Narrative subjectivity: Restorying hope

The question of hope is arguably most pressing where it is most ephemeral or ostensibly the least reasonable response to a world confronting the polycrises of climate catastrophe, multiple geopolitical conflicts, and deepening inequality. Hope is typically future-orientated, framing both political and personal possibilities in developmental terms and strongly invested in the promise of youthful potential. Narrative temporality disrupts this linear notion of progress, attending to the ways in which the past and future collide and coincide in the present, rendering the inner-outer terrain of human life unstable and much more difficult to navigate. This paper adopts and adapts Teo’s approach to theorizing subjectivity in relation to the concept of hope, offering 1) a critique of thin versions of hope or optimistic positivity; 2) narrative resources of memory and imagination for reconstructing hope; and 3) possibilities for creative subjectivity and practices of hope in the present. Narrative psychology offers ways for rethinking subjectivity in temporal, embodied, and relational terms, providing threads of theory-method to articulate hope as a constitutive concept in re-storying self- and world-making.