I took interest in Bruner’s point that “the canonical and the possible are forever in dialectical tension with each other” (14). When I think about it, I find that life constantly battles between what exists and what does not exist, what is and what could be. Or, in relation to memory, what happened, tangibly, and what, intangible, was gathered from that happening. But, while memory seems to shape the could have been, it also constrains it, shaping an experience into something and thus leaving out all other possibilities for what could be. The idea of memory constraining possibility is intriguing to me. It makes me realize that every day, every minute, people are handed tangible experiences, one after another, and what we make of them is left up to our memory. It would seem, then, that we have a choice of how we shape experiences into our lives, but I suppose memory is constraining. Firstly, do we choose what we remember? And secondly, when we remember something, we have added meaning to and categorized our experience, immobilizing it, disabling it from entering into different territories, finding different avenues. That memory will forever be attached to it. Is that how it works? I do believe that memory constrains experience—that’s pretty much all it does. But to what extent does it do so? It seems that narratives are a form of memory—they are a template it seems, lodged in people, to which their memories and lives must abide by. Memory constrains firsthand experiences, but I wonder how much narratives constrain memory. Why do we remember what we remember? I believe that a lot of it has to do with what we are supposed to remember. Bruner discusses the characteristics of story, and mentioned that in stories there has to be a normal way of life, and then that normal way of life is disrupted, something is shaken up. I think that our memories follow the patterns of these stories. We remember what is unusual. Were we taught to do that, though? Or is that just what we do naturally? I believe that it’s both. The structure of story, of narrative, exists, because it follows the pattern of life, but now that that story is in place, perhaps it is what memory abides by, regardless of any transgressions. I find my memories to be extremely affected by narrative. Often, I even find myself narrating things in my head as they happen to me, identifying them as important or unimportant (probably according to some sort of standard societal narrative) and thus remembering them later.
I love the boldness of Bruner’s initial statement in chapter three, stating “I want to begin by proposing boldly that, in effect, there is no such thing as an intuitively obvious and essential self to know…rather we constantly construct and reconstruct our selves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter…” (p.64). I am negatively affected by the idea that much of a person is molded “even mindlessly” (p.65) by the culture into which we are arbitrarily immersed. Do we have no say in the formation of our memories? Are they not malleable and have we no control over the narrative we create them from? Perhaps the idea behind therapy is that this power exists within us and we need to learn to take control of our past, or memory, and shape it for a more lucrative future. I am given hope, however, with the idea that this shaping can take place just as “mindlessly” as it is created. I’m thankful for the reaffirmation that the mistakes I have learned from will shape how I create my narrative (and thus my future- my mistakes are not in vain). I was also interested in the idea of the “pacte autobiographique” (p. 66). I have, often, been criticized (seldom lauded) for being a great story teller. This is because I am able to discern what it is that I think you think you would like to hear. This can lend a story teller the title of an inconsistent personality. I’ll call it empathy. I like the idea that people (and not just I) change and re-direct their constructed narratives unconsciously, or in a state of “implicit or deliberate” subconsciousness. Sadly, I almost changed my facebook status to “selfhood involves a commitment to others and the self” – but did not care to insult Bruner in such a way to reduce him to such a venue. Nevertheless, this fact speaks for my interest in the idea of sociopathy, the other and being “true to yourself”. If one has no regard for the other, he is a sociopath (in our culture). Thus, true “selfhood” (in America?) must include this commitment as well as the commitment to the self. I like to toss this idea around in my mind. What is the extent of concern for others the “self” must take on to dodge the label of sociopathology? And what if you are a libertarian? A divergent thought regarding p. 104: Bruner mentions a study conducted by “our two conscientious investigators” (however, he only mentions a friend of his two pages back, Shirley Heath, and I’m not entirely certain she is the conscientious investigator to whom he refers). He shows how fewer than two in ten adult Americans believe their moral values to be shared with adolescents. He says that parents tend to be less taken by media stereotypes, but that they “take their own teenagers are ‘exceptional’ and seem willing to accept media stereotypes of American youth in general.” I wonder who these parents are, what this research is, and if the parents of teenagers in West Philly would feel this way about their own children. I have my doubts.
