Narrative engagement and the creative practices of International Relations

Abstract

Personal narratives are political narratives and their potential for reflexivity lies in the ways they may attempt to link that relation. Narrative approaches are beginning to populate the mainstream journals and publishing houses of critical International Relations (IR). The possibilities for relationship between narrative and reflexivity are enabled by understanding the reflexive capacities of narrative. It is possible to respond to some of the seemingly insoluble problems that narrative evokes its supposed indulgence or its extreme, potentially depoliticizing, subjectivity. Narrative writers actually tend not to make grand, sweeping generalizations based on their experiences, but rather attempt to connect these experiences to the social and political world in specific and grounded ways. It should be remembered that some of the most powerful social theory ever produced has emerged from the political and narrative experiential writings of great thinkers like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Cynthia Enloe, and Patricia Hill Collins.