Why narratives stick? Theorising success and failure of narratives in IR

The study of narratives has gained growing traction in International Relations, even provoking some to announce a ‘narrative turn’. While there are works focusing on the relationship between narration, images, identity, power, strategic action, ontological security or emotions, one crucial aspect has been left largely under-theorised: Given the multiplicity of available narratives, why is it that some of them are more successful than others, why some get chosen by actors and others not, and why some of them are more persuasive than others? In other words, what makes narratives stick? The paper will draw on different literatures from IR and social theory to argue that answers are to be found along three different dimensions. First, narratives are more likely to succeed when they are built in a way that resembles broader cultural structures of storytelling, such as classical literary and dramatic templates. Second, in order to stick, narratives need to draw on deeper discursive resources and present the situation in question so as to ‘render the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar’. Third, the success of narratives is determined by their ability to tap into the corporeal aspect of subjectivity, provoke desire and attract affective attachment. These three arguments provide the axes of a theoretical framework for the assessment of resonance and durability of narratives, which will be illustrated on the example of British and American official language in the Libya crisis in 2011. I will show that the temporary success of the storyline of Muammar Gaddafi as the ‘brutal dictator’ who was butchering the freedom-craving ‘people of Libya’ can be explained as a combination of all the three factors. The demise of this narrative and the rise of the ‘intervention fatigue’ storyline that followed only few months later will be utilised to make the final point that all narratives are constantly threatened by their inner contradictions and the alternative stories that are suppressed by them. It is this inherent instability that harbours the possibility for an ethico-political intervention in the form of taking critical distance from dominant narratives and/or constructing counter-narratives.