Bruner suggests that, “we constantly construct and reconstruct ourselves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter, and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hope and fears for the future.” (64) These selves that we create and recreate are subject to our past experiences and the memories we have of these past experiences. But through narrative, one often constructs a different past, a different story and this, in turn, often creates memories that were never actually there. How does this change the way in which we view our “self”, or how does this change the “self” itself? It is said that memories make us the people we are, so if we were to change our memories would we be different people? Would our “self” change? Also, is there any way to reverse this? Is there a way to convince ourselves that we have developed a false memory of a certain event and then recreate our “self” again? Our memories are formed by the story we tell ourselves of the certain event we are trying to remember. One will only remember what one deems important and therefore, as we have seen in other readings, two people will tell different stories of the same event; they will have different memories of the same event. Bruner argues that if we “lacked the capacity to make stories about ourselves, there would be no such thing as selfhood.” (84) We would be unable to reconstruct the story of the day in our minds, we would not be able to create a sense of self, an idea of whether or not you enjoyed what you did with your day, if you would like to repeat it; we would have no idea about what our “self” was made of. Bruner says, “true memory mirrors the real world…” I wonder if there is such a thing as true memory. Is there any way that we can remember everything as it happened? Narratives, no matter how much the author tries, will always be just one point of view. As we discussed briefly in class, I wonder if it is desirable to have a true memory of everything.
Bruner begins the chapter by posting a question on why we need to tell ourselves about ourselves if our selves are just there. He goes on to say that we constantly construct and reconstruct our selves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter, and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hopes and fears for the future. With that, we are like making up a story about ourselves. These stories are heightened each time because of the constant change around us which involves people, circumstances etc. Bruner goes on to saying that much of self making are picked up from the culture which we are immersed. I was born in a Chinese family and grew up with Chinese beliefs and ethics. When I came to the States, everything changed as the superstitions I had did not exist here and the strict rules I grew up with did not apply. My life in the States has allowed me to create a new narrative of my life. When reading Bruner's view that one rarely encounters autobiographies that are without turning points. Coming to the states is somewhat a turning point for me as I'm in a very different culture and I've learnt a thing or two about myself. On the other hand, I have read many plays and I realized that many playwrights develop a play according to their lives. There is a plot, there are goals, there's a past and the characters have identities. As Bruner states that one rarely encounters autobiographies, whether written or spontaneously told in interview, that are without turning points, are these plays considered autobiographies? Bruner strongly argues that through narrative we create and re-create selfhood,that self is a product of our telling. He also states that the construction of selfhood cannot proceed without a capacity to narrate. I do not disagree with his point but can't help but wonder what would happen if our narrative was always the same. Does our selfhood have to depend on narrative?
In chapters 3 and 4 of Bruner, Bruner discusses the importance narratives have in creating self and why narratives are so important. One of the things that interested me the most in this reading was the point Bruner makes about how our self-making stories accumulate over time. He then goes on to say how we change our stories as we grow older as well as change them in order to fit new circumstances, new friends, and new enterprises, thus causing our memories to fall victim to our self-making stories (65). This correlates with a few of the readings we have done over the past few weeks. First, it connects to the Rubin reading, which deals with life scripts, non-personal memories about transitional points in life, which “everyone” goes through at some point in time. Although our life-narrative, individual life as actually lived, may differ from how we are supposed to remember an event placed on the life script list, we tend to change how we tell this to people, and even change it for ourselves to remember in order to fit how we have matured as a result of this or other memories. This point also connects to the Wilson and Ross reading, which talks about how we evaluate our past selves in a manner that makes us feel good about ourselves. Even if no change has occurred, we will still acknowledge that a change for the better has occurred. Here is another example of reshaping memories in order to keep up with our changing selves. This makes me wonder why there is so much pressure to change memories we have made in order to seek approval by others, even if these are unique memories special to us. I find narrative paradoxical in a way. Although it is positive (especially when used in narrative medicine and narrative ethics) narrative, I believe, can be used negatively when it causes us to change our memories based on other narratives we hear. Since we are social beings, we tend to narrate our memories to others and listen when people narrate their memories to us. This situation often occurs when flashbulb memories are made, since they have had a big impact on our life as well as other’s lives, causing us to narrate what we remember more than we would narrate a memory not shared with others. Although changing our memories based on what we have heard over and over by someone else may be done unconsciously at times, narratives, which help us construct memories in a concrete way, may also destruct our memories, and recreate them, thus resulting in inaccurate memories, which can be harmful, or just confusing when trying to “tell ourselves about ourselves”.
