Emplotting anticipatory resilience: An antenarrative extension of the communication theory of resilience

Abstract

This work extended the communication theory of resilience by examining how individuals construct anticipatory resilience through narratives of disruptive life events. Guided by postmodern antenarrative theory, we analyzed the emplotment of 25 individuals’ narratives of disruptive events to understand how participants make sense of these events and prospectively craft resilience as storied logics of the future. The findings challenged extant resilience theorizing by centering narrative incoherence and conceiving of anticipatory resilience as a communicated logic of the future rather than as discursive-material resource. The analysis also suggested theoretical implications for this reframed understanding of anticipatory resilience and narrative incoherence as a site for critical investigation of resilience processes.