It’s the realm of becoming generative possibilities, where storytelling is rhizomatic, fluid and open to between of relational interpretation. Here, we explore the potential of futures arriving, yet to be told.
Antenarratives are the SEEDS of pre-story and pre-narrative. This website is dedicated to the study and exploration of antenarrative - the fragmented, non-linear, and complex ‘seeds’ of your organizational stories emerging and growing shaping your pre-story and pre-narrative coherence. I’m David Michael Boje Ph.D. I invented the term ‘antenarrative’ in 2001, defining it as a process that precedes and shapes pre-narratives and pre-stories in organizations. Over the past two decades, antenarrative processes developed into key aspects:
Pre-narrative Speculation
Antenarratives are “bets” on potential future narratives. They represent fragmented, non-linear, and often incoherent speculations that may eventually coalesce into coherent narratives and well-known stories. This pre-narrative stage allows for multiple possibilities and interpretations ‘antecedent’ a dominant narrative emerges.
Temporal Dynamics
Antenarratives challenge traditional notions of causality and one-way temporality in storytelling:
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They link retrospective pre-narratives to living, ongoing stories.
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They reverse temporal logic, allowing potential futures to arrive from the future, not just the past, and then shaping (re-historicizing) how past events are interpreted and narrated in the present.
Multiple Life-Forms
I identified several types of antenarrative processes:
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Pre/bet antenarratives: Fragmented stories that may develop into full narratives
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Spiral antenarratives: Dynamic, evolving meanings to go beyond linear or closed-loop systems.
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Rhizomatic assemblage: Combinatorial processes that maintain ambiguity and allow for multiple potential narratives.
Prospective Sensemaking
Antenarratives are crucial for “prospective sensemaking,” enabling organizations to anticipate the risks of their; bets on the future’ and to shape possible futures rather than simply reacting (retrospectively) to past events. This forward-looking aspect distinguishes antenarratives from traditional narrative approaches.
Sociomaterial Aspects
Antenarrative processes involve social and material elements, in what Karen Barad calls ‘material-discursive intra-activity, what Donna Haraway calls material-semiotics, and what Myra J. Hird calls ‘superorganism’ community of human and non-human life. They each recognize that not only people but also objects, environments, and other non-human entities contribute to storytelling and meaning-making in a posthuman multispecies ecology
Focusing on seven pre-narrative and pre-story processes, antenarrative theory and practice provides a framework for understanding how pre-stories emerge, evolve, and shape organizational realities before they become fixed, often linear narratives. This approach offers valuable insights into the dynamic and complex nature of antenarrative pre-story and pre-narrative processes.