I thoroughly agree with Bruner in his statement that we “constantly construct and reconstruct ourselves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter...because our self-making stories need to fit new circumstances, new friends, new enterprises”. (pages 64 and 65) Bruner also states that while we tell ourselves these stories over and over again, we are deciding whether or not we are turning out to be a person that we would like to be. I remember that several years into the past (around middle school I believe) I was talking to my older sister about a family trip to Disney World that probably happened two or three years earlier. I told her that I remembered her doing something I cannot currently remember, but it definitely had some kind of cultural stigma (such as picking the nose in public, having a temper tantrum etc.). Then to my surprise and indignation, she revealed that it was actually me who had done whatever event had happened. I hadn’t meant to intentionally lie or change the event, but apparently I did not like my own actions during the event and switched around the main characters to better my own character for myself and compared to my sister. Bruner also remarks that “selfhood without commitment constitutes a form of sociopathy—the absence of a sense of responsibility to the requirements of social being.” (page 69) Chris McCandless, who according to Bruner shunned authority and responsibility as a social being, basically lived a life of a hermit in the wilderness. He would probably have made it out alive if he had not mistakenly eaten poisonous plants. I am sure that there are many successful hermits that live without “social responsibility” and are not sociopaths, or is the fact that they sequester themselves from society an indirect response to culture and society? I also believe that it was either Walden or Thoreau, while writing beautiful prose on nature, could not live as a hermit in nature himself and would instead visit his mother and eat pie at regular intervals.
In Bruner’s chapters three and four of Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, he brings up the idea of self. Our narrative creation of self and our self-making stories make up who we are. We spend so much time talking about ourselves and telling stories. When I think about it, so many of our conversations revolve around telling stories and reminiscing on past events. So our personal narrative is based on memory and of imagination into the future. We are constantly constructing and reconstructing ourselves to meet the needs of situations we encounter and the culture/society we’re living in. This made me think of the idea that we are always trying to create a self that is fit for society and that is publicly acceptable. Therefore, our self-making narratives come to express what we think others expect us to be like. Self- making is partly based on others and culture, however when someone becomes concerned solely with how society is looking at them and judging their self, then problems arise. Self-making is our principal means for creating uniqueness and individuality. We all have multiple selves and we have the ability to show ourselves in many different ways. Today with modern technology, there are so many ways to show oneself such as with Facebook or Myspace where you can hide factors of yourself that you do not want to show and enhance others. In this sense, self-telling is a public act. It is also a public act in terms of autobiographies and talk shows. There are countless talk shows that have people come on and confess their feelings and completely reveal their self to millions of viewers, becoming utterly vulnerable. Bruner brought up an interesting point that the self that autobiographers write about is just one self and one version of that self. This may be true, but what constitutes just one self from the others? Are we all on a search for our true life and true self through self-telling? And are we all on a quest to find a higher truth? I agree and disagree with these statements. I do believe that there are points in one’s life where you need to take the next step, break free from conventionality, routine and commitment. And in doing so, in whatever which way such as going abroad to help others less fortunate that oneself, depending on who it is, one can possibly find themselves and find a higher truth. I believe that we all have our own turning points in life and rites of passage in a sense, however I do not agree with the idea that we are always trying to find our own voice and a higher truth in life. We are constantly creating and recreating our “self” therefore there is no need to push at it to find our place in life. Our place in life will come to us through our constant recreation of our self through self-making and self-narrative.
