Key Features of the Narrative Self Sample Clauses

Key Features of the Narrative Self. Given a few key aspects of narrative proper, what are the salient qualities of the narrative self? Naturally, narrative views of the self all connect some kind of self with some version of narrative. However, the link between self and narrative is highly variable. Perhaps it is best to begin with one particular definition of the narrative self. Xxxxxxxxx states that it is a “more or less coherent self (or self-image) that is constituted with a past and a future in the various stories that we and others tell about ourselves” view (Strawson, 2004). This will be addressed further below, where we consider criticisms of the narrative view. (Xxxxxxxxx, 2000, p. 15). Two prominent features of the narrative self are already apparent in this definition: whatever else it may consist of, the narrative self has temporal and social dimensions (unlike some other kinds of selves, which we discuss below). Additionally, the narrative self is almost always constructed in some way. In other words, one creates (and is created by) the narrative. Finally, although there is some disagreement on this issue within the literature, one is either the author, actor or both. One can safely state that, virtually all accounts of the narrative self include both temporal and social dimensions, require that narratives are constructed, and implicate the given self partially as agentive author and partially as passive actor, in one combination or another. We will address each of these in turn. Another way of conveying the temporal aspect of the narrative self is to say that it is diachronic (Zahavi, 2007, p. 179). By diachronic, it is meant that the narrative self exists across time. Ricoeur has argued, in fact, that it is impossible to discuss selfhood or personal identity absent from the temporal dimension of being (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 138). For Ricoeur, however, human time is unique, in that it bridges the gap between phenomenological and cosmological time. Human time takes place in the form of stories, a “narrated time structured and articulated by the symbolic mediations of narratives” (Ricoeur, 1985, p. 439; Xxxxxx, 0000, p. 106). The narrative self relies on the coherence of a narrative or story that links birth to life and death (XxxXxxxxx, 1985). For Ricoeur, in fact, a self ceases to be a self if it is solely aware of itself in the atemporal, first-person perspective. Temporality is a necessary feature of narrative selfhood. In this way, narrative “is not merely a way of gaining insig...