Narrative and the Self (1991) is a study on the narrative
dimensions of identity by Anthony Paul Kerby, at the crossroads of
hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, semiotics and phenomenology. My own notes
on the notes appear in italics (JAGL).
Full text at SSRN:
13 Pages
Posted: 15 May 2025
Date Written: December 31, 2003
Keywords: Anthony Paul Kerby, Narrative, Self, Narrative identity, Narrative self, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology
Suggested Citation:
Also here:
_____. "Notes
on Narrative and the Self." 2003. In García Landa, Vanity Fea
4 May 2024.* (Anthony Paul Kerby).
https://vanityfea.blogspot.com/2024/05/notes-on-narrative-and-self.html
2024 DISCONTINUED 2025 – Online at
the Internet Archive.*
https://web.archive.org/web/20241106133758/https://vanityfea.blogspot.com/2024/05/notes-on-narrative-and-self.html
2025
_____. "Notes on Narrative And The Self."
(December 31, 2003). SSRN 15 May 2025.*
https://ssrn.com/abstract=5178524
2025
_____. "Notes on Narrative and the Self." In
García Landa, Vanity Fea 15 May 2025.*
https://blogdenotasvanityfea.blogspot.com/2025/05/notes-on-narrative-and-self.html
2025
https://x.com/JoseAngelGLanda/status/1958468807602667915
2025
—oOo—
Notes on Narrative and the Self
José Angel García Landa
Universidad de Zaragoza
Notes (2003) on
Kerby,
Anthony Paul. Narrative and the Self.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. 32-64.
Kerby, “the self is given content, is
delineated and embodied, primarily in narrative constructions and stories” (1).
The self as a product of action (and representation, I would add - JAGL).
“The stories we tell of ourselves are
determined not only by how other people narrate us but also by our languages
and the genres of storytelling inherited from our traditions” (Kerby 6).
Self-narration as interpretive activity (7); the meaning of past is refigured in the
present.
“our conscious narratives inevitably
refigure and augment the prenarrative level of experience” (9).
Alasdair MacIntyre and Hannah Arendt: self-understanding
as emplotment of one’s experiences: “storytelling animals” (MacIntyre), Kerby
12.
“Experience gains its density and
elusiveness precisely through a continuous contextualizing or meshing of part
to changing whole” (Kerby 16).
“The experience of our identity is in
fact so interwoven with difference that neither pure identity nor pure
difference can be granted complete precedence” (Kerby 17).
The present is meaningful because it is linked
to past and future (Augustine’s ‘living present’: not instantaneous; the narrative
articulation of temporal connectedness plus body identity gives us our sense of
personal identity (18-19). Husserl: “The ego constitutes himself for himself in
… the unity of a ‘history’ (Geschichte).”
(19) (Cartesian Meditations).
The roots of the narrative unity of self are to be found in
Locke, anti Cartesian (before Hume) (Kerby 25): “Nothing but consciousness can
unite remote existences into the same person: The identity of substance will
not do it” (Essay vol 1 p. 449),
qtd in Kerby 25. Hume relies on causality and imagination to ground the self —beyond Locke).
Kerby: “My identity for myself is the
identity I am conscious of, the identity I can bring to awareness” (25). (But
cf. law: body, for others).
Kerby: Link between access to memory and
emplotment (28). The narrative structuration of memories generates our
understanding of the past. There is no definite
meaning of the past (31), we cannot escape “the historicity of our gaze and our
interests” (31); “our talk of the self is self-constituting rather than
referential to an ontologically prior subject” (31). “The meaning of a life can
be adequately grasped only in a narrative or storylike framework” (33). “True”
narratives of the past are only canonical versions of stories (38).
Distance
between the experiencing self and the narrating self (38).
Difference between Kerby’s definition of
narrative:
“narration can be conceived as the
telling (in whatever medium, though especially language) of a series of
temporal events so that a meaningful sequence is portrayed—the story or plot of
the narrative” (39)
and mine (JAGL):
“the semiotic representation of a series
of events” (no talk of meaning- which is a shortcoming in my definition).
“The prenarrative is, in its most general
form, the drama we call our lives” (39); “we are constantly adopting the
narrator’s position with respect to our own lives and also the lives of others”
(39). Beyond the body: events and habits associated to the body generate the meaning of
our existence. Actions are understood in relation to before and after, etc.
“Life
is inherently of a narrative structure, a structure that we make explicit when
we reflect upon our past and our possible future” (40). “The actions of human
agents, to be intelligible, must be seen against the background of a history, a
history of causes and goals, of failures, achievements, and aspirations. (40).
“The self, and this is a crucial point, is essentially a being of reflexivity,
coming to itself in its own narrational acts” (41).
