Living Between Myth and Metaphor: New Article by Adam Cowart

Our own adjunct professor Adam Cowart was recently published in the Journal of Futures Studies.

Living Between Myth and Metaphor: Level 4 of Causal Layered Analysis Theorised

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose the inclusion of emplotment and what we might call “situating metaphors” while conducting a causal layered analysis (CLA), in order to locate the narrative arc or arcs that underpin the deeper discursive levels of the domain. The paper draws on several years of teaching and applying causal layered analysis by the author, and the manner in which story is often employed at both the metaphor and myth levels; the first as an organising device and the second as an archetypal device. The paper then describes a methodological approach to employing emplotment, as either an alternative or complementary approach to metaphor and myth extrapolation, in which litany and systems-level discourses are situated along the monomyth archplot structure. In a post-truth world, in which reality is increasingly subjective and fragmented, situating the metaphorical location of a discourse along a conceptual and generic meta-narrative structure provides a helpful tool, not only in locating the discourse, but in anticipating where it may evolve or de-evolve to in the future. This then allows for prospective conceptualisations of how future systems states and behaviours change as a result of slow, tectonic shifts in myths and worldviews. The paper builds on a body of work that synthesises deep storytelling and futures and proposes a generative role that emplotment may play in gaining deeper insight into pasts, presents, and anticipating futures.