Narratives Of Self Research Articles

23.16 : Iteração da identidade através da arte e da tecnologia

In this paper, I will reflect on “23.16”, a research project that delves into autobiographical memory, technology, and installation art, developed during the Master’s in Fine Arts at FBAUP. This investigation intersects with the conference’s focus on the arts and memory. Anchoring my methodology in autoethnography, I manipulate personal materials—sound and memory—employing a strategy of transfer and iteration within a network of devices. This creates a mise-en-abîme that bridges various artistic languages and forms. The work embodies a living inquiry into Judith Butler’s narrative of self as articulated in “Giving an Account of Oneself,” scrutinizing the iterative process of self-narrative and the persistent metamorphosis of identity. The project is further informed by Paul B. Preciado’s reflections on the imbrication of technology and identity, alongside Gilbert Simondon’s notions of transduction and perpetual becoming. The philosophical paradox of Theseus’ ship serves as a conceptual metaphor within my work, posing inquiries about identity’s endurance and transformation. This metaphor extends to challenge the identity of the project itself, questioning whether it retains the essence of a singular work despite the continuous substitution of auditory and visual forms. The project materializes in multimedia installations that, emanating from the same auditory roots, conjure seemingly dystopian versions of reality and memory. The installations are a testament to the performative nature of memory and the cinematic transformation of sound into image, and subsequently, into moving images. In dialogue, I aim to reflect on the generative possibilities of this experimental process—how the critical discourse may contribute to the research’s evolution.

Meditation and interoception: a conceptual framework for the narrative and experiential self.

The concept of the self is complex and there is no consensus on what the self is. However, there are emerging patterns in the literature that point to two different selves, the narrative and experiential self. The narrative self refers to a conceptual or representational knowledge of the self that extends across time and manifests in self-reflection and personality assessments. The experiential self refers to first-person perception, moment-to-moment awareness, embodiment, and a sense of agency. These two selves are reliably linked to two distinct neural circuits, the default mode network (DMN) and the insula and salience network (SN). One of the consistent themes in the meditative and mindfulness literature is a change in the perspective of the self. In this paper, I will review how meditation alters those neural circuits providing a plausible mechanism that can explain the changes in the self. I also propose a rudimentary conceptual framework to account for some of the mixed results found throughout meditation literature.

Commentary: East Asian Educational Migration as Narrative Quests

ABSTRACTI interpret the rich conceptual insights and empirical findings of the special issue Childhood, Migration and the Pursuit of Happiness in Middle‐Class East Asia through the lens of understanding migration as a journey of narrative quests. Drawing from moral philosopher McIntyre's theory of narrative self and the pursuit of a good life, I highlight the dialectic and dialogic aspects of ‘narrative quests’ across multiple cases of East Asian educational migration (educational migration broadly construed). I highlight key features, central themes and tensions of narrative quests among these migrant families. I also pose questions for expanding further inquiry under this theoretical framework.

Synthesizing the temporal self: robotic models of episodic and autobiographical memory.

Episodic memories are experienced as belonging to a self that persists in time. We review evidence concerning the nature of human episodic memory and of the sense of self and how these emerge during development, proposing that the younger child experiences a persistent self that supports a subjective experience of remembering. We then explore recent research in cognitive architectures for robotics that has investigated the possibility of forms of synthetic episodic and autobiographical memory. We show that recent advances in generative modeling can support an understanding of the emergence of self and of episodic memory, and that cognitive architectures which include a language capacity are showing progress towards the construction of a narrative self with autobiographical memory capabilities for robots. We conclude by considering the prospects for a more complete model of mental time travel in robotics and the implications of this modeling work for understanding human episodic memory and the self in time. This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

Conceptualising personhood in nursing care for people with altered consciousness, cognition and behaviours: A discussion paper.

