Enactive, Interactive, Social—New Contexts for Reading Second-Person Narration

Abstract

In this article, I would like to discuss whether recent interest in human interactions may facilitate the long-standing debates on second-person narratives, and help to go beyond an official list of controversies or questions about this ambiguous literary form. Here, I introduce the method of reconceptualizing second-person narrative inspired by social cognitive research, including some empirical findings from social neuroscience. It may be a step towards an enactive theory of second-person narrative. This approach includes an explanation of subjectivity inscribed in that narrative form (“an interacting dyad”); redefinition of second-person narratives in terms of interaction, cooperation, and social event; and remodeling of the ethics and pragmatics of this form as narrative reenactment. Such a conceptualization may explain the current role of the second person in social and interactive media that has given rise to the empowered and directly engaged “you” user.