Toward a Generative Metanarrative Theory of Human Displacement

• In Event: Storying Just Futures: Emancipatory Analyses of Representations of People Who Sought Refuge

Abstract

This theoretical paper contextualizes the research presented in this symposium by situating this work within a Generative Metanarrative Theory of Human Displacement (Authors, 2023). Generative Metanarrative Theory of Human Displacement is an emerging conceptual framework and theory of action that seeks to understand and (re)claim the emancipatory potentials of transmedia stories and storytelling towards preventing forced displacement, achieving justice for people who seek refuge, and cultivating a collective sense of global responsibility towards anti-racist, liberated futures.

Multiple disciplines study representations of forced displacement and people who have sought refuge (e.g. Education, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Media and Communication, Literary Studies), identifying similar patterns independently of each other (e.g., the need for historicizing and culturally authentic representations) and calling for broader analytic theories (Le Espiritu, et al., 2022). This theory draws from scholarship across several fields in order to invite ontologically consequential dialogue that disrupts siloed and hyperspecialized perspectives of human displacement and humanity on a global scale.

Conceptually, this work brings together scholarship in critical race theory (e.g., Bell, 1987; Brayboy, 2005; Collins, 2021; Crenshaw, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 2009, 2013; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano, & Yosso, 2002), critical refugee studies (Espiritu et al., 2022; Nguyen, & Phu, 2021), critical literary studies (Boutte & Muller, 2018; Campano, et. al, 2013; Enciso, 2011; Kumashiro, 2001; Thomas, et. al, 2020; Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016), and transmedia literacies (Dena, 2014; Jenkins, 2017; Lemke, 2009, 2023; Rish, 2015), facilitating a dynamic intersectional analysis and centering the significance of race within and across bureaucratic migratory categories.

In disentangling and theorizing how narratives are constructed and circulate, we also draw upon methodologies of cultural industries studies (Saha, 2016, 2018), critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature (Botelho & Rudman, 2009; Huber, et. al, 2020), and multimodal critical inquiries (Campano, et. al, 2020; Djonov & Zhao, 2014; Machin & Mayr, 2023; Van Leeuwen, 2014). Future-oriented analysis disrupts deeply-rooted histories of recurring injustice across place and time by critically analyzing prevailing, hidden, and missing story archetypes about “forced displacement”, and tracing these archetypes back to their explicit and implicit purposes (interests and interest convergences), audiences, storytellers, and modes of transmedial production and distribution in order to generate both personal and collective imperatives of agentive, intergenerational storying.

By examining processes and mechanisms that create metanarratives about displacement across media and texts, broadly construed, Generative Metanarrative Theory of Human Displacement invites interdisciplinary storytelling that disrupts narrative ideologies of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, classism, and racism, and instead centers people’s and nation’s histories, cultures, and unapologetic visions of sustaining and fulfilling futures.

Authors

• Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Nora Peterman, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Richard M. Minaya, University of Missouri - Kansas City