In Oneself as Another Ricœur speaks of the “ethical implication of the narrative” (p. 163). In the meantime, a “Narrative Ethics” has formed around the question of whether such implications exist and how they might appear. Narratives are not merely permeated by specific moral contents, values and norms but – such is the more fundamental thesis – the phenomenon of morality as such is constituted only in and through narratives. The following considerations aim to contribute to this subject. The terms narrativity (1) and morality (2) are to be defined in a way indicating possible correlations (3). The central thesis is: Moral experience and acting are fundamentally based on processes of identity and empathy formation, and narratives enable, create, stabilize and energize both identity and empathy.
This chapter explores the notion of persona, focusing on two interrelated “axes” of identity, the first tied to time and the second to what might be termed “relatedness to the Other.” Drawing especially on William James’s seminal reflections on self and identity, it is suggested herein that an important aspect of identity concerns the degree of congruence, or lack thereof, between the various stories told by oneself and others about the meaning and movement of one’s life. Also important, in James’s view, is the issue of personal continuity and how it might best be understood. These ideas, taken together, lead him to conceptualize identity in essentially narrative terms. In order to address the notion of persona via the idea of narrative identity, I turn to Keith Richards’s recent book Life (2010), which provides a vivid illustration of the process of negotiating one’s own and others’ perspectives on who and what one is. For Richards, the widely-circulated public images that had been on display throughout much of his life had been in tension with what he regarded as his innermost interests and desires: In Jamesian terms, his Spiritual Self had been belied by the rather more colorful Social Selves on view. By Richards’s own account, these images had been folded into his identity, such that it became difficult to disentangle the authentic person from the persona. Ultimately, there may be no way of doing so. This does not mean abandoning the idea and ideal of personal authenticity, however. On the contrary, it means reimagining it, in full recognition of the multiple paths through which narrative identity comes into being.
While a narrative approach to the construction of identity opens up quite “naturally” to the question of who I am in time, i.e. to a temporal order, it is inclined to neglect the question of who I am part of, i.e. of belonging. This essay argues that the adherence to a plurality of social worlds provides the teller with options of self-positioning in his or her self-narratives. Even within the confinement of a limited story world a whole variety of self-positions is regularly evoked. Social exclusion, on the other hand, can be described in positioning theory as the experience of other positioning, of being positioned by dominant others. Other positioning endangers the possibility of narrating oneself as an agent in one’s own self-stories and consequently obstructs the process of identity construction. This raises the question how individuals manage to maintain the dynamics of self-positioning in self stories, which are largely shaped by the experience of social exclusion. To answer this question, Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopias as used by Kevin Hetherington is discussed as the conceptualization of a – real – social world, which is related to the dominant social order in an ambivalent way. Heterotopias offer the experience of a third space, beyond the binary logics of an “either-or” or “in-out” and thus allow for the development of self-positions beyond these oppositions. Two empirical examples of heterotopic self-positioning are presented. The characteristics of these narratives are discussed.
Perspectivation – verbal practices to represent perspectives – can be used in personal storytelling to negotiate moral claims which are crucial to the teller’s self. The perspectives of different interactants in the story-world can show up in complicated fusions or as contested battlefields, contrasting, backing or commenting each other. Preferably in reported speech and scenic re-stagings of episodes, the narrator as “almighty author” can shape or frame the voices of problematic interactants within the story by means of rhetorical devices, which enables him to gain authentification and persuasive power while refraining from explicit evaluations.
This chapter explores the roles perspective can play in conversational storytelling (e.g. creating involvement, sympathy and bonding) and to what extent literary narratology can offer useful terms to describe perspective-taking in such contexts. The chapter traces instances of focalization in the referential frameworks of a craft artist’s life interview. It illustrates how the interviewee positions himself within the interview and in his narrative and how he also invites the interviewer to partially adopt his position.