In this section Bruner delves into the narrative structure of our memories. Which came first the chicken or the egg? I always find myself asking this question. Did we as humans start out organically organizing our memories into one particular narrative that later we consciously tried to uphold? Or did we take our memories and through the performance of conventional narratives around us consciously conform our memories to the same dull narrative? I think it is the latter. Our memories will live on inside of us whether consciously or unconsciously without our forcing them to fit a narrative. We can look at our lives without making it an interesting story with a beginning middle and end. The beginning will always be there. We are born. Some describe a beautiful moment in their live for example falling in love as where their life begun. But, this is purely a conscious attempt to mold ones life into a linear narrative. The problem I see is not with the framing to create a narrative but the fact that the narrative is so commonly linear. Yet our lives in reality are anything but linear. The middle of our life story is the present. The end is our death. What can we really tell about our lives while they are happening? Why do we feel the need to narrate the past? Or even the present… It seems that human’s capacity to make sense of our memories affects our sense of self. Our identity is contingent upon what we decide is true about our past. I watched loads of television as a child even up until this moment. When I was young I would tell stories about my life in my head as they happened at times. Other times I would tell stories to my friends. I remember in elementary school I was at a sleepover with six or seven girls. We competed to see who could stay up the longest. I lost but before I did I was begged by them to tell a story. So I told the story of every small or big romantic experience I had ever had up until that point. Which was surprisingly for my age a lot. The point is I know now that what I said was not the “truth.” I made my life sound interesting like the plot of a TV show, novel, or film. I embellished some aspects and left out others for various reasons. When I tell stories to myself I edit so as to make myself feel better or at times worse. Depressives often tell their stories to themselves as worse than they truly are or were. These are stories because no one really knows what memories are. This is why the topic of this class is so intriguing. Autobiographical memories are where science and fiction meet.
8 comments:
I took interest in Bruner’s point that “the canonical and the possible are forever in dialectical tension with each other” (14). When I think about it, I find that life constantly battles between what exists and what does not exist, what is and what could be. Or, in relation to memory, what happened, tangibly, and what, intangible, was gathered from that happening. But, while memory seems to shape the could have been, it also constrains it, shaping an experience into something and thus leaving out all other possibilities for what could be.
The idea of memory constraining possibility is intriguing to me. It makes me realize that every day, every minute, people are handed tangible experiences, one after another, and what we make of them is left up to our memory. It would seem, then, that we have a choice of how we shape experiences into our lives, but I suppose memory is constraining. Firstly, do we choose what we remember? And secondly, when we remember something, we have added meaning to and categorized our experience, immobilizing it, disabling it from entering into different territories, finding different avenues. That memory will forever be attached to it. Is that how it works? I do believe that memory constrains experience—that’s pretty much all it does. But to what extent does it do so?
It seems that narratives are a form of memory—they are a template it seems, lodged in people, to which their memories and lives must abide by. Memory constrains firsthand experiences, but I wonder how much narratives constrain memory. Why do we remember what we remember? I believe that a lot of it has to do with what we are supposed to remember. Bruner discusses the characteristics of story, and mentioned that in stories there has to be a normal way of life, and then that normal way of life is disrupted, something is shaken up. I think that our memories follow the patterns of these stories. We remember what is unusual. Were we taught to do that, though? Or is that just what we do naturally? I believe that it’s both. The structure of story, of narrative, exists, because it follows the pattern of life, but now that that story is in place, perhaps it is what memory abides by, regardless of any transgressions.
I find my memories to be extremely affected by narrative. Often, I even find myself narrating things in my head as they happen to me, identifying them as important or unimportant (probably according to some sort of standard societal narrative) and thus remembering them later.
