Considering counter-narratives: Narrating, resisting, making sense (review)

This timely book borrows mainly from the editors’ themed issues of the peer-reviewed journal Narrative Inquiry (known before 1997 as the Journal of Narrative and Life History). This overlooked book is constructed in an original fashion: six core articles are each followed by a series of four or five commentaries by various authors (probably by some of the original reviewers) and then concluded with responses to the commentaries by the original authors of the articles. I consider this unusual approach to discussion and debate efficient and thought-provoking.

In ‘Opening to the original contributions: Counter-narratives and the power to oppose’, Molly Andrews broadly defines counter-narratives as ‘the stories which people tell and live which offer resistance, either implicitly or explicitly, to dominant cultural narratives’ (1). The six main articles touch on various themes including motherhood, normality, photography, daytime television talk shows, cultural memory, and older women talking about sex. All articles show how a second version of a story can somehow emerge from an event at some point. In the first part Andrews focuses on ‘the story of mothering’ as told in interviews with a few elderly people, wondering about how time can change their perceptions and judgments about their relationships with their own mothers. In Part 2 Karen Throsby argues that a group of participants who have failed at in vitro fertilization try to transform their way of retelling their stories into the terms of ‘normality’. In Part 3 Barbara Harrison studies relationships between photographic narratives and some other methods of constructing a story, usually texts. Part 4 is Rebecca Jones’s discussion of older women’s intimate thoughts about their own sexual experiences after the age of sixty. In Part 5 Corinne Squire studies the representation of gender and race in daytime television, observing differences between ‘serious’ shows and entertainment. Part 6 enables Mark Freeman to question what he calls the ‘narrative unconscious’ of the autobiographical narratives. Finally, Michael Bamberg provides an updated conclusion that did not appear in the original two issues of the journal.

Perhaps the most stimulating pages in each part are the concise responses the authors of the six articles write to the commentaries, especially relating to the part on photography, which was my favorite because of the interdisciplinary perspectives it brought. There is also an accurate discussion about realism and hegemony in that part.

On the down side, I do not consider Considering counter-narratives as relevant for undergraduates, but it might inspire many scholars working in linguistics, everyday sociology, cultural studies, and gerontology. I believe the book would even be suitable for some academics studying the dynamics of ideologies; that is the impression I got when I read it for the second time. Furthermore, the possible links between counter-narratives and ethnomethodology could be questioned more deeply, as is suggested in some chapters (see, for instance, pp. 114 and 191). I can understand why the coeditors did not want to impose their own definition of counter-narratives, but I would have liked to see this concept defined in clear terms by every author, at least tentatively; I feel most of them did it only implicitly. In sum, Considering counter-narratives is not made for newcomers in narrative studies, but it surely succeeds in opening many doors and raising more questions than bringing answers. I think most scholars already familiar with narrative theories and discourse analysis can still learn from the book.