6

Exploring Narrative Interaction

in Multiple Contexts
Amy Shuman

tudies of narrative interaction take into account how participants in a

S storytelling occasion manage their relationships to each other, to their
larger worlds, and to the events and characters within the narrative (Young,
1987). Narrative is one cultural resource for negotiating meaning across
these relationships in both local and larger cultural, historical, and social
contexts. This is not to say that narrative does successfully negotiate mean-
ing, but rather that it holds out this possibility (Shuman, 2005). Interaction
implies relationship between tellers and listeners but also invokes other
relationships beyond the narrative occasion. Face-to-face conversational
interaction is only one form of narrative interaction; this chapter explores a
variety of narrative interactions, including a face-to-face conversation, a
telephone conversation, a legal affidavit, and other written communication.
Interactional approaches to narrative analysis are grounded in the eth-
nography of communication, described broadly by Dell Hymes (1974),
elaborated in the early work of sociolinguist Harvey Sacks and folklorist/
anthropologist Richard Bauman (1986), and developed in more recent work
(Bamberg, 1997; Norrick, 2000; Ochs & Capps, 2001). Harvey Sacks (1992)
asked some very fundamental questions about how narrative works in con-
versation; his work identified narrative as a chronology of events, a definition

125
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William Labov (1972) later refined as a recovered chronology. Sacks addressed

how people negotiate the ownership of experience through narrative, how
they gain the floor for an extended turn at talk, and how they co-produce
stories. Erving Goffman (1974) used a related approach in his understanding
of narrative as a frame of talk. Interactive approaches to narrative often iden-
tify formal patterns and thus overlap with formal narrative research generally
(Herman, 2007). Interactive narrative research thus bears similarity with
folkloristic textual research, for example Vladimir Propp’s (1958) study of
units of plot structure and Heda Jason’s (1973) study of numbskull tales,
which attend to cultural properties and textual properties and thus are useful
for interactive research.

Approaches to Interactive Narrative

In my work, interactive narrative research represents a confluence of (1) the

ethnography of communication, sociolinguistic research, and conversa-
tional analysis; (2) early folkloristic studies of form and genre and more
recent studies of performance; and (3) narrative theory, beginning with
M. M. Bakhtin’s (1986) discussions of genre and authoritative discourse
and including formal, structural, and semiotic research. These areas always
overlap; in particular, research on performance depends on the study of
style, aesthetics, and poetics.
I began with the question of who can tell stories about what to whom, or
the question of “entitlement” (Sacks, 1992; Shuman, 1986, 2005). Sacks
(1992) began by observing that our experiences are just about the only thing
we truly own, but that sometimes we are not in the best position to know
what happened to us. In his example, the witness to a car accident becomes
the expert whose vantage point provides knowledge that might be missing
for the person who suffered the experience. Experience can be collabora-
tively represented (Erickson, 1976). Alternatively, the perpetrators of vio-
lence can know more than their victims about things such as who was
involved, where and when an event occurred, or what motivated the violence.
The concept of available narrative addresses one dimension of this prob-
lem. However, saying that a narrative is available does not mean that narra-
tors consciously or strategically assess a corpus to find a suitable narrative.
To the contrary, people are more likely to discuss the unavailability of suit-
able or acceptable representations of their experiences. Available narratives
might better be described as already familiar scripts, often recognized out of
awareness (Ochs & Capps, 1996). Narrative is one way of making sense of
traumatic situations that completely disrupt ordinary life. Alternatively, the
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——127

available narratives that are already familiar through the media or in a com-
munity repertoire of stories may be rejected by individuals who regard the
narratives as interfering with any understanding of what they experienced
(Bamberg & Andrews, 2004).
Building on the concept of entitlement (or who has the right to tell what
to whom), in my research, I have considered what happens when stories
travel beyond the people who have experienced the described events. I became
interested in how an individual’s personal narrative could be used allegori-
cally to describe a more general human experience. G. Thomas Couser
(1997) provided examples of how narratives become dominant for particu-
lar illnesses. Similarly, discussions of core narratives (Mishler, 1986) invited
discussion of how emblematic narratives could obscure their underlying
ideologies. Using interactive narrative analysis, we can ask how narratives
become valorized and how they are part of the cultural and linguistic
resources of a community, whether as part of a repertoire or as part of other
circulations of narrative (Georgakopoulou, 1998; Georgakopoulou, 2005;
Ochs & Capps, 2001). The question of who can say what to whom becomes
a question about how people negotiate the circulation of narrative (Briggs &
Mantini-Briggs, 2003). How are particular narratives valorized and others
contested (Bamberg, De Fina, & Schiffrin, 2007)?
I divide my discussion of narrative interaction into (1) tellability/reportability;
(2) ownership, entitlement, and footing; (3) uses of genres, performance styles,
and reported speech; (4) intertextuality and dialogic narration; (5) narrative
and social/political membership categories; and (6) conclusions—on narra-
tive interaction, narrative circulation, and trauma narrative.
The narrative I discuss here was told as part of a larger collaborative research
project on political asylum narratives with lawyer/sociologist Carol Bohmer
(Bohmer & Shuman, 2008). Narrative constitutes a crucial, perhaps the
most crucial, part of the political asylum process because people applying for
asylum often have no evidence of their experiences apart from their narra-
tives.1 It is incumbent on the applicant to provide a narrative that meets the
unstated expectations of the asylum officials for credibility, consistency, and
detail.2 Applicants who fail the narrative test (not explicitly acknowledged
as such) fail to get asylum.
Margaretta (not her real name), a Cameroonian, was denied asylum
because her story did not meet these criteria. The immigration officials
found inconsistencies in her story, and they also found her story to lack suf-
ficient evidence of political persecution. In the course of our work, we heard
many stories that were regarded by the officials as similarly lacking; we have
chosen to discuss Margaretta’s story because she has requested that it be
told. Our research carries an additional ethical burden because we do not
128——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

