Abstracts

Authors' Companions? Imagined Selves in Writing Literary Fiction

Karin Kukkonen (University of Oslo)

It is not uncommon that characters demand a happy ending or that writers experience their protagonists’ voices as a presence in their heads. Psychology has explained the phenomenon in terms of the «illusion of independent agency» (Taylor, Hodges, and Kohányi 2003; Taylor 1999). Children experience this illusion when they encounter «imaginary companions», and it appears that writers are more likely to have imaginary companions when they are young, as well as maintain the experience of the illusion into adulthood. Constructing an imagined self, with its own volition and voice, becomes automated in the expert practice of writers, according to Taylor and colleagues. However, authors develop highly diversified strategies for managing these imaginary companions, as I will show on the basis of an extensive investigation into practices of literary writing. I will argue for the need to consider the «illusion of independent agency» in an enculturated setting, where writers make use of the affordances of writing in order to develop both material and epistemic agency (Bernini 2014; Fabry 2019) in their encounters with imaginary selves. The argument will be based on author interviews and manuscript studies, showing the great diversity and flexibility in the creative uses to which writers put imagined selves. These creative uses, then, may also shed light on how imagined selves may impact on everyday life narration.

Re-Writing the Autistic Self

Emily Hughes (University of York, UK)

Uncanny in its abject ‘otherness,’ there is a prevailing assumption that autism is to some extent unnarratable. This is reinforced by the fact that autistic people themselves are thought to have difficulties with introspective and interoceptive awareness, meaning that, as self-narrators, they can be considered unreliable. At the same time, the lack of precise biological signifiers in autism research has led a number of scholars in neurodiversity, disability and queer studies to argue that autism is fundamentally a ‘narrative condition’; diagnosed through stories told from the ‘outside,’ autistic people are signified according to a symbolic sequence of affective and behavioural deficits. My aim in this paper is two-fold. Firstly, I will draw on recent work on hermeneutic, epistemic and affective injustice in the philosophy of medicine to consider ways in which the apparent ‘un-narratability’ of autism has led to an impoverished conception of autistic self-hood that has harmed autistic people. Secondly, I will consider a range of novel rhetorical strategies being used by autistic people to narrate autism from the ‘inside out,’ such as ‘autie-biography,’ and consider what these attempts at re-writing autism might tell about the autistic experience of self.

Revisiting the Interplay of Habits, Embodied and Narrative: Explicating Addiction Recovery

Daniel D. Hutto (University of Wollongong)

Responding to the conference theme of exploring the prospects and limits of self-narration, this paper makes a case for taking narrative therapy seriously as means for modest self-shaping in the domain of mental health. Focusing on addiction recovery, it will provide a worked philosophical analysis designed to show how, in principle, a person’s self-narrative tendencies can connect to, interact with, be constrained by, and - yet – also potentially reshape their embodied habits and vice versa. It will be shown how both embodied and narrative habits can, potentially, make a difference in supporting or undermining the recovery goals people set. In this regard, it challenges and updates the account provided by Dings (2019) that appeals to mechanisms, not habits, to explicate the dynamic interplay between embodied activity and acts of self-narration.

Feelings of ‘Story’? Victim Self-Narratives in and around the Justice System

Kate Rossmanith (Macquarie University)

There is a widely held view that the criminal justice system can provide ‘closure’ for victims of crime and their loved ones. Researchers argue, however, that ‘closure’ as a concept is amorphously defined: there is no agreement about what it is, whether it exists, or, if it exists, how it can be achieved. Some research suggests that, for victims, ‘closure’ is not regarded as an end point, but an interactive process by which they can construct meaningful narratives.

