Boje's Advanced Storytelling Methods seminar at Lille France

PDF of slides for this seminar Thank you Donia for the transcription and interview results.

Our case study for today: Ancient and Modern Technological Processes in Blacksmithing Art Work; Ferronnerie d’Art et Physics Quantum

Part I:

1. What is ontological storytelling inquiry methodology?

1. Answer: it has the three dimensions: narrative-past, living stories-present, and antenarratives transforming the future. THere has been a long time divide between Rationalism Narrative and the Empiricism that reduces living stories to objects relationships. On the one hand, Rationalism presupposes " and so the world is only 'what' of symbolic experiences of the past. Empiricism, on the other hand, presupposes a phenomenal world order, whose locus is the body, objects in relation to other objects, present-at-hand, and that the observer and measurement calculations are independent of the 'what' so 'livng stories' become objectified and reified into nodal points. But this Descartes dualism of Subjectivity and Objectivity, has a third player, the Ontological. This gap can be overcome by the Ontology of Antenarrative inquiry, where the meaning of space-time-mattering has meaning, Being-in-the-world in primordial existence. In ontological storytelling inquiry (OSI), many futures arrives ahead-of-themself, and the many pasts also arrive, and both influence the moving present. It is the more radical paradigm of Quantum Physics which has raised questions and conducted experiments that problematize Newtonian Mechanistic Empiricism, and also brings the Observer Effect center stage, so the gap can no longer conceal the 'what.'

PART II: Theory Points

1. "No place dominates enought to be global and no palce is self-contained enought to be local" (Latour, 2005: 204)
2. Storyteling is an attunement that "functions largely in the building out of the past and the future: (Mead, 1932/1980: 75).
3. "Past, present and future belong to a passage which attains temporal structure through the event, and they may be considered long or short as they are compared with other such passages" (Mead, ibid, p. 24).
4. "Past and future as definite horizons which each define the present - pressing forth into the there - from out of the past and future" (Heidegger, 1971: 72, Ontology - The Hermeneutics of Facticity).
5. Analysis: storytelling is de-distancing the global and local. Storytelling of moving present, is coming out of the past and the future (ahead-of-itself). Short and long temporal duration of the passage of past and future storytelling into the moving present means that storytelling of a linear past-present-future (beginning, middle, end) coherence narrative is a coverup for the other sorts of temporal orders. E.g. For Mead it is present-->past-->future. For Heidegger it is future-->past--->present. For Henri Bergson it is past-now, past-now, etc. swelling into the now-present, but not a future arriving ahead-of-itself. Both Heidegger and Mead took exception to Bergson's duree (the immediate present of past-nows swelled into the present. Heidegger call it the 'monstrous' now.
6. In sum, in the blacksmith art businesses, the future is channeled, a path is set, and is arriving, that the organization is moving along at present, and is attaching a past history narrative that fits that future-path. for more on this point see http://peaceaware.com/Boje

PART III: DEFINITIONS IF WE NEED THEM

What is an antenarrative? In 2001 book on Narrative Methods... I defined 'antenarrative' as a double-meaning, a 'before' narrative coheres, and a 'bet' on the future transforming the present and past. This is a Rationalism paradigm shift for narrative which presumes that the past will replay in the future. And it is a challenge to Empiricism which keeps objectifying living stories into the present, where only the Now matters. Antenarrative inquiry raises the questions of what are the multiple ways of space-time-mattering that are in play.

