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Chapter 2 - Telling Tales About Lives

from Part II - About Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

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Summary

An image presented to us by life brings with it, in a single moment, sensations which are in fact multiple and heterogeneous.

Marcel Proust Time Regained in Remembrance of Things Past

Individuals, in their remembrance of things past, select segments from their lives, amplify a few events, narrate a few in a matter of fact manner, downplay some despite constant prodding and make up their life stories in the presence of the other. In the very act of textualization the self's relationship to lived experiences shifts and in this process individuals compose unique plots in their life stories and draw distinct characterological profile of themselves. As a researcher, I played an active role in generating narratives by way of framing questions and mediating the narrative flow. Furthermore, I selectively deploy analytical categories to interpret these narratives creating an intersection or perhaps a dialogization of autobiography (the account of person's life) and biography (the retelling of such an account by the other). Bakhtin (1990) argues that there is “no clear-cut, essentially necessary dividing line between autobiography and biography” (p. 150). Bakhtin does acknowledge that there is a difference and it might even be considerable, but in both biography and autobiography the I-for-myself is not the only organizing principle. Instead the image of the person is achieved in a triadic relationship between I-for-myself, I-for-others and others-for-me.

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Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata, and Culture
The History of Understanding and Understanding of History
, pp. 39 - 90
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2010

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