Ricoeur: self-knowledge
mediated through signs, symbols, cultural works, etc. Barbara Hardy: “We dream
in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair,
believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate, and
love by narrative” (41). Cf. Ricoeur (experience is too unstructured perhaps before narrative
in his account).
“The progression from prefigured to configured and refigured
receives a technical elaboration in Time
and Narrative in terms of three stages of mimetic representation: mimesis1
(the everyday world of action), mimesis2 (the stage of creative narrative
configuration), and mimesis3 (the appropriation of the work of mimesis2 to the
world of the reader).” (Cf. my own emphasis on interaction. Interaction as
reelaboration, renarrativization, resignification). “Narration should not be
seen as creating order where there once was pure chaos or dissonance” (44,
quoting Ricoeur).
There is no precise starting point in interpretation dividing bare
content from interpretation. “Rather, interpretation has always already started”
(44). For Ricoeur: “the game of telling is included in the reality told” (45). (Cf. my narrating narrative, or Shakespeare’s doubling emphasis on metatheatre - JAGL).
Personal
identity is grounded on continuity of experience, “This identity, it should be
noted, is not the persistence of an entity, a thing (substance, subject, ego),
but is a meaning constituted by a relation of figure to ground or part to
whole. It is an identity in difference constituted by framing the flux of
particular experiences by a broader story” (46); “we often undergo experience
in narrative sequences quite automatically, without choice” (47) or without
explicit reflection.
Emotions as the product of reflection and
interpretation, narratively articulated (48-49) “at least some emotions cannot
be reduced to bodily states that the predelineated subject simply endures, but
are, on a narrative account, part and parcel of what it means to be a subject”
(49).
There
is a hermeneutic relationship between emotion and its narrative
representation: the narrative articulation may change the emotion itself
(50). A prenarrative quality of emotions: they demand an explicit
articulation, but
there are already narrative elements in them from the start (link to
ideologies, beliefs,
extraindividual, evaluative). (Charles Taylor, etc.).
“although narration is a secondary
process, it is an essential one with respect to human understanding because it
places acts in relation to each other and discloses those Gestalten and continuities without swhich understanding would prove
infertile” (53).
Intertextuality in remembering: the retelling
of a prior remembering, a prior emplotment, not of the event itself (53).
Narrative valorizes past action,
retelling of past. “Narrative, howver, not only delivers the past but is also
the medium of our aspirations and desires, imaginatively expressing, in the
stories we tell ourselves and those others that we hear and read, a possible
future with its attendant joys and hardships and, hence, possible selves” (54).
Stories plot who we may become (cf. Walker Gibson, articulation not just
through plot or character models but through identification or distance with
speaking positions and implied stances).
Telling a person’s story is an
evaluation of the kind of moral agent that person is, (Telling also reveals the
teller, I would add). Evaluative emotions (like a feeling of guilt e.g.).
Evaluations are self-constitutive, they are grounded on our dispositions and
expectations, and they transform them (like reading a novel). (58). (Taylor
too).
Narrative legitimizes practice, it accepts the embeddedness of moral
practices in a variety of traditions, beliefs, dispositions (61). Vs. moral subjectivism
and objectivism (missing word here: an interactional theory of morals, with
narrative as a prime instrument).
“in the end it is the formation of character
(along with its important social dimension) that is crucial in moral
considerations” (62)
Formation of character as drive to the future, moral ideals. Pro conflicts being
allowed in traditions, otherwise decline (63). “Much of our own narrating can
usefully be seen as driven by some such conflict, tension or crisis in our own
lives” (63).
Vs. dogmatism, which imposes a predetermined closure. “But closure
is often belied by the actual subtext of action (the prenarrative level); a
subtext exhibiting divergences and contradictions that are not taken up in the
explicit narrative enterprise. Self-understanding rides tandem with an
encountering of otherness, with an imaginative empathy for the other that in
turn discloses or develops possibilities for oneself.” (63-64) (cf.
faultlines, crises, conflicts, traumas — JAGL).
“Systematization of the self in terms of
a play of semiotic positions—of speaking, spoken, and implied subjects” (64).
Vs. the notion of the subject as a prelinguistic datum,
directly present to itself (67). The history of consciousness is linked to the history
of representation (cf. Calvin Schrag).
(Corollary: that the consequences for
subjectivity of the contemporary explosion of mechanically mediated
representations is surely both immense and not perceptible from our
standpoint).
The speaking subject attains selfhood via its
expressions (prenarrative becoming narrative) (69). The other’s body as site of his
discourse. (But…) “Even when the speaker is absent some form of ascription to
an embodied authorial origin generally occurs. This act appears to be
fundamental to our society” (71).
