Story, Discourse and Narrative

Yesterday I went to listen to Enos Das Pradhan, General Secretary of the Church of North India talking about the recent violent attacks on Christians in India. It was all rather depressing and conducive of that 'but what the heck can we do about it?' feeling. Conflict is something I would rather run away from, but as reconciliation is so central of the Christian hope, I know I can't just do that. The day was saved for me by a young Indian academic, Mr. Brainerd Prince, who spoke afterwards. He was suggesting that the way into dealing with communal violence is to begin with its ideological roots and to understand the dynamic of story-discourse-narrative. In every situation, especially where there is conflict the story that is told (what happened) is always embellished with the discourse I add to explain why it happened like that and the two together become the accepted (or disputed) narrative. The clue is to realise that our discourse is always informed by ideology. The way into conflict resolution is to try to separate out story (facts) from discourse (interpretation) and then to negotiate discourse independently from story. Sounds great - now all I need is to get into a conflict so I can try it out! Thanks, Brainerd.