What is Antenarrative? by David Boje (2001; updated July
25 2004)
I give "antenarrative" a double meaning (Boje, 2001). First, as being before and second as a bet. First, story is "ante" to narrative; it is "antenarrative." A "narrative" is something that is narrated, i.e. "story." Story is an account of incidents or events, but narrative comes after and ads, more "plot" and tighter "coherence" to the story line. Antenarrative is therefore "ante" to story and narrative is post to antenarrative. Story is an "ante" state of affairs existing previously to narrative; it is in advance of narrative. Used as an adverb, "ante" combined with "narrative" or "antenarrative" means earlier than narrative. For practical examples of access to recent articles and papers See Antenarratives of McDonald's, McDonaldland, & McDonaldization website.
Ante is also a bet, something to do with gambling and speculation. The noun "ante" has an etymology dating to 1838 that is defined as "a poker stake usually put up before the deal to build the pot <the dealer called for a dollar ante>" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In horse racing, "ante-post" is a wager made on a horse before that day of the race. As a verb, it is anteing.
ANTENARRATIVE is a "pre-narrative," and a "bet" (ante) that you can tell a pre-story that will become a story that is world-changing. An antenarrative is a story that is NOT YET. It has not yet enrolled its cast of characters. It has not yet become REAL-ized in the world of objects and processes and systems. Antenarrative has not yet changed the context; Antenarrating means you are trying to recontextualize or decontextualize. Antenarratives depend upon an expanding sociometry, a growing network of actors to work in bits of context, to send the antenarrative along its way to becoming a story. Antenarratives seduce interests, enroll characters in continuous chains of dramatization; because it takes theatrics to real-ize the antenarrative, so it becomes narrative. The antenarrative translates its contexts into its emerging cohesion.
Antenarratives collect events and characters into their psychic economy. Antenarrative flight continues as long as their is context left to transform. Antenarratives feed on new contexts, they consume contexts, they recontextualize. Antenarratives stay in flight until they become domesticated, or become Framed and tamed within some dominant storyline. Spreading an antenarrative seems as harmless as sharing a bit of urban legend, or passing along a tasty morsel of gossip. Yet antenarratives threaten to change the world. Antenarratives seduce us into complicity; we feel somehow compelled to pass them along into our personal networks. Every antenarrative has a story of its journey, but some we can not trace; some leave many marks along their path.
Antenarratives die. They unravel and re-ravel the contexts they traverse. Antenarratives are really quite dangerous; they can stampede the herd. "The collective fear of a heard in flight is the oldest and perhaps commonest example of a crowd state" (Canetti, 1963: 309). Antenarratives definitely affect and infect crowds. Some change the rhythm of the crowd. Antenarratives can assemble crowds and disassemble hierarchies and propel some novel crowd into existence; they rally around the emerging antenarrative.
Antenarratives are in motion, awake, always on the move, setting off along un-prescribed passageways. They seem to jumped across prohibited blocks. Surrounding an antenarrative with prohibitions to its sharing, ignites its traverse. Antenarratives change in composition as they traverse contexts and passageways. Antenarratives can split off elements, and incorporate new ones, as the tale extends with accumulated and dragged along debris. As Kierkegaard (1996: 161) posits, "life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards." This applies to Storytelling Organizations, since they are forever creating a collective memory of themselves in stories.
The Paradigm Differences over Antenarrative, Narrative, and Story - Yannis Gabriel (2000), Barbara Czarniawska (1997) and Boje (2001) have paradigm differences. Gabriel thinks my terse stories and my fragmented antenarratives are not “proper” stories. Czarniawska, like so many others (e.g. Russian Formalism) privileges narrative over story. More ... see (Boje, Rosile, & Gardner, 2004
PART II REFERENCES
Barge, Kevin J. 2002. Antenarrative and managerial practice. Working Paper, University of Georgia. Accepted for publication in revised form at Communication Studies. (should be out by now).
Baskin, Ken 2004. Storytelling and the Complex Epistemology of Organizations. Chapter for Managing the Complex, Vol. IDRAFT July 1. Contact author .