Kerby:
Merleau-Ponty points out the delusive
‘transparence’ of language fading into the meaning expressed (77) (Vs. Martínez
Bonati).
The experience of subjectivity in language
(somewhat overstated) as desire and possibility of expression, of bringing something
to language (77).
Becoming a subject of symbolic
prefiguration as occasion of desire and torment (e.g. novels on finding one’s
identity vs. impositions of others). Kerby 79.
“The symbolic does not directly represent
or correspond to the real, for it generates a level of signification, and
therefore meaning, in a more or less closed network of mutual relations that
both refigure and transcend the level of the real.” (79)
(The spoken subject does
not coincide with the speaking subject).
Mirror stage indicative of the role of
self-representation in cultural life. (80). “Only by the detour of the other is
self-presence attained” (81).
“narration cannot be said to aim simply
at mirroring the prenarrative level” (82) (Cf. James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis, 1999: interaction, ethical and
projective function of narrative, making of communities, addressee contact... —JAGL).
Narration as self-fashioning, not merely mimetic of previous self structures. Cf.
Habermas’s notion of understanding as grounded on an interest (Kerby 88).
“Guiding our present investigation is
this question: to what degree can the truthfulness of a self-narration be
considered more a matter of pragmatic and creative adequacy than of a
correspondence to the way things actually were or are?” (83)
(Problem here:
“actually” – a vicious circle. Actually for whom? Back to pragmatic adequacy - JAGL).
Meaning of our acts in terms of both “because-of” and “in-order-to” motives
(Alfred Schutz):
“The meaning of our acts, however, as this is worked out in terms of
because-of and in-order-to motives, is a productof retrospective and
prospective emplotments that draw upon the prenarrative past, refiguring it in
light of the present demand for sense and coherence. Here again we find the
dialectic of the prenarrative and narrative, a dialectic that is, to borrow a
useful phrase from Merleau-Ponty, one of creative
adequation.” (83-84)
“The truth of our narratives does not
reside in their correspondence to the prior meaning of prenarrative experience;
rather, the narrative is the meaning of
prenarrative experience. The adequacy of the narrative cannot, therefore,
be measured against the meaning of prenarrative experience but, properly
speaking, only against alternate interpretations of that experience.” (84).
(A
problem here (JAGL): this pre-narrative experience will not be have
been lived by others exactly in the same way as the narrator. A debate
between narratives, or between interpretations. Kerby does not emphasize
the role of others in the narrative debate — and the the agendas and projects of others. The question of friendly vs. unfriendly criticism, etc.)
Poetic language as overturning of ordinary categories,
speaking from a prenarrative and presubjectived locus (Kristeva— Kerby 85). Cf.
psychoanalysis: “overcoming prior and perhaps well-established interpretations
of ourselves. This is also a reason why literature, at its best, is both
disturbing and liberating” (86).
“Indeed, a good case can be made for
viewing narrative understanding as the most adequate approach to the human
domain. To understand ourselves we must grasp our implicit history, for to be
human is not simply to have a history (in a certain sense animals have this),
but to be cognizant of this history” (87).
(JAGL: In which sense? Animals have a
history for us. Cognizance at a primary level and at a reelaborated level,
the difference is essential. A role of criticism, of interaction and of the conflict of
different representations and intepretations).
Donald P. Spence pro interpretation as “a
pragmatic statement that has no necessary referent in the past” (qtd. in Kerby
89). “The construction not only shapes the past—it becomes the past in many cases because many critical early
experiences are preverbal and, therefore, have no proper designation until we
put them into words” (89).
(This is always the case in interpretation. There
are nonverbal aspects to all experience, and nonverbal relationships between
elements of the intepreted phenomenon and its context which need to be
verbalized. e.g. the gesture of language, or the significance of the framed
elements in another frame of reference. The interpretation therefore always
brings out meaning which was only partly existent in the original before the
interpreter’s action - JAGL).
Narrative emplotment must link elements “in a way that
is intellectually and emotionally acceptable” (90). (The
situational-interactive- community making dimension of narrative. Audience
design, interaction with audiences). “It should also be noted that one’s own
acceptance of a narrative may be significantly affected by whether or not other
people accept one’s account” (90).
Refiguring of the past may also involve a
disfiguring (96) Pro accuracy on facts, but global meaning is not a fact (96).
Plausibility of historical account in a narrative which synthesizes various
threads of the past into a coherent meaningful whole, “Such plausibility may
depend on factors (e.g., future events) not at all present to the actors of the
events being considered” (96).
Disinterestedness, too, is not an ideal from the
hermeneutic point of view (Gadamer, Habermas):
“Authenticity, after all, is not the mere
recounting of one’s past but, as Heidegger has said, also the projection of
one’s possibilities” (97).
