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Matti Hyvärinen
Travelling Metaphors, Transforming Concepts
This volume discusses the travelling concepts of narrative. But what do we
understand by “travelling concepts”? I address this issue by reading Mieke Bal,
who originally suggested the term, and by scrutinizing the metaphor of travel itself.
Do we assume that the concept of narrative has remained the same over the course
of its travels? The chapter suggests that there are many levels to consider in using
the term travellers: the abstract idea and metaphor of narrative, the concept, the
narrative theory. Instead of mere travel, the concept of narrative itself has changed,
often covertly, but with substantial consequences. The chapter discusses the
difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches to narrativity in social
research. The metaphorical discourse on narrative has enlarged the concept’s range
of reference substantially and too far afield for many commentators, while keeping
the criteria of the concept formal and conventional. The end of the chapter
examines these narrative metaphors of life critically, finally by discussing the
manner in which Ian McEwan’s novel On Chesil Beach thematizes and contests
ubiquity and portability of narrative as a concept and metaphor.
This chapter is the third part of my recent interventions into the study of the narrative
turns. Instead of a single narrative turn, I suggest the relevance of at least four distinct
turns to narrative with different research agendas, narrative languages and appraisals of
narrative (Hyvärinen, 2010). The narrative turn in literature, with its structuralist
programme and scientific rhetoric, took place from the 1960s to the 1970s and
consolidated its position as the mainstream of literary scholarship. The narrativist turn in
historiography in the 1970s focused on the critique of the narrative form of representing
the historical past. The third turn, in social sciences, education and psychology, began in
the early 1980s. In contrast to the two earlier turns, the dominant tone of this third turn
was both anti-positivistic and hermeneutical. Parallel to this third turn, one can also
In: Hyvärinen, M., Hatavara, M. & Hydén L-C. (eds) The Travelling Concepts of Narrative. 2013.
13-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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detect a broader cultural turn to narrative in media and politics. Building on this scheme,
Hyvärinen (2012a) explores further the historical relevance of certain narrative
prototypes (Proppian, Aristotelian) in narrative thought. Since Roland Barthes’ (1977)
famous lines on the ubiquitous nature of narrative, a contrast has prevailed between the
abstract and universal promise of the concept and the particularly narrow genres (e.g.
Russian wonder tales) that have functioned as prototypes of narrative.
This chapter shifts the focus to the metaphor of travel itself. Is it the term (word),
concept, theory or metaphor of narrative that travels most efficiently? In contrast to the
term, the concept endures fundamental change and diversification during these travels. In
comparison with the two earlier articles focusing on the historical aspect of the turns, the
orientation of this chapter is more prescriptive and uses the history of concepts approach
as its method of critique, particularly while discussing the metaphoric discourse.
The chapter proceeds by first discussing the relevance of its conceptual approach. Next it
turns towards concrete examples and documents important conceptual changes since the
first narrative turn in literature. After discussing the particularly narrow concept of
Hayden White, the chapter portrays one postmodernist attempt at conceptual purification.
Then the focus turns towards the powerful metaphorical discourse in social research,
which is re-evaluated from the perspective of the ‘postclassical’ understanding of
narrative. The last section finally tests the relevance of the metaphorical discourse by
reading Ian McEwan’s novel On Chesil Beach.
Travelling with Mieke Bal
The title of this volume owes a great deal to Mieke Bal’s book Travelling Concepts in the
Humanities. Therefore it is more than appropriate to commence with discussing some of
her ideas (Bal, 2002). In introducing her term ‘travelling concepts’, Bal is foremost
concerned with the phenomenon of widespread transdisciplinary work in the humanities
– a parallel issue we are dealing with in this book. While working increasingly within
interdisciplinary settings and projects, we face the genuine problem of academic costs.
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However, Bal continues, by “cost I do not mean anything economic. I mean the high
costs involved in such obvious endeavours as getting the basics, reading the classics, and
working through one’s own methodological toolbox” (p. 3). This is a sobering remark
during times of easy interdisciplinary hype and should be remembered on every occasion
that we advertise narrative travels or the celebrated interdisciplinary field of narrative
studies.
How, then, to reduce the necessary costs? Differing from cultural anthropology, Bal’s
‘cultural analysis’ does not presume such a preset ‘field’ as the culture of a distant village
to be charted but, firstly, almost always needs to be construed and negotiated. Cultural
analysis is a term Bal prefers to cultural studies. For reasons of convenience, I presume
that outside the study of one particular text, novel, short story or drama, narrative
scholars regularly face similar problems of outlining first the field of the study.