This paper explores the role of ‘story’ in victims’ affective experiences. Victims are routinely encouraged to ‘tell their story’ e.g. the presentation of victim impact statements in the courtroom; to the media; in support-group settings; and via true crime podcasts. They are increasingly encouraged to ‘write their story’ too e.g. the production of memoirs. This paper considers the ways in which such practices are commonly couched in therapeutic discourse and in a discourse of rights: that storytelling and life writing are ‘healing’ and that they give victims ‘a platform’ and ‘a voice’. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork, and on concepts and approaches from socio-narratology, life writing, narrative criminology, and anthropology, the paper teases out the tensions that exist in such conceptualisations of self-narrative, and how ‘feelings of story’ operate in the lives of victims and their loved ones.

Regulation and Dysregulation in Embodied and Social Narratives

Richard Menary & Hoda Mostafavi (Macquarie University)

Embodied narratives can help to regulate the emotional and visceral activity of the brain and wider nervous system. When heartbeat is elevated and breathing quickens as a result of a stress inducing situation, self-talk can help to regulate those visceral responses (although not always). What though is the structure of that self-talk? Arguably, it consists of simple commands - ‘breathe slowly’, ‘stay calm’, ‘stay focussed’, etc. However, we argue that these are simply reminders of longer narrative explanations that constitute self-talk (which may originate with others) and it is these longer narratives that play a coherence and meaning making role for the regulation of limbic and autonomic activity. 

Social narratives regulate our responses to the actions and life ways of others. Not only do we use them to understand others (as constitutive of our social cognitive lives), but also to communicate and deliberate with others. These deliberations often make normative claims and judgements about the character traits, actions and intentions of others, but also mitigating factors about the social situation in which those agents find themselves. We will argue that social narratives are contested and revisable in these public deliberations with others. Of critical importance is the way that our self-narratives, our narratives about others and the social and moral norms that we use to evaluate ourselves and others can be significantly altered by harmful narratives that assail us through interactions with others and various media.

In this talk we will outline the nature of embodied and social narratives and their regulative role and then discuss ways in which those narratives can dysregulate our mental and social lives.

Narrative Identity and Creative Writing: On Dominant Narratives and Possible Lives

Alexandra Effe (University of Oslo)

Narratives are ubiquitous. They are part of our individual and collective histories and cultures, the connections we form with other people, and the media we consume. We continuously, and often nonconsciously, tell ourselves stories about ourselves and are confronted with those told by others. Some people, in addition, engage in acts of self-narration more intentionally, for example in dialogue with a therapist, by keeping a diary, by composing poetry, and even entire books. The benefits of self-narrativization are generally acknowledged, as is the fact that the narratives we form are to an extent determined by socio-cultural models and norms. How—and which—modalities of self-narration bring psychological gains has not yet been sufficiently explored, however. Taking its starting point in this lacuna, this paper focuses on the affordances of creative writing, proposing that its two core elements together can offer a way of productively engaging with narratives that do us harm. It analyzes the metacommentary of literary authors in light of frameworks from philosophy of mind, psychology, and narrative theory. This interdisciplinary investigation into creative writing and narrative identity can be used to develop therapeutic interventions and to better understand authors’ creative process as embodied interaction of material and cognitive resources, embedded in and extended into their environment.

Telling to Live: Embodiment in Ancient Egyptian Funerary (Auto-)Biographical Texts of the 3rd Millennium BCE

Julia Hamilton (Macquarie University)

Ancient Egyptian language bridges the realms of speech, writing, and images (Houston and Stauder 2020): hieroglyphs in display-oriented spaces, such as tombs and temples, were often aesthetically crafted in order to enhance their meaning. Ancient Egyptians perceived their names (ren) and other designators of the self as being intimately bound to other parts of the body and bodily processes: their annunciation on the breath was linked to creation itself, and they could be literally consumed in some magical practices in order to be contained in the belly. Moreover, human figures accompanying textual inscriptions could became part of the ‘intentional and extensional meaning’ of the inscribed words (Loprieno 2003, 246). In this paper, I demonstrate how this interplay between text and image in funerary (auto-)biographical texts from the 3rd Millennium BCE enlivened their narrators (Baines 2020). I will also demonstrate how ancient Egyptians harnessed the creative potential of their visual language to make complex and multi-layered references to the worlds in which these texts existed, communicating different aspects of the narrator’s identity and state of being as desired and required.