The aim of this discussion paper is to explore factors and contexts that influence how nurses might conceptualise and assign personhood for people with altered consciousness, cognition and behaviours. While a biomedical framing is founded upon a dichotomy between the body and self, such that the body can be subjected to a medical and objectifying gaze, relational theories of self, multiculturalism and technological advances for life-sustaining interventions present new dilemmas which necessitate discussion about what constitutes personhood. The concept of personhood is dynamic and evolving: where historical constructs of rationality, agency, autonomy and a conscious mind once formed the basis for personhood, these ideas have been challenged to encompass embodied, relational, social and cultural paradigms of selfhood. Themes in this discussion include: the right to personhood, mind-body dualism versus the embodied self; personhood as consciousness, rationality and narratives of self; social relational contexts of personhood and cultural contexts of personhood. Patricia Benner's and Christine Tanner's clinical judgement model is then applied to consider the implications for nursing care that seeks to reflexively incorporate personhood. Nurse clinicians are able to move between conceptions of personhood and act to support the body, as well as presumed autonomy and relational, social and cultural personhood. In doing so, they use analytical, intuitive and narrative reasoning which prioritises autonomous constructions of self. They also incorporate relational and social contexts of the person receiving care within the possibilities of technological advances and constraints of contextual resources.

What is narrativity?

AbstractIn recent years, narrative accounts of the self have gained increasing attention. It is widely accepted that humans are storytelling creatures, that stories shape our self‐conception, and that we fail to be agents without a narrative framework. While there is less agreement on what constitutes a narrative, it is generally understood to be more than a chronological listing of life events; it is also an account of the explanatory relationships among these events—a story of how events lead to other events. However, specifying the nature of this explanatory relationship has proven difficult. As critics have pointed out, narrativists often resort to simplistic notions of narrative when faced with criticism. The concept of narrative explanation needs to be elaborated in a way that is both substantive enough to exclude trivial behaviours from being considered narratives and nonrestrictive enough to accommodate ordinary lives that may not be particularly story‐like. In this paper, I review existing accounts of narrative explanation and propose a teleological account, according to which narratives consist of goal‐directed explanations of a sequence of events. I argue that a teleological account of narrative explanation can be a fruitful way to clarify the concept of “narrative” in the context of the narrative self by addressing the most common objections.

Meaningfulness and attachment: what dreams, psychosis and psychedelic states tell us about our need for connection.

The human need to find meaning in life and the human need for connection may be two sides of the same coin, a coin forged in the developmental crucible of attachment. Our need for meaningfulness can be traced to our developmental need for connection in the attachment relationship. The free energy principle dictates that in order to resist a natural tendency towards disorder self-organizing systems must generate models that predict the hidden causes of phenomenal experience. In other words, they must make sense of things. In both an evolutionary and ontogenetic sense, the narrative self develops as a model that makes sense of experience. However, the self-model skews the interpretation of experience towards that which is predictable, or already "known." One may say it causes us to "take things personally." Meaning is felt more acutely when defenses are compromised, when the narrative self is offline. This enables meaning-making that is less egocentrically motivated. Dreams, psychosis, and psychedelic states offer glimpses of how we make sense of things absent a coherent narrative self. This has implications for the way we understand such states, and lays bare the powerful reach of attachment in shaping what we experience as meaningful.

Kaleidoscope of a Self: Byron’s Ravenna Journal

The Ravenna Journal (written 4 January – 27 February 1821) documents a critical and complex period of Byron’s life. In light of the codependent and fluid relationship between Byron’s poetry and prose, this essay explores the literary value and poetics of the Journal and its function as a testing ground for Byron’s experimentation with style, tone, and language. I also place the Journal within Byronic self-representation and the era’s strong autobiographical impulse and suggest that the diary does not only reflect on the poetry/politics dilemma but reveals versions of Byron’s selfhood in a kaleidoscopic mode, one which resembles the make-up of Don Juan . In this way, the narrated self emerges as a refracted identity and an aggregate of moods and contradictions which, however, interrelate and are given shape and purpose through the regularity and conventions of the journal. Despite the limitations and challenges it poses to the reader due to its mediated and excised form, the essay argues that the Ravenna Journal enhances our understanding of the Byronic self and enriches our appreciation of the literary artistry of Byron’s prose.

