[lit-ideas] narrative forms and political processes

Julie Krueger writes

"I'm interested in the sort of 'reading' that Fish is doing of this campaign... 
the application of a narrative form to a political process.  I can't decide if 
I think it is formalized and forced or not."

I've not read Paradise Regained (and it's been something over 30 years since I 
read Paradise Lost), so I don't really have an opinion about whether the 
comparison Fish draws between the current presidential campaign and Milton's 
story is forced or not, but I think that we all are constantly telling stories 
like the one Fish tells, though not all of us can call Milton to our aid.

I don't know whether the story Fish tells, in which Obama prudently stays out 
of the fray that McCain keeps trying to drag him into, is a story Obama tells 
himself or not, but it captures one of the things I like about O'Bama.  The 
characterization Fish gives of Obama -- I equally might have said "the role 
Fish has Obama play in his story" -- resonates with ways I've thought about 
Obama's actions.  I've told myself a similar story, albeit much less completely 
articulated than Fish's.

Others, of course, may think Fish's (and my) story is complete bunk.  They 
would have some other story, casting Obama perhaps as an unatractive figure in 
a narrative with a very different trajectory.

But in any case, I think that each of us -- my imagined interlocutors and I -- 
would be "applying a narrative form" to the political process.

I think that's what's always going on in every organizational decision (I'd 
push that even harder, and say in almost all decisions of any sort).  We're 
telling ourselves a story about the situation and the 'decision' is equally a 
practical, physical thing (whose name do I mark on the ballot?) and a turn of 
the narrative screw.  What happens next precipitates revisions of the story, 
sometimes extending the story's trajectory as it was envisioned at the time of 
the decision, at other times diverting that trajectory dramatically, 
precipitating a call for rewriting the story as it was at the time of the 
decision.

To revert to the question of rational decisions I was talking about the other 
day (and with a tip of the hat to Eric Yost and Mike Geary for their comments, 
to which I didn't quite know what to say...), I think the choices people make 
are based on what they think the next episode should be, or what they want it 
to be, in the on-going, improvised drama(s) we're all constantly enacting.  All 
the rational analysis we do serves only to furnish the props, the set and the 
definition of the situation in which we're to improvise the next episode -- 
sort of like the cards Drew Carey used to pull up and read from to set up the 
scene for the ensemble to improvise in the show "Whose Line is it Anyway?"

One problem with that way of looking at things is that it means there's no 
certainty to be had, no decision can really be rational and just about anything 
can be negotiated at any time.  A lot of people find that uncomfortable.  But 
to me, that's the way it is and the pipe dream that we could have it any other 
way -- that our leaders or insitutions could be so farsighted and competent 
that they could eliminate the uncertainty of the future -- always was just 
that, a pipe dream.

Best to all,
Eric Dean
Washington, DC

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