Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture(1 Studies in Narrative)

How does narrative give shape and meaning to human life? And what special role do narratives play in identifying one as a person in the world? This book explores these questions from the vantage points of various human and cultural sciences, with special attention to the importance of narrative as expression of embodied experience, mode of communication, and form for understanding the world and ultimately ourselves. Presenting a variety of perspectives — from narrative psychology and literary criticism, to discourse, communication and cultural theory — these studies examine the intricacies of narrative identity construction. With contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field, the book highlights the cultural field in which narratives shape forms of life. Using verbal and pictorial, linguistic and performative, oral and written, natural and literary autobiographical texts, the studies demonstrate how the construction of selves, memories, and life-worlds are interwoven in one narrative fabric.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction (by Brockmeier, Jens); 2. Part I: Narrative and Self Construction: Theoretical Perspectives; 3. Self-making and world-making (by Bruner, Jerome S.); 4. Narrative: Problems and promises of an alternative paradigm (by Brockmeier, Jens); 5. Metaphysics and narrative: Singularities and multiplicities of self (by Harre, Rom); 6. Narrative integrity: Autobiographical identity and the meaning of the "good life" (by Freeman, Mark); 7. Part II: Worlds of Identity: Life Stories in Cultural Context; 8. "The people will come to you": Blackfeet narrative as a resource for contemporary living (by Carbaugh, Donal); 9. Narratives of national identity as group narratives: Patterns of interpretive cognition (by Feldman, Carol Fleisher); 10. "You're marked": Breast cancer, tattoo, and the narrative performance of identity (by Langellier, Kristin M.); 11. Part III: Between Past and Present: Autobiographical Memory and Narrative Identity; 12. Richard Wagner's creative vision at La Spezia: or The retrospective interpretation of experience in autobiographical memory as a function of an emerging identity (by Sehulster, Jerome R.); 13. Identity and narrative in Piaget's autobiographies (by Voneche, Jacques); 14. From the end to the beginning: Retrospective teleology in autobiography (by Brockmeier, Jens); 16. From substance to story: Narrative, identity, and the reconstruction of the self (by Freeman, Mark); 17. List of contributors; 18. Credits and acknowledgements; 19. Index

Review :
The mode of thought which is narrative and the modern preoccupation with identity meet here in this important book. This will be a central text for anyone with concern for either of these fields, and essential for those whose interests span both of them. Brockmeier and Carbaugh have assembled an impressive array of authors who have laid the foundations of inquiry about how people construct narratives of their lives. This volume, despite the independence of its various contributions, nonetheless serves the important purpose of exploring how we construct what we call our lives, and how we create ourselves in the process. All these various contributions point to a single focus, that is, the process of autobiographical identity construction. This volume would help to open new ways to narrative studies, shedding new light on human conception of human lives and how they might be approached and be understood. Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self, and Culture promises to be a rich and useful volume. It is rich in terms of the diversity and quality of authors it brings together for the development and illustration of a common theme. It is rich as well in terms of the variety of ways it shows how narratives function in the lives of people, particularly in the ways that narratives function in the ways individuals constitute their own identities and link themselves in various ways to cultures. It will be a useful book because of this richness and quality but also because it addresses a timely topic that is of interest to scholars, students, and general readers. This book, edited skillfully by Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh, explores how narrative is central to how we make sense of ourselves — culturally as well as individually — and how narratives can be used as methodological tools in the exploration of selves and others, including groups and whole cultures. It is indeed an ideal volume for the start of our new series Studies in Narrative. A richly synthetic exploration of narrative as the pre-eminent instrument of self-fashioning, illuminating in transdisciplinary perspective the poetics of identity as culturally and intersubjectively constituted. [...] elegantly written, full of important information and conclusions, edited so to provide a wide-ranging insight into an original and provoking field of human sciences. I believe that this is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, highly inspiring and valuable volume. Especially the first part, with its theoretical exploration of concepts of self and narrative from the threefold perspective of social science, psychology and literature, will be important for those working in the field of literary autobiography or the study of 'narrative' in a wider sense. Moreover, what stands out are the insightful connections the contributors make between self-narration in 'high art' or 'high theory' and the everyday stories which human beings use to understand and communicate their own lives to others. Narrative and Identity is a treasure trove for anyone studying the human experience in various disciplines.