I love the boldness of Bruner’s initial statement in chapter three, stating “I want to begin by proposing boldly that, in effect, there is no such thing as an intuitively obvious and essential self to know…rather we constantly construct and reconstruct our selves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter…” (p.64). I am negatively affected by the idea that much of a person is molded “even mindlessly” (p.65) by the culture into which we are arbitrarily immersed. Do we have no say in the formation of our memories? Are they not malleable and have we no control over the narrative we create them from? Perhaps the idea behind therapy is that this power exists within us and we need to learn to take control of our past, or memory, and shape it for a more lucrative future. I am given hope, however, with the idea that this shaping can take place just as “mindlessly” as it is created. I’m thankful for the reaffirmation that the mistakes I have learned from will shape how I create my narrative (and thus my future- my mistakes are not in vain). I was also interested in the idea of the “pacte autobiographique” (p. 66). I have, often, been criticized (seldom lauded) for being a great story teller. This is because I am able to discern what it is that I think you think you would like to hear. This can lend a story teller the title of an inconsistent personality. I’ll call it empathy. I like the idea that people (and not just I) change and re-direct their constructed narratives unconsciously, or in a state of “implicit or deliberate” subconsciousness.
Sadly, I almost changed my facebook status to “selfhood involves a commitment to others and the self” – but did not care to insult Bruner in such a way to reduce him to such a venue. Nevertheless, this fact speaks for my interest in the idea of sociopathy, the other and being “true to yourself”. If one has no regard for the other, he is a sociopath (in our culture). Thus, true “selfhood” (in America?) must include this commitment as well as the commitment to the self. I like to toss this idea around in my mind. What is the extent of concern for others the “self” must take on to dodge the label of sociopathology? And what if you are a libertarian?
A divergent thought regarding p. 104: Bruner mentions a study conducted by “our two conscientious investigators” (however, he only mentions a friend of his two pages back, Shirley Heath, and I’m not entirely certain she is the conscientious investigator to whom he refers). He shows how fewer than two in ten adult Americans believe their moral values to be shared with adolescents. He says that parents tend to be less taken by media stereotypes, but that they “take their own teenagers are ‘exceptional’ and seem willing to accept media stereotypes of American youth in general.” I wonder who these parents are, what this research is, and if the parents of teenagers in West Philly would feel this way about their own children. I have my doubts.
Bruner suggests that, “we constantly construct and reconstruct ourselves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter, and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hope and fears for the future.” (64) These selves that we create and recreate are subject to our past experiences and the memories we have of these past experiences. But through narrative, one often constructs a different past, a different story and this, in turn, often creates memories that were never actually there. How does this change the way in which we view our “self”, or how does this change the “self” itself? It is said that memories make us the people we are, so if we were to change our memories would we be different people? Would our “self” change? Also, is there any way to reverse this? Is there a way to convince ourselves that we have developed a false memory of a certain event and then recreate our “self” again?
Our memories are formed by the story we tell ourselves of the certain event we are trying to remember. One will only remember what one deems important and therefore, as we have seen in other readings, two people will tell different stories of the same event; they will have different memories of the same event. Bruner argues that if we “lacked the capacity to make stories about ourselves, there would be no such thing as selfhood.” (84) We would be unable to reconstruct the story of the day in our minds, we would not be able to create a sense of self, an idea of whether or not you enjoyed what you did with your day, if you would like to repeat it; we would have no idea about what our “self” was made of.
Bruner says, “true memory mirrors the real world…” I wonder if there is such a thing as true memory. Is there any way that we can remember everything as it happened? Narratives, no matter how much the author tries, will always be just one point of view. As we discussed briefly in class, I wonder if it is desirable to have a true memory of everything.
Bruner begins the chapter by posting a question on why we need to tell ourselves about ourselves if our selves are just there. He goes on to say that we constantly construct and reconstruct our selves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter, and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hopes and fears for the future. With that, we are like making up a story about ourselves. These stories are heightened each time because of the constant change around us which involves people, circumstances etc. Bruner goes on to saying that much of self making are picked up from the culture which we are immersed. I was born in a Chinese family and grew up with Chinese beliefs and ethics. When I came to the States, everything changed as the superstitions I had did not exist here and the strict rules I grew up with did not apply. My life in the States has allowed me to create a new narrative of my life. When reading Bruner's view that one rarely encounters autobiographies that are without turning points. Coming to the states is somewhat a turning point for me as I'm in a very different culture and I've learnt a thing or two about myself.