Major Depression as a Disorder of the Narrative Self: A Qualitative Study

Introduction: Abnormal self-experiences are a common feature of major depression despite their absence from current diagnostic manuals. Current diagnostic criteria leave us with an impoverished conception of depressive disorders, and they fail to exploit the diverse experiential alterations that might be useful for understanding and diagnosing patients, and last but not least for explaining the aetiology of these disorders. Although some phenomenological descriptions of abnormal self-experiences in major depression are available, further research is needed to validate these through detailed clinical interviews. Methods: To characterize these phenomena in more detail and to verify and consolidate previous accounts, we conducted a qualitative study using the Consensual Qualitative Research method. Results: Our findings identified three categories of abnormal self-experiences: (1) impossibility to project oneself forward, (2) not recognizing one’s self, and (3) losing control on one’s self. Conclusion: Before delving into these results, we briefly described how the self is conceptualized in phenomenological psychopathology and explored in the literature on the self-experience in major depression. After discussing our results in the light of recent and contemporary phenomenological literature, we suggest that the inability to recognize otherness as part of oneself – which is the core of depressive experiences – ends in specific symptoms of depersonalization that differ from schizophrenic ones. We conclude that the self-experience, and in particular narrative identity, is central to the development and maintenance of depression.

Becoming Changemakers: How Social-Emotional Learning Can Enhance Civic Agency Development

To better prepare students for active and thoughtful participation in a democratic society, civic education should foster an array of civic competencies. Cultivating student civic agency—an under-studied civic competency—is of particular importance to equip students to authentically use their voice in their communities. But what does it look like to foster student civic agency in a classroom setting? This article leverages a social and emotional learning (SEL) framework to uncover the active curricular ingredients and educational mechanisms through which a student-led civics curriculum has fostered civic agency. In this multi-site case study, we analyze the implementation of an eighth grade student-led civics curriculum in a northeastern U.S. state. We outline how implicit SEL processes in these classrooms, stemming from a pedagogical focus on “changemakers,” supported development of civic agency. We found that the changemakers theme facilitated student exploration of their own civic identity and values, while prompting students to critically examine political power structures. Notably, the theme also helped students to develop a narrative of self as changemakers and to envision themselves actively engaged in civic spaces. This study adds insights to growing evidence on the multi-faceted benefits that civically-oriented SEL may offer to preparing young people to engage in democracy.

The Construction of the Narrative Self: Applying the Internal Multi-Actor Performance Method for Children (IMAP-C) to Help Children Cope with Emotional Distress

Currently, young people are confronted with a rapidly changing world filled with uncertainty, which often triggers negative emotions such as fear or sadness, ultimately leading to emotional distress. This article demonstrates a method that structures practitioners’ work and helps young people to cope with emotional distress. Known as the dialogical Method of Internal Multi-Actor Performance (IMAP) (Gkantona, 2023), this method was founded on the Dialogical Self Theory (DST) and has been developed for therapeutic and counseling procedures. The IMAP is a narrative method which aims to analyze the client’s multi-voicedness and its methodology follows four evolving dialogical stages (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, and Meta-thesis), which facilitate the reorganization of clients’ internal narratives. Thus, the Internal Multi-Actor Performance Method for Children (IMAP-C) is presented, as modified to meet the needs of counseling and therapeutic procedures for children and adolescents experiencing emotional distress. Its adjustment to children’s needs focuses on developmental issues and the dialogical features of working with children as well as the use of art therapy techniques (i.e., role plays, drawings and therapeutic puppetry). A clinical case example illustrates the dialogical processes underlining the application of the IMAP-C in the treatment of a nine-year old boy who suffers from fears and post-traumatic stress. The child’s first attempts to form an integrated narrative identity are also highlighted.

The Tacitly Situated Self: From Narration to Sedimentation and Projection

Recent analytic-philosophical works in the field of situated cognition have proposed to conceptualize the self as deeply entwined with the environment, and even as constituted by it. A common move has been to characterize the self in narrative terms, and then to argue that the narrative self is partly constituted by narratives about the past that are scaffolded (shaped and maintained) by, or distributed over, a variety of objects that can rekindle episodic memories. While we are sympathetic to these approaches, here we propose a different strategy to situate the self—one which can be seen as complementing the narrative one, and which draws from concepts and ideas central to the phenomenological-existentialist tradition. We suggest, first, that the self has a sense of its past not just via narratives and episodic memories, but in virtue of being embodied and thus, importantly, sedimented (in other words, it has, or rather is, a body memory). Embodiment and sedimentation, in turn, always necessarily imply an environment or a situation, entailing that the self is also inherently situated. Second, we discuss the future-oriented dimension of selfhood, and argue that we understand ourselves as projected into the future, again not necessarily only narratively and reflectively, but also tacitly, in a bodily and inherently situated way.

