The Narrative Turn and the Poetics of Resistance: Towards a New Language for Critical Educational Studies

Abstract

This article argues for the adoption of a new language in critical educational studies through the ‘narrative turn’, a turn that politicizes knowledge by drawing attention to questions concerning the meaning, construction and authorship of narratives. In the authors' interpretation going back to the poetics of early narrative forms they development the argument that there is an ancient history of the form that privileges it as a means and form of resistance. The article tracks the adoption of narrative in the human sciences and details the development of narratology as the scientific study of narrative by such luminaries as Paul Ricoeur, and describes the ‘crisis of narrative’ in the postmodern condition by reference to the work of Lyotard, who begins to problematize the ‘metanarrative’ and its role in legitimation processes. This political understanding of narrative is further explored in relation to ‘narrative identity’ through the work of Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha and Charles Taylor and their emphasis on social imaginaries.