On the other hand, I have read many plays and I realized that many playwrights develop a play according to their lives. There is a plot, there are goals, there's a past and the characters have identities. As Bruner states that one rarely encounters autobiographies, whether written or spontaneously told in interview, that are without turning points, are these plays considered autobiographies?
Bruner strongly argues that through narrative we create and re-create selfhood,that self is a product of our telling. He also states that the construction of selfhood cannot proceed without a capacity to narrate. I do not disagree with his point but can't help but wonder what would happen if our narrative was always the same. Does our selfhood have to depend on narrative?
In chapters 3 and 4 of Bruner, Bruner discusses the importance narratives have in creating self and why narratives are so important. One of the things that interested me the most in this reading was the point Bruner makes about how our self-making stories accumulate over time. He then goes on to say how we change our stories as we grow older as well as change them in order to fit new circumstances, new friends, and new enterprises, thus causing our memories to fall victim to our self-making stories (65). This correlates with a few of the readings we have done over the past few weeks. First, it connects to the Rubin reading, which deals with life scripts, non-personal memories about transitional points in life, which “everyone” goes through at some point in time. Although our life-narrative, individual life as actually lived, may differ from how we are supposed to remember an event placed on the life script list, we tend to change how we tell this to people, and even change it for ourselves to remember in order to fit how we have matured as a result of this or other memories. This point also connects to the Wilson and Ross reading, which talks about how we evaluate our past selves in a manner that makes us feel good about ourselves. Even if no change has occurred, we will still acknowledge that a change for the better has occurred. Here is another example of reshaping memories in order to keep up with our changing selves. This makes me wonder why there is so much pressure to change memories we have made in order to seek approval by others, even if these are unique memories special to us. I find narrative paradoxical in a way. Although it is positive (especially when used in narrative medicine and narrative ethics) narrative, I believe, can be used negatively when it causes us to change our memories based on other narratives we hear. Since we are social beings, we tend to narrate our memories to others and listen when people narrate their memories to us. This situation often occurs when flashbulb memories are made, since they have had a big impact on our life as well as other’s lives, causing us to narrate what we remember more than we would narrate a memory not shared with others. Although changing our memories based on what we have heard over and over by someone else may be done unconsciously at times, narratives, which help us construct memories in a concrete way, may also destruct our memories, and recreate them, thus resulting in inaccurate memories, which can be harmful, or just confusing when trying to “tell ourselves about ourselves”.
I thoroughly agree with Bruner in his statement that we “constantly construct and reconstruct ourselves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter...because our self-making stories need to fit new circumstances, new friends, new enterprises”. (pages 64 and 65) Bruner also states that while we tell ourselves these stories over and over again, we are deciding whether or not we are turning out to be a person that we would like to be. I remember that several years into the past (around middle school I believe) I was talking to my older sister about a family trip to Disney World that probably happened two or three years earlier. I told her that I remembered her doing something I cannot currently remember, but it definitely had some kind of cultural stigma (such as picking the nose in public, having a temper tantrum etc.). Then to my surprise and indignation, she revealed that it was actually me who had done whatever event had happened. I hadn’t meant to intentionally lie or change the event, but apparently I did not like my own actions during the event and switched around the main characters to better my own character for myself and compared to my sister.
Bruner also remarks that “selfhood without commitment constitutes a form of sociopathy—the absence of a sense of responsibility to the requirements of social being.” (page 69) Chris McCandless, who according to Bruner shunned authority and responsibility as a social being, basically lived a life of a hermit in the wilderness. He would probably have made it out alive if he had not mistakenly eaten poisonous plants. I am sure that there are many successful hermits that live without “social responsibility” and are not sociopaths, or is the fact that they sequester themselves from society an indirect response to culture and society? I also believe that it was either Walden or Thoreau, while writing beautiful prose on nature, could not live as a hermit in nature himself and would instead visit his mother and eat pie at regular intervals.
