Narrative Emotions and the Shapings of Identity (original) (raw)
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In this paper I focus on the relationship between a literary/narrative text and the real world of the reader. Drawing on the observations by ethical critics Wayne C. Booth and Martha C. Nussbaum, Paul Ricoeur`s theory of the threefold mimesis, and the problem of the intersection between the world of the text and the world of the reader, I aim to demonstrate that there is much difficulty in marking out an explicit boundary between our narratives and our life/lives, as they are in constant dialogue and permanent exchange. Stories and literary texts widen our cognitive and moral horizons, shape our character and as such become “the very source of our being” (Booth 1988, 265), profoundly shaping our identity. I consider the reader`s self as their narrative identity, that is to say, I view them as subjects who, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur, have a narrative form which constitutes life-stories of which the reader is the story-teller. Such autobiographical stories are narratives therefore they can be analysed as narrative texts. Referring, among others, to Mieke Bal`s theory of the narrative subjectivity, I want to show that although literary characters do not really exist or act, there are numerous parallels which liken story heroes to us – the readers - as fictitious stories imitate real actions of people in the real world. Consequently, “the real life” is “lived in images derived in part from stories,” and there is nothing like a “natural, unstoried self.” On the contrary, our self is always narrated, in fact, it is our narrative identity (Booth 1988, 228).
Narrative emotions and the shaping(s) of identity: Guest Editor’s Introduction
2014
, participants were convinced of the need to further explore the connections between these issues across the multiple forms of contemporary narrative. Though much has been written about narrative identity, this collection of essays privileges its possibilities from the perspective of theories of emotions. The following articles refer both to the ways in which emotions are represented in narratives, as well as how these representations assume a reader's emotional competence, dwelling on the numerous ways in which narrative empathy is enhanced. Through close readings of different contemporary narratives, this special issue illustrates the advantages of narrative in the portrayal of emotions: Emotions are, unlike language, non-linear, imprecise, unstructured and diffuse. Therefore language is an inadequate medium to represent emotions, and "telling," that is, putting a simple label on an emotional state, is less engaging than "showing" by a wide register of narrative means available to fiction. (Nikolajeva, 2014, p. 95)
From the point of view of hermeneutic psychology, the self is a product of action and of representation, with narratives of the self as a major representational and structuring principle. In this sense reality is interwoven with narrative fictions. Experimental fictions and reflexive narratives are therefore a prime cognitive instrument in the development of complex structures of self-identity and subjetivity.
Narrative as a Means of Creating an Identity for Ourselves and Others
Synthesis Philosophica, 2011
The need to narrate is according to P. Ricœur the very core of creating the knowledge of self. The process of identification through narration does not lead us to be focused on our own narration. We always find other people’s narrations first and then start telling the narration of our life. Through narration, as understood by Ricœur, we can simultaneously learn ethics as well as morals. To show this the author compares philosophic view of identity by Ricœur with Frisch’s literary experiment in the novel I’m Not Stiller. Both of them are a hermeneutic intertwining that brings to natural identity. In this hermeneutic process we can rediscover ourselves in a world, in which we will respect our own identity by being fully open to its creative transformation.
An exploration of discoursal identity: The rhetoric of narrative writing
XLinguae, 2021
The paper aims at disclosing the process of writer identity enactive construal in narrative writing. Three constituent parts of identity discoursal construction in the narrative are social semiotics as a reflection of the social environment, cultural identity theory as the embodiment of cultural choices and preferences, and pragmatics (Charles S. Peirce). The following research questions have been formulated: (1) What is the nature of identity construction? (2) What rhetorical factors influence identity construal in narrative discourse? By providing a step-by-step analysis of thematic structure, the paper conducts a discourse analysis of narrative episodes in terms of Agent, Process, and Medium triad (Halliday, 1973), reflecting the mechanisms of reader’s manipulation with information as a dynamic semiotic process of interpretation, limited by a final interpretant.