want to put any of the people we have worked with in further jeopardy.
Even changing names or names of countries might not provide sufficient
protection, so for the most part, we try to find published accounts that
match the circumstances of the people we have worked with as examples to
use in our own publications. Margaretta is concerned that people are
unaware of the injustices she experienced in Cameroon and welcomes any
opportunity to have her story reach a larger audience.
Carol Bohmer and I have written elsewhere about how the political asy-
lum process, fundamentally an interrogation, produces “epistemologies
of ignorance” that too easily result in the failure of applicants to pro-
vide consistent, coherent, detailed narratives. Others have also discussed
the seeming absurdities in which, for example, the exact same narrative is
rejected for completely opposite reasons (Ranger, 2008), or a translation
error results in the accusation of inconsistency (Jacquemet, 2005), or cul-
tural assumptions and communicative inequalities result in faulty processes
(Blommaert, 2001). After carefully scrutinizing these studies, Amnesty
International reports on injustices in the system, and examples of letters of
denial, we have come to the conclusion that these absurdities conceal a
deeper, more troubling, problem. In every case, although the interactions
are absurd, due process has been followed. Given the current political cli-
mate, in which countries are both obliged to accept true asylum seekers and
are reluctant to open their doors to what they fear are “hoards” of people
displaced by political persecution, it now appears that immigration offi-
cials, if not intentionally complicit in the manufacture of absurdity, per-
petuate the conditions that create obstacles to valid asylum seekers as part
of following due process.
Asylum seekers often have very complex affiliations that compromise
their cases. Some are such unwitting victims of violence that they do not
know the political circumstances that triggered attacks against them and
thus are unable to answer questions about why they fear returning. In those
cases, lawyers like Carol Bohmer, who works pro bono for community refu-
gee agencies, often do the background research and teach the applicant
about the political situation. Some applicants have, as a survival strategy,
created affiliations with both sides in a conflict. Many have taken up arms
themselves to fight their persecutors, but depending on how involved they
were in using or distributing arms, they may be disqualified for asylum. The
narrative we discuss here describes a situation that compromises many asy-
lum seekers: To escape, persecuted people often bribe someone or use a false
document (passport, visa, or identification card). The immigration officials
are particularly suspicious of bribery and the use of false documents as acts
that compromise an applicant’s credibility.
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——129

Tellability/Reportability

Labov’s (1972) discussion of tellability began with the question of “why this
narrative—or any narrative—is felt to be tellable; in other words, why the
events of the narrative are reportable” (p. 370; see also Labov, 1997). He
pointed out that some matters are “always reportable: the danger of death
or of physical injury” (p. 370). In other words, in this discussion, he tied
reportability to particular kinds of content. Similarly, others discuss tellabil-
ity in terms of the newsworthiness of events (Sacks, 1992, pp. 773–786).
What makes a story tellable is always a matter of both the content of the
story and the context of the storytelling occasion.3 Although things like dan-
ger of death are tellable in terms of content, they can also be stigmatizing,
traumatizing experiences to report, and thus the most untellable.
Some discussions of tellability have become derailed by a faulty assump-
tion that tellability is measured in terms of the worthiness or noteworthi-
ness of a narrative or its interest for listeners (Baroni, 2010). Accountability
depends not, primarily, on the topic of the narrative but instead involves
assessments of discretion, privacy, and other sanctions (Norrick, 2005,
p. 324; Shuman, 1986, p. 54). The worthiness of a narrative depends on
a relationship between topic and context and on the relationships among
the participants in the storytelling occasion, as well as the people
described or implicated in the narrative. Noteworthiness depends on
whether or not the events described are news, but as Goffman (1974)
pointed out, some occasions warrant the repetition of an already familiar
narrative (p. 508).
In my discussion of Margaretta’s narratives, I consider some of the limits
of tellability, including not only stigma and trauma but also other cultural
issues. I use interactive narrative analysis to understand how different story-
telling occasions acknowledged or violated her entitlement to own her own
experiences, and I review how she aligned herself with particular identity
categories and refused others.
Carol began working with Margaretta after she was denied asylum the
first time. Margaretta wasn’t able to tell the story to the immigration official
without breaking down, so she and Carol rehearsed once a week to prepare
for the appeal hearing. Carol dreaded putting Margaretta through it over
and over again, but from Margaretta’s perspective the following was true:

Margaretta (M): Carol made a huge difference.

A huge difference.

Very helpful.
130——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

Carol, I can’t tell you what she means to me.

I can’t even tell you.

Amy Shuman (AS): You mean a lot to her too.

M: Every week,

made me have the feeling of being someone somebody cares about.

She can never understand that.

