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1. NARRATIVE EXPLANATION AND ITS MALCONTENTS
Author(s) -
CARR DAVID
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
history and theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.169
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1468-2303
pISSN - 0018-2656
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2008.00433.x
Subject(s) - narrative , epistemology , narrative criticism , action (physics) , narrative network , narrative inquiry , mode (computer interface) , narrative history , sociology , value (mathematics) , history , aesthetics , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , operating system
In this paper I look at narrative as a mode of explanation and at various ways in which the explanatory value of narrative has been criticized. I begin with the roots of narrative explanation in everyday action, experience, and discourse, illustrating it with the help of a simple example. I try to show how narrative explanation is transformed and complicated by circumstances that take us beyond the everyday into such realms as jurisprudence, journalism, and history. I give an account of why narrative explanation normally satisfies us, and how or in what sense it actually explains. Then I consider how narrative is challenged and rejected as a mode of explanation in many scientific and other contexts and why attempts are made to replace it with something else. I try to evaluate the nature and sources of these challenges, and I describe this controversy over narrative against the historical background of its emergence. My paper ends with a pragmatic defense of narrative explanation against these challenges.