It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics [Paperback]

Francesca Poletta's latest, It Was Like A Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics, is essential reading for students of cultural trauma, social movements, and collective memory. Her basic thesis is that the ambiguity of narrative used in political speeches, public deliberation, and other discursive forums, is a powerful mechanism of social power. Her analysis successfully divorces narrative from the clutches of literary theory in order to show the causal and predictive power of storytelling. The following passage is a microcosm of the book's main message (p. viii):

"Take a story that, some say, won George Bush the 2004 election: a thirty-second television spot titled "Ashley's Story." The spot was produced by a conservative group, and it aired in nine contested states in the month before the election. It recounted sixteen-year-old Ashley Faulkner's meeting with the candidate at a campaign rally in Lebanon, Ohio. Ashley had lost her mother in the 2001 World Trade Center attack, and after that, the spot's narrator reported, she had "close up emotionally." The narrator continued, "But when President George W. Bush came to Lebanon, Ohio, she went to see him, as she had with her mother four years before." As Bush made his way through the crowed of well-wishers, a friend of the Faulkners told him that Ashley's mother had been killed in the 9/11 attack. Bush turned and spontaneously embraced the girl, saying that he knew it was hard and asking if she was all right. "And that was the moment," the family friend recounted, "that we saw Ashley's eyes fill up with tears." Ashley herself explained, "He's the most powerful man in the world and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe, that I'm okay." The spot concluded with Ashley's father saying, "What I saw was what I want to see in the heart and soul of the man who sits in the highest elected office in our country"

This is only one of several powerful examples Polletta gives among others including analysis of the power of narrative in an on-line forum about the September 11th attacks, the use of the Civil Rights movement in Congressional speeches over the last sixty years, and the early sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement itself. In each of these examples, Polletta convincingly demonstrates how narrative can be strategically deployed by social movements and civil debate, developing a much more sophisticated vocabulary of "framing" than the wider literature on social movements in sociology as well as linguists such as Lakoff. Poletta's analysis of the context in which narratives are presented and the manner in which they are received allows her to predict when and where the use of narrative enables, transforms, or stifles, democratic debate. Coupled with Eviatar Zerubavel's similarly innovative analysis of the social structure of denail in The Elephant in the Room, Poletta's book provides young cultural sociologists with an impressive artillery of theory and methods with which to invade the dusty barracks of political sociology.

Anyone who wants to better understand the stories we tell, the stories we collect, and the stories we value, ought to read this book. I refer to Poletta's book constantly in my own endeavors -- she is just brilliant.

Any student or scholar of history, politics, and social research would benefit from the thoughtful way Polletta outlines the culturally-bound conventions of narrative and storytelling. It Was Like A Fever examines the narrative tradition by weaving questions about storytelling into a tapestry of examples from the social world. The author sets the foundation of the exploration of narrative (a term she uses interchangeably with "stories") by first asking why stories matter.

Stories matter because a prevailing cultural sense about them exists. We have strong ideas about when and where a story should be told, what kind of story is appropriate, and who is expected to tell that story. Story-tellers are subject to scrutiny, and as the audience, what we decide about who can tell which stories leads us to either reproduce or dismantle the status quo. Use of narrative among disadvantaged groups has risks and benefits. Polletta believes that the risks are derived more from the norms of the who-when-and-where of giving narratives than from the actual content of the narrative. They draw plot lines with beginnings, middles, and ends that often adhere to general principles that lead audiences to judge or interpret their subject.

As an audience considering a story we are ambivalent, which leads to several tensions in story-telling. I believe these tensions are helpful to keep in mind during narrative analysis and research. First, we believe that stories are both unique and commonplace. There are narratives that can be employed by everyone, but also narratives that are only acceptable when told by certain people. Second, tension exists between deception and truthfulness in story-telling. Often the demands of constructing a compelling story compete with the teller's need to tell an absolute truth. Third, conflicting ideas about the social value of stories exist. Polletta shows how stories can be powerful and powerless, and this tension is most meaningful when we consider who does their telling - the advantaged or the disadvantaged person.

Linguistic dynamics embedded in the terms story-tellers employ have consequences important for historical research. In her example, Polletta investigates the relationship between meaning and process in the 1960 student lunch-counter sit ins. Metonymies within student accounts of the protest, particularly the use of words like "spontaneous" that describe process, shaped the meanings of protest and mobilization. Although "spontaneous" can mean unplanned, the concepts employed when students interpreted spontaneous were "moral, local, and urgent" (p.28)

A point that academics and students of history must not overlook is that context is crucial when examining the consequences of narratives. If a narrative is given in a context where truth is of primary importance, the audience expects the details of the story to be consistent with each re-telling. As Polletta shows, this has real consequences for women who are victims that must give accounts of their victimization multiple times in a legal setting. This illustrates how contexts have attached conventions about what a story should be. When narratives do not meet these expectations, we devalue or discredit them.

Polletta examines how the powerful and powerless use stories by looking at the separate narratives of members of congress and activists when referring to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The example illustrates the constraints placed on one's ability to refer to the past. History is malleable - its re-telling depends on who tells the story about history and what is their purpose. The disparate narratives about Dr. King point out how the way in which we, as a collective of citizens, honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. reframes his message. The message becomes reflective instead of active. Instead of a day of action and service, we take a day off.

In the conclusion, the author asks how our beliefs about history are shaped - and possibly compromised - by common conventions about story telling. Anyone who wishes to analyze narrative accounts of the past needs to take this message seriously. Everyone has expectations that are based on conventions about what a story ought to be. Researchers hold normative expectations about what makes a good interview and often equate a more confessional tone with a better or more accurate account. Breeching these conventions has its risks but conforming to them also carries penalties.

Polletta brings empowerment and life to the use of stories, and more intricately, the power words have within the frame of persuasive communication. I was impressed by the expounding throughout, with underpinnings reflective of how metogymical inference bring about neurological responses, as she explains word-craft and the art of storytelling intended to promote an agenda and prompt unconscious approaches to effect social change.