This metadiscursive account of tellability resonates with the reports of

many victims of violence and trauma. Although Margaretta could not tell
the story to the asylum official, she found it therapeutic to tell her account
to Carol, whom she trusted as what trauma scholars have called a “true wit-
ness.”4 Some trauma therapists suggest that narrative provides clients with
the opportunity to “feel in control of the process of remembering the assault
and the feelings associated with it” (Foa & Rothbaum, 1998, p. 158).5
Here I discuss only excerpts from Margaretta’s narratives. The full text
is reproduced elsewhere (Shuman & Bohmer, forthcoming). Margaretta
and I composed the following synopsis. Margaretta was attending nursing
school at Buea University, the only English-speaking university in
Cameroon. In the midst of her studies, the Francophone authorities dis-
credited the English speaking programs, and the students were told that
they would have to complete their degrees in French. Margaretta and the
other students protested peacefully and were arrested. Margaretta was
arrested twice more. She was raped and tortured, and she was sent to a
prison that she feared she would never leave. She bribed a guard and
escaped, and because she had won a Fulbright scholarship, she was able
to come to the United States, where she applied for political asylum. The
initial narrative Margaretta told me did not include the accounts of the assaults
or rape that she described to Carol and at the second hearing. The par-
ticular circumstances of rehearsing for the hearing (and the hearing itself)
provided conditions for tellability not warranted either in Margaretta’s
account to Amy or in our discussion here. Tellability is both a social cri-
terion, referring to the relationships among the participants—including
those not present at a storytelling occasion—and an intertextual criterion,
referring to other narratives, other representations, and other discourses.6
Tellability refers to a relationship between tellers and listeners that takes
account of what is reportable and of who can tell what to whom in what
circumstances (Ochs & Capps, 2001, pp. 33–36; Shuman, 1986, pp. 54–76;
Shuman, 2005, pp. 12–17).
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——131

Ownership, Entitlement, and Footing

Once Margaretta entered the asylum process, the story no longer belonged
to her. In a paradox that challenges the core of Sacks’ (1992) pronounce-
ment, the asylum process uses people’s narratives to examine and chal-
lenge their credibility. In the context of interaction—in this case, the asylum
hearing—proprietorship of the narrative shifts from the asylum seeker to
the asylum official. In their authoritative role, the asylum officials endeavor
to identify even small inconsistencies in the narrative that might then prove
the entire narrative to be false and thus the claim for asylum to be unwar-
ranted. In essence, they steal the warrant from the teller. But this is not
shocking if we recognize it as an exaggeration of what happens all the time
in storytelling.
Anytime someone tells someone else’s story, the proprietorship, the
authority, shifts. This is why trauma narrative is so delicate, so dependent on
the relationship between the teller and listener. At best, the listener is what
Dori Laub (1995) called a “true witness” (p. 66), someone who offers com-
passion and takes on the responsibilities incumbent upon listeners. At worst,
the teller feels exploited by the listener who appropriates the narrative. For
example, in a comparatively mild form of exploitation, the narrative is used
to create pity, to create the equivalent of the poster-child for tragedy, or to
create the illusion of compassion, in which other people’s stories become
allegories for suffering but at the cost of making the person who suffered an
exotic other. We can examine storytelling in interaction not only to learn
about people’s experiences, but also (and I would argue, more importantly)
to understand how narrative is used in interaction to extract people’s stories
away from them.
What is at stake in Margaretta’s narrative is what Goffman (1981)
called “footing,” a concept that has been elaborated on by narratologists
interested in positioning (Bamberg, 2003; Harré, 2008; Wetherell, 1998).
Narrative is one means for establishing one’s footing, or alignment, with
others in the narrative interaction and with particular categories of peo-
ple. It is not only, or even primarily, a point of view, but it instead estab-
lishes a connection between a person and her experiences. Through alignment,
a narrator says, “I’m the kind of person who does this kind of thing and
not that.”
Margaretta’s larger task for the asylum hearing was to establish her foot-
ing as a credible person. In the narrative she told to me, she established her
footing as a respectable student who had no recourse other than to act when
faced with the decertification of her nursing program.
132——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

We were just asking for the education.

We didn’t hurt anyone.

We were treated like criminals.

When you ask for your rights, you’re treated like a criminal.

It’s not right.

Margaretta referred to these actions as the actions of a group. Not only

she, but also her fellow students were targeted, first for discrimination, and
later for persecution. As a group, they were just asking to be educated, did
not hurt anyone, but were treated like criminals. Margaretta then shifted to
the generalized you and said, “When you ask for your rights, you’re treated
like a criminal.” As Patricia O’Connor (2000) explained in her discussion of
the generalized you,

When the speaker switches to “you” yet still indexes the self, several activities
are going on: (1) the speaker is distancing himself from the act by dropping the
“I” and using a “you” that indicates the self as generically or commonly like
others in that position; (2) the audience is being involved through the position-
ing as a fellow agent in a situation commonly experienced or, curiously, as a
participant in an act not ever experienced; and (3) the speaker, by using the
“you,” is also addressing the figure of the self in his own past and is perhaps
closing up, not distancing, the “space” between the past act and the current
understanding of that act. (p. 77)

Margaretta distanced herself from the idea that she acted alone, or in
isolation. It is very important she was “commonly like others in that posi-
tion” because the commonality helps to justify her actions. Her goal in this
part of the narrative was to distance herself from, or contradict, the assertion
that she was a criminal. “When you ask for your rights, you’re treated like
a criminal.” Here Margaretta was making two moves at once to establish
her footing. She was creating a link between her situation and that of anyone
who asks for rights and is treated like a criminal, and she was recruiting me,
as her audience, to that position. O’Connor’s (2000) third point is very
important to establishing footing. As O’Connor observed, Margaretta is
closing up, not distancing what might otherwise be a gap between the past
and present. She continued to stand by her beliefs that what she did was
“just ask for the education” and that she should not have been treated like
a criminal.
Margaretta’s narrative describes a change in footing, in her case a choice
to join the Southern Cameroon National Council.
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——133

That’s when I realized.

That was when I joined the southern Cameroon national council.

1992.