Boje, David M. 2001. Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London: Sage. Available form Sage or Amazon
Boje, D. M. 2004a. Grotesque Method. Published in Proceedings (edited by Henri Savall, marc Bonnet & Michel Peron) of First International Co-sponsored Conference, Research methods Division, Academy of Management: Crossing Frontiers in Quantitative and Qualitative Research methods. Vol. II pp. 1085-1114. Lyon France, Presentation March 19 2004; paper written February 1, 2004; revised Mar 11. Copy on line at http://peaceaware.com/McD/
Boje, D. M. 2004b. Regenerating Ronald McDonald with the Method of Grotesque Realism. Published, pp. 752-756 Business Research Yearbook, Vol. XI 2004 edited by Carolyn Gardner, Jerry Biberman & Abbass Alkhafaji. Paper about the play, and the play presented in San Antonio Texas on Mar 26 2004 Copy on line at http://peaceaware.com/McD/
Boje, D. M. 2004c. Architectonics of McDonald’s Cohabitation with Wal-Mart: Critique of critical and mainstream theory and research perspectives. March 2 2004; Revised April 3 2004. Published in conference proceedings of Critical Perspectives on International Business Programme for Workshop, Durham Business School, UK; Paper presented Mon Apr 5 2004 in teleconference format Copy on line at http://peaceaware.com/McD/
Boje, D. M. & Cai, Y. 2004. McDonald’s: Grotesque Method and the Metamorphosis of the three Spheres: McDonald’s, McDonaldland, and McDonaldization. Accepted for publication in The Metamorphosis Journal (23 July 2004). Copy on line at http://peaceaware.com/McD/
Boje, D. M.; Driver, M.; & Cai, Y. 2004. McDonald's, McDonaldland, and McDonaldization: Humor and the dialogical approach to strategy. Paper presented Sat July 10 2004 at Standing Conference for Organizational Symbolism, Halifax Nova Scotia. Copy on line at http://peaceaware.com/McD/
Boje, D.M., Luhman, J. & Baack, D. (1999). " Hegemonic Tales of the Field: A Telling Research Encounter between Storytelling Organizations." October issue of Journal of Management Inquiry. 8(4): 340-360.
Boje, D. M. & Rosile, G. A. (2002). Enron Whodunit? Ephemera. Vol 2(4), pp. 315-327 http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/2-4/2-4bojeandrosile.pdf
Boje, D. M. & Rosile, G.A. (2003). Life Imitates Art: Enrons Epic and Tragic Narration. Management Communication Quarterly. Vol. 17 (1): 85-125. http://business.nmsu.edu/%7Edboje/theatrics/7/EpicTragicTheatre.pdf
Boje, David M., Rosile, G.A., Durant, R.A. & Luhman, J.T. (2004) Enron
Spectacles: A Critical Dramaturgical Analysis. Special Issue on Theatre and
Organizations edited by Georg Schreyögg and Heather Höpfl, Organization
Studies, 25(5):751-774. Available on line at http://business.nmsu.edu/mgt/jpub/boje/enron.pdf
Boje, D. M.; Rosile, G.A.; & Gardner, C. 2004. Antenarratives, narratives
and anaemic stories. Paper presented in Showcase Symposium, Academy of Management,
Mon Aug 9 2004 in New Orleans. Organizer, John Luhman. On line at http://peaceaware.com/McD
Dalcher, D. & Drevin, L. 2003. Learning from information systems failures
by using narrative and antenarrative methods. Proceedings of SAICSIT, pages
137-142. Available on line at http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway
Vickers, Margaret H. (2002). Illness, work and organization: Postmodernism and antenarratives for the reinstatement of voice. Working paper, Unviersity of Western Sydney. Accepted for publication at Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organizational Science.
If you have an ANTENARRATIVE reference, then please let me know dboje@nmsu.edu
PART III ANTENARRATIVE EXAMPLES
Enron, for example, its antenarrating recruited and abandoned characters, themes, frames, dialog, and spectacles as Enron took flight to become the darling of the New Economy, then the monster lurking inside the abyss of its own collapse. At each turn, Enron's Antenarratives seemed to illuminate, but in the end the facade was all that remained. Antenarratives take on a speculative value since they are quite ironic; setting forth in reversals, shattering dualities, then aligning with superficialities. Antenarratives flee their possessors; ask Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay. Enron was dragged kicking and screaming through all kinds of post-collapse spectacles; grand dramas of public inquiry took place in the Congressional hearings. Enron's global spectacle (the hero of the Internet Economy) become a megaspectacle (a set of scandals). Enron's succession of public spectacles were quite antenarrative; little pre-narrations seemed to catch fire in the public imagination; where is the sex scandal at Enron; Did the president know? Did Fastow know the off-the-balance-sheet partnerships was just a spectacle facade? Enron antenarratives were media currency, the obsessive interest of millions of spectators. When the media glare dropped of the Enron megaspectacle scandals, the tired old concentrated and diffuse spectacles (Debord, 1967) ensued. "Oh Enron, that was the exception" said one antenarrative, "it does not mean that deregulation is not a good thing for energy marketeers."
There must be different types of antenarratives.
All kinds of work organizations, be they bureaucratic, postmodern, quest, or chaos/complexity -- all of them have antenarratives that take flight. A few land to become full-blown stories that pare part of the life script of the organization. The bureaucracy tries to let plans fly that will change their work processes and idea systems (ideological Frames). The Chaos/Complexity firm has this antenarrative floating about that somehow people can manage at the edge of the abyss, and by staying at the edge (but not falling in) can realize all kinds of efficiencies and untapped revenues that the bureaucratic beast could never grasp. The post-modern antenarrative is that the modern organization can become what it is not yet being. All those quests that work organizations undertake, each has an antenarrative beginning, but how few every get very far away from home, and fewer still return with the magic elixir. Antenarratives aspire to be frame-breaking, frame changing, but many never take flight. By Frame I mean the Septet type of Frame.
