From hero to villain to hero: Making experience sensible through embodied narrative sensemaking

Abstract

This article aims to make a contribution to the literature by addressing an undertheorized aspect of sensemaking: its embodied narrative nature. We do so by integrating a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective of narrative and storytelling with a documentary case taken from a filmed tour of a sports team to illustrate the process of sensemaking around a specific event. We argue that we make our lives, ourselves and our experience ‘sensible’ in embodied interpretations and interactions with others. We suggest this occurs within contested, embedded, narrative performances in which we try to construct sensible and plausible accounts that are responsive to the moment and to retrospective and anticipatory narratives.