Арсен Аветисов – Political Narratology. How Stories Shape Power and Compliance (страница 4)

The simple story was the most persuasive. Though it defies the rational mind, it turns out that even numbers can get in the way of people adopting new behaviours or beliefs. The best stories are those that bypass the brain’s requirement to store facts separately from a person’s opinions.

This is not a weakness. It is human nature. The danger begins when a person refuses to acknowledge it.

Why Is It Important to Distinguish These Levels?

Distinguishing between narrative, ideology, and programme is not an academic exercise. It is a survival skill in the political space.

He who argues with a programme while remaining inside someone else’s narrative will lose. He who criticises an ideology without touching the story will not be heard. And he who accepts a narrative without realising it loses his freedom of interpretation.

Political narratology begins with a simple, yet difficult step: to see the story before you agree or object.

If a narrative is not a programme or an ideology, a new question arises: ‘Where, exactly, does the political struggle unfold?’ Not in parliament, not in laws, and not even in the media. It unfolds in the space of competing stories.

And it is to this space we now turn.

Chapter 3. Politics as a Competition of Stories

The specific political distinction… is that between friend and enemy.

Why Is There Never Just One Story in Politics?

One of the most persistent illusions is the notion of politics as a debate of ideas. It seems as if different forces propose different programmes, and society chooses the most reasonable one. In reality, this is never the case. Ideas rarely clash in politics. Narratives do.

Each side offers not just a position, but an explanation of reality: what is happening, why now, who is to blame, who we are, what has been done to us, or what we must do to reclaim what was lost or protect what is fragile.

Therefore, the political arena is not a marketplace of arguments. Politics is a marketplace of meanings, where the victor is not the most accurate story but the most lived one.

What Does ‘Competition Of Narratives’ Mean?

The competition of narratives is a struggle for the right to name what is happening, to define the frame of meaning.

The questions sound simple, yet they determine everything else: Is this a crisis or an opportunity? A mistake or a betrayal? A threat or an invention? A defeat or a temporary sacrifice? Stability or stagnation? Reform or destruction?

A narrative is what an event becomes in people’s minds.

Why Does Not Truth Guarantee Victory?

In theory, it seems the true story should win. In practice, the story that wins is the one that better performs a psychological function.

A story wins if it is simple, repeatable, emotionally charged, reduces anxiety, or gives it direction. It wins when it offers clear roles, provides a sense of belonging, and justifies past decisions.

Truth can be complex, contradictory, and inconvenient. A story, however, must be livable.

A person chooses what they can live with.

The Field of Narrative Struggle

The political field is always populated by several competing stories, even if one appears to dominate outwardly. Typically, these are stories of different scales and levels: the official narrative of the authorities, the alternative narrative of the opposition, local stories of particular groups, traumatic narratives of the past, hidden or suppressed plots, and accompanying ironic or cynical versions of events.

These do not always exist in direct conflict and often run parallel, hardly touching. But in moments of crisis, they collide head-on.

It is during a crisis that you can see which story people have truly internalised.

How Does One Narrative Displace Another?

Stories rarely destroy each other logically. They displace one another. A story stops working when it no longer explains a person’s experience. When words no longer match lived reality, when promises find no confirmation in fact, and when repetition ceases to soothe.

At that moment, a vacuum arises. And it is instantly filled by another story, often simpler, more radical or cruder, but emotionally precise.

Political upheavals do not begin with actions but with a replacement of explanations.

Why Is the Past a Constant Battleground?

In the competition of stories, the past plays a special role. Not as a set of facts, but as a plot. The past can be told as glory or as trauma, as proof of greatness or as a series of humiliations, as a source of pride or as an unpaid debt.

Control over the past is control over possible futures. Because it is the past that answers the question: who are we, and what are we ‘owed’?

This is why history in politics is never neutral; it is always an instrument of the present.

Why Is Compromise Between Narratives Almost Impossible?

You can negotiate with ideas. You can bargain over programmes. With stories – almost never.

Because a narrative is not an opinion; it is an identity. To accept another’s story is to admit you have been living in a false one. And that is psychologically far too costly.

This is precisely why political conflicts so often appear irrational. People are not arguing about measures, but about the right to reality.

The Triumph of a Narrative as a Phase of Acceptance

When one narrative wins, it ceases to look like a story. It begins to seem like ‘simply reality’. Its language becomes natural, its assumptions self-evident, its questions the only possible ones.

At this moment, alternative stories begin to look naïve, dangerous, radical, inappropriate, and untimely.

This is how true victory works in politics. Not through compromise or universal agreement, but when disagreement becomes marginal.

Why Does the Competition of Stories Never End?

You can suppress one story, displace another, and silence a third. But you cannot destroy the competition itself. Because reality is always more complex than any telling of it.

Any dominant story accumulates tension over time. It simplifies, smoothes over, omits, and then cracks appear. In these cracks, new plots begin to sprout.

Politics is not a path to a final truth. It is the endless rewriting of explanations.

Why Understand This?

Understanding politics as a competition of stories changes your perspective, your algorithm of observation. You stop asking, ‘Who is right?’ and start asking, ‘Which story is working right now – and why?’

You see not only the words but also the roles they offer you. Not only the facts, but the plot they are inserted into.

This does not make a person cynical; it makes them attentive. Because in a world where stories, not ideas, are victorious, the most dangerous position is to believe that stories do not matter.

It is from here that we approach the next question: ‘Why do even the most accurate facts so often lose to a well-told plot?’

Chapter 4. Why Facts Lose to Narratives

Confidence is a feeling, not a sign of accuracy.

The Illusion of Fact-Based Politics

Modern people like to think of themselves as rational. We believe we make political decisions based on data, numbers, statistics, expertise, and evidence. It seems that if you show the ‘real facts’, the false story will collapse on its own. But this almost never, or truly never, happens.

Facts can be accurate, sources reliable, and arguments flawless. And still, they lose because facts by themselves do not live in the human mind.

A Fact Without a Story is Mute

A fact is an isolated event; a story is a connection. A fact says, ‘This happened.’ A narrative explains: ‘This happened because… and it means…’ Without a story, a fact doesn’t know what it relates to, what follows from it, who it concerns, whether it requires action, or if it is a threat or the norm.

Until a fact is embedded in a story, it remains noise. This is precisely why in politics, it’s not about refuting facts but about rewriting the stories in which those facts live.

How the Brain Chooses Between a Fact and a Story

The human brain did not evolve to analyse mathematical tables or draw geometric figures. It evolved to survive in an uncertain environment. A story provides what facts cannot: causality, sequence, predictability, emotional orientation, a sense of control, and anxiety reduction.

Facts require effort – a story saves energy. A fact forces one to think – a story allows one to feel that they already understand.

Under conditions of overload, fear, and uncertainty, a person almost always chooses coherence over accuracy.

The Emotional Architecture of Meaning