1 Introduction Davip HERMAN 1 Interdisciplinary Narrative Theory: A Sketch ugh they are united by their common convem with the forms and ns of narrative, and also by their shared focus on the relations be- tween stories and intelligent behavior, the twelve new essays gathered in this volume are notable forthe diversity of their datasets, descriptive tech- niques, and explanatory aims.!' The contributors’ samples range from sto ries constructed for cognitive-psychological experiments, to narratives told by patients in psychotherapy, to stories collected during sociolinguistic interviews, 1o news stories, to stories written for children, to narratives fiom several anstc genres, including various kinds of fiction, Neoclassical French drama, a movie screenplay, and Wagnerian opera. ‘The authors" methods of inguiry are equally diverse, ranging from reflection on what goals a theory of narrative should set itself and how it should go about Teaching those goals, 10 quantitatively based evaluation of competing 1o- search hypotheses conceming stories, 10 case studies of individual nama- tives, to consideration of how stories form past of the basic mental equip- iment of ‘cognitively modern humans’, in Mark Tumer’s phrase. Some of the essays, indeed, use several ofthese methods (and others) at once. There use the terms intlizence,itligent behavior, and cognition mote or less syn00y- ‘mously, adopting Barbara Rogof’s (1990) definition of mligance as the socially supported ability fo solve problems grounded in particular domains of activity. However | do not mean to suggest at al the contibuiors to the volume would subsribe to this same defaition. Narrative Theory andthe Cognitive Sconces David Herma (ed) Copyright © 2003, CSL Publications,2/ Davin Henatan, ‘The extraordinary variety of the contributors’ tutor texts and research foci testifies to the pervasiveness and polyfunetionality of narrative itself As accounts of what happened to particular people in particular circum stances and with specific consequences, stories are found in every culture and subculture and can be viewed as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change. At issue is a strategy for sense- ‘making that contrasts with, but is in no way inferior to, ‘scientific’ modes of explanation that characterize phenomena as mere instances of general cov ering laws? In the narratological literature, narrative is broadly defined as a sequen lly organized representation of a sequence of events (Chatman 1990; Genette 1980 [1972]; Prince 1982; Rimmon-Kenan 1983). In this con- text, events can be understood as time- and place-specific transitions from some source state S (e.g. a battle is imminent) to a target state S* (the bat- Ue has been won or lost). As Prince (1973) noted, however, event-sequences fare a necessary but not a sufficient condition for stories. What distinguishes (1) from (2)—what makes (2) a narrative instead of a mere agglomeration of unrelated elements, as in (1}-—is the structure into which states and events are slotted in the second case but not the first (1) The battle was over. The battle was imminent. The fight took place (2) The batle was imminent. Then the fight took place. As a result, the battle was over. 2 Relevant in this content is Jerome Bruner’ (1986) diinton between ‘narrative ‘paradigmati’ (or Ingico-lassifentory) modes of thinking. Bruner’ srgoment tha tive thinking constitutes a mode of copii on » par with paradigmatic thinking hes helped ‘spawn the research tration sometimes refered to broadly ns ‘nacatve. psychology (el ‘Sarbin 1986). However, as Hoshmand (2000) points out in her overview aticl, wotk eon ‘acted under the auspees of narrative prychology actualy inludes a numberof more or Test interrelated endeavors: estemologieal reflection on naraive as a paradigm for knowledge viewed as socially constructed; 2 mode of mete-psyehological or mete theoretical inquiry sing narrative as 8 base metaphor for theory consinction and theoretical integration: method for sbstenive psychological ingsry complementing quantitative methods and draw ing on ‘narrative ways of knowing’, Le. those associated with ethnographic, grounded theory, and phenomenological syle of investigation; and the application of concept from namative theory by clinical practitioners and psychologic reseachers (ef. Howerd 1991) Narrative pychologits engaged in any ofthese endenvors wil I believe, find a least por tions ofthe present volume useful. Conversely, ll the contributors tothe volume investigate Issues proximate to. or in some cases overlapping with, those explored in one or mare of the [pstmentoned midornins of rare psychrogy ‘Compare the definition offered by Mtrgoln in hie contrition to thie volume: *.a 1 verbal representation of things in time, and more specially of changes of state caused by physical eventereopuerion 3 In (1) two states and an event are presented additively, but in (2) the target state isan inversion of the source state, and moreover the inversion in ques tion is caused by the event that intervenes between the source and target states. The difference between narrative and non-narrative sequences thus derives from the higher-order, supersentental structure that can be discemed in (2) but not (1). Inversely, humans’ ‘narative competence’ stems from their ability 1o produce and understand representations of event sequences in which such higher-order structure obtains—even if, in the case of verbal harrative, that structure is not explicitly signalled via temporal adverbs (then), causal connestives (as a resuli), or other linguistic means. For his par, Todorov (1968) imposed an even more restrictive condi- tion on how states and events have to be distributed for an event-sequence to qualify as a story. For Todorov, narratives prototypically follow a trjec- tory leading from an initial state of equilibrium, through a phase of dise- 4quilibrium, to an endpoint at which equilibrium is restored (on w different Tooting) because of intermediary events—though not every narrative will trace the entirety of this path (of. Bremond 1973; Kafalenos 1995), To- dorov thereby sought to capture the intuition that stories characterstically involve some sort of conflict, or the thwarting of participants’ intended actions by unplanned events, which may or may not be the effect of other participants’ intended actions. From this perspective, to be categorized as a narrative, an event-sequence must involve some kind of noteworthy (hence “tllable’) disruption of an initial state of equilibrium by an unanticipated and often untoward event or chain of events (ef. Propp 1968 (1928). Bruner (1991) advances a similar claim when he suggests that stories em- body a dialectic of ‘canonicity and breach’. As Bruner puts it, “to be worth telling, a tale must be sbout how an implicit canonical script has been breached , violate, or deviated from in a manner to do violence to...{ts] “Legitimacy” (1991: 1). ‘In contrast with some ofthe earlier narratological research, the contribu- tions to the present volume seck less t0 specify necessary and sulficient conditions for story than to explore the semiotic, cognitive, and sociointer- factional environments in which narrative acquires salience and to which stories in turn lend structure, Indeed, as I argue in my own contribution, narratives are found virtually everywhere because the construction of stories lends crucial support to so many practices and types of activity. Stories ‘enable people to communicate about past, imagined, or otherwise non- proximate situations and events (Goffman 1974, 1981). Further, by con- struing themselves and their cohorts as ‘characters’ in an unfolding nara- tive, people are able to make inferences about their own and others? minds (Herman under review). Stories can also be used to build an account of ‘who was responsible for what during a criminal trial or a family argument