If they know you are a leader

you are somebody

you are an intellectual

they kill you

because they understand that the strength of that.

...

They know very well that the way we are being treated is not right,

those who are

young intelligent people,

so I decided to join the organization

because I realized that

I really had to do something.

It wasn’t going to get better.

I needed to do something.

So I joined and I started getting involved.

We knew somebody was going to die,

we knew somebody was going to be arrested

The gendarmes broke into my apartment.

I was detained for two days.

On the third day I was released,

my brother came.

I was asked to sign a document that said I’d never get involved again.

You come to a point in life where you really believe in the cause.

I was raised to stand up for what was right,

that was my aha moment

that is how I decided to join SCNC.

134——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

Goffman (1981) wrote, “A change in footing implies a change in the

alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the
way we manage the production or reception of an utterance” (p. 128).
Changes in footing can include intertextual reference points—that is, the
change in footing may include not only changes within a single speech event
but also in relation to previous footings or positions. First, referring to the
events in Cameroon, Margaretta positioned herself as a rational actor rather
than a criminal. Second, referring to her earlier, failed asylum hearing, in the
narrative she told me, Margaretta did not reposition herself in relation to
how the U. S. immigration officials positioned her, as not credible and there-
fore not deserving of asylum.
Rom Harré (2008) described positioning theory as an alternative to role
theory in psychology.7 Harré’s discussion focused on how people are
described; each description positions people in terms of, for example, what
they are able or unable to do and what their obligations might be. Karoline
Tschuggnall (1999) recommended an intertextual approach to the concept
of positioning. Using Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of authoritative discourse
(p 342), she demonstrated how people are multiply positioned in the stories
others tell about them and in one person’s multiple portrayals about herself
(Tschuggnall, 1999, p 215).
Michael Bamberg (2003) outlined three sorts of questions to understand
positioning: (1) “How are the characters positioned vis-à-vis one another
within the reported events?” (pp. 221–222); (2) “How does the speaker
position him/herself vis-à-vis the audience? (p. 222); and (3) “How do nar-
rators position themselves vis-à-vis themselves?” (p. 222). Bamberg advo-
cated the following:

A view of positioning that is more concerned with self-reflection, self-criticism,

and agency (all ultimately oriented toward the possibility of self-revisions).
In so doing, I suggest that we clearly distinguish between the ‘being positioned’
orientation, which is attributing a rather deterministic force to master narra-
tives, and a more agentive notion of the subject as ‘positioning itself,’ in which
the discursive resources or repertoires are not a apriori, pre-established, but
rather are interactively accomplished. (p. 224).

Like Bamberg, I would like to emphasize that position does not refer to a
place from which people speak; such a concept will too easily suggest the
same kind of static role that Davies and Harré (1991) rejected. The idea of
“taking up a position” too closely resembles the idea of a role, of a position
that exists apart from the decision to take it up. Along the same lines, I want
to clarify my own earlier writing about the concept of available narrative.
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——135

The concept of an available narrative can infer the idea that the narrative
exists, to be taken up or not. Instead, the virtue of the concept of position-
ing, or in Goffman’s (1981) terms, footing, is that it is interactive, intertex-
tual, and dialogic. Negotiations of positioning, tellability, and ownership occur
at the intersection of narratives as texts and narratives as interactions. Ochs
and Capps (2001) described a continuum of relations among tellers, listen-
ers, and narratives (p. 20).

Uses of Genres, Performance Styles,

and Reported Speech

Most speech occasions combine different genres. Margaretta first told

her story to the asylum officials in her written affidavit, a part of her
asylum application that also requested information in the form of short
answers to questions, lists, and filled-in blanks (Bohmer & Shuman,
2008). She told her story to me as part of a telephone conversation that
included, among other things, updates on the current situation in Cameroon
and updates on our mothers’ health situations. Her early conversations
with Carol included discussions of asylum policy in the United States.
Narrative sometimes emerges in conversation as relevant to a topic, is
offered as a response to a request, is performed as news, or is offered as
a “second story” to another narrative (Sacks, 1992, pp. 764–772), among
other possibilities.
Margaretta’s performance of her narrative was different in each of the
contexts but did not change substantially in its content. Trauma narrative
scholars have observed this consistency. In the political asylum context, the
idea that a narrative is performed would challenge its credibility. Asylum
officials are watchful for what they perceive to be borrowed scripts, and
when they hear a particular experience sound too familiar, they are suspi-
cious that the applicant may not be genuine. This was not a primary concern
in Margaretta’s case. To the contrary, the asylum officials were unfamiliar
with unrest in Cameroon and were suspicious of her claim to have been the
target of politically based persecution.
Performance style is another factor that contributes to a successful asylum
hearing. In their discussion of expectations for applicants, the asylum offi-
cials refer often to demeanor (Bohmer & Shuman, 2008, p. 149). Applicants
are expected to show particular kinds of affect at certain times, correspond-
ing to the officials’ cultural assumptions. Narrators have many resources for
performing credibility or for calling attention to the authenticity of their
136——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

narratives. Reported speech, insofar as it claims to reproduce the exact

words spoken during an event, is one of these resources.
In her account to me about meeting the lawyer who put her in touch with
Carol Bohmer and who eventually convinced a judge to reconsider her case,
Margaretta replayed the situation, using reported speech, indicated here for
emphasis with quotation marks:

M: And that was how I met Dan Berger.

AS: oh

M: I told myself,

“You need to talk to this man.”

I walked up to this man

“I have a story to tell you

but it’s a long story

and I’m not sure.”

I said, “I have so much fear and anger.”

