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Narrative Negotiation of Practical Identity

Today's post is by Maria Cristina Contrino.


Maria Cristina Contrino



What is the role of narratives for our personal identity, for who we are in everyday life? What kinds of narratives shape our actions, interactions and relations? What is the role of ‘wrong’, erroneous narratives? 

In my paper I review three narratives accounts that highlight the importance of narratives for personal identity and argue for the practical notion of personal identity (Schechtman 1996); the variety of psychological and bodily characteristics that shape a person (Schroeder 2022); and the role of affectivity and bodily interactions in supporting our narratives and maintaining our identity (Lindemann 2014). 

Yet, these approaches do not do justice to the roles of certain narratives that are not fully rational and involve errors: a narrative view needs to account for the practical significance in one’s life of erroneous narratives, such as impostor’s narratives, delusions and confabulations (Bortolotti 2018, 2020).

In my view, we negotiate our practical identity thanks to everyday narratives and embodied interactions; and the notion of identity negotiation accounts for the practical role of errors and delusions. 

Firstly, most of the time everyday narratives are sufficient to convey our experiences, beliefs, aims etc., within everyday interactions with others; moreover, everyday narratives allow to repair some errors (Currie 2010) thanks to the ‘to and fro’ of conversations (Helder and Hough 2018) and inputs like gestures, cues, questions, etc. (Fabry 2023). Through everyday narratives we ‘recruit’ others into our plans, projects and actions, structuring our practical relations. 

Secondly, embodiment allows us to supplement inadequate narratives through affective and bodily interactions, like, for example, cuddling one’s grandchild (Lindemann 2014); and to develop habits and skills that anchor our interactions within the environment and other people.

While narratives involving major errors, like delusions or the narratives of impostors, are occasionally embraced and negotiated as factual and correct, usually major narrative errors are negotiated at face value. This allows us to recognise that these narratives with their errors have a practical significance as they shape some of our actions, interactions and practical relations. 

For example, we can engage with someone who claims to be the late French general Napoleon, making sense of the way she dresses and her attempts to recruit others into her military training, without taking her to be the long dead Napoleon and without joining in her military plans.

I am currently working on a more detailed account of how narrative errors are negotiated and their impact on one’s practical identity.

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