Three strategies for doing narrative resistance: Navigating between master narratives

Abstract

Narrative psychology emphasizes the role of culture in shaping identities. Less attention has been paid to how individuals resist culture. Specifically, two aspects have remained understudied: the diverse forms of doing narrative resistance and the navigation between different types of master narratives involved in the process. The present study aimed to fill these gaps by examining the personal stories of former residents of Yamit, an Israeli region in the Sinai Peninsula that was evacuated following the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Holistic narrative analysis of the personal stories revealed three strategies of resisting the episodic master narrative of Yamit established in Israeli societyexplicit debate, implicit debate, and neutralizationwhich differ in the relative weight of my/our story and the story about us. To remain within the Israeli consensus, resistance to the episodic master narrative was intertwined with appropriation of the Zionist foundational master narrative. The study demonstrates that narrative resistance can take diverse forms and simultaneously involve compliance with and resistance to different types of master narratives. Investigating these two findings offers a nuanced understanding of counternarratives as multifaceted, illuminating the complex relationships between personal stories and culture.

Relational Agency and Identity Navigation in Life Stories on Addiction: Developing Narrative Tools to Analyze the Interplay Between Multiple Selves

“…The examination of this issue indicates what kind of identity claims the life stories’ narrators make (Bamberg, 1997) and to what kinds of values and moral orders they relate their ideal or normative selves. How narrators present themselves to themselves becomes observable in how they appeal in their narrative trajectories and interactive justifications to dominant discourses (Fairclough, 2003) and master narratives (Hochman & Spector-Mersel, 2020).…”

Master narrative methodology: A primer for conducting structural-psychological research.

“…Similarly, Mosley et al (2021) detail how activists in the Black Lives Matter movement can share their stories of resistance to prevent continued racial trauma. Others have used the term “counternarratives” to highlight the active construction of narratives that provide a narrative in opposition to cultural expectations, emphasizing the individual agency to do so (e.g., Aronson et al, 2020; Cochrane-Brown, 2020; Hochman & Spector-Mersel, 2020; Miller et al, 2020; Toolis and Hammack, 2015). And still, others have focused on “asset” narratives to support and lift up those in marginalized positions (Davis et al, 2020).…”

Covid-19 as a Generator of Pending Narratives: Developing an Empirical Tool to Analyze Narrative Practices in Constructing Futures

“…The examination of this level indicates what kind of values and moral order the pending narrative promotes. They become observable in how the narrator of the pending narrative appeals to the dominant discourses (Fairclough, 2003) and master narratives (Hochman & Spector-Mersel, 2020).…”

“…The second level deals with interaction between the narrator and the audience and includes positioning the storytellers vis-à-vis their audiences in a specific interactive relation (Bamberg, 2020). And the third level is about the ideological values and identities that the storytellers intend to transmit through the narrative by appealing to certain dominant discourses (Fairclough, 2003) and master narratives (Hochman & Spector-Mersel, 2020). By using a text example, I will first describe how a pending narrative can be analyzed as a narrative practice that operates on these three levels.…”