And he said,

he gave me his card

and said,

“Call me at your first convenient time.”

And we talked.

So I called him

and the first day I called him

and I said “I could talk to you because my heart said I could talk to you”

from the first day I saw him.

So I told him everything.

And he said “the first thing I want you to do is just seek counseling.”

Reported speech not only replays a situation, doing what Goffman (1974)
described as “running through a strip of already determined events”
(p. 508), it also shifts authority from the narrator to the person quoted
(Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 342–343), even if the person quoted is oneself. Using
reported speech makes the claim that the words quoted were uttered in another
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——137

context, and replaying that context grants authority as well as import to the
current replay. Quotation is a way of reclassifying a message and of creating
a meta-discourse, an implicit commentary (Shuman, 2005. p. 39).
Margaretta’s decision to talk to Dan Berger was pivotal for her. Importantly,
both of the pivotal points of her narrative include reported speech. An out-
sider just reading her narrative might not grasp the significance of her
encounter with Dan Berger. In fact, it ended up making the difference
between getting or not getting asylum, but this is not what she reported.
Instead of describing the consequence of the meeting, she described the meet-
ing itself. She slowed down her narrative to include her own words to her-
self, making the decision to talk to him. She provided detail about telling
Dan Berger that she had a long story to tell, and she quoted his exact words,
“Call me at your first convenient time,” but then only alluded to their con-
versation in the most general terms, “We talked,” and then later “So I told
him everything.” Again, she included his response as reported speech, “The
first thing I want you to do is just seek counseling.” In the narrative, Dan
Berger is present as “me” and “I,” and he speaks in the present tense. Reported
speech makes it possible for Margaretta to convey the depth and significance
of this occasion without spelling that out. When she said, “and I said, “I
could talk to you because my heart said I could talk to you,” she refers to
having a conversation with Dan Berger without ever telling us what it was
that she said to him beyond the fact that she told him she could trust him.
The important thing for her was the choice she made to speak to him.
Reported speech makes this tellable.
The other pivotal point of Margaretta’s narrative was her account of
recognizing the guard at the prison and persuading him to help her.

So when he saw me he was shocked.

He said “What are you doing, what happened?”
I explained to him
I told him
I said,
“please you really need to help me.
If you don’t help me,
this is the end of it.
I really need you to help me”
So
he wouldn’t do it without a price
138——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

so we had to strike a deal.

And that’s how I walked away.

As in the meeting with Dan Berger, Margaretta’s description of her meet-

ing with the guard described more about the metadiscourse than about the
content, which was alluded to briefly as “I explained to him. I told him.”
Instead, their exchange was the focus of the narrative, and Margaretta
quoted him asking her why she was in prison and herself begging with him
to help her. She does not report either the conditions of the bargain or the
exchange regarding the bargain. Her written affidavit included no reported
speech and included information about the deal:

I overheard the Commissioner telling a police officer to prepare for my depar-

ture to Kondengui prison.

I was then assigned to clean the floors of the prison and empty the buckets of
urine and feces.

I recognized the police officer that was assigned to supervise me. We knew each
other because he had brought his father to the National Center for Diabetes
and Hypertension at the Yaounde Central Hospital, where I worked from July
2002 to May 2003. He was also from Babessi, my hometown.

I struck a deal with the police officer—he would help me escape, and I would
pay him 500,000 CFA francs. We arranged that I would bring the money to
his wife’s house after I escaped.

In contrast to this written affidavit, in her telephone conversation with

me, Margaretta used reported speech to describe an encounter with the
guard, a character who served a pivotal role in the course of events. Several
scholars have contributed to our understanding of narratives of life-changing
events (Linde, 1993; Ochs & Capps, 2001). We do not want to assume that
we know how people will narrate what counts as life-changing or self-
redefining (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). Very often, the thing an outsider
views as life-changing (discovering that one has an illness; the experience of
trauma; major life firsts and decisions) defies the listeners’ expectations, and
the narrator insists on alternate, unexpected accounts. In Margaretta’s nar-
rative, the important, life-defining claims are not about the luck of discover-
ing that she knew the prison guard but instead about how one finds oneself
confronting an injustice that forces one to act, and how that act should be
understood as a position of integrity, and that people who act justly are not
criminals and should not be treated as such.
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——139

Margaretta’s account of bribing the guard, like so many other accounts

by asylum seekers about bribing guards to escape prison or to cross borders,
challenged her credibility in the eyes of the asylum officials. Whereas
reported speech might grant authority, and thus sometimes credibility, to a
narrative told in conversation, even reported speech would not have made a
difference to the officials’ suspicions. To understand this, we need to view
the intertextual dimensions of the narrative.

Intertextuality and Dialogic Narration

One can find numerous accounts of the University of Buea student strikes.
For example, the following is an Internet appeal for foreigners to continue
pressuring the Cameroonian government:

As we wrote in our last letter of appeal to you; on the 27th of April 2005,
paramilitary forces of French Cameroon shot using life [sic] ammunition at
students who were peacefully demonstrating to express their grievances
against the administration of the university and the annexation regime of
French Cameroon. This despite the express provisions of the law, including the
law of Cameroon forbidding the using of life [sic] bullets by security forces to
restore order.
After we wrote on the issue last time, on May the 23 2005, the police again
shot at students with life [sic] ammunition killing one person and seriously
injuring five others.8

