This essay explores the cultural dimension of autobiographical narrative, focusing especially on the way in which cultural texts and “textures” become woven into the fabric of memory. This process is one of which people are often unaware, resulting in regions of history that may be all but unknown. The “narrative unconscious,” therefore, refers not so much to that which has been dynamically repressed as to that which has been lived but which remains unthought and hence untold, i.e., to those culturally-rooted aspects of one’s history that have not yet become part of one’s story. An important challenge for those fashioning autobiographies is thus to move beyond personal life, into those largely uncharted regions of history that find their origins in the shared life of culture. From this perspective, autobiography is not only a matter of representing a life from (sometime after) birth until (sometime before) death; it is a matter of discerning the multiple sources, both proximate and distant, that give rise to the self.
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Bradburya, Jill & Jude Clark
2012. Echoes of the Past in Imaginings of the Future: The Problems and Possibilities of Working with Young People in Contemporary South Africa. Global Studies of Childhood 2:3 ► pp. 176 ff.
Carlsen, Arne
2016. On the tacit side of organizational identity: Narrative unconscious and figured practice. Culture and Organization 22:2 ► pp. 107 ff.
Chawla, Devika
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Chawla, Devika
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Crafford, Anne
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Edgington, Ursula
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Edgington, Ursula
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Edgington, Ursula & Jade Wilton
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Fei, Winnie, Ruthellen Josselson & Molyn Leszcz
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Freeman, Mark
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Freeman, Mark
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Freeman, Mark
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Freeman, Mark
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Freeman, Mark
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Frie, Roger
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Frie, Roger
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Johanson Botha, Liz
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Löyttyniemi, Varpu
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Randall, William L. & Gary M. Kenyon
2004. Time, Story, and Wisdom: Emerging Themes in Narrative Gerontology. Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement 23:4 ► pp. 333 ff.
Sakai, Tomoko
2009. Trans-Generational Memory: Narratives of World Wars in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland. Sociological Research Online 14:5 ► pp. 187 ff.
Smith, Brett & Andrew C Sparkes
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Smith, Brett & Andrew C. Sparkes
2008. Contrasting perspectives on narrating selves and identities: an invitation to dialogue. Qualitative Research 8:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Smith, Tammy
2007. Narrative boundaries and the dynamics of ethnic conflict and conciliation. Poetics 35:1 ► pp. 22 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. The Origin and Development of the Concept of Identity. In The Cambridge Handbook of Identity, ► pp. 23 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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