SEPTET means seven elements of Metatheatrics. The seven elements are: (1) Frames of the Work Organization, (2) Themes of Working Conditions, (3) Dialogs of the 3Cs, (4) Characters trained and untrained, (5) Rhythms those patterns of time, (6) Plots that are sometimes strategic, and (7) Spectacles of the Socio-Economics of Capitalism (See Intro to SEPTET, SEAM, and Metatheatre).
Every once in a while, someone interrupts the flow of experience and asks you to give an ACCOUNT of WHAT IS GOING ON? Your mind races, experiences come to mind, a plot thickens, and you begin to speak, and a story is told. You are living experience before narrating it, before someone requires you provide a story with the coherence of beginning, middle, or ending. And then it is out there, but you know it is only ONE WAY to tell the story. Others will have their ways. You never know the WHOLE story (there is none). The Story never finishes, it keeps unraveling, keeps coming undone, and keeps getting RESTORIED. Story is an "ante" state of affairs existing previously to narrative; it is in advance of narrative. It answers the question "what is going on here?" And the FIRST STORY is told. Ante is also a bet, something to do with gambling and speculation. You BET you can TELL A STORY THE FIRST TIME. "There are implicit rules in storytelling (who can tell it, to whom, and where)" (Boje, 1991a: 124). You can not just CONSTRUCT a story and tell it to just anyone. Antenarrative is about the TAMARA of storytelling (Boje, 1995). In Tamara, Los Angeles' longest-running play, a dozen characters unfold their stories before a walking, sometimes running, audience. They are trying to find out "who done it?" They want to find out the story, that has yet to be figured out.
Antenarrative is the fragmented, non-linear, incoherent, collective, unplotted, and pre-narrative speculation, a bet (Boje, 2001). Story is antenarrative (a practice attempt) and on occasion even anti-narrative (a refusal to be coherent). "The important point" says Weick (1995: 27) "is that retrospective sensemaking is an activity in which many possible meanings may need to be synthesized, because many different projects [stories] are under way at the time reflection takes place" (additions, mine). There are many stories you could tell, and you CREATE one to tell this time to this person. Storytelling organizations are antenarrative, existing to tell their collective stories, to live out their collective stories, to be in constant struggle over getting the stories of insiders and outsiders straight. It is a sensemaking that is coming into being, but not finished or concluded, in narrative retrospection. Antenarrative is collective memory, the organization memory in stories. It is before story becomes reified (becomes an object taken for granted) with repeated consensual validation. And because people in organizations typically are chasing multiple story lines, and are aware that overdetermining the story is risky, the collective memory is always being reworked and worked out, but never completed.
In sum, antenarrative is the fragmented, non-linear, incoherent, collective, unplotted, and pre-narrative speculation, a bet. To traditional narrative methods antenarrative is an improper storytelling, a wager that a proper narrative can be constituted.
Since story, narrative, and antenarrative are used throughout the book, some introduction is important. Story resists narrative; Story is antenarrative and on occasion even anti-narrative (a refusal to be coherent). The folk of organizations inhabit storytelling spaces outside plot, not tidy and rationalized narrative spaces. Narrative analysts replace folk stories with less messy academic narrative emplotments and create an account of organizations that is fictively rational, free of tangled contingency, and against story.
A great example of antenarrative is Peretti, Jonah (2001). My Nike Media Adventure. The Nation. Feature Story April 9th http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010409&s=peretti
Richman, Josh (2001) 'Is Nike Still Doing It?' Mother Jones Magazine, March 16.
San Francisco cartoonist, animator, and playwright Dan McHale does a great cartoon about the whole Jonah Peretti, Ordering "SWEATSHOP" sewn on his Nike shoes urban legend. Source http://shey.net/niked.html
Peretti, an MIT graduate student took what I call an antenarrative (a bet that he could create a story that would catch on) and sent it by email to 12 friends, who sent it to their friends, until two web sites posted it, and then a string of news papers, and finally the Today Show flew Jonah in for an interview, and even the Wall Street Journal got into the urban legend distribution business. The story passed from antenarrative (pre-story) to story, to legend in just two months. Is there anyone on the planet who has not heard the story. Peretti's article in the Nation, raises some interest issues about the role of micromedia in the protest movement, and how it interacts with macromedia. For more on antenarrative, see What is Antenarrative?.
The Kerngahan Antenarrative, starring Kathie Lee Gifford –
a second example of antenarrative happened in April 1996, when labor activist
Charles Kernaghan, studying sweatshop situations of U.S. corporations in Central
American, since 1990, decided to craft a story that would embarrass, not only
brand labels but also media stars, whose clothing was made in sweatshops. In
May 1996 media personality Kathie Lee Gifford was the protagonist of the story,
crying on national TV, claiming character defamation, as Kernaghan’s antenarrative
circulated through the storyteller’s network.
The unseen heroes, of course, are the young women making her Wal-Mart
clothing line in sweatshops in Honduras and a few blocks away from the TV studio
televising the Regis and Kathie Lee talk show. As Kernaghan (1996) describes
his first encounter with Kathie Lee:
We took the Honduran child worker to meet with Kathie Lee at Cardinal O'Connor's residency in New York ity on June 5. It was the first time I met her. She came with attorneys and public relations people.