Understanding behavioral and cognitive dispositions as subsystem topologies within cognitive models: A proposal.

In our 2023 paper, entitled "Modeling interactions between the embodied and the narrative self: Dynamics of the self-pattern within LIDA," Kugele, Newen, Franklin, and I propose a functional description and implementation of a central element of Gallagher & Newen's pattern theory of self, which identifies an agent's self with a dynamic pattern of so-called cognitive aspects which govern their thought and behavior (Gallagher, 2013; Newen, 2018; Gallagher & Daly, 2018). The pattern theory explicitly rejects the traditional conceptualization of the self as a unitary entity with certain properties that resides within agents, with the idea of a pattern of aspects being central to its ability to account for the dynamic, yet relatively stable development of most natural agents' selves. Implementing the pattern theory within Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent revealed that, in order for a cognitive architecture to account for both the dynamic and stable nature of an agent's self-pattern, aspects of that pattern had to be realized by dispositions of the agent to either think or act in a certain way. In this commentary, I argue that this fundamental role of dispositions extends to cognitive processes in general and that cognitive systems should be understood in terms of the dynamical interactions of dispositions over time. In order to facilitate such an understanding, dispositions will have to be identified with topologies of cognitive (sub)systems. I provide an example of such a topology by reference to informational topologies in neuronal systems.

Translating the Self in Medieval European Romance: Narration and Emotion in Partonopeu de Blois, Partonopier und Meliur and Partonope of Blois

Abstract This article approaches the question of selfhood by reading the opening passage of the Old French romance Partonopeu de Blois alongside its translations in different Northern European languages: the thirteenth-century Middle High German Partonopier und Meliur by Konrad von Würzburg and the fifteenth-century Middle English Partonope of Blois. Both translations bring interiority and subjectivity to the passage by adding direct speech and access to the character’s thoughts and motivations. In allowing the protagonist to respond to and rationalise his own emotions, the translators add a layer of self-awareness to their characterisation, thus producing a narrated self that was lacking in the original. This article demonstrates the great potential of comparative analysis in the study of medieval emotion and self. The different linguistic versions of the same passage here illuminate one another, highlighting different narrative techniques in the construction of literary selfhood. While the objective, exterior style of narration in the Old French passage constructs a helpless character, lacking in self-possession, the later German and English translations display a different narrative strategy that reveals their character’s decision-making process, and thus make him into a self-reflecting agent.

‘You wanna talk afterwards?’ Ontoepistemological implications of the researcher self in fictional research narratives

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates how fictional narratives can address ethical and epistemic problems in the creation and conduct of qualitative research. A story about international students with parental responsibilities in the UK is presented. Through this ‘performance,’ fictional narratives can address issues linked to ethical and epistemic desires. This article contributes to the extant literature on fictional research writing by presenting and interrogating a piece written in response to ethical and epistemic dilemmas in the field. I present the lack of opportunity to meet for a group study to demonstrate how participants can convene in the ‘virtual real.’ Instead of passively accepting the unfortunate limitations on our interactions and interpretations, I allowed a fictional version of a utopian meeting to ‘occur’ among us. At the same time, the account itself performs a reflexive dystopian unravelling as I reveal some tacit frameworks and processes that led to its writing. Finally, I discuss the repercussions of desire on the material presentation of research as part of an initiative to address impossibilities in the conduct of research.

