Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain

New York: Oxford University Press USA (2003)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirically consistent explanation for narrative in relation to consciousness. Understanding the role of narrative in determining individual and collective consciousness has been elusive from within traditional academic frameworks. This volume argues that addressing so broad and complex a problem requires an examination from outside our insular disciplinary framework. Such an open examination would be informed by the inquiries and approaches of multiple disciplines. Recognition of the different approaches to examining personal stories will allow for the coordination of how narrative seems, with what mental labor it does, and how it is realized. Only by overcoming the boundaries erected by multiple theoretical and discursive traditions can we begin to comprehend the nature and function of narrative in consciousness. Narrative and Consciousness brings together essays by exceptional scholars and scientists in the disciplines of literary theory, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how stories are constructed, how stories structure lived experience, and how stories are rooted in material reality. The specific topics addressed include narrative in the development of conscious awareness; autobiographical narrative, fiction and the construction of self; trauma and narrative disruptions; narrative, memory and identity; and the physiological and neural substrate of narrative. It is the editors' hope that the multidisciplinary nature of this collection will challenge the reader to move beyond disciplinary confines and toward a coherent interdisciplinary dialogue.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Understanding Narrative Theory.L. B. Cebik - 1986 - History and Theory 25 (4):58.
Dennett and Ricoeur on the narrative self.Joan McCarthy - 2007 - Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
Narrative Thickness.Rafe McGregor - 2015 - Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 52 (1):3-22.
Narrative, identity and the self.Dieter Teichert - 2004 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (10-11):10-11.
The mess inside: narrative, emotion, and the mind.Peter Goldie - 2012 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Narrative and Power Toward a Theology for the Overdog.Gregory D. Loving - 2000 - Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union
1. narrative explanation and its malcontents.David Carr - 2008 - History and Theory 47 (1):19–30.
Subjectivity and the limits of narrative.Joseph Neisser - 2008 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 15 (2):51-66.
Narrative and consciousness: Review article.Thomas R. Smith - 2004 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (5-6):146-155.
On Narrative: Psychopathology Informing Philosophy.James Phillips - 2013 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (1):11-23.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-10-14

Downloads
9 (#1,079,720)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Owen Flanagan
Duke University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references