Summary
Narrative power is a movement’s capacity to make its stories count: to change which ideas a society treats as normal, and so what its rules allow. The term is associated with the racial justice leader Rashad Robinson, whose essay ‘Changing Our Narrative About Narrative’ defines it as “the ability to change the norms and rules our society lives by”. His test is presence versus power: a front-page story is presence; power is forcing a change in decisions.
Mandy Van Deven, writing for arts funders, defines it as “the ability to determine which meaning-making systems people use to interpret and construct the world”. Both say it depends on narrative infrastructure.
Rationale
Part 1 cites Robinson’s essay, and Mandy Van Deven advised and was interviewed for this work. Their term holds us to being “clear-eyed about the role of power” in what keeps dominant dispositions in place.