Conflict as text and as narrative universe

Abstract The article proposes an analysis of conflict as a network of antagonistic relations in its diachronic dimension, whose elements are expressed in narratives. The concept “conflict” is treated as an abstract category that lacks a concrete referent, even though certain facts, phenomena, or artifacts may be conceptualized as its manifestations. The argument demonstrates that when such conceptualizations take on a narrative character, the set of such narratives becomes a dynamic textual universe. The article also highlights the role of pragmatics in the reception of such narratives. They can be read at the denotative or the engaged (emic) level. The latter allows the reception of individual narratives (or even their recognizable attributes) as a gateway to a universe of content, in which, among other things, binary oppositions encode information about the structure of the social world.