Narrative is a constitutive element of our knowledge of and communication about world and self. A key element of narrative and our understanding of it is the (re-)construction of perspective and the specific kind of narrative identity this perspective projects and pre-figures. If our understanding of fictional narratives is based on real-world experiential cognitive parameters, how do we deal with texts that cannot be fully grasped in accordance with these parameters, and what effects do these “unnatural” texts have on everyday storytelling? This essay discusses fictional narratives and narrative perspectives that transcend mimetic and experiential theories of interpretation and narrative in various forms and manners. It asks how, why and with which consequences for our conceptions of narrative identity fictional narratives go beyond our everyday experiences and cannot be fully explained in terms of real-world experiential cognitive parameters. This essay aims to show how fictional narratives and “unnatural” perspectives open up new horizons and narrative identities, specifically ways of world-making, and that our appreciation for this “unnaturalness” leads to a more profound understanding of these narratives as well as our knowledge of world and self.
Jeffrey Eugenides’s epic novel Middlesex raises the overarching questions of how a comprehensive understanding of selfhood can be gained and to what extent the construction of a coherent identity by means of language is possible. In his attempt to make conclusive sense of his self, Cal, the intersexual narrator and protagonist of the novel, takes refuge in the idea that constructing a narrative identity will lead to self-coherence. While this wish for unity is understandable from a psychological perspective, a poststructuralist approach to Middlesex shows that Cal’s endeavour to fix selfhood in narrative ironically results in making it even more indeterminate. Narratives continually and inevitably communicate with pre-existing texts which results in the constant deferral of their final meaning, and narratives are revealed to be incapable of providing a definite selfhood. Middlesex shows that the primary aim is not the achievement of a coherent self but rather the constructive process of telling the narrative. The novel thus reformulates the concept of narrative identity in terms of constant, ultimately open-ended performance.
This essay explores the act of self-authorising confession represented in Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and the ethical considerations that are raised in consequence. Drawing on the work of Peter Brooks, J. M. Coetzee, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (and others) I argue that in Atonement McEwan points up the impossibility of attaining either truth or self-forgiveness via acts of (confessional) self-writing. McEwan’s probing portrayal of the limitations of individual perspective result in ethical insights that extend beyond the realm of (fiction) writing and cut to the heart of interpersonal engagement. He invites readers to recognised the extent to which even our most empathetic attempts to imagine the interiority of others are always, and inevitably, acts of authoritative appropriation. At the same time, however, McEwan encourages recognition of the limits and consequences of (self) authority; he suggests the ongoing need, of the self-narrating self, for the re-cognition of (reading) others. Briony, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, ultimately realises the impossibility of herself writing the forgiveness she desires and acknowledges the authority of the others who will finally write her in their (retrospective) readings.
This paper focuses on queer subjects as heteronormativity’s marginalized others and the consequences of this subject position for autobiographical structures and queer concepts of time. My literary examples are Quentin Crisp’s life writings, notably his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant, and with the help of Judith Butler’s theory of subject formation as well as recent queer theories on negativity and failure (Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam), I show how Crisp expressly inhabits the position of the abject, of negativity, and develops a lifestyle of failure, which he is able to turn into a success later in his life.
This paper addresses identity construction in confessional poetry and explores three poems by Anne Sexton in closer detail. It shows that identity in lyrical texts can be discussed more poignantly by using the concept of narrative identity. A close reading of the three poems reveals three different self-concepts, the possibility of multiple selves, and the notion of permanent self-actualization through narrative. Furthermore, this paper suggests that narrative identity theory concentrates too much on conventional narratological frames such as narrative coherence. The reading of lyric poetry extends the narratological settings especially with respect to time. Therefore, this paper suggests that analyzing narrative identity in literary texts contributes to our general understanding of narrative identity. In addition, it draws attention to the connection between identity and emotion. It shows that lyric poetry evokes emotions not only through narrative, but also with the help of non-narrative devices. As a result, the paper demonstrates that emotions influence the identity-process and challenge a purely rational understanding of narrative identity.
