Demarcation the Term Collective Narrative: Investigating the Role of Narrative Agent in the Shared Concepts

Despite the global popularity of collective narrative mode, which has gained momentum after the phenomenon of narrative turn, this type of narrative has not received much attention in Iran in terms of theoretical exposition. Especially in the field of literature, despite the abundance of narrative examples, there are only a few cohesive studies on this narrative form. This research, based on a poststructuralist approach in narrative studies, aims to initially define the nature and boundaries of this mode through a cognitive perspective, utilizing the philosophy of mind and action. Furthermore, it seeks to demonstrate the different manifestations of this narrative mode and introduce criteria for distinguishing between narrative genres. The main finding is that the primary difference in collective narrative forms lies in the narrative focal point; the narrative focal point can be the distinguishing factor between narratives that are read collectively versus narratives that have a collective narrative agent (explicitly referred to as "we-narratives"). In a secondary perspective, the focus of this research, namely "we-narratives," is differentiated based on a narrative perspective. The narrative perspective determines the boundaries of access to/privacy of characters' minds and consequently determines the level of unity among the narrative voices in our narrative. Finally, an attempt has been made to provide a proposed classification for different levels of "we-narratives" based on the degree of foregrounding of the constitutive characters of the "we-narrator," in order to shed light on the distinctive structure of collective narrative with a first-person plural narrative agent.