MC52060A Money & the Media

Money and Narrative/Stories

Outline of todays lecture

What are narratives and stories, and why do they
matter?
Frameworks for analysing narratives and stories
about money
Fictional narratives
Nonfiction narratives
Autobiography and alternative histories

What is narrative?
Aristotle: the art of storytelling = the dramatic
imitating and plotting of human action (Kearney
2002: 3)
Narrative is the representation of an event or a
series of events (Abbott 2008: 13)
More than simply a description, exposition or lyric
And all around us: friends, teachers, newsreader,
novelists, columnists all narrate things to us

What is narrative?
Distinction often made between narratives and
stories
Stories = the series of events that occur, and
which are narrated
Narrative = the specific way of plotting and telling
the story
Points to fact that stories are always mediated
we do not see them directly

Why do narratives/stories matter?

Stories/narratives make things explicable (how
the world came to be)
They make things memorable over time
They are inter-subjective (someone telling
something to someone about something)
They thus make the world, and the events that
happen in it, both shareable and historical
contributing to creation of community

Why do narratives/stories matter?

The same thing applies at level of the individual
When someone asks you who you are, you tell
your story (Kearney 2002: 4)
Every life is in search of a narrative
Narrative provides a viable form of identity
It is a pattern to cope with the experience of
chaos and confusion and with the experience of
temporality (Kearney 2002: 129)

How narrative works

Narrative involves telling story in a particular way
Aristotle: it is an imitation of action
A creative redescription of the world such that
hidden patterns and unexplored meanings
come out (Kearney 2002: 12)
It gives us a distance from which to view events
Opens up perspectives not normally accessible?
Empathy and detachment => new ways of being

2. Frameworks for analysing

narratives about money
Thematic in terms of ongoing/persistent
conceptual frameworks (see week 1)
Marx, Aristotle and others: money as corrosive
of human relations
Adam Smith; money/trade as benign
Simmel, Weber: money as ambiguous disruption

Frameworks for analysing narratives

about money
Historical in relation to issues/concerns of the time
E.g. demise of trade unions, rise of financial
capitalism, high levels of unemployment, role of
women in workforce
Geographical: concerns specific to place/region
These are not mutually exclusive
Broad frameworks (e.g. money as corrosive) may
be foregrounded at specific historical moments

Frameworks for analysing narratives

about money
The social function of stories e.g. ideology critique
E.g. Lvi-Strauss stories provide symbolic solutions
to contradictions which could not be solved
empirically (Kearney 2002: 6)
Critical theory/Horkheimer & Adorno the extent to
which cultural products (e.g. novels, films, songs)
affirm the status quo (affirmative vs autonomous
art)
False comforts, false resolutions?

Fictional narratives money

corrupts the person
Wall Street (1987)
Dramatizes real
historical change
(financial capital 1980s)
Broader theme of
potential of money to
corrupt human values
A battle for the soul of
a young man

Fictional narratives money as the

power to control and exploit
Pilcrow (2008) Adam
Mars-Jones
Money as form of
communication, but also
control over others
Transposes Marxist
themes moneys
power to institute
relations of domination
and exploitation

Fictional narratives money vs

authentic relationship
Jane Austen and
marriage plot novels
(Male) hero has to
choose between wealthy
woman who would
enhance status
and poorer but more
altruistic or authentic
women
The triumph of love over
money?

Fictional narratives money/trade

as benign
Rarer (because less
dramatic?)
And more often as
backdrop to ordinary
life
Markets/money-making
activity as largely benign
Brings different types of
people together, leads to
cooperation (see Adam
Smith, Montesquieu)

Fictional narratives money as

ambiguous disruption
Brewsters Millions
(1985 [1902])
Man with no sense of
money has to spend
$30 million within 30
days to inherit $300
million
Dramatizes ways to
waste or use money
Also the ambiguously
transformative effect of
wealth

Fictional narratives
Mary Poppins
Set in Edwardian
London
Banker married to
suffragette
Tension between
different relationships
to money
To invest or to give?

Fictional narratives historical

concerns
Boys from the Blackstuff
(1982)
Unemployment in
Liverpool in Thatcher era
Humorous but ultimately
tragic look at the way
economics affects
ordinary people (BFI
2006)

3. Fictional narratives
My Beautiful
Laundrette (1985)
Many themes, but
context of
Thatcherism and
entrepreneurial
culture of 1980s

Nonfiction narratives
A broad category: real-world events narrated in all
kinds of ways
Historical narratives share with fiction the
transformative plotting of scattered events into a new
paradigm (Kearney 2002: 12)
But make distinct referential claim based on evidence
Yet in many languages same word used for stories
and history (histoire, Geschichte)
Historical narratives are world-making as well as
world-disclosing

Nonfiction narratives
History is told with interests in mind? An interest in
communicating/sharing (Habermas)
What we consider communicable is also what we
consider memorable and valuable (Kearney 2002)
Narrative comes between us and the world (Abbott
2008: 154)
Nonfiction writers select some details rather than
others, emphasize some not others, disclose etc
Emplotment: chronicle of events => meaningful
story

Nonfiction narratives: the

dramatization of real events
Made in Dagenham
(2010)
Dramatizes Ford
sewing machinists
strike of 1968
Re-claims womens
role in labour history
Then becomes part of
shareable
world (Kearney)

Nonfiction narratives: true-life

stories

Nonfiction narratives:
documentaries

Autobiographies and counterhistories

The role of stories and narratives in creating a
sense of selfhood
Narrative provides us with one of our most viable
forms of identity individual and
communal (Kearney 2002: 4)
Storytelling as sense-making technique? (e.g.
in psychoanalysis/therapy)
A way of locating oneself in history but also
sometimes against it

Autobiographies and counterhistories

Landscape for a Good
Woman (1987)
Against romanticized
accounts of working class
A story of unfairness,
resentment, and wanting
material things
Also about stories

Autobiographies and counterhistories

Autobiographies and counterhistories

Why autobiographies and counter-histories
matter:
The stories that people tell themselves in order
to explain how they got to the place they
currently inhabit are often in deep and
ambiguous conflict with the official interpretive
devices of a culture (Steedman, 1987: 6)

New narratives and micro-narratives

Many authors (e.g. Kearney, Abbott, Fludernik)
raise question of end of narrative/ threats to
story
Some agreement that there are challenges to
tradition of linear narrative, new forms emerging
Narratives are increasingly multi-plotted, multivocal and multi-media (Kearney)
Worth attending to narrative qualities of e.g.
photography (Berger, Another Way of Telling)
Also the micro-narratives of social media?

Social media micro-narratives

Conclusion
Why stories and narratives matter making things
memorable, comprehensible, shareable, social,
historical
Different types of narratives
Similarities and differences between fiction and
nonfiction narratives
Autobiographies and counter narratives
Social media/digital media and new narrative forms