In Oneself as Another Ricœur speaks of the “ethical implication of the narrative” (p. 163). In the meantime, a “Narrative Ethics” has formed around the question of whether such implications exist and how they might appear. Narratives are not merely permeated by specific moral contents, values and norms but – such is the more fundamental thesis – the phenomenon of morality as such is constituted only in and through narratives. The following considerations aim to contribute to this subject. The terms narrativity (1) and morality (2) are to be defined in a way indicating possible correlations (3). The central thesis is: Moral experience and acting are fundamentally based on processes of identity and empathy formation, and narratives enable, create, stabilize and energize both identity and empathy.
This chapter explores the notion of persona, focusing on two interrelated “axes” of identity, the first tied to time and the second to what might be termed “relatedness to the Other.” Drawing especially on William James’s seminal reflections on self and identity, it is suggested herein that an important aspect of identity concerns the degree of congruence, or lack thereof, between the various stories told by oneself and others about the meaning and movement of one’s life. Also important, in James’s view, is the issue of personal continuity and how it might best be understood. These ideas, taken together, lead him to conceptualize identity in essentially narrative terms. In order to address the notion of persona via the idea of narrative identity, I turn to Keith Richards’s recent book Life (2010), which provides a vivid illustration of the process of negotiating one’s own and others’ perspectives on who and what one is. For Richards, the widely-circulated public images that had been on display throughout much of his life had been in tension with what he regarded as his innermost interests and desires: In Jamesian terms, his Spiritual Self had been belied by the rather more colorful Social Selves on view. By Richards’s own account, these images had been folded into his identity, such that it became difficult to disentangle the authentic person from the persona. Ultimately, there may be no way of doing so. This does not mean abandoning the idea and ideal of personal authenticity, however. On the contrary, it means reimagining it, in full recognition of the multiple paths through which narrative identity comes into being.
While a narrative approach to the construction of identity opens up quite “naturally” to the question of who I am in time, i.e. to a temporal order, it is inclined to neglect the question of who I am part of, i.e. of belonging. This essay argues that the adherence to a plurality of social worlds provides the teller with options of self-positioning in his or her self-narratives. Even within the confinement of a limited story world a whole variety of self-positions is regularly evoked. Social exclusion, on the other hand, can be described in positioning theory as the experience of other positioning, of being positioned by dominant others. Other positioning endangers the possibility of narrating oneself as an agent in one’s own self-stories and consequently obstructs the process of identity construction. This raises the question how individuals manage to maintain the dynamics of self-positioning in self stories, which are largely shaped by the experience of social exclusion. To answer this question, Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopias as used by Kevin Hetherington is discussed as the conceptualization of a – real – social world, which is related to the dominant social order in an ambivalent way. Heterotopias offer the experience of a third space, beyond the binary logics of an “either-or” or “in-out” and thus allow for the development of self-positions beyond these oppositions. Two empirical examples of heterotopic self-positioning are presented. The characteristics of these narratives are discussed.
Perspectivation – verbal practices to represent perspectives – can be used in personal storytelling to negotiate moral claims which are crucial to the teller’s self. The perspectives of different interactants in the story-world can show up in complicated fusions or as contested battlefields, contrasting, backing or commenting each other. Preferably in reported speech and scenic re-stagings of episodes, the narrator as “almighty author” can shape or frame the voices of problematic interactants within the story by means of rhetorical devices, which enables him to gain authentification and persuasive power while refraining from explicit evaluations.
This chapter explores the roles perspective can play in conversational storytelling (e.g. creating involvement, sympathy and bonding) and to what extent literary narratology can offer useful terms to describe perspective-taking in such contexts. The chapter traces instances of focalization in the referential frameworks of a craft artist’s life interview. It illustrates how the interviewee positions himself within the interview and in his narrative and how he also invites the interviewer to partially adopt his position.
