engleski

Narrative Identification

Narrative is usually considered as one of the most established forms of mediation between the self and community. The point of departure for a closer examination of this common truth, however, will be the provocative thesis put forth by the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero in her recent book Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti (1997) /Relating Narratives, 2000/. Pointing out its dyadic ethic instead of its tryadic social connection, she represents narrative as a scene of exposition of myself to the other. Inasmuch as I am not the master of my own life-story, and inasmuch as I cannot find out who I am without it, I am constitutively dependent on only You being able to narrate it to me. Cavarero thus displaces the classical subject in favor of the narratable self that exists in a permanent need of a supplementary other. Without that unique other my ethical uniqueness (who I am) gets reduced to my social substitutability (what I am). In my paper, I shall compare Cavarero’ s “ Arendtian” /“ Levinasian” account with that of Judith Butler, which is closer to the thought of Michel Foucault. Butler insists on an anonymous linguistic structure which imposes the third-person perspective upon a subject willing to give an account of itself.

narrrative; identity; Cavarero; Butler

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