It's All About the Narrative

It is interesting to see how terms from specific disciplines make their way into the vernacular of the media over time.

For me the first real example of this was on a return to the USA in the early 90's on a business trip and I noticed that what had previously been terminology reserved for the financial industry had been assumed by the news broadcasts and the newspapers. Walking down the street in New York the snippets of conversation from little old ladies to young fashionistas all seemed to be totally preoccupied with things financial.

Recently as the entire family got together for the holidays I found that the idea of the "narrative" was common across different academic courses as my son spoke of the narrative within political science and history, and my daughter discussed the role of the narrative in the medical context.

My wife too chimed in as in her recent Masters Degree in Design History she said after the first couple of weeks she was being driven to distraction by an apparent preoccupation with the idea of the narrative in the History of Design.

I for my part can't remember having been confronted with the concept in my various degrees from over 30 years ago, and certainly not within the context of a trading floor or even the boardrooms of various financial institutions.

And yet this weekend in both the International Herald Tribune and the London Sunday Times the term was used by two very different writers to describe totally different situations all in the same vein as regards the importance of understanding the narrative.

My interest is that I generally think of the narrative in terms of literature, and more specifically fiction, so although I now understand the use of the concept, it did seem somewhat removed from what is actually happening-in the first instance.

But the more I reflect upon it, the more useful it becomes.

I have just finished reading "The Best and the Brightest", and although the term was not used explicitly, I find myself using it to understand what the underlying (hi)story of the relevant participants and its significance, whether it was on an individual basis, within a political party or government office, or on a national level.

The next book on the agenda is "The Selling of the President". After the dog's breakfast of the Johnsonioan entry in the the Vietnam conflict with all its myriad narratives I look forward with some trepidation to see how Madison Avenue, whose sole purpose is to create narratives, propelled Richard M Nixon into the White House.