Narrative is a constitutive element of our knowledge of and communication about world and self. A key element of narrative and our understanding of it is the (re-)construction of perspective and the specific kind of narrative identity this perspective projects and pre-figures. If our understanding of fictional narratives is based on real-world experiential cognitive parameters, how do we deal with texts that cannot be fully grasped in accordance with these parameters, and what effects do these “unnatural” texts have on everyday storytelling? This essay discusses fictional narratives and narrative perspectives that transcend mimetic and experiential theories of interpretation and narrative in various forms and manners. It asks how, why and with which consequences for our conceptions of narrative identity fictional narratives go beyond our everyday experiences and cannot be fully explained in terms of real-world experiential cognitive parameters. This essay aims to show how fictional narratives and “unnatural” perspectives open up new horizons and narrative identities, specifically ways of world-making, and that our appreciation for this “unnaturalness” leads to a more profound understanding of these narratives as well as our knowledge of world and self.
Jeffrey Eugenides’s epic novel Middlesex raises the overarching questions of how a comprehensive understanding of selfhood can be gained and to what extent the construction of a coherent identity by means of language is possible. In his attempt to make conclusive sense of his self, Cal, the intersexual narrator and protagonist of the novel, takes refuge in the idea that constructing a narrative identity will lead to self-coherence. While this wish for unity is understandable from a psychological perspective, a poststructuralist approach to Middlesex shows that Cal’s endeavour to fix selfhood in narrative ironically results in making it even more indeterminate. Narratives continually and inevitably communicate with pre-existing texts which results in the constant deferral of their final meaning, and narratives are revealed to be incapable of providing a definite selfhood. Middlesex shows that the primary aim is not the achievement of a coherent self but rather the constructive process of telling the narrative. The novel thus reformulates the concept of narrative identity in terms of constant, ultimately open-ended performance.
This essay explores the act of self-authorising confession represented in Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and the ethical considerations that are raised in consequence. Drawing on the work of Peter Brooks, J. M. Coetzee, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (and others) I argue that in Atonement McEwan points up the impossibility of attaining either truth or self-forgiveness via acts of (confessional) self-writing. McEwan’s probing portrayal of the limitations of individual perspective result in ethical insights that extend beyond the realm of (fiction) writing and cut to the heart of interpersonal engagement. He invites readers to recognised the extent to which even our most empathetic attempts to imagine the interiority of others are always, and inevitably, acts of authoritative appropriation. At the same time, however, McEwan encourages recognition of the limits and consequences of (self) authority; he suggests the ongoing need, of the self-narrating self, for the re-cognition of (reading) others. Briony, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, ultimately realises the impossibility of herself writing the forgiveness she desires and acknowledges the authority of the others who will finally write her in their (retrospective) readings.
This paper focuses on queer subjects as heteronormativity’s marginalized others and the consequences of this subject position for autobiographical structures and queer concepts of time. My literary examples are Quentin Crisp’s life writings, notably his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant, and with the help of Judith Butler’s theory of subject formation as well as recent queer theories on negativity and failure (Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam), I show how Crisp expressly inhabits the position of the abject, of negativity, and develops a lifestyle of failure, which he is able to turn into a success later in his life.
This paper addresses identity construction in confessional poetry and explores three poems by Anne Sexton in closer detail. It shows that identity in lyrical texts can be discussed more poignantly by using the concept of narrative identity. A close reading of the three poems reveals three different self-concepts, the possibility of multiple selves, and the notion of permanent self-actualization through narrative. Furthermore, this paper suggests that narrative identity theory concentrates too much on conventional narratological frames such as narrative coherence. The reading of lyric poetry extends the narratological settings especially with respect to time. Therefore, this paper suggests that analyzing narrative identity in literary texts contributes to our general understanding of narrative identity. In addition, it draws attention to the connection between identity and emotion. It shows that lyric poetry evokes emotions not only through narrative, but also with the help of non-narrative devices. As a result, the paper demonstrates that emotions influence the identity-process and challenge a purely rational understanding of narrative identity.