Samuel Swenson-Reinhold: Fisher & Narrative Intelligence

 In my freshman year here at Christopher Newport, I presented at Virginia Wesleyan in a conference on the Humanities. My presentation was on what is called 'narrative intelligence', basically this idea that we as humans have this capacity to use storytelling as a tool, and some of us are better at it than other people. While I was particularly focused on the leadership implications of narrative intelligence, I found myself reflecting back on this concept when I read Walter Fisher's work on the narrative paradigm. 

Fisher states that "the operative principle of narrative rationality is identification rather than deliberation" (Fisher, "Narration" 6). We talk a lot about myth relating the truths about our reality to others, and I think that, moving into existential terms, Fisher is exactly right about this identification. We, as humans, want to belong to something, someone, somewhere, etc., and it makes perfect sense for us to simply want to be able to attribute ourselves to something. Otherwise, we're alone. In Shadowlands, Lewis' student says that "We read to know we're not alone." This relates perfectly to this idea that we want nothing more than to identify with something greater than ourselves and have a comradery. Great storytellers, like great leaders, communicate stories that their audiences connect to and identify with so as to draw them in close and move them in a certain way.