Based on a True Story

The convergence in the 1980s between postmodern epistemology, cognitive psychology and narratology forcefully reoriented the idea of storytelling. From a fictional device for representing reality, storytelling was recast as a cognitive tool underlying all mental processes. On this view, our sense of reality was seen as an effect produced by individual narrativising. This idea has many implications. The aim of this essay is not to try to survey the literature on this complex topic but to characterise two issues that the narrative view of reality obscures. One is the role of a shared reality and the other is political inertia. This argument seeks to create space for thinking about the idea of a common reality which has been traduced in theoretical discussion in favour of fractured reality. It concludes with a discussion of what can be gained by seeing narrative as a vehicle for approaching reality and not reality itself.