This narrative, told from the battlefield, as it were, from the midst of a
conflict rather than from a historically retrospective perspective, not only
provides context for Margaretta’s account; it also works dialogically to
position her narrative intertextually within a discourse of protest. Like
Margaretta’s narrative, the Internet narrative makes the point that the stu-
dents were “peacefully demonstrating” and that it was government, not the
students, that acted against “the express provisions of the law.” The model
that Edward Bruner and Phyllis Gorfain (1984) developed, drawing on the
work of M. M. Bahktin, is useful for understanding narratives that challenge
authority. The Cameroonian authorities were in the position to claim to
know the truth and to dismiss the students’ narratives as misinformed, per-
sonal accounts.9 Bruner and Gorfain (1984) observed, “Occasionally, a story
becomes so prominent in the consciousness of an entire society that its recur-
rent tellings not only define and empower storytellers, but also help to con-
stitute and reshape the society” (p. 56). Margaretta’s story refers to and is in
140——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

dialogue with other society-shaping stories about the conflicts that

reshaped her life. Bruner and Gorfain argued, “All stories are told in
voices . . . a story is told in a dynamic chorus of styles which voice the
social and ideological positions they represent” (p. 57). Bruner and Gorfain
pointed out that in the “dialogic relationship between self and society”
(p. 60) neither the individual nor the historically sanctioned text should be
regarded as fixed and unchanging.10 They regarded assumed objectivity as
a rhetorical stance that claims to be based on the facts. Paradoxical situa-
tions, however, require interpretation (p. 64). In their discussion of dialogic
narration, they are not referring to the idea that “every story can be rein-
terpreted at a later date or retold in a different context and new meanings
will emerge” (p. 65) but that some stories are “riddled with paradox, reflex-
ivity, and inquiry” and “crystallize in a struggle over meaning that takes
place between authoritative and challenging versions” (p. 66) (in this case
in Israeli political and moral discourse). The asylum officials’ suspicions of
bribery, although less monumental in scale, because they are not recog-
nized to be at the core of national identity, similarly reference a struggle
that can be traced to a fundamental paradox: the appeal to enemies for aid
in times of great need.
Margaretta’s accounts, both in the affidavit and in personal conversa-
tion, of her exchange with the guard she bribed make it very clear that the
bribery was possible because she recognized the guard as a familiar person
in the ordinary life she inhabited before her protest and arrest. She had
treated his father in the hospital. His wife’s sister lived in her building. We
can deduce from this that the guard might have been more willing to help
her because he knew how to find her to get the bribe money, or that he felt
some compassion for her because she had helped his father, or that ordinary
life acquaintances can prevail across enemy lines. For the asylum officials,
either she is an activist who was being politically persecuted or she is an
ordinary person not eligible for asylum. For the asylum officials, the asso-
ciation with the guard compromises her account of her association with the
political organization.
However, viewing this paradox only on the surface, as a contest about
veracity, reproduces the cultural, political, and social gaps that inevitably
prejudice the officials against the asylum seekers. We can minimize the gap
by explaining that bribery and even corruption are “normal,” not only in
situations of conflict in Cameroon but also in the United States, but it is
exactly this normalization that the asylum officials resist. Most listeners or
readers of Margaretta’s account would have no trouble accepting these
explanations. Instead, the asylum hearing is an occasion for widening what
Briggs and Bauman (1992) described as an “intertextual gap.” The paradox
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——141

of appealing to (and bribing) enemies creates a gap that the asylum officials
can exploit in their efforts to undermine Margaretta’s credibility. It creates
an opportunity to misunderstand. So much is written about narrative’s pos-
sibilities and promises for mutual understanding that we can easily overlook
the possibilities narrative affords for misunderstanding (Shuman, 2005).

Narrative and Social/Political

Membership Categories

The multiple voices and multiple narratives interlaced with Margaretta’s

narrative of dissent, arrest, and persecution are in some cases in conflict with
each other. Margaretta’s narrative is also part of a larger political context:
Dissent in Anglophone Cameroon, although corroborated by U.S. country
reports on Cameroon, counters the official Cameroonian account.11 The
U.S. country report corroborates Margaretta’s description of Yaounde
Kondengui Prison as rife with human rights violations and lack of access to
trials or other means of contesting incarceration or proving innocence.12
The Republique du Cameroon issued several press releases about student
unrest at the University of Buea, including the following:

A group of students started violent demonstrations which led to the destruc-

tion of University property. These demonstrations—which continued at night
when an assorted group of individuals armed with guns and clubs attacked a
police station—ended in the death of two of the assailants and injuries sus-
tained by the law enforcement officers. (“Cameroon,” 2006)

In this account, the students are characterized as having committed

criminal acts. What is most important to Margaretta is her credibility as a
person who is not a criminal. Margaretta was raped and persecuted by
Cameroonian law enforcers who determined her to be a criminal. Her only
option was to escape. The asylum officials did not regard her as a criminal,
but they rejected her claim to be a political dissident persecuted for her
political actions and thus warranting asylum. She was denied asylum
because the immigration officials did not accept her account of herself as a
political activist. Margaretta herself described her activism as out of neces-
sity, as motivated by injustice rather than by an ideological commitment.
The positions are rigid but also interdependent.
“Criminal” is a category of person, but it is not a fixed category. In
Harvey Sacks’ (1992) terms, it is a membership category produced by infer-
ence. Unlike groups or clubs, membership categories replace an individual
142——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