Becoming (In)Visible: Self-Assertion and Disappearance of the Self in Contemporary Surveillance Narratives

Abstract Visible surveillance technologies are vanishing in the wake of dataveillance. The practice of surveillance is certainly not disappearing, but it has become inconspicuous. In a regime of invisible surveillance, the watchers and the watched alike are hard to identify, for the latter have also become socially invisible as human beings. I argue that the idea of becoming invisible in both digital and pre-digital surveillance societies is multifaceted. On the one hand, it suggests total deprivation of personal autonomy as a result of overexposure resulting in the disappearance of the subject and, on the other hand, it implies a possibility of resistance and self-assertion. Self-exposure is taken to extremes in Dave Eggers’s dystopian novel The Circle (2013) where the protagonist becomes the centre of attention in a “viewer society” (Mathiesen 1997) and “goes transparent” (Eggers 2013, 351). In contrast, Wolfgang Hilbig’s Stasi novel “Ich” (1993) works with different notions of invisibility. Recruited to spy for the Stasi, Hilbig’s protagonist – an unsuccessful poet – is at the same time targeted by East Germany’s secret police and wants to become invisible, hiding from the omnipresent Stasi surveillance in Berlin’s maze-like cellar corridors in an attempt of self-assertion. The comparison of these novels will elucidate how different discourses on (in)visibility and transparency contribute to an account of subjectivity that attempts to resist surveillance.

Transforming Experiences in Literature and Psychotherapy

The article presents an analysis of Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, with a view to transforming experiences in literature and psychotherapy. It focuses on three central points: the question of personal authenticity, the autobiographic narration of self as source of our identity, and the importance of physical contact as a bridge between individuals. A short clinical note highlights some critical issues that could be important for the reader, personally as well as professionally.

Narratives of self: identity formation among marginalized groups studying abroad

This article calls attention to the complex ways in which study abroad participants make meaning and narrate their experiences abroad. I ask, how do participants understand their study abroad experiences in relation to informing and giving meaning to their conceptions of self? To answer this question, this article uses a qualitative case study approach to explore the voices and experiences of low-income, first-generation, ethnoracially minoritized study abroad participants. Participant counternarratives challenge dominant depictions of study abroad on the basis of white normativity. Findings reveal study abroad as engendering a process of rethinking membership, identity, and belonging for ethnoracially minoritized students with intersecting identities. The findings also point to the complexities that participants face as they grapple with the boundaries and feelings of exclusion that their own countries of origin construct to keep them or other marginalized groups from membership.

INTERACTIVE PATTERNS OF THE OPENING STATEMENT IN THE DEFAMATION CASE TRIAL OF DEPP VS HEARD 2022

In light of the interactive aspects of a monologue speech, this study intends to examine the opening statement by the plaintiff’s lawyer, Ben Chew, in the trial of the Depp versus Heard Defamation case in 2022. Utilising Searle’s Illocutionary Acts and Hyland’s Stance and Engagement Models which was modified by Chaemsaithong, and the qualitative descriptive method, the writer can elaborate on how the interactive patterns can be discerned through the utterances presented by the lawyer. The finding shows 68 utterances dominated by 46% representative acts and 40% commissive acts, while the least occurrences are 7% of expressive acts and 7% of directive acts. Thereafter, it is also found 91 stance markers in the form of 50% attitude markers and 13% first-person pronouns, and 54 engagement markers in the form of 26% second-person pronouns, 10% reported discourse, and 1% questions. Through those interactive devices, the lawyer negotiated his representations within the opening statement at three levels: narrative, interpersonal, and personal self. Those negotiations are operated simultaneously as interactive means for presenting his proposition and identity as a lawyer while engaging rapport with jurors. Therefore, persuading them to be on the same page with the lawyer’s point of view, in which he stood on the plaintiff’s side in the trial.

Professionelle Authentizitat

The idea of an authentic self is at the heart of building trust in NGO fundraising. This paper asks how personal fundraising by paid workers ( ‚dialogers‘) relates to expectations of authenticity. Building on a review of the online self-representations of NGO fundraising agencies’ and on an ethnographic study of fundraisers’ work, it traces where the concept of the authentic self becomes relevant in fundraising and how it relates to notions of neoliberal labour. A conceptual history of personal authenticity, attempts at interpretation from cultural studies and media studies, as well as reflections on authenticity in fundraising marketing serve as approaches to the research field and lead to an account of the dialogers’ narrative selves. This enables a reflection on how authenticity as a powerful discourse relates to NGOs and to neoliberal worlds of work in general. The paper aims to condense the broad theory on personal authenticity and relate it to salaried work in the context of voluntary engagement. Furthermore, the examination of this special case of professional trust work helps to review assumptions that all too quickly arise from the interpretive pattern of ‚neoliberalism‘.