ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 introduces the main theoretical framework of Intimacies of Exclusion. It starts by offering a brief overview of how recent research on narrative has shifted from a text-oriented model to a practice-oriented paradigm and how researchers have embraced this paradigm. This chapter then introduces the key notions of stance and stancetaking, the Bakhtinian chronotope, and spatiotemporal scales as they are applied to narrative practices theoretically and analytically. The dynamic nature of narrative practices is emphasized throughout the chapter. Like Chapters 4 and 5, this chapter shows how racializing ideologies emerge in Northern Italians’ narrative practices. These emerging, circulating ideologies are indeed common across various social actors in this region. The chapter argues that, through a close analysis of these narrative practices, researchers can thus better understand how ideologies can be sustained and legitimized in Northern Italy. Narrators take advantage of the heterogeneity and fluidity to occupy varied positions in interaction, but these positions also often coalesce into identities and around social boundaries that position migrants as outsiders. Intimacies of exclusion thus emerge in, and solidify through, these narrative practices.
