Narrative Empowerment for Intelligence: Structural Study Applied to Strategic Notes

This article presents the initial results of the research project titled “Narrative Empowerment for Analysis: Epistemic Challenges in the Technical Construction of Strategic Narratives.” To instrument the construction of strategic narratives, it is necessary to characterize their technical features. Gerard Genette’s modal narratology, as developed in “Figures” III, allows us to describe the relationship between the pseudo-time of the narrative – the succession of sentences and pages – and the diegetic time – the time of the story being told – as well as phenomena of mode and voice. We conducted a micronarrative analysis of DGSE notes related to the Rwandan crisis in the 1990s and are now conducting a macronarrative analysis of the entire set of documents, considering their chronological succession as a single narrative for the recipients. We present the challenges encountered during the decomposition process and provide a description of the analysis output, which will serve as material for reflecting on an appropriate digital medium for the construction of strategic narratives.