Baines, John 2020. From living a life to creating a fit memorial. In Stauder-Porchet, Julie, Elizabeth Frood, and Andréas

Stauder (eds), Ancient Egyptian biographies: contexts, forms, functions, 47-83. Atlanta: Lockwood.

Houston, Stephen and Andréas Stauder 2020. What is a hieroglyph? L'Homme: revue française d’anthropologie 233, 9-44.

Loprieno, Antonio 2003. Is the Egyptian hieroglyphic determinative chosen or prescribed? In Morra, Lucia and Carla Bazzanella (eds), Philosophers and hieroglyphs, 237-250. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Self-Narrative and Moral Self-Governance

Doug McConnell (Macquarie University)

The characteristics of self-narrative and self-narration have been evoked to explain a wide variety of phenomena, including how people experience, manage, process, and recover from, trauma, abuse, bereavement, borderline personality disorder, and addiction. Despite this, there has been little research into the influence self-narratives might have on typical moral psychology.  Where philosophers have addressed this topic, debate has centred on whether self-narration is essential for a flourishing, morally rich life, or whether non-self-narrators might also be virtuous.

My interest is orthogonal to this debate. I focus on that subset of people who do self-narrate and describe in detail how self-narrative structure and content can enhance or undermine their moral self-governance. I argue that self-narrators can improve their moral self-governance through self-narrative shaping or ‘work’ and draw support for this view from the empirical literature.

The Role of Self-Narration in Young People’s Resilience and Wellbeing

Penny Van Bergen (University of Wollongong)

A key challenge to our understanding of the psychological benefits of self-narration for young people is the lack of integration across fields.

According to developmental and applied cognitive memory research, everyday autobiographical memory narratives play positive and negative roles in supporting ones’ sense of self and generativity, providing points of connection with others, and directing future actions using lessons from the past (Bluck & Alea, 2011, Harris et al., 2014). Particularly important for self-related functions are not the specific events themselves but the meaning attributed to them. Adolescents and emerging adults who retell their events with greater coherence and insight are often thought to show better wellbeing and psychological adjustment, for example, although cultural and age differences also emerge (Greenhoot & McClean, 2013; Reese et al., 2017; Sales et al., 2013)

Interestingly, a separate but similar body of clinical and organisational psychology research has suggested that insights gained via reflection on everyday stressors can support the strengthening of skills needed for resilience (Crane et al., 2018). This research uses different terminology to that in applied cognitive memory research – reflection, for example, rather than memory or narrative – and has most frequently focused on adults using diary methods: yet there are similarities in concepts, processes, and proposed mechanisms of effect.

By mapping similarities and differences across fields, including theoretical motivations and findings, I hope to highlight opportunities for cross-fertilisation and shared insight.

Self-Narratives and Their Role in Biased Episodic Recall and Self-Deception

Albert Newen (Ruhr University Bochum)

Self-Narration, telling stories about oneself, enables us not only to inform others about us but also to stabilize a so-called narrative self. The narrative self is basically the unity of the autobiographical information I can report about me. In addition, we also focus on those autobiographical stories that are especially relevant for me, so-called self-defining memories and beliefs about me. What is the functional role of the narrative self? I will focus on two functions in this talk: First, there will be shown a systematic influence of the narrative self on episodic recall: we tend to recall events of our life in a way that makes former events more coherent with the (normally) positive self-image which consists in the self-defining aspects of our self-narratives. Second, I will argue that there can be a tension between the narrative self and our actual experiences when these experiences are unwanted or challenging for our self-image. In everyday life this results in systematic self-deception to shield the positive self-image Thus, we develop biased self-narration to keep our positive narrative self-image by interpreting or re-evaluating actual evidence. Biased self-narratives are part of our standard mindset but they can be disastrous for a person if they are embedded into pathological conditions: this happens in the case of depression which involves a biased negative evaluation of all events involving oneself or in the case of narcissism which involves a biased positive evaluation of all events involving oneself.