ABSTRACT
A narrative renders a description and/or celebrates an event, in words spoken or written or perhaps in song or statue. Narrative aspects of arts express and deal with efforts at control by identities. Narrative when it reports efforts at getting control by identity already formed can, like ceremony, go beyond merely novel performance to assert lasting impact. Ordinary social life consists mainly in routines that lock actors into various niches, which together make up social organization. Viewing artistic production processes as narratives brings into view failures and misfits and rejects. Narrative weighs performances, perhaps many, by choosing which ones and how to string them together. Performance as a construct presupposes agency and engenders narrative. In some art in one era, artists’ careers may be seen as the main units of production, but in another era they may be disdained for the reputations of performances or the careers of particular objects.
