Resilience as Narrative: Illustrations from the EU’s COVID-19 Discourses

This paper explores the concept of “resilience as narrative,” highlighting the central role that storytelling plays in shaping how resilience is interpreted and enacted at both social and institutional levels. We contrast the ex-post paradox of resilience, the idea that resilience is often only recognized after a crisis has occurred, with the ex-futurorum perspective, in which resilience is framed through anticipated or imagined futures. This shift invites a move away from defining what resilience is toward examining how it is constructed and narrated in public discourse. Drawing on literature about narrative structures and typologies of resilience models (absorptive, adaptive, transformative), we identify three ideal types of resilience narratives, distinguished by their temporal orientation, the novelty of the challenges they address, and the degree of continuity they maintain with core identities or institutional essence. These narrative types are illustrated through an analysis of political discourse, specifically the press releases of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the COVID-19 crisis, revealing their analytical power. Political narratives offer a powerful lens to observe the socially constructed nature of resilience, as they actively shape its meaning by mobilizing values, metaphors, and temporal frameworks to orient collective action and envision possible futures.