ABSTRACT
I Some large claims have recently been put forward in the name of narrative theory. Might it not be that all forms of knowledge partake of a certain narrative or storytelling interest? Such ideas have taken hold not only (as might be expected) among literary theorists, but also among philosophers and historians. Of the latter, Hayden White goes furthest in asserting that history is always a species of narrative construct, a discourse whose meaning is actively produced by the tropes and devices employed to make sense of an otherwise inchoate material.1 The positivist assumption-that ‘truth’ must surely emerge if ‘the facts’ are just set down in their proper, self-evident order-is the merest of delusions, according to White. What it serves to disguise is the way in which competing ideologies work to reorganize the discursive field in pursuit of their own particular ends. The various kinds of narrative emplotment are closely bound up with these varieties of ideological world-view. One would have to go back to the earliest, most primitive forms of history-the barebones chronicle of events-to find a plausible counter-example to White’s sophisticated arguments. And even there, as he shows, the supposedly ‘factual’ record is by no means innocent of certain narrative designs.