action with a category of person who did that action. The Cameroonian
government sees the people who protested as members of the category
criminal. Margaretta is all too aware of this and works to create a different
category in her narrative, the person who “was just there for the education”
and who “didn’t hurt anyone.” Both of these descriptions reference the
category she objects to. Her use of “just” restricts her actions to being a
student and nothing more, certainly not the “more” of being a criminal.
Similarly, not hurting anyone excludes her from the category of criminal.
Then she reported, “When you ask for your rights, you’re treated like a
criminal. It’s not right.”
The asylum officials operate with a different membership category, literally
being persecuted for membership in a social group or for holding a political
opinion that qualifies an individual for political asylum. Although the asylum
officials did not categorize Margaretta as a criminal, neither were they willing
to categorize her as a persecuted member of a social or political group.
Perhaps the greatest paradox in Margaretta’s case is that the asylum offi-
cials suspicions of details that they believed compromised her credibility
corresponded with practices accepted as normal in the United States. They
were suspicious of both her account of her membership in the political orga-
nization and her account of bribing a guard to escape. Using her resourceful-
ness as an educated person, Margaretta located Dan Berger, who not only
recommended that she get counseling for her PTSD but also persuaded a
judge to take her case. The judge, not so unlike the guard, was able to
reverse her precarious situation.

Conclusions: On Narrative Interaction,

Narrative Circulation, and Trauma Narrative

The analysis of narrative interaction—attending to how people use narra-

tive to negotiate their social relationships—provides insight into situations
that produce gaps rather than coherent understandings of experience
(Linde, 1993; Schiffrin, 1996: Schiffrin, 2000). Working at multiple levels
of analysis, from the close analysis of narrative to the study of public policy
and political theory on asylum, Carol Bohmer and I have been able to use
narrative analysis to explore how the political asylum process exploits the
unsayable and the unrepresentable to discredit (literally, depriving credibil-
ity) asylum applicants. Although studies of narrative in everyday life are
enormously helpful for understanding the trauma narratives of political
asylum applicants, the applicants’ narratives are missing the ordinary part
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——143

of the everyday and thus cannot possibly arrive at the kind of coherence
often discussed as a feature of conversational narrative (Linde, 1993). As
Paoletti and Johnson (2007) wrote, “The basic function of the ‘work of
being ordinary’ is maintaining the intelligibility of what happened and
therefore the possibility itself of communicating among members” (p. 91).
They also contended that “this difference [a different perception of ordi-
nariness] in the narrative focus is bound to class membership; that is, it is
possible to identify specific strategies as category bound activity linked to
class membership.”
Margaretta’s account is an example of a local narrative that failed to
match the institutional expectations for it; the gap is measured through a
lens of suspicion, part of a global politics that invites that scrutiny. Veena
Das (2007) observed that these discourses of suspicion “become crystallized
when more and more refugees begin to come from Africa, Sri Lanka, or the
Middle East” (p. 333). Margaretta’s narrative is an example of a dialogic,
intertextual, narrative interaction that invokes country reports on Cameroon,
other narrative testimonies about bribing guards to escape, the historical
political narratives that inform asylum policy from its inception, narratives
produced by NGO’s such as AsylumAid, and scholarly discussions, such as
this. Charles Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs (2003) recommended that we
examine seriously the obligations and consequences regarding the circula-
tion of stories.13
These narrative circulations do not have equal weight or valence; their
particular confluence and juxtaposition in any one narrative interaction has
bearing on how suspicion is manifested and how tellability is managed. The
difficulties people who have experienced violence face in narrating trauma
further challenges tellability (Suarez-Orozco & Robben, 2000). The conflu-
ence of the dialogic political and personal narratives operates in terms of
Foucault’s concept of governmentality, creating the asylum seeker as a par-
ticular kind of impossible subject.14
Discussions of narrative interaction, including the concepts of entitle-
ment, positionality, and tellability, take into account not only how narra-
tors legitimate their accounts but also the processes of delegitimation, such
as the suspicions of the asylum officials. In this case, the stakes for entitle-
ment are high—the rejection of the narrative is a rejection for asylum. The
positionality of the official carries with it the predetermined weight and
responsibility not only for making one particular decision but also, and
with greater weight, the responsibility for maintaining due process in the
immigration and asylum system generally. In this process, tellability is a
systemic weak point; non-tellable events, for example bribing a guard,
144——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

produce gaps of credibility that undermine the narrator’s position and

delegitimize her case.
The analytic division of narrative into events that move the action for-
ward and evaluative phrases (Labov, 1972), although immensely useful for
understanding how narrative works, can be misleading if it is taken to imply
that the events are somehow more factual than the evaluative and metadis-
cursive comments. To the contrary, narrative is often a means for contesting
truth and negotiating reputation (Brenneis, 1996). Margaretta and the asylum
officials occupied different metadiscursive terrains; they were not engaged in
the same contest. For the officials, the question was whether or not she was
credible and whether or not her case warranted a sufficient fear of return.
Margaretta wanted to be validated as having protested against injustice
rather than having committed an illegal act.
Margaretta was discredited on several grounds. Her hope was to redeem
the discreditation she experienced in Cameroon. Asylum narratives often
contain fundamentally discrediting accounts; in Margaretta’s case, the rape
and the bribery of the guard were stigmatizing in different ways. As Goffman
(1963) explained, people who narrate stigmatizing experiences are in the
difficult position of acknowledging the discrediting event and attempting
repair that might restore social status.
Tellability, questions of what is sayable and what is unsayable, and under
what conditions, plays a huge role in managing what counts as truth in
narrative interactions. In the asylum hearings, personal testimonies and
public discourses/memories/narratives converge. This convergence can, in
some circumstances, be complementary, so that a personal story can serve
as an allegory for the public discourse and thus cement an ideological posi-
tion. Of course, this occurs in political asylum cases just as it does in other
political arenas: one person becomes the poster child for the larger dis-
course. Alternatively, the failure to merge the personal and the public cre-
ates a gap, or multiple gaps, whether in the form of counter-narratives,
coming from the personal as a rejection of the public discourse, or in the
form of bureaucratic refusals, coming from a government institution as a
rejection of a personal testimony.15
Questions of entitlement, tellability, and positionality/footing (i.e., who
says what to whom in what conditions) require an interactive approach to
narrative. In the political asylum hearings, where narrative is used as a
basis for determining credibility, entitlement can be undermined, tellability
can be compromised, and positionality can be manipulated. Margaretta’s
entitlement to account for her own experiences was undermined by the
configuration of the hearing, in which the official retained control of the
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——145

