" I've been
paying attention to similar questions in different literatures, which seem
motivated in part by a concern for complexity and for parsing out different
strata or time depths in sociocultural phenomena - like the distinction
between the situated social self and the "cultural" or enduring self; or the
autobiographical self, the discoursal self, the writing self...."
I have been meaning to respond and take BB's multilogue decay rates to be
descriptive not prescriptive so here is my concern.
Actually I only have two questions. 1. Are these different selves
constituted with respect to bound or unbound, contextualized or
decontextualized audiences (no jokes please, I'm using set theoretic
terminology). 2. Is the narrative self different in some qualitative way
from any of the other "selves" or is it part of each? According to Bruner
(in Cult Psych, p128) narrative is "linking of events over time" and hence
inherent in all thought and thus, I presume, in all selves.
These two questions suggest a third concerning communication between the
different selves. Are there different narrative selves for each of the
possible narratives (i.e., writing, discoursal, etc.) who need have no
knowledge of each other--Jekyll and Hyde extreme? It seems that at least
some "higher order narratives" would to be necessary to allow successful
social functioning unless one takes an extreme social objectivist position .
But then what is that self that knows itself in all of these particular
selves? Spooky shades of Hegel in the season of the witch.
Paul H. Dillon