The Study Of Narrative As The Form Of Democratic Deliberation

Along with the deliberative turn of democratic theory, there are two representative forms of deliberation gradually formed in the discussion of democratic deliberation. One is argument, and the other one is narrative. The deliberative democrats led by Habermas address that, the major way for people to involve in democratic deliberation is argument. In their view, the democratic deliberation should be a process that liberal and equal people deliberative with each other rationally about the public issue. People who are involved in the democratic deliberation should be liberal, equal, and reasonable. So the reasonable people will support their point by argument, also they will cooperate with each other to communicate and interact about the public issue to get a better result. This point raised by Habermas who represents some deliberative democrats has dominated lots of scholars about how to understand democratic deliberation process for a long time, until the deliberative democrats represented by Iris Marion Young objected and demurred it. They believe that there might be some difficulties if they just restrict the form of democratic deliberation to argument, such as the limitation of the applicability of the deliberation democrats, the interactive rejection inside the deliberation group, the prejudice against the vulnerable people to involve in deliberation, the atmosphere that everybody will fight each other to “win” the deliberation, all of these will be harmful to the quality and result of the democratic deliberation process. This point put forward by Young and some other deliberative democrats has been accepted by a large number of deliberative democrats, thus they start to explore and research another way to proceed with democratic deliberation. Gradually, they recommend narrative as a method to conduct democratic deliberation, which means that narrative will be another approach for the democratic deliberation process.Will narrative be another approach for the democratic deliberation process as some deliberative democrats imagined? There are some disagreements. A large number of deliberative democrats admire, support and show sympathy for the narrative, and some deliberative democrats reject, doubt or unsure about the narrative. Obviously, this question that whether narrative is an effective way for democratic deliberation is still open to discuss. This paper is going to conduct a comprehensive thinking about the function of narrative for democratic deliberation. It will begin with the definition of the narrative, including the common meaning of narrative, the meaning of narrative in faceto-face conversation, and the specific meaning of narrative in the democratic deliberation process. From the common narrative, to the conversational narrative in the face-to-face environment, to the specific narrative in the democratic deliberation, this is a continually process to decline the scope of the outlook and gradually focus on the essential of narrative. The explanation and understanding about the first two meaning of the narrative will help us to have a better command of the narratives meaning in democratic deliberation. Specifically, for the realization about the common meaning of narrative, it will start from two aspects, including the “definition of the narrative” and “the dimensionality of the narrative”; for the realization about the meaning of the conversational narrative in the face-to-face interactive context, it will start from two aspects, including “the definition of the conversational narrative” and “the major types of the conversational narrative”; for the realization about the specific narrative’ meaning in the democratic deliberation process, it will start from four aspects, including “the basic definition of the narrative”, “the important feature of narrative”, “the principle of the narrative”, and “the interactive process of the narrative”.On the basis of accurately mastering the meaning of narrative, this paper will continue to discuss the positive function of narrative for democratic deliberation. Overall, it will push the democratic deliberation process, and improve the quality of the democratic process from four aspects if people really regard narrative as another choice for democratic deliberation process. Specifically, first of all, it will promote the inclusion of the democratic deliberation, make up for the rejection which is caused by argument; moreover, people who are involved in the democratic deliberation will attract others to focus on their point by the narrative; besides that, people who are involved in the democratic deliberation will manage and unite the emotional knowledge which come from different social stage to objective social knowledge, and help them to have a reasonable and sensible judgment; finally, when people who are involved in the democratic deliberation come from different culture background, and have deeply culture difference, they can express this kind of difference, proclaim the source of the difference, and narrow down the scope of the deeply difference which is caused by the incommensurability of culture.Although narrative will promote the democratic deliberation process and improve the quality of democratic deliberation process, it also has some bad influence on the deliberation process. Specifically, narrative will enlarge the scope of the deliberation’s meaning, blur the connotation and extension of the deliberation’s meaning; also if the narrative is fake, it’s dangerous to conduct the democratic deliberation process with the strategy which is summarized from the faked stories; maybe it can not bring a thoughtful judgment if people regard narrative as a method of democratic deliberation.All of these considerations about regarding narrative as another choice to conduct democratic deliberation are still open to debating. If people want to test the theory, they need the help of the empirical research. Now some scholars have already performed some empirical research about the role of narrative in the real democratic deliberation. With the help of the existed research and results, this paper will use an indirect way to conduct empirical test for the theoretical study that narrative is another approach for democratic deliberation.