Michael Hanne: The Origins of the
Narrative/Metaphor Nexus Project
After studies at Oxford and Glasgow universities, I taught and researched in Italian literature at Exeter University, UK and the University of Auckland, New Zealand for 25 years. In 1995 I founded the Comparative Literature Program at Auckland, directing that program until my retirement in 2010.
My first major venture into narrative studies was researching and writing The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change (Berghahn, 1995), in which I examined the grand claims which had been made over the preceding 200 years for the direct social and political effects of certain exceptional novels. In the course of writing The Power of the Story I came to know, and be influenced by, the work of Hayden White (history), Jerome Bruner (psychology), Roger Schank (cognitive science), Fredric Jameson (literary theory), Theodore Sarbin (psychology) and others, who, from their different disciplinary perspectives, asserted the fundamental role of narrative as a device by which human beings structure and give sense to experience. In Jameson’s words, narrative is “the all-informing process…the central function or instance of the human mind.”
My first major venture into narrative studies was researching and writing The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change (Berghahn, 1995), in which I examined the grand claims which had been made over the preceding 200 years for the direct social and political effects of certain exceptional novels. In the course of writing The Power of the Story I came to know, and be influenced by, the work of Hayden White (history), Jerome Bruner (psychology), Roger Schank (cognitive science), Fredric Jameson (literary theory), Theodore Sarbin (psychology) and others, who, from their different disciplinary perspectives, asserted the fundamental role of narrative as a device by which human beings structure and give sense to experience. In Jameson’s words, narrative is “the all-informing process…the central function or instance of the human mind.”
Very quickly, however, I came to realize that, just across the river from narrative studies, another group of scholars, including George Lakoff (linguistics), Mark Johnson (philosophy), Andrew Ortony (cognitive science), Raymond Gibbs (psychology) and others were cultivating the field of metaphor studies and that they were making similarly grand claims about the fundamental role of metaphor. In the words of Lakoff and Johnson “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”
Given the evident parallels between the claims for the fundamental role of narrative and for the fundamental role of metaphor, it might be assumed that they are mutually exclusive. However, I came across a small number of thinkers, notably Paul Ricoeur (philosophy), Louis Mink (history), Deirdre (formerly Donald) McCloskey (economics) who asserted the complementary functioning of the two devices. In the words of McCloskey: “there seem to be two ways of understanding things; either by way of narrative or by way of metaphor,” and the relationship between them is “antiphonal” (that is: they “sing to each other”).
I noted, moreover, that theorists and practitioners in a wide range of academic and professional disciplines, from economics to environmental studies, from law to medicine, and from politics to management studies, were employing either a narrative perspective or a metaphor perspective, but that little communication was occurring between researchers across the two perspectives. Intuitively, I felt that it might be worthwhile to arrange a forum in which proponents of narrative and proponents of metaphor from a wide range of disciplines might meet. This led me to organize in 1996 the first of what has turned out to be a long series of international conferences: Narrative and Metaphor across the Disciplines.
Since that first conference at Auckland, I have collaborated with colleagues at universities in the US and Europe to run a series of symposia and conferences on how narrative and metaphor function in each of four major disciplines and professional domains: medicine, politics, law, and education. Some of our key findings have been:
Given the evident parallels between the claims for the fundamental role of narrative and for the fundamental role of metaphor, it might be assumed that they are mutually exclusive. However, I came across a small number of thinkers, notably Paul Ricoeur (philosophy), Louis Mink (history), Deirdre (formerly Donald) McCloskey (economics) who asserted the complementary functioning of the two devices. In the words of McCloskey: “there seem to be two ways of understanding things; either by way of narrative or by way of metaphor,” and the relationship between them is “antiphonal” (that is: they “sing to each other”).
I noted, moreover, that theorists and practitioners in a wide range of academic and professional disciplines, from economics to environmental studies, from law to medicine, and from politics to management studies, were employing either a narrative perspective or a metaphor perspective, but that little communication was occurring between researchers across the two perspectives. Intuitively, I felt that it might be worthwhile to arrange a forum in which proponents of narrative and proponents of metaphor from a wide range of disciplines might meet. This led me to organize in 1996 the first of what has turned out to be a long series of international conferences: Narrative and Metaphor across the Disciplines.
Since that first conference at Auckland, I have collaborated with colleagues at universities in the US and Europe to run a series of symposia and conferences on how narrative and metaphor function in each of four major disciplines and professional domains: medicine, politics, law, and education. Some of our key findings have been:
- In a number of disciplines (e.g. medicine and the law), there is an established interest in the role of narrative, yet study of the role of metaphor is less developed and more fragmentary
- In other disciplines (e.g. politics) study of metaphor is more developed
- It is the interaction of narrative and metaphor in the theory and practice of each discipline that is so revealing (e.g. conceptual metaphors in education generating policy narratives)
- While narrative and metaphor function rather differently in each discipline, there are many striking points of overlap between disciplines (e.g. medical metaphors employed by political leaders and metaphors of warfare to be found in medical discourse)
- Given the tendency for the discourse of a discipline to be captured by conventional metaphors and stock narratives, it is crucial for practitioners to become more conscious of these and, where appropriate, to craft alternative metaphors and narratives by which the field may be reconceptualized and innovative practice may be generated.