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Narrative approach to the art of war and military studies - Narratology as military science research paradigm Cover

Narrative approach to the art of war and military studies - Narratology as military science research paradigm

By: Jan Hanska  
Open Access
|Nov 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to initiate discussion into the role narratives could play in military studies. Narratology is an old and well-established research paradigm that first emerged as part of the linguistic turn. Yet its potential has not been depleted. It is the study of narratives or stories. There are plenty of topics not yet approached from this perspective especially in the field of military studies. The military academia needs to broaden its scope of research and allow for alternative orientations and theories to be used to address traditional dilemmas, create new research paradigms and enrich the variety of analysis. Critical security studies approach shared topics with military studies by embracing the aesthetic turn that differentiates between the representation and the represented. The argument in this article is that to produce comprehensive information on its research topics military studies would benefit from embracing them as people experience them and not focus on their ontology. The article does not offer a methodological toolbox to the reader but rather an introduction to some classics of narratology and offers a few insights how this type of approach could be used in military history, strategy, operational art or even leadership studies.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jms-2016-0186 | Journal eISSN: 1799-3350 | Journal ISSN: 2242-3524
Language: English
Page range: 1 - 19
Published on: Nov 23, 2016
Published by: National Defense University
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2016 Jan Hanska, published by National Defense University
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.