Fragments of a Self: embodiments, (re)enactments, and re-encounters with memory

Creator

Ellen Kaplan, Smith CollegeFollow

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Publication Source

Memory, Trauma and Narratives of the Self

Inclusive Pages

133–149

Creation Date

2024

Publisher

ElgarOnline

Comments

Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.

Document Type

Book

Description

Chapter abstract:

Our stories tell us who we are. The sense of self acquires temporary coherence through the stories we tell ourselves and others. This chapter considers the self-shaping work of story, looking at acting and writing processes as they contribute to the construction of self. Self-narrative, in its many iterations - memoir, autobiography, life writing - allows us to script an identity which shifts, transforms, dissolves, and reconstitutes itself over time and across circumstances. Actors and writers cannibalize memory to nourish their creative work. Traumatic memory, though unreliable and often inaccessible, may return unbidden to offer a pathway to exploration, revelation, and exposure of the ever-shifting self. The self is singular, but not single. It is unique and persistent, but not stable. We remember, re-member, and mis-remember the past to construct a provisional, always changing indisputably unique, self. We crave unity, but our memories are fractured, selective. When does memory become a story?

Book abstract:

This insightful book explores the impact of traumatic experiences on the constitution of narrative identity. Editors Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho, and Joana Ricarte bring together multidisciplinary experts to examine the epistemic and ethical-political value of narrative memory, demonstrating its significance in forming essential aspects of the self and collective identity.