“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” -Steve Jobs
Narratives, the stories that people tell, provide a rich source of information about how they make sense of their lives, how they construct disparate facts and weave them together cognitively to make sense of reality.
It is generally agreed that life and its absence (death) are a mystery therefore people are eager to hear narratives that give a possible insight on the subject, no matter how far-fetched they might be.
A narrative is essentially a story, a term more often associated with fiction than with political science. Since narratives help us understand ourselves as political beings, they become an invaluable tool in navigating the myriad of sensations that bombard us daily.
Given that narratives affect our perception of political reality, which in turn affect our actions in response to or in anticipation of political events, narratives play a critical role in the construction of political behaviour. We do so as individuals and as collective units, as groups or nations.
The use of narrative is the most widespread and powerful form of discourse in human communication. It differs from other modes of discourse in several important ways.
Firstly, narrative generally requires agency. It involves human beings as characters or actors. These human beings have a place in the plot, and a role in the story. When narrative emphasises human action that is directed towards goals, it provides insight on how different people organise, process, and interpret information and how they move toward achieving their goals.
Secondly, narrative suggests the speaker’s view of what is canonical. What is ordinary is discussed as the matter of fact. The unusual and the exceptional are what is remarked. Narrative thus provides data for analysis not only in the spaces and silences.
Thirdly, narrative requires some sequential ordering of events, but the events themselves need not be real.
The story constructed may be indifferent to extralinguistic reality; it is the sequence of the sentences, the way events are recounted (rather than the truth or falsity of any of the particular sentences or events recounted), that reveals the speaker’s mode of mental organisation.
How the speaker organises events to give meaning to them is what becomes important, for it is the process of organisation that reveals much about the speaker’s mind.
Fourthly, narrative requires the narrators' unique perspective. It cannot be voiceless or without an opinion.
It thus moves beyond mere reporting; it suggests how the speaker makes sense of the commonplace, revealing how the speaker organises experience and the distinctions people make in their everyday lives. The speaker creates the context to be analysed by drawing in what they consider relevant cultural influences.
The power of narratives carries with it the potential for abuse and manipulation. Even well-trained social scientists interested in objective scientific analysis find narrative suspect as a research methodology.
Understanding and interpreting a narrative is perhaps as much an art form as a methodology and must be attempted with extreme caution.
Political narrative is not only a theoretical concept but also a tool employed by political figures to construct the perspective of people within their environment and alter relationships between social groups and individuals.
As a result, fiction has the potential to become fact and myths become intertwined into public discourse. Political narrative is impactful in its ability to elicit pathos, allowing the narrative to be influential in the value it provides rather than the truth that is told.
We are currently in a season of narratives in Kenya and each storyteller is going to great lengths to persuade us that their version represents reality. Let us exercise caution with these narratives and maintain peace as we await the decision of the Supreme Court.