1. What are four types of antenarratives? linear, cyclical, spiral, and rhizomatic-assemblages. The linear path from past->present->future is presumed in Rationalism, in the monological linear-ante-narrative. The cyclical-antenarrative path of phases that repeat as they were in the past, again and again, in the future is the second sort. The spiral-antenarrative, with its updrafts and downdraft forces is an ontology that both Deleuze (Repetition and DIfference) and Heidegger (Poetry, Language & Thought) write about. The rhizomatic-assemblages are what Deleuze and Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus), and to some extent Latour (Reassembling the Soical) write about. So what I see happening in the world of blacksmith art sculpture, is a paradigm shift from ancient Greek alchemy of the elements to the modern technologies of power hammers, and now into the quantum physics which use laser cutters and computer algorithms such as in the work of Julian Voss-Andreae. And in this transformation the ancient alchemy of the black arts and the quantum are having their encounter. Each blacksmith artist balances the old and the new production prcesses. In a sense Karen Barad (Meeting the Universe Halfway) got it right, there is an intra-activity of discourse with materiality, or as I put it, an intra-penetration of storytelling with quanta-materiality. A new ontology of space-time-mattering is being set loose in the nouveau blacksmithing art. And this is a revolution as important as the union of Newtonian physics and the late Renaissance art.
2. What are the four types of causality involved?
   1. Linear causality: "If with some rat material, applying some process of transformation, we produce some consumer object, we are in a frame of linear causality: z cause produces y effects" (p. 61). Here we have the usual and ordinary beginning, middle, end narrative, where the past linear repeats its pattern in the future.
      
   2. Cyclic causality (feedback loop causality): "An enterprise needs to be regulated. It must carry out its production based on external needs, from the power of its work and its internal energy capacity. But we know“ have known for about 40 years now, thanks to cybernetics“ that the effect (sales or slumps) can feed back to stimulate or slow the production of objects and services in the enterprise" (p. 61).The cyclical causality presumes the past cycle will repeat its phases exactly in the future cycle. But what happens when the cycle path counteracts or amplifies. Your cycle causality becomes spiral causaltiy and a very different antenarrative is happening.
      
   3. Spiral causality (recursive causality): "In the recursive process, the effects and products are necessary to the process that creates them. The product is producer of that which produces it. "Society itself, as an organized and organizing whole, feeds back to produce the individuals through education, language, and school. The individuals, in their interactions, produce society, which produces the individuals that produce it. This creates a spiral circuit through historical evolution" (p. 61). With the spiral-antenarrative the forces of deviation-counteraction and deviation-amplification means that the repetition of the orbits is not the sameness we knew and relied upon in cyclical causality. Now the causality has other sorts of forces, so there are moves left and right, in and out, updrafts and downdrafts. Strategy is no long so predictable, yet a certain directionality, disclosability, de-severance, etc. is possible to fore-tell, and to fore-care about in the fore-structuring. The radical shift is that sensemaking is no longer just retrospective, it is the future arriving into the moving present, as well as the important forces of the past swelling into the moving present. Space-time-mattering is occuring from two ways and changing the moving present, but not deteministically, not repetively. And this gives potentiality to make moves that are liberatory, to enter into wider, more open orbits. Or, one can make conservative choices and follow along tighter orbits, but these also are attracted by the downdraft. The cases of the blacksmith artists give examples of choices made between the updraft into outer orbits of ventureness and the downdraft of imitation, those tighter orbits around what Heidegger calls the center-draft (PLT).
      
   4. Rhizomatic-Assemblage causality (relational/mutual and recursive): cause and effects are in an assemblage network, or "rhizome"of relationships, in a repetition of difference that deterritorializes and reterritorializes the landscape (see Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). In relational causality, "This relational type of causality involves recognizing that an effect is caused by the relationship, often one of balance or imbalance, between elements of a system. Neither element is the cause by itself" (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2008: 6). http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/smg/Website/UCP/causal/causal_types.html The rhizomatic-assemblage antenarrative does not have the elegant geometry of linear, cyclical, or spiral-antenarratives. Rather, this sort of antenarrative moves every which way, with above ground runners, below ground root stems, and each producing tubers that become new nodals in the networking movements.

Reference Materials and Background, if youw want to look further

I am best known for making a distinction between narrative and story

Boje, D. M. 1995. "Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A Postmodern Analysis of Disney as 'Tamara-land.'" Academy of Management Journal. 38(4): 997-1035. see pdf of article

STORYTELLING ORGANIZATION and SPIN:

Merci Beaucoup

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