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Paper short abstract

This paper combines narrative analysis with fantasmatic logics to expose the affective grip that keeps hegemonic normative frameworks in place, even when they fail to deliver. An Ethics-by-Design project, studied through interviews and participant observation, serves as the primary case.

Paper long abstract

Concepts like Ethics-by-Design (EbD) and Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) have gained traction as vehicles for embedding ethical and social considerations into research and innovation. Backed by European policy frameworks, they function as hegemonic normative frameworks that define desirable futures and prescribe how science and technology ought to get there. Yet their transformative potential is rarely self-evident in practice (e.g. Gogoll et al., 2021; Tigard et al., 2023), and what remains underexplored is why these frameworks prove so resilient even when they fail to deliver.

This paper introduces a new analytical move: extending narrative analysis with Glynos and Howarth's fantasmatic logics (Glynos & Howarth, 2007) to expose the affective grip holding hegemonic framings in place (Glynos, 2021). Understanding narrative infrastructures as collectively maintained networks of storylines organized through dominant metaphors (Deuten & Rip, 2000; Ampe & Goeminne, forthcoming), we argue that such infrastructures are sustained not by narrative coherence alone, but also by fantasmatic investments that may render alternatives difficult to pursue.

We develop this argument through a narrative inquiry into a three-year interdisciplinary EbD collaboration between software engineers and SSH scholars. Drawing on interviews and participant observation, we illustrate how a dominant 'ethics toolbox' narrative infrastructure consolidated within the project, and how its staying power becomes more fully intelligible when its fantasmatic underpinnings are brought to light.

This paper focuses on EbD as a primary case, while situating the analysis within the first author's PhD research, which will further develop and apply this combined narrative-fantasmatic lens across research and innovation contexts.