Futures Studies of Social Narratives in Cognitive Governance: The Embodied Representation of Narratives in the Nexus of Language, Memory, and Social Policy

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of English Language, Faculty of Humanities, Tolou-e-Mehr University, Qom, Iran (Corresponding Author).

2 Ph.D. in Futures Studies, Supreme National Defense University, Tehran, Iran.

10.22081/jti.2026.74805.1128

Abstract

Narrative is not merely a tool for transmitting experience; rather, it constitutes a cognitive, neurocognitive, social, and cultural mechanism through which human beings construct meaning from their world, identity, and embodied experiences. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and employing a meta-synthesis methodology, the present study examines the relationship among social narratives, episodic memory, mental spaces, embodied meaning, and cognitive governance, while also analyzing the consequences of the unheard narratives of people in forming social depression. The findings demonstrate that narratives emerge from the interaction of neural networks, episodic memory, and conceptualization processes. During the hearing or retelling of narratives, sensory-motor, visual, parietal, and temporal areas of the brain are activated. From this perspective, narrative is not merely the linguistic representation of experience, but rather the neural and mental reconstruction of embodied reality. The article further argues that the gap between the grand narratives of governance and the counter narratives of ordinary people leads to feelings of being unheard, socially forgotten, and deprived of meaning and belonging. Such conditions may foster collective depression, social distrust, and the expansion of cognitive fragmentation within society. Under these circumstances, cognitive governance requires the capacity to hear, analyze, and represent social narratives within policymaking processes.
The study subsequently adopts a futures-oriented perspective to investigate emerging trends in the relationship among technology, media, narrative, and governance. The results indicate that, with the expansion of artificial intelligence, algorithmic media, virtual reality, and cognitive big data, narratives will become the primary arena for shaping social perception and governing the mind. Thus, societies lacking mechanisms for “hearing the narratives of the people” will face intensified cognitive polarization, erosion of social capital, crises of meaning, and increased collective psychological disorders.

Keywords

References

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Theosophia Islamica

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Available Online from 02 June 2026

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