Narrative Templates and Modes of Emplotment

The final procedure involved examining two forms of macro narrative structures:

narrative templates and modes of emplotment. Through these two aspects, narratives and linguistic apparatuses are linked to the elaboration of narrative coherence. These– together with evaluative binary codes – are the most macro-related aspects of narrative theory.

A substantial proportion of the stories recounted drew on public interpretations of past events, i.e. forms of collective remembering (e.g. A. Assmann 2006a, Halbwachs 1952, Olick 1999, Wertsch 2002). These interpretations were normally contested and conflicting; however, there is usually a more canonical narrative which controls – more or less successfully – the current meaning and framing of past events.

Drawing on James Wertsch’s (2002, 2008) notion of ‘schematic narrative templates’, I would suggest that most stories are characterized by typical forms of plotting (beginning, middle, end), characters and moral evaluations via these narrative templates. Thereby, people can organize biographical experiences, media reports, family transmissions, historical sources and anecdotes in a more structured way.

Not all the events reported present such patterning. Some events were barely mentioned; they function rather as a form of narrative orientation or focalization.

Additionally, people can employ contesting and contradictory templates when reporting the same events in different parts of an interview. Still, some templates seem to be more robust than others since they provide more structured historical sequences, complete repertories of characters and clear evaluative clauses.

Conversely, some templates, which lack historical focalization, emphasize only moral or existential attributions (for example, see below the differences between the Argentine and Chilean narrative accounts of their respective dictatorships).

Narrative templates can evolve over time and therefore possess some form of historicity. In addition, they can be generalizable for reporting different events. As Wertsch claims: “I am concerned with the notion that a generalized narrative form may underlie a range of narratives in a cultural tradition. This changes the focus from analyzing a list of specific narratives to analyzing an underlying pattern that is instantiated in many of them” (2002: 61).

As I will show later, narrative templates might vary according to class, gender, political tradition and national constellation, all collective attempts at controlling narrative boundaries (Eder 2009, Harrison White 2008). At this more general level, I will highlight and compare – in every generational site – social differences by marking age, class, gender and national narrative forms.

By analyzing narrative templates I was able to recover the memory supports mentioned (films, books, images, memorials and rituals, amongst others). These different media were useful to explain certain symbolical conflicts, catchwords, recurrent expressions or ‘figures of memories’ (Erinnerungsfiguren, J. Assmann 1992:37-38). For every macro event recurrently mentioned in life stories, I offered some academic literature from Latin American cultural or historical sociology as a general reference. Still, the reader will never hear about an ‘objective history’ vs a

‘subjective life story’. The following chapters present neither ‘history’– wie es eigentlich gewesen ist – nor the interpretations put forward by intellectuals, historians and sociologists. The chapters are constructed exclusively around the narrative templates contained in my interviewees’ life stories. The academic material will merely be useful to inform the background and development of certain narrative patterns. Above all, the literature about the processes of coming to terms with dictatorship will be defining for understanding the construction and struggle over meaning attribution to these difficult pasts.

By looking for connectivity, coherence and narrative templates are basically an attempt to understand how events are ‘emplotted’. Hayden White defines a plot as “a structure of relationships by which the events contained in the account are endowed with a meaning by being identified as part of an integrated whole” (Hayden White 1980:13). Ricœur similarly points out that the “notion of events made into story through the plot immediately suggests that a story is not bound to a merely chronological order of events (…) the plot construes significant wholes out of scattered events” (1991b:106). By drawing on the concept of plot, every chapter will summarize a predominant ‘mode of emplotment’. That is, the chapters will not only inform to what extent some events are more important than others, their specific forms of meaning attribution and narrative pattern, they will end up by presenting some macro form in which historical and biographical events are ‘grasped together’

within each age group. I have already claimed that particular identity, moral

temporal boundaries are involved in these macro plots (see above 1.4, and Eder 2006, Lamont 1992, 2000, Somers 1994).

These modes of emplotment are an analytical outcome in which life stories and different collective templates work together within every generational site.

Certainly, multiple plots might be observed within each age cohort but I concentrated on those that are more revealing in terms of understanding the sharing of generational stories that circulate. The identification of modes of emplotment is based on the literature of plot lines (Gergen 1988 and Zerubavel 2003) and cultural genres (Alexander 2003, Bruner 2004, Fryre 1957, Jacobs 1996, Smith 2005). The examination of plot lines takes into consideration the development of a plot over time (progressive, regressive, rise-and-fall narratives), whereas cultural genre helps to identify the sorting of typical narrative emplotments, such as comedy, tragedy, romance and satire, amongst others. Chapter Seven will elaborate the relationship between these modes of emplotment.

The next four chapters are the result of these analytical procedures. Every chapter is organized chronologically, starting from ‘historical boundaries’, continuing with childhood stories, the formative years, until the adult period (at least for the two older age cohorts). That diachronic ordering might facilitate readers’ understanding of these life stories. The chapters emphasize the turning points and social memories of every generational site and illustrate the matching between biographical and historical events. Yet, the attention is primarily on the narrative templates and meaning attributions bestowed on reported events. Crucially, every chapter ends by presenting a particular mode of emplotment, which I will compare in the final chapter.

Chapter 3

Buenos Aires, 1965-1974: Sequences of (dis)illusion and nostalgic/comedy plots

About a decade ago, when describing how British activists connect their biographical stories with the broader political situation, Molly Andrews stated that “although the life stories were clearly distinct, taken together there was, at the same time, a sense in which they constituted one collective story” (2007: 52). Although this sort of connectivity might be key, Andrews’ research concentrated on leftist activists, the stories discussed in what follows do not necessarily share this common frame. I focus on the narration of ordinary people who only share being born during the same period and in a similar geographical space. This chapter recounts the events experienced by people born in the province of Buenos Aires between 1965 and 1974.

The authors of these stories come from different socio-economic contexts of Buenos Aires and different political traditions.

The chapter has a dual structure. On the one hand, events and periods are presented diachronically (from grandparents’ stories until the present time). The underlying idea is not only to match interviewees’ life courses and the most reported collective events, but also to understand the meanings attributed to these episodes. After all, the process of meaning attribution is affected by both the individual’s biographical recollections as well as collective templates anchored in different memory supports, such as bodily emotions, family dialogues, media reportage, films or public rituals.

On the other hand, the chapter introduces two modes of emplotment, although these will only become fully visible at the end. The first plot type is that of nostalgia, a story of decadence in which the past is represented as a mythical order, while the present is turned into a traumatic state of insecurity. The second plot type is that of comedy in which the past is represented as difficult (Dictatorship-Malvinas-Neoliberalism) while the present is viewed with an optimism outlook (a happy ending). While the diachronic route reinforces the importance of formative years for generational memories – a critical period of civil participation during the recovery of democracy – the notion of narrative plots illustrates two modes of grasping the past and future expectations.