On the importance of breaks: transformative experiences and the process of narration

Philosophical Explorations 25 (3):338-342 (2022)
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Abstract

ABSTRACT In this comment, I argue that transformative experiences such as experiences of grief often imply a break in one's coherent, non-fictional and biographical narratives and practical identities. The nature of these breaks is of a certain kind, as they interrupt even the process of narration. To insist that the process of narration as well as the narratives themselves belong to one and the same process of adjustment in transformative experiences such as grief might overlook the importance of such breaks, namely that the contain a moment of refusal and revolting against mourning. The tension involved in such breaks might not allow to be circumscribed into narratives nor do they fit into the process of narration as a destabilizing moment; the breaks insist on the incomprehensibility of each loss and they remain part of what it means to survive and to undergo transformative experiences.

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Line Ingerslev
University of Aarhus

Citations of this work

What is the relationship between grief and narrative?Regina E. Fabry - forthcoming - Philosophical Explorations:1-7.

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References found in this work

Wisdom Won From Illness: Essays in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.Jonathan Lear - 2017 - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Grief, self and narrative.Matthew Ratcliffe & Eleanor A. Byrne - 2022 - Philosophical Explorations 25 (3):319-337.
Open Minded. Working Out the Logic of the Soul.Jonathan Lear - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 51 (203):254-257.
The difficulty of reality and a revolt against mourning.Jonathan Lear - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (4):1197-1208.

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