By David M. Boje, Jan 9 2007
Genealogy is an inquiry into the ways of mythmaking and enlightenment of collective memory. Genealogy traces alternative history to the dominate BME linear narratives of power, their founding story, their glorious adventure or progress, emancipation, and rationality. There is more than one collective memory, one for each group (Halbwachs, 1950/1980).
The approach I am recommending for story consulting relies upon genealogical method, to offer a polyphony of counternarratives. Genealogy investigates the circumstances by which story in collective memory, emerges, evolves, and gets rehistoricized. This happens sometimes as situations demand story be rehistoricized to account for discoveries of changes in the environment of the present. but, more often rehistoricizing is more about more egocentric interests. Genealogy gives account of the transformation of antenarratives into stories in the struggle of power and knowledge. In genealogy the utility of myth-making to the Storytelling Organization is assessed as a process that is temporal and spatially distributed, disconnected, and not all that coherent.
There is no truth in collective memory. Trying to find truth in collective memory is like trying to find a machine that gives out perpetual motion. Collective memory is not representation of reality, not something that gets more correct over time, but just pure misinterpretation, and more misinterpretation as life goes on.
Genealogy, for Nietzsche, call collective memory into question, and reads an alternative set of counterstories to dominant history, without claiming its about truth.
"... everything that exists; no mater what its origin, is periodically reinterpreted by those in power in terms of fresh intentions" (Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, p. 208).
Genealogical Method is a tracing of reinterpretations, antenarratives made into petrified narratives, and antenarratives purged, or pushed to the margins. The result is to expand the story constellations, to put dominant narrative into relationship with marginalizes counterstories.
Story Consulting (the more critical postmodern kind) traces the power of writing, telling, and visualizing. Textuality, orality, and visuality is another name for these stylistics. To investigate one without the others is the ultimate reductionism.
James Michner (1978) classic historical fiction novel, gives us some insight into genealogy. Michner combines just enough historical facts and detail with his fictional characters to make his storytelling credible. He interviews ferryboat and skipjack (oyster dredger) captains, Native American historians to build his knowledge of Choptank indian matters, histories of Frederick Douglas, goes to talk to people at museums (Maritime, mariner's) and consults numerous history books.
He uses a genealogical method to build an alternative history of the Choptank River. One character, Captain John Smith is an explorer search the Chesapeake for gold and silver. His scribe on the voyage is named Steed. Steed writes down Smith's remarks on sheets of paper, and transcribes them to the ship's log. Smith did not like Steed's rendition. The facts were accurate but Smith was forever revising what would become the official history of the voyage.
Steed: "it/s what you said, sir."
Smith: "I know, But our time onshore was brief. You must take that into consideration." (p. 73).
Smith took the pen from Steed and scribed a more heroic founding story:
... Captain Smith gathered his sturdy crew beside the shallop and told them, "Men, we set forth this day on a journey of exploration which will dazzle the courts of Europe. In Virginia we shall find gold and silver. It may be we shall uncover the hidden path to the treasures of India and China... We make this voyage to further the Glory of God, to carry His Word to lands which know it not, and to bring everlasting greatness to our beloved King James, late of Scotland but now of all Britain" (p. 75).
Stead reacted in horror, "you never said those things, Captain."
Smith snapped, "I was thinking them" (p. 75).
On the seventh day of their voyage they came across an island. A canoe of quite friendly Indians came out to greet them, motioning them to follow.
Steed writes, "No gold, no silver, no pearls, no rubies, no emeralds" and notes exactly what Steed said. Steed came form Devon in England and proposed that as a name. Steed puts down what Smith said.
Smith edits it, "You want to name the island Devon? And so it shall be, but would it not be wiser to show in the record that this was my decision, not yours?" (pp. 79-80). And he changes the story told about the friendly Choptank Indians:
Smith: "It is no mean task for three men to go unarmed into the heart of hostile Indian territory."
Steed started to express his disagreement, but then decided to keep silent. The final result is this founding story:
After we had passed this island we proceeded a goodly distance up the Choptank we were accosted by a group of fierce and hostile Indians, and the Captain approached at once that our safety depended upon how we dealt with these savages, who could have killed our little band supposing they had wished... " p. 80-81).
Smith proceeds to quote Machiavelli, in long passages he had never spoken, but if he had the time he would have. Smith also asks Steed to change the part about the Indians being taller than Smith. Steed was so dumbfounded he could not speak. Steed is thinking silently to himself, "It was all true, and at the same time totally false" (p. 81).
And that is exactly my point about what passes for history in general, and founding story in particular. Its all true, and at the same time totally false.
FETISH OF THE AVERAGE STORY AS HISTORY
Some would seek truth in story as a middle ground between several story versions, and count that as history. Or they might take a popularity poll and say that that is the history of a group. That is its collective memory. However as Michner's example shows, there can be several versions of collective memory, even aboard the same ship. It is what Michner calls the "fetish of the average" (p. 94).
Story consulting falls victim to the fetish of the average, creating a totalized story out of fragments, writing one that is some kind of blend, or an imagined middle ground. The storyteller and the historian scribe negotiate a rendition that they will pass along as the official story.
Microstoria - There is a chapter on microstoria in Boje (2001, Narrative Methods for Organization & Communication Research). Microstoria is the story of the little people, like Steed, and the Choptank Indians, whose collective memory of the founding story is quite form Smith's. Microstoria is a genealogy, a way of resurrecting forgotten stories, written out of the official history of ship's captains, generals, presidents, and CEOs. It is more than gathering the history from secretaries and janitors. It is gathering counterstories of resistance to grand narratives of history.
This is the very reason I prefer genealogy to history. History is a totalizing account of a few heroic characters, told from a certain point of view. Those with the sword write the history. And they write the founding stories, or rewrite them over and over again, year after year in Storytelling Organizations.
Leader and scribe conform their negotiated history construction to the likely impact it will have upon their audience. Smith is worried about more funding for his voyages, and how he will be perceived in the historical record, as a heroic explorer. Steed wants a record that is accurate, that does not reflect badly on his profession as scribe. Scribes have a certain expectation of one another.
Story consulting that takes a more genealogical approach traces the evolution and major shifts or revolutions in the way founding stories, saga adventures, get reconstructed. A simple BME plot gets negotiated, and renegotiated at various points in time. There are reasons for this revision of collective memory.
In my study of Disney, I did a genealogy, and put together some microstoria that was quite different than several officially scribed Disney histories (Boje, 1995). It turns out the Ub Iwerks, Walt's forgotten partner, may have been the cartoonist who invented Mickey Mouse, not Walt. Up had been drawing Oswald the Rabbit, who was a mimic of Felix the Cat, who was an imitation of the movie character, charlie Chaplain. When the Iwerks/Disney partnership lost their control over Oswald the Rabbit to a distributor who claim its patent, there are several founding stories for who created Mickey Mouse. Put the renditions of Felix, Oswald, Chaplain, and Mickey in a line up, and you can easily see how one morphed into the other.