THEORIZING NARRATIVE IDENTITY:. Symbolic Interactionism and Hermeneutics
Sociological Quarterly, 1998
This article argues for a synthesis of George Herbert Mead's conception of the temporal and intersubjective nature of the self with Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory of narrative identity. Combining the insights of Ricoeur's philosophical analysis with Mead's social-psychological orientation provides a subtle, sophisticated, and potent explanation of self-identity. A narrative conception of identity implies that subjectivity is neither a philosophical illusion nor an impermeable substance. Rather, a narrative identity provides a subjective sense of self-continuity as it symbolically integrates the events of lived experience in the plot of the story a person tells about his or her life. The utility of this conception of identity is illustrated through a rereading of Erving Goffman's study of the experience of mental patients. This example underlines the social sources of the self-concept and the role of power and politics in the construction of narrative identities.
Narrative identity, practical identity and ethical subjectivity
Continental Philosophy Review, 2004
The narrative approach to identity has developed as a sophisticated philosophical response to the complexities and ambiguities of the human, lived situation, and is not-as has been naively suggested elsewhere-the imposition of a generic form of life or the attempt to imitate a fictional character. I argue that the narrative model of identity provides a more inclusive and exhaustive account of identity than the causal models employed by mainstream theorists of personal identity. Importantly for ethical subjectivity, the narrative model gives a central and irreducible role to the first-person perspective. I will draw the connection between narrative identity and ethical subjectivity by way of an exposition of work by Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, and a brief consideration of Korsgaard's work on practical identity and normative ethics. I argue that the first-person perspective-the reflective structure of human consciousness-arises from human embodiment, and therefore the model of identity required of embodied consciousness is more complex and irreducibly first-personal than that provided in a causal account. What is required is a self-constitution model of identity: a narrative model of identity.
Paul Ricoeur of Refigurative Reading and Narrative Identity
Symposium, 2000
This paper explores the relation between personal identity and story telling. In particular I examine how Paul Ricoeur links narrative discourse to identity formation. For Ricoeur stories are not simply aesthetic objects disconnected from experience, but are rooted in the very fabric of life and have the capacity to profoundly refigure our world. Narrative discourse and life are for Ricoeur dialectically tied to each other through a "mimetic arc." This, however, poses interesting problems and difficulties. How do stories affect the transformation of experience? According to Ricoeur the identity of the text can be incorporated into my own personal and communal identity through a mode of analogical transfer. This is the art of interpretation , the art of selfhood, the performative process of becoming a self in relationship with others. RÉSUMÉ: Cet article analyse la relation entre identite personnelle et le fait de raconter une histoire. J 'aborde en particulier le lien entre le discours narratif et la formation identitaire, tel que le concoit Ricoeur. Pour ce dernier, les histoires ne sont pas simplement des objets esthetiques detaches de l' experience; elles sont plutOt ancrees dans le tissu meme de la vie, et ont le pouvoir de refigurer profondement notre monde. Le discours narratif et la vie sont, dans la pens& de Ricoeur, lies de facon dialectique par un «arc mimetique 0. Une telle facon de voir souleve, cependant, des questions et des difficultes interessantes. Comment les histoires affectent-elles la transformation de l'experience? Selon Ricoeur, l'identite du texte peut etre integree dans ma propre identite personnelle et collective par un mode de transfert analogique. C'est en cela que consiste l'art de l' interpretation, de l'ipseite, le processus perfOrmati fdu devenir de soi en relation avec les autres.
An identity structure in narrative: Discourse functions of identity-in-practice
Narrative Inquiry, 2012
This article refocuses the discussion of identity in narrative and practice by looking at structuring-in-practice and beyond to the discourse functions of identity. The narrative of an Ethiopian Israeli female college student is analyzed, wherein she tells about changing elementary schools — a context mirroring the immediate situation in her new academic setting. The analysis identifies and labels the partial, microgenetic elicitation of identity-attributable imagery in each utterance and then consolidates the accumulation of those images into the various groupings relevant in the narrative. In the particular narrative studied here all consolidated images contrast against the one identity-attributable image that is interactionally advantageous. This result, found in all 28 prototypical narratives in my corpus of 46, is evidence of a poetic identity structuring of narrative serving two discourse functions: (1) metasemantic- the contrastive identity work creates and indexes the narrat...