Waves of Information, Suffocated Understanding, and the Place for Narrative Inquiry in the “Post-Truth” Era

Abstract

Psychologists working in the field of narrative inquiry draw from multiple scholarly traditions, ground their work in differing epistemological positions, embrace a plurality of interpretive frameworks, and approach analysis from various perspectival orientations. Thus, in this article I do not present a monological story about narrative truth; rather I explore a range of ways that notions of veridicality are addressed and negotiated by narrative psychologists. In exploring notions of Truth, truths, facts, meanings, and understanding, I present some of the epistemological frames, conceptual tools, and analytic approaches employed by narrative researchers, and in so doing, illuminate how they come to, articulate, and justify their claims. These practices, I argue, generally reflect a suspicion of “the Truth” of a monological story, an appreciation of the relationship between truth and method, and an acknowledgement of the great responsibility involved in interpreting the story of another. Accordingly, I argue that practitioners of narrative inquiry in psychology generally take issues of veridicality more seriously than those who have historically sought certainty and claimed “Truth,” and that the field has much to offer in the “post-truth” era – a time of abundant information and minimal understanding.

Notes

1 Recently, in response to the “narrative dangers” he observes in an increasingly narrativized political world (ranging from “bald-face lies” to “projective reversals”), Freeman (2019) called on the field to “get in the game,” to “fight narrative with narrative,” and to combat “corrupt narratives… with more truthful and ethically defensible ones” (p. 14). His call signals a need for more politically mobilized modes of narrative analysis and an acknowledgement that narrative researchers have been historically more focused on personal modes of meaning-making. He also acknowledges the ethical dilemmas inherent in such an analytic task (i.e., the othering of the Other), which highlights the negotiative aspects of narrative inquiry. As Josselson (2004) has pointed out, one’s interpretive stance is of paramount importance in narrative inquiry; researchers must negotiate how they position themselves in terms of re-storying (working from a hermeneutic of faith) and demystification (working from a hermeneutic of suspicion). Accordingly, the claims made by researchers – whether focused on exposing the narrative strategies of political manipulation (see Freeman, 2019), or not – are contingent upon the holistic construction of their research, which entails an accounting of their interpretive stance.

2 Kvernbekk (2007) asserts that Bruner’s conception of verisimilitude refers to “truth-likeness,” which signals that truth beyond interpretation is illusory while allowing for some degree of approximation between an account and the facts and/or events being referred to. Bruner (1998) asserts that verisimilitude is “utterly local and context dependent, not the stuff of syllogisms, universals, and rules of inference” (p. 24).

3 Levitt et al. (2017) have argued that the elaborate methodological rationales that are common in much qualitative research pose unique challenges for those accustomed to the conventional presentation of methods.