Narrative self: Paul Ricoeur
When the self is constructed through narrative or story then the focus of human existence is laid upon their phenomenal experiences. It brings about a sense of dramatisation and operation of “emplotment” which configures the diverse events and actions of human lives and turn it into a meaningful whole. The concept of self and identity is fashioned by adaptation of plots from cultural stock of stories and myths. In psychological, psychoanalytical and humanistic theories self is fundamental concept. In the traditional way self has been identified as ultimate substance, not subject to impermanence. But the narrative structure denies this kind of concept of self and provides an alternate conceptualization of the self. …show more content…
In fact most of his works are influenced by Aristotle’s teleology. Ricoeur’s style of working is mostly textual hermeneutic which is very much apparent in his Time and Narrative in which he adopts a narrative approach toward explaining the construction of self and how narratives affects the nature of self. His main focus lies in showing that self is a socially constructed entity and not something ontological. A similar account of this kind of self has been understood in Buddhist philosophy. Ricoeur derives the concepts of “muthos” and “mimesis” from Aristotle’s Poetics and very innovatively he constructs a basis for narrative “emplotment”. The term “emplotment” refers to the application of something, in Ricoeur’s case it is the application of the theory of narrative into human existence in order to form a concept of self that is ultimately based on …show more content…
Ricoeur called it the stage of “emplotment”, where situations are put into an imaginative order, these situations contain a great deal of variety. In the same way as it is done in the plot of a story. “Emplotment” in this sense according to Ricoeur plays a mediating role as he puts it ‘the level of Mimesis2 is the kingdom of as if’’. He further defines emplotment as the synthesis of heterogeneous elements. These heterogeneous elements are events, agents, and objects. Emplotment is the task of arranging these events, agents and objects and contribute them to make a part of the larger whole in which each element takes place in a group as a collection of interconnected events and places to constitute the narratives. Emplotment “transfers the events or incidents into a story”. The process of emplotment involves two views: first, there is synthesis between the events or incidents and the story, the events are multiple and the story is unified and complete (prenarrative), events combine as a synthesis into the story. In this way the plot thus makes one story out of the multiple incidents, or one can say there is a transformation of many incidents into one story, in short it is refiguration of earlier events or incidents. In this process the events become something more than a mere occurrence, it rather serves as an important element in the formation of narrative. Second view of narrative formation as Ricoeur calls it a
When the self is constructed through narrative or story then the focus of human existence is laid upon their phenomenal experiences. It brings about a sense of dramatisation and operation of “emplotment” which configures the diverse events and actions of human lives and turn it into a meaningful whole. The concept of self and identity is fashioned by adaptation of plots from cultural stock of stories and myths. In psychological, psychoanalytical and humanistic theories self is fundamental concept. In the traditional way self has been identified as ultimate substance, not subject to impermanence. But the narrative structure denies this kind of concept of self and provides an alternate conceptualization of the self. …show more content…
In fact most of his works are influenced by Aristotle’s teleology. Ricoeur’s style of working is mostly textual hermeneutic which is very much apparent in his Time and Narrative in which he adopts a narrative approach toward explaining the construction of self and how narratives affects the nature of self. His main focus lies in showing that self is a socially constructed entity and not something ontological. A similar account of this kind of self has been understood in Buddhist philosophy. Ricoeur derives the concepts of “muthos” and “mimesis” from Aristotle’s Poetics and very innovatively he constructs a basis for narrative “emplotment”. The term “emplotment” refers to the application of something, in Ricoeur’s case it is the application of the theory of narrative into human existence in order to form a concept of self that is ultimately based on …show more content…
Ricoeur called it the stage of “emplotment”, where situations are put into an imaginative order, these situations contain a great deal of variety. In the same way as it is done in the plot of a story. “Emplotment” in this sense according to Ricoeur plays a mediating role as he puts it ‘the level of Mimesis2 is the kingdom of as if’’. He further defines emplotment as the synthesis of heterogeneous elements. These heterogeneous elements are events, agents, and objects. Emplotment is the task of arranging these events, agents and objects and contribute them to make a part of the larger whole in which each element takes place in a group as a collection of interconnected events and places to constitute the narratives. Emplotment “transfers the events or incidents into a story”. The process of emplotment involves two views: first, there is synthesis between the events or incidents and the story, the events are multiple and the story is unified and complete (prenarrative), events combine as a synthesis into the story. In this way the plot thus makes one story out of the multiple incidents, or one can say there is a transformation of many incidents into one story, in short it is refiguration of earlier events or incidents. In this process the events become something more than a mere occurrence, it rather serves as an important element in the formation of narrative. Second view of narrative formation as Ricoeur calls it a