narration through a process of interrogation. Tellability was compromised

not only by Margaretta’s reluctance to recount the rape and torture details
but also by her quite different sense of what counted as the pivotal events
to be narrated. Of greatest consequence for Margaretta’s appeal for asy-
lum, her positionality was manipulated and she was deemed not to be
credible—that is, she was deemed to not be who she said she was. Instead
of being, as she claimed, a political activist who had justly protested unfair
treatment, she was considered to be a criminal by the Cameroonian gov-
ernment and a not credible applicant, whose descriptions of both her
political membership and of her bribing a prison guard raised suspicions
for the U.S. asylum officials.

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Notes

1. See Liisa Malkki’s (2007) discussion of “the specter of the impostor, the ‘false
refugee,’” (p. 338) as part of the asylum process. See also Goodman and Burke,
2010; Maryns, 2006).
2. Internationally, a person qualifies for asylum “owing to a well-founded fear
of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a par-
ticular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and
is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of
that country” Article 1, The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
(UNHCR, 1951).
 CHAPTER 6 Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts——149

3. As several narrative scholars have pointed out (Norrick, 2005), tellability

does not belong either to texts or to tellers but, instead, is a property of contexts. The
same narrative might be untellable in some contexts and tellable in others, and a
narrator may tell things to some people and not to others.
4. See Dori Laub’s (1992) discussion of the true witness.
5. Foa and Rothbaum (1998) wrote, “In this part of treatment, our goal is to
help you process the memories connected with the assault by having you remember
them for an extended period of time. Staying with these memories, rather than run-
ning away from them, will help decrease the anxiety and fear that are associated with
them. It is quite natural to want to avoid painful experiences, such as memories,
feelings, and situations that remind you of the assault. However, as we have already
discussed, the more you avoid dealing with the memories, the more they disturb your
life. Our aim is to help you gain control over the memories instead of having the
memories control you” (pp. 159–160). (See also McKinney, 2007.)
6. Tellability often invokes questions of ownership and entitlement. For exam-
ple, Carol Bohmer and I do not feel entitled to reproduce most of the narratives we
have collected in our research. They are not our stories to tell. Although, in this case,
we are governed by possible life and death consequences or the possibility that even
if a person or her family might not be physically harmed, our report of her narrative
could jeopardize her case. The opposite is also possible. We have discussed cases in
which an applicant gained public notoriety by virtue of the attention granted by
prominent people (usually celebrities or activists rather than scholars) and received
asylum status because the notoriety changed the immigration officials’ estimation of
the harm they might suffer by being returned to their native country (Bohmer &
Shuman, 2008).
7. Harré (2008) wrote that the virtue of positioning theory is that, unlike roles,
which are “relatively fixed, often formally defined and long lasting,” positioning
theory “concerns conventions of speech and action that are labile, contestable and
ephemeral” (p. 30).
8. See http://thecaravan.org/node/285. Posted May 30, 2005.
9. For example, the officials “claimed the students were politically manipu-
lated.” (http://camacda.co.uk/2010/02/16/universities-still-glorified-secondary-
schools/)
10. See also Briggs’ (1988) cautions against “casting hegemony in singular, static,
and monolithic terms” (p. 369).
11. Republique Du Cameroun. (2006, November 30). Press release on violent
student strike at the University of Buea. Accessed August 1, 2010, from http://www
.spm.gov.cm/index_ac.php?param=accueil&r=r&d=11203&t=dss&lang=en
12. U. S. Department of State. (2008, March 11). Diplomacy in action: Cameroon.
Retrieved August 1, 2010, from http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100470.htm
13. Briggs and Mantini-Briggs (2003) wrote, “The anthropological tactic of
attempting to expose social suffering by bringing local worlds to the attention of
global audiences runs the risk of legitimating social inequality if it fails to challenge
the global pretensions of elite accounts, to bring out the global critiques often
150——PART II Analyzing Storytelling

found in the narratives of poor and racialized populations, and to confront the
gatekeeping mechanism that provide broad audiences for some narratives and
restrict others to home” (p. 327).
14. In her discussion of the work of Didier Fassin and Estelle d’Halluin on
political asylum, Veena Das (2007) discussed discourses of suspicion in terms of
“the emergence of new protocols of bureaucratic and judicial regulation in which
the test to which asylum seekers have to submit to establish that they are ‘true’
victims of repression must correspond to the category of trauma formalized as
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a recognized diagnostic category in psy-
chiatry” (p. 330).
15. McKinney (2007) wrote, “Private trauma and personal memory are thus
connected with public and collective memory, simply in the act of telling and
receiving, if there is mutual awareness among the bearers of witness that the
trauma occurred within a historical and collective context. This exchange enables
the client to reclaim his own position as witness to the truth of what happened
and achieve membership within a collective of testifying ‘survivors’ whose iden-
tity is anchored in a discourse of remembrance” (p. 277). (See also Day, 1998 and
De Fina, 2003.)