Heidegger vs. subject/object dichotomy, Dasein situated the subject within a
word and a language, new era in European philosophy. (101).
(Anticipated by 19th-c. historicism in this sense - JAGL).
The semiotic subject:
“The human subject must
thus be situated within the structures that sustain it rather than posited as
transcendent to them; it must be implicated in the production of such
structures but need not be taken as foundational.” (101)
Kerby advocates a favorable interpretation of
structuralism as a refusal to separate subject from the social order, rather than
negating it. (102).
“The text’s future lies in the hands of
its readers. But while the psychophysical author (the person) is left behind,
what we have called a subject of speech remains” (102).
Motives for division and dispersion of the
subject: “Given this diversity, the possibility of unity for the subject can
only arise through two primary channels: routine activity at the level of
praxis and acts of self-narration” (105)
(Too pessimistic here: routine may
refer to satisfactory acts of social interaction where the subjects achieve
mutual recognition - JAGL).
Semiotic model for the subject based on a
tripartite division: “the speaking
subject or material agent of ediscourse, the subject of speech or purely linguistic subject of the discourse
(designated by personal pronouns and other deictical indications), and the spoken subject or subject produced
through or by the discourse as a result of its effect on a reader-listener”
(105).
(This
should be further specified: the narratee, the subject as represented
and favoured by the discourse, the subject as evaluated by a third
party...).
The body is reintegrated into the
communicative equation as site of narration and site of ascription (implied
author 2) for the subject.
“A split or noncoincidence in the subject is also
apparent here due to the interpretive nature of this participation. One may
not, for example, accept the expression as an adequater representative of
oneself, which may cause the cycle to continue again. This cycle of ever new
signification and appropriation is, of course, none other than the dynamic
framework within which personal development takes place” (108).
Reflexivity of
interpretation, Taylor's Sources of the Self.
Conclusion:
We act our part as selves but
script is not pre-written: “as in a first-person narration, we interrupt the
ongoing drama with retrospective assessments and refigurations and are not,
therefore, completely engulfed in our roles” (109).
“The unity of the self,
where such a unity exists, is exhibited
as an identity in difference, which is all a temporal character can be” (109).
Identity is never settled, “the prenarrative out of which it arises need never have
a definitive interpretation” (110). Desire for an identity is more unchanging than
identity itself. The self not a prelinguistic given for which language is a tool,
“but is an implicate of language usage” (110)
(Here one should add other 'languages', models, frames... nonlinguistic signs which frame linguistic action - JAGL).
“When we are in the heat of conversation it is particularly
evident that what ‘I’ say is not at all prefigured in consciousness but is a
spontaneous and bodily response to the speech situation” (111).
The body as
and enduring locus, person as an embodied self… Person as a body of gestures,
artificial division between body and mind or body and self. Pro expressive
potential, vs. repressive society which treats expressive potential of the body
as renegade or antisocial (113).
Situating the subject in history and culture,
it cannot be freed from psychological or ideological distortions. “The human
subject is a self-interpreting animal that, via narration, is of necessity prey
to its own ‘fictions’.” (114)
The subject as the product of a creative act, not pregiven
to be simply recognized and respected.
115 n. 2: On the “implied author”:
“The
latter term is employed in two primary and interrelated senses: (1) to
designate the status of the author that a text sets up for the reader in and
through itself, and (2) to stress that what the text reveals about the “author”
cannot be directly identified with the flesh-and-blood author. The term implied subject is intended to refer to the subject set up by
our utterances, but which, in ordinary usage at least, does not contain the
distance evidenced in point 2. That is, behind our speaking or thinking there
is not another (more real) subject or author.”
118 n. 16: For Ricoeur, “Narrative will
bridge the abyss between lived time and objective, or cosmic, time”
121 n. 34. Collingwood: an emotion is
bound up with its expression, cannot be reduced to the bare psychological
phenomena prior to expression.
125 n. 39 for Derrida, presence as the
suppression of differance: “Presence is thus the overlooking or suppression of
the mediating signifier, or, which is the same thing, the erasing of a
primordial difference or otherness.”
125 n 45. In Lacan, “The ‘real’ is not
what we tend to mean by ‘reality’, for this is primarikly a symbolic product.”
Oliver Sacks too gives a narrative grounding to
identity (The Man who Mistook...),
“each of
us is a singular narrative, which is constructed,
continually, unconsciously, by, thorugh, and in us—through our perceptions, our
feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken
narrations…. To be ourselves we must have
ourselves—posssess, if need be repossess, our life-stories” (Sacks, qtd in
Kerby 127 n. 69).
131 n. 2: importance of being as, of models or archetypes in
order to tell our story and construct our identity (tragic or otherwise, etc.).
—oOo—
