Farewell to genre: Plot, meaning, and eudaemonic paths in social narratives.

The article critically examines the application of narrative theory to social narratives, arguing that the traditional concept of genre is conceptually ambiguous and insufficient for analyzing social narratives' influence on social action and cultural change. Instead, it proposes focusing on the formal element of plot structure called the "eudaemonic path"—a trajectory tracing a protagonist's movement between states of well-being (from happiness to misery or vice versa)—as a clearer analytic framework. The author delineates six cardinal types of eudaemonic paths (comic, tragic, comic irony, tragic irony, comic romance, and tragic romance) based on the direction and pattern of change in well-being, demonstrating how these paths regulate which content is included or excluded in social narratives. Examples such as the dominant American narratives of World War II and 9/11 illustrate how eudaemonic paths shape collective memory by constraining narrative content to maintain coherence with the protagonist's well-being trajectory. This framework offers a more precise tool than genre for understanding how social narratives structure meaning and influence collective beliefs and actions.