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Narrativity, Self, and Self-Representation

Authors: James L Battersby;

Narrativity, Self, and Self-Representation

Abstract

In the December 2004 issue of Ratio, Galen Strawson published an important essay in which he mounted a groundbreaking attack against what has become virtu ally the standard view of how we construe our lives: the narrative identity thesis, which insists that our identity is a function of the story that we construct about our selves. Specifically, he forcefully challenges both the descriptive and normative as pects of the thesis, the judgment, on the one hand, that, in Oliver Sacks's words, "each of us constructs and lives a narrative" (105), and the judgment, on the other, that, as Marya Schechtman puts it, we ought to construct our lives narratively, that, indeed, we must do so to achieve full personhood (119). The overall argument of Strawson's piece divides into two major sections, each of which has two parts: (1) a defense of what he calls an Episodic approach to self-experience, in which the self, considered as self, is a "now" phenomenon disconnected from the past and the future, and an attack against what he calls the prevailing Diachronie approach to self experience, in which the self, considered as a self, is understood to persist in time from the past into the future; and (2) a defense of a non-Narrative form of self-repre sentation and an attack against the dominance of the Narrative form of self-represen tation. The aim of Strawson's case at large is to reconfigure the terms and the conditions of the discussion of the relations obtaining between the self and its repre sentation. In my view, one cannot read this piece without being impressed by its icon oclastic turn, by its temerity in facing down the almost universal endorsement of the narrative identity thesis, and by its unflinching insistence that the Episodic/non Narrative approach to self-representation has equal standing with the Diachronie/ Narrative approach, that in point of fact it just might be, primus inter pares.

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Powered by OpenAIRE graph
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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
21
Top 10%
Top 10%
Top 10%
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