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If the
field of the study is indefinite, methods will not provide much alleviation from the
problem:
Nor are its methods sitting in a toolbox waiting to be applied; they, too, are part of
the exploration. You don’t apply one method; you conduct a meeting between
several, a meeting in which the object participates, so that, together, object and
methods can became a new, not firmly delineated, field. (p. 4)
To further this dilemma and to emphasize its relevance, I suggest that we probably never
just ‘apply’ a method without its local customization to the problems and materials at
hand. With narrative studies in social sciences, the fallacy of method regularly appears in
formulations such as “I study X by asking people to tell narratives about X and then
conduct narrative analyses on the material.” The quandary of this formula is its way to
reduce narrative merely into a representation of the world ‘out there.’ Instead, I propose
that narratives, if interesting at all, are always already in the world, constituting the very
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For example, there is far more literature about narrative and narrative studies than I will ever be able to
read, not to mention study carefully. There are too many languages, too many genres of literature. Yet I
should keep the field of my “conceptual history of narrative” somehow compact, relevant and
communicable.
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world, and we should rather be interested in existing ‘narrative environments’ and
ongoing local ‘narrative practices’ (Gubrium & Holstein, 2008). It is easy to agree with
Bal, methods indeed do not solve the problem.
Having expressed her hesitation with methods, Bal arrives at her “extremely simple”
conclusion by proposing that “interdisciplinarity in the humanities, necessary, exciting,
serious, must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than methods”
(p. 5). It is noteworthy that Bal does not suggest, as her primary recommendation, for
example, going back to ‘theory’ or ‘philosophical backgrounds’, both being legitimate
and fundamental elements of study. Reducing costs, Bal seems to think, will be best
realized with a systematic focus on key concepts. What she recommends, however, is not
just abstract conceptual analysis but “[r]ethinking the use and meaning of concepts as a
methodological principle” (p. 10). She emphasizes that she is not interested in concepts
“as firmly established univocal terms but as dynamic in themselves.” And specifically:
“Not because they mean the same thing for everyone, but because they don’t” (p. 11).
So far, I have travelled happily with Bal. Bal’s discussion quite obviously supports the
conceptual focus of this volume. She equally encourages registering the conceptual
variety and the actual uses of the concept. Nevertheless, I have some places yet to visit,
new travels yet to make. Quentin Skinner, one of the most distinguished contemporary
historians of political thought, has for a long time investigated the historical change of
political and intellectual concepts (Skinner, 1988 offers a short summary of his ideas).
Skinner explicitly rejects the general idea of focusing on the “meaning” of a concept.
Three entirely different aspects of meaning may change when a concept is changed:
firstly, and most obviously, the criteria of a concept may change. This aspect is activated
concerning divergent definitions of a concept. We may discuss, for example, whether
narratives always portray a clear sequence of events, from a beginning to an end, or
whether it is enough that they “cue” the receiver to make inferences on particular events.
Secondly, Skinner suggests the changed range of references. Before the first narrative
turn in the 1960s, ‘narrative’ was employed only in a limited and particular sense.
Roland Barthes famously suggested its broader applicability in his celebrated 1966 article
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(Barthes, 1977), but the most radical move from the level of representation to the
ontological aspects of living took place in the 1980s, after the narrative turn in social
sciences and psychology (Hyvärinen, 2010, 2012a). Narrative was attached to living,
personality and social relationships. Jerome Bruner, for example, has never challenged
the definitions of narrative; nevertheless he was one of those who thoroughly changed
what can now be legitimately called ‘narrative’ (Bruner, 1987, 1990).
Skinner takes one further step away from the abstract ‘meaning’ of concepts. He
suggests that the range of possible appraisals of a concept can also change over time.
For the narrativist school of historiography and many critics of narrative research,
narratives as such are ideologically worrisome (White, 1981; Hyvärinen, 2010, 2012a,
2012b). Indeed, it is frequently presumed that we should, instead, advance storytelling,
that one necessary part of narrative research itself consists of a researcher’s own personal
storytelling (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). This aspect of changing appraisals is intimately
connected to the imagined context and community of narrative theory and research.
Galen Strawson, in his full-scale attack on narrative studies, suggested the useful term of
“narrative camp” (Strawson, 2004). Instead of bolstering up the narrative camp (as a
movement inspired by the narrative turns) and fighting its fights against diverse enemies,
I argue for a slightly different attitude of moderately de-camping narrative studies. One
aspect of this attitude of de-camping is a resistance to conventional redemption and quest
narratives told about narrative turns and theory, and a readiness for a reflective re-
assessment of the tradition of narrative research itself (as Brian Schiff, for example, is
doing in terms of narrative psychology is this volume, as is Olivia Guaraldo in terms of
the storytelling practices of Italian feminism).
After visiting Skinner, in any case, I now have some concerns about the metaphor of
travel. Who is the traveller, to begin with? Narrative theories themselves have
characteristically been relatively slow to travel. For example, the conceptual distinction
between ‘narrative discourse’ and ‘story’, so fundamental for structuralist narratology,
never completely arrived on the side of social sciences. In case we think that concepts
travel, do we, by the same token, presume that it is the very same and solid concept of