Art and Identity

Abstract

Early works that advanced narrative understanding of the self, such as Alastair MacIntyre's After Virtue, came as refreshing change from more standard discussions of the metaphysics of identity. The speed at which this conception was embraced is testament to its intuitive power; by now the narrative model of the self holds an almost hegemonic position in theories of identity and has become commonplace to talk of the self as narrative construct. But the popularity of this model has also meant that has undergone very little critical review since its early development. I wish here to raise some questions about the aptness of this model for capturing the complexity of the self and, by highlighting some of its limitations, to suggest possible avenues for broadening the narrative conception into fuller and more nuanced account of identity. To suggest that the self is narrative, or the product of narrative, is implicitly to say that the self is work of art. It is an artwork of particular type-a literary work-that is created by the practice of telling stories. Unlike theories that posit the self as substance on the model of the metaphysics of things, this position has at its heart an aesthetic view of the self as the product of creative and imaginative practice of very specific kind. And while is great theoretical potential in the investigation of the subject along these lines, such an exploration will have to broaden its scope to consider more than literary art forms as the basis for self-identity. While the self may be formed in part by the telling of stories, I will argue that is also formed by much more and has facets that cannot be captured by strict understanding of narrative. At present, the narrative model is the only aesthetic conception of the self available and this conception does not, for the most part, admit or explore its aesthetic roots. The Narrative Self Marya Schechtman, in her recent work The Constitution of Selves, writes: The cornerstone of the narrative self-constitution view is the claim that person's identity is created by self-conception that is narrative in form. More broadly put, this means that constituting an identity requires tthat an individual conceive of his life as having the form and logic of story-more specifically, the of person's life-where story is understood as conventional, linear narrative.1 This view-or ones very similar to it-is prevalent in both psychological and philosophical circles, having been advanced by Donald Spence, Roy Schafer, Donald Polkinghorne, and Jerome Bruner in psychology, and by (among others) Paul Ricoeur, Alistair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor in philosophy.2 I will take Schechtman's statement as paradigmatic of narrative theory,3 pointing to specific departures from as they become relevant. The narrative theory of the self has much in common with hermeneutic or interpretationalist accounts of identity, such as Charles Taylor's, which hold that the self is (at least in part) constructed through our interactions with others and with the cultural horizon in which we live. It is by our interpretive and imaginative reconstructions, these accounts suggest, that we make sense of the world and our lives-and thereby gain sense of identity. Paul Ricoeur adopts this basic hermeneutic stance, and cautions that there is no self-knowledge without some kind of detour through signs, symbols and cultural works.4 And Joseph Margolis makes stronger aesthetic claim when he notes that the complexities of the art world are the inseparable mates of what is required in understanding ourselves as selves;5 the key to grasping the human subject for Margolis will be the same for understanding both the cultural horizon and the art that condition it. But is the kind of detour we make through our cultural horizons that provides the specific mark of narrative theory. For Ricoeur, self-interpretation finds in narrative a privileged mediation;6 it is in telling our own stories that we give ourselves an identity. …