Your point is well taken. I certainly did not mean to dismiss narrative
analysis or its usefulness in an account of contextualized persons. I
simply agreed with Jay, that narratives alone are not a sufficient tool
for this purpose, and that other sorts of text afford us critical
perspectives on the "working self." I suppose the step that comes
first depends on a finer specification of the purpose.
Thanks for inviting the clarification.
- Judy
>I would like to ask: isn't it possible to combine narrative analysis of the
>self with Bakhtin's idea on heteroglossia, especially using the concept of
>dialogism, to understand how the self (or selves) relates to the larger
>social context? It seems to me that narrative analysis can be a very useful
>tool to understand how a person may see himself or herself in relation to,
>for example, his or her work. To derive the selves through narrative
>analysis could be the first step to understand the _subjective_ perspective
>of the person in question. Following this first step, we may study how the
>selves, derived from the narrative analysis, relate to the other. A way to
>get to this interaction with the other would be to study the dialogized words
>emanating from the selves. These words, in turn, would be chosen according
>to the surrounding environment from where the speaker is speaking from. The
>impression of an initial _subjective_ self, then, may begin to open up after
>we realize that the construction of this wishful "working-self" has been
>partially shaped by the affordances and limitation given by the work
>environment.
>You will have to excuse me for trying to summarize these complex interactions
>within one short paragraph. It is obviously impossible. But the point that
>I'm trying to make is that it seems to me a bit hasty to try to dismiss
>narrative analysis based on subjectivism.
>
>Patricio.
>--
>Patricio S Calderon Internet: calderon who-is-at umdnj.edu
>Day: (212)642-2562 (school)
>Evening: (908)247-7579 (home)
>Developmental Psychology Department
>City University of New York, Graduate Center
>
>
>
Judy Diamondstone
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
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