In Bruner’s chapters three and four of Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, he brings up the idea of self. Our narrative creation of self and our self-making stories make up who we are. We spend so much time talking about ourselves and telling stories. When I think about it, so many of our conversations revolve around telling stories and reminiscing on past events. So our personal narrative is based on memory and of imagination into the future. We are constantly constructing and reconstructing ourselves to meet the needs of situations we encounter and the culture/society we’re living in. This made me think of the idea that we are always trying to create a self that is fit for society and that is publicly acceptable. Therefore, our self-making narratives come to express what we think others expect us to be like. Self- making is partly based on others and culture, however when someone becomes concerned solely with how society is looking at them and judging their self, then problems arise. Self-making is our principal means for creating uniqueness and individuality.
We all have multiple selves and we have the ability to show ourselves in many different ways. Today with modern technology, there are so many ways to show oneself such as with Facebook or Myspace where you can hide factors of yourself that you do not want to show and enhance others. In this sense, self-telling is a public act. It is also a public act in terms of autobiographies and talk shows. There are countless talk shows that have people come on and confess their feelings and completely reveal their self to millions of viewers, becoming utterly vulnerable. Bruner brought up an interesting point that the self that autobiographers write about is just one self and one version of that self. This may be true, but what constitutes just one self from the others?
Are we all on a search for our true life and true self through self-telling? And are we all on a quest to find a higher truth? I agree and disagree with these statements. I do believe that there are points in one’s life where you need to take the next step, break free from conventionality, routine and commitment. And in doing so, in whatever which way such as going abroad to help others less fortunate that oneself, depending on who it is, one can possibly find themselves and find a higher truth. I believe that we all have our own turning points in life and rites of passage in a sense, however I do not agree with the idea that we are always trying to find our own voice and a higher truth in life. We are constantly creating and recreating our “self” therefore there is no need to push at it to find our place in life. Our place in life will come to us through our constant recreation of our self through self-making and self-narrative.
In this section Bruner delves into the narrative structure of our memories. Which came first the chicken or the egg? I always find myself asking this question. Did we as humans start out organically organizing our memories into one particular narrative that later we consciously tried to uphold? Or did we take our memories and through the performance of conventional narratives around us consciously conform our memories to the same dull narrative? I think it is the latter. Our memories will live on inside of us whether consciously or unconsciously without our forcing them to fit a narrative. We can look at our lives without making it an interesting story with a beginning middle and end. The beginning will always be there. We are born. Some describe a beautiful moment in their live for example falling in love as where their life begun. But, this is purely a conscious attempt to mold ones life into a linear narrative. The problem I see is not with the framing to create a narrative but the fact that the narrative is so commonly linear. Yet our lives in reality are anything but linear. The middle of our life story is the present. The end is our death. What can we really tell about our lives while they are happening? Why do we feel the need to narrate the past? Or even the present… It seems that human’s capacity to make sense of our memories affects our sense of self. Our identity is contingent upon what we decide is true about our past. I watched loads of television as a child even up until this moment. When I was young I would tell stories about my life in my head as they happened at times. Other times I would tell stories to my friends. I remember in elementary school I was at a sleepover with six or seven girls. We competed to see who could stay up the longest. I lost but before I did I was begged by them to tell a story. So I told the story of every small or big romantic experience I had ever had up until that point. Which was surprisingly for my age a lot. The point is I know now that what I said was not the “truth.” I made my life sound interesting like the plot of a TV show, novel, or film. I embellished some aspects and left out others for various reasons. When I tell stories to myself I edit so as to make myself feel better or at times worse. Depressives often tell their stories to themselves as worse than they truly are or were. These are stories because no one really knows what memories are. This is why the topic of this class is so intriguing. Autobiographical memories are where science and fiction meet.
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