Stories about Stories
It is a well-accepted fact of the academic world that those who engage in research and study and the rigorous exploration of the world around them are prone to pretensions. We accept this as a fact of their position in the world, and the nature of what it is they do: they explore. They delve into the very fabric of life itself and attempt to extrapolate answers that will eventually trickle into our everyday lives in some unknown and likely unappreciated way. Though certainly many of this bent hope that their discoveries will change the world in some visible, meaningful way, it is my belief that few of them acknowledge what they do as having such change as a likely outcome.
This, however, does not stop endless pontificating, posturing, and down-right delusional behaviour on the part of many who would consider themselves ‘academics’ in defending what it is they do as being important, often the most important.
Before I wade into this topic, let me first declare my colours, so that you know my biases going in: In terms of what the academy might call me, I would likely sit as both a political scientist and a historian. For reasons both personal and academic, I would likely more readily identify as a social historian, but certainly one with a particular interest in politics (among nearly everything else). Philosophically, I come from a tradition that stresses perception, subjectivity, relativity, and narrative. In terms of fancy identifiers, I would probably be characterised as a postmodernist (perhaps as a post-postmodernist), and more specifically as someone influenced by the Hermeneutic tradition.
But what all of those fancy words manage to hide is the way I actually see myself and frankly, the way I see everyone else.
I a man of stories.
As far as I am concerned, the entire world is made of stories. I think everyone is actively engaged in the project of either understanding stories already told, or creating new ones. This understanding of the world stresses the most basic definition of story, as being an account of something, real or imaginary, that is recounted to others, perhaps even to the self. When you look at the word story in that sense, then every act of exploration becomes a story. There is the obvious example of the historian who looks at the past and relays that information to the present, but the comparison need not be so facile. Chemists are story-tellers, too. Combining one compound with another, watching for a reaction, recording that, and then relaying that information; that’s a story. Physicists, studying the formation and functioning of the universe, are looking at stories – often deeply important ones. Even mathematicians, sometimes distant and separated from other disciplines and avenues of exploration are story-tellers, at least in my mind. The development of an equation, perhaps the simplest form of a story.
Think about it: one plus one equals two. If I have one thing, and then I bring in something else, and add it together, I have two things. It may sound like an abstract process, but what you are talking about is the birth of something new from two previous things. This process can be carried forward in infinitely complex ways on a nearly infinite number of activities.
Stories matter; progression matters. Everything we do in this crazy world is based on the assumption that something is going to happen. The non-presence of something is still something that we note, something that we are going to comment on. Nothingness breeds stories even still. This is the idea – the story- that I want to impart to you who might stumble into reading this. Despite the posturing we all make, the many claims to superiority that float around, we’re all fundamentally interested in the same thing: stories. If we can tell them, if we delve into the world deeply enough, then maybe we can add something powerful to the story of humanity. We can only hope that that story has a good many pages left in it.
