Narratives of Rebellion

• In Event: Narrative Criminology III: Innovations

Abstract

Social movement theory provides several mechanisms that account for how and why individuals engage in risky criminal actions against established political regimes. These involve the catalytic discharge of repressed grievances, the diffusion of feasible repertoires of action, and the promulgation of powerful 'vocabularies of motive.' While these theories are compelling, this paper argues that their inattention to narrative leads to an incomplete account of the role of teleology in motivating rebellion. Narratives, being eminently teleological, can be criminogenic because they provide the cognitive resources for envisioning success in the midst of depressing asymmetrical challenges and because they attribute casual significance to what in the present seem to be futile or insignificant actions. Building on the notion within narrative criminology that 'genres' can be salient across cultures (Joosse et al. 2015; Presser and Sandberg 2015) and informed by two case studies of environmentally-motivated sabotage campaigns, I describe the genre, 'narratives of rebellion,' which a) tends to invoke botanical, subterranean, and regenerative imagery, b) creates perceptions of solidarity with as-yet unseen fellow travelers or comrades, and, c) takes advantage of the distinction between fiction and reality in a way that equips storytellers with the ability to voice 'truth-to-power' statements while avoiding self-incrimination.

Author

• Paul Joosse, University of Hong Kong