Narrative versus Episodic Self: The Matter with Identity
Narrative versus Episodic Self: The Matter with Identity

Summary/Abstract: Humans tend to seek their identity as entities existing over a period of time by making narratives. The paper argues that seeking diachronic self-identity through narratives or stories results in the self-experience being one of separation or alienation from the real world. This happens because language is primarily a form of secondary representation, and the means by which we attempt to find identity often appear in the form of narratives. The dominance of the metaphor of life as a journey shows this. The remedy is to reduce the hold of narrativity by making self-experience fundamentally episodic.

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