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The Here and Now

In the novel Waterland, the narrator at one point says, "Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer a definition - is the story-telling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right" (1983, p. 53). This observation that human beings tell stories - using narratives to create meaning and identity - is a common one in literature and philosophy. It is also important for an understanding of the arts and the role of the educator.Swift s narrator is perhaps a little naive to think that as long as theres a story, everything will be all right. We can be caught up in the stories of others and find ourselves without a speaking part. As we struggle to define our own identities and the identities of our communities, we must usually contend with narratives we have not authored ourselves. Sometimes the dominant storyline is not all right and story-telling must come to the rescue by creating a counter-narrative.Swift's narrator may not be completely right that animals and nature live only in the Here and Now, without memory or history, either. The lives of animals and natural systems bear the imprint of the past too. But, the narrator may be right if he means that only human beings can tell stories about those historical narratives that both constrain and liberate us in the present, and use those stories to re-direct the meaning and impact of those past narratives. Narrative represents both continuity with the past and the potential for transformation.An active grasp of the present requires both the effort to understand the narratives that help to constitute the present and also creative engagement with story-making aimed at the future. While we are unavoidably the inheritors of other people's narratives, we are also the ones who determine the next chapter in those narratives. It is we who participate in deciding what kind of narrative future generations will inherit from us. Identity and meaning are both inherited and created in a rich mixture full of potentiality and danger.As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the narrative construction of identity and meaning can take place through many different media. The story-telling animal is not limited to words alone. Architectural spaces, patterns engraved on ceramic funeral urns, landscape paintings, videos, self-portraits, public shrines, the sounds of musical instruments, can all tell a story and embody narrative meaning for an individual or a community.The authors of the articles in this issue all address, in one way or another, the importance of narrative within the context of art education. They illustrate how various media can be used to enhance students' ability to articulate their own identity and to find meaning around them. In the process, their relationship to the narratives structuring their lives and opportunities can change in radical and liberatory ways.Sharif Bey discusses how diverse forms of visual culture can be used to mourn and memorialize victims of violence. His study of residents of Beltzhoover, on Pittsburgh's Southside, helps us to understand how the marking of walls, the inking of skin, and the spontaneous construction of public shrines tells the stories of individuals who lived and died in this neighborhood. …