ABSTRACT
As homo significans (meaning makers), the world is accessible to us only through interpretations. However, we are also homo fabulans because we interpret and tell stories about our experiences, about who we are or want to be, and what we believe. Narratives order our world, they are ‘‘the primary way by which human experience is made meaningful’’ (Polkinghorne 1988: 1). Although our lives begin with us being subject to the stories of our parents and others around us, we soon begin to tell stories of our own about who we might become and where we belong. We take issue with how we have been represented, and we deliberate how we might represent ourselves differently (cf. Hall 1996). Narratives both enable and limit representation-and representation shapes our world and what is possible within it. Narratives, therefore, are profoundly political.
