Plotting stories after war: Toward a methodology for negotiating identity

Abstract

Identity is an important factor in international conflicts. As it is a crucial part of the problem, some scholars argue, national identity should be an important part of the solution. Parties to the conflict, they recommend, should negotiate their national identities so as to reach a “narrative equilibrium” that will allow them to overcome national stereotypes, build trust, and sustain peaceful relations in the future. This article evaluates not the merits of these negotiations, but the tools that social scientists have employed to analyze them. Its main purpose, therefore, is methodological. It argues that attempts to theorize the negotiation of identity fall short of their goal because they focus heavily on the notion of negotiation and very little on the concept of identity. To remedy this shortcoming, the article turns to the structural theories of narrative to conceptualize the negotiation of identity as a negotiation of literary plots. It argues that the negotiation of identity is the attempt to move away from two mutually exclusive romantic plots, and toward tragic, comic, or satiric plots in counterpoint. The introduction of plots, the article concludes, provides important insights that help theorize the negotiation of identity in post-conflict scenarios.

The international model citizen and the Syrian war: Canadian identity from a civilian power perspective

“…Further research is necessary to determine if Rule of Law is the dominant identity element in other Canadian foreign policy areas as well, or if this finding is based on the nature of the conflict studied in this article. Moreover, to gain more insight into the historical development of the Canadian autobiographical narrative, an engagement with the different ''plots'' 65 employed by the Conservative and Liberal parties respectively might be fruitful. Finally, the results of this analysis indicate that the Harper government was trying to shape a more ''masculine'' narrative of an active and independent Canada, while under Trudeau ''female'' qualities, such as the protection of civilians, were emphasized.…”

Legacies of war: Syrian narratives of conflict and visions of peace

“…Ordinary people also narrate the story of what happened to them individually and as a group, thus moulding the legacy of war for their community. This part of the formation of war legacies is often overlooked within the political sciences, particularly in IR's state-level analyses (Bachleitner, 2018;Khoury, 2018). However, individuals also do memory work through their narratives, and the outcome is likely to look different from the memory work done by political elites.…”

Postnational memory: Narrating the Holocaust and the Nakba

“…(Said 2007) In the literature, the attempt to think productively rather than competitively about competing narratives is given different names: 'the negotiation of national identity' (Kelman 1997), 'communicative memory' (Torpey 2001), 'historical dialogue' (Barkan 2001), 'multidirectional memory' (Rothberg 2009), 'bridging narratives' (Pappe and Hilal 2010), 'agonistic dialogue' (Maddison 2015) and 'deliberations on memory' (Bashir and Goldberg 2014). These notions are couched in different philosophical backgrounds, but they all refer to dialogical attempts to deal with past injustices in context of political reconciliation (Bashir 2012;Khoury 2017Khoury , 2018bMaddison 2015). In this article, I will use Bashir and Goldberg's idea of 'deliberation on memory'.…”