By RENATO ORTIZ*
A narrative is not defined by reality, it is the story, it is sufficient in itself.
Everything is narrative: Grimm's fairy tales, a novel, flat-earthers, newspaper reports, the commentary of a football match, a political speech, an advertisement. In its discrepancy and omnipresence, the idea of narrative enjoys the unbearable lightness of being. It should not be confused with the notion of discourse, explored by linguists and semiologists, it is imprecise and unsatisfactory; however, its widespread use gives it an apparent appearance of truth.
Strictly speaking, its conceptual vagueness guarantees its unquestionable success in everyday vocabulary; particularly with the advent of social networks, which feed a collective illusion, anything said with conviction and stridency becomes convincing. A narrative is a series of events that constitute a story, as in English: storytelling.
Its purpose is to tell “everything that happened”, that is, the sequence of what is narrated in a story. Its truth lies in its coherence; the reason for its existence does not lie in what is foreign to it. It thus differs from the concept of ideology, which requires a necessary counterpoint with reality; the question of falsehood is always present. It is in this sense that it was said that bourgeois ideology or religion were a “false consciousness” of the world.
They certainly mobilized people and gave meaning to their lives, but they were partial (ideological knowledge is marked by partiality). The notion of ideology is underpinned by the trait of “distortion” or incompleteness; the points of their account can be contrasted by something that lies outside their enunciation.
A narrative is not defined by reality; it is the story, and it is self-sufficient. What happens around it is irrelevant; what matters is its essence, what is narrated. Two “extreme” examples (if it is possible to speak of extremes in the universe of stories) are suggestive. The first refers to flat-eartherism, which states: our senses indicate that the Earth is flat; we cannot see the curvature of the horizon even when we are in an airplane; rivers and lakes are level, and should be curved if the Earth were spherical. The planet is a round, flat disk in which the North Pole is in the center and the edge is formed by ice, Antarctica.
The second implies denial of the space race to the moon. It is supported by a specific piece of evidence: a photograph of the American flag on the lunar surface. In it, a small part of it is folded, which is perceived as something “fluttering”; however, there is no wind on the moon, so the photo was taken somewhere on Earth. None of these considerations can be contradicted by the reality principle, that is, when confronted with scientific discourse.
He assures us that the Earth is round, that there are photos and films taken in space about the blue planet, and that there is effective evidence that demonstrates the presence of man on the moon. However, such evidence is external to the internal coherence of what is stated, and it does not in any way disturb it. It can also be said that science itself is also a narrative, and it would thus be situated alongside others, without, however, contradicting them.
But the structural coherence of the “stories” does not seem to be enough for them to be confirmed as such. There is noise. Even conspiracy narratives are coherent, as they say, they are “theories” that are organized through a rational explanation of the hidden forces that perpetuate a certain act. In this sense, the examples I used do not entirely dispense with the use of certain elements of reality. To state that “we cannot see the curvature of the Earth” or “there is no wind on the moon” implies searching for a materiality of reality that can justify such statements.
Wouldn’t this contradict the very notion of narrative? I believe that the contradiction is resolved when we analyze the use of these stories, particularly considering their accusatory nature. As anthropologists show in relation to witchcraft, it is a belief shared by all members of a community. However, no one identifies as a witch. “Evil” exists, but it is practiced by others.
Narratives feed on accusations of the falseness of others. As in witchcraft, by placing untruth outside itself, belief expels the noises of its contradiction; by accusing its adversaries of distorting reality, its internal dimension remains unharmed, unchanged. The virtue of existence is thus anchored in its immaculate lightness.
* Renato Ortiz He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The universe of luxury (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3XopStv]
Originally published on blog of BVPS
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
