Conclusions

NARRATIVES

Golden age, utopian and dystopic discourses tell stories with beginnings and endings. Not all these stories are presented in linear fashion; they may incorporate flash backs or present the perspectives and adventures of multiple characters. Readers must nevertheless be able to impose a linear structure on the overall narrative. Linearity is shared by autobiographical narratives that are essential components of our identities. Like all works of history, they impose order and progression on events that was rarely evident at the time and may not be justifiable in retrospect.⁸⁶ They do so by playing up certain strands of development at the expense of others and interpreting them in a manner fully supportive of, their plot line.

Students of narrative like Hayden White and Louis Mink describe narratives as imaginary creations that we impose on the world.⁸⁷ Most people think of linear narratives as "natural" forms of expression that capture the essence of the world and of ourselves. Some philosophers in the phenomenological tradition contend that narratives are central to our being because they allow us to incorporate the past into the present in meaningful ways.⁸⁸ Such Kantian-style isomorphism between our minds and the world is highly questionable, although it is deeply entrenched in Western philosophy and culture. Efforts by novelists from James Joyce to Robbe-Grillet and Italo Calvino to break free of linear structure do not have wide appeal because of the unaccustomed and therefore difficult demands they make on readers. There is nevertheless nothing "natural" or superior about linear structure. Such beliefs are based on the false understanding of causation and its representation.

Linearity is distinguished by its causal understanding of the physical and social worlds. In such narratives, earlier events or developments are assumed to responsible for later ones and constitute the thread that ties stories together. Others forms of representation are available and some have a long history in Western culture. Aristotle, while aware of efficient, or preceding causes, also emphasizes telos, or the ends that objects and living things are intended to serve. The acorn's purpose is to grow into an oak, and a story about its life would work backwards from this end to explain various stages of its transformation and growth.⁸⁹ The New Testament is framed in part this way as are Marxist accounts of history, their oak trees being the Second Coming and communism. Greek tragedy and some modern fiction employ archetypes, as Mozart and Da Ponte do in Don Giovanni. While telos-driven stories and archetypes are often embedded in linear plots, causation is external to them. Depending on one's reading of Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus' behavior is attributable to fate or his character, either, or both of which, make the plot unfold as it does.

Modern understandings of linear causation build on the pioneering work of David Hume. Following Bacon and his students, who narrowed the concept of cause to immediate or efficient cause, Hume reasoned that "X" could be considered the cause of "Y" if the two consistently covary and "X" precedes "Y."⁹⁰ This approach to causation lies at the core of neopositivism and its search for regularities. In the course of the twentieth century, non-linear models have become prominent in the physical and biological sciences. They assume that the physical and biological worlds are complex, open-ended systems in which agency, accident and confluence are all important determinants of outcomes In such worlds, the interaction effects of variables are often non-additive, as they depend on the presence or absence of other conditions. Even linear systems with known feedback loops can quickly become non-linear and unpredictable when some of their parameters have high values.⁹¹

Elsewhere, I have made the case for considering the social world an open-ended non-linear system; by non-linear I mean a system that does not satisfy the superposition principle so its output is not necessarily proportional to its input. I contend that many, if not most, social and political transformations are the product of non-linear confluences.⁹² If this is true, linear narratives cannot model the social world of our individual lives as they too involve transformations, some of which are triggered by confluences or accidents. If there is any isomorphism between our minds and our world it will have to be non-linear in nature.

Hume describes causation as a product of the human mind, not a feature of the world.⁹³ This understanding is accepted by most physical scientists, who have largely abandoned the notion of cause. Causation and its linear formulation are social constructions that we take for granted because they are so deeply embedded in our culture. Linear perspective in art is a telling example. In the 1920s, Erwin Panofsky suggested that each historical epoch of Western civilization had its own "perspective" that was consonant with and helped to negotiate a particular Weltanschauung. Linear perspective should not be regarded as a scientific advance over medieval representations of space; it came no closer than earlier perspectives in capturing reality, but did express more effectively the world view of Renaissance Italians.⁹⁴ Panofsky’s ideas initially met great resistance, if not incredulity, from art historians and scientists, which may have reflected the general reluctance of even intelligent and sophisticated people to recognize the extent to which their understandings of the world are limited and parochial.⁹⁵ Panofsky's insight that linear perspective is above all a convention no longer seems so radical as it parallels similar moves towards constructivism in anthropology, philosophy and political science.

Could we move away from linearity in our life narratives? The occasional use of other forms of narration in Western culture and their wider use elsewhere indicates that it is at least a theoretical possibility. It is most pronounced in the visual arts, where during the course of the last century, abstract, non-linear forms of representation made great inroads. However, such art remains an elite fascination and most Westerners remain uncomfortable with it even they may encounter it on a regular basis. Postwar popular culture is more promising because it has consciously sought to blur, stretch and blend traditional genres and create new ones. Television is particularly adventurous in this regard. Programming has moved away from grand, linear, narratives. The forty-five episodes Monty Python and His Flying Circus, which began in 1965, broke new ground in this regard as did music videos, which came a decade later, with the advent of MTV in 1977. Music videos violate most aesthetic boundaries and routinely treat people and their activities in non-linear ways.⁹⁶ In postmodern culture, unitary identities are giving way to unstable, pastiche identities.⁹⁷ The recognition, even quest, for such identities is reflected in clothing that mix items representative of diverse styles and purposes that rendered them illegible when combined for purposes of distinctive individual presentations of self.

In the absence of other pressures to rethink our identities it nevertheless seems unlikely that non-linear forms of narrative will ever become really pronounced, let alone dominant. Claims are made that female autobiographical narratives are less linear than their male counterparts, but for the foreseeable future it is probably fair to assume that linear narratives will retain their hold over both sexes and the autobiographies constructed this way are likely to reaffirm our illusions about unified and consistent selves.⁹⁸

Might it be possible to think about our lives in non-linear ways within the framework of linear narrative? This could take the form of parallel linear narratives that track the development of multiple selves. Such narratives would not capture the reality of social life as well as their non-linear counterparts but they would allow life narratives to support more sophisticated understandings of the self. Multiple narratives would also encourage us to think about some of the connections among these different framings and the extent to which they are contingent. If so, we might consider branching points connecting these framings and some of the other selves we might have been or might yet become. For some people, this kind of reflection could serve as a spur to personal development and a more humble understanding of ourselves and our species.