Gerrit Loots: rhizomatic narrative

16. Thank you for your attention!