Narrative and Narrative Identity

Nowadays it is recognized that an individual’s identity is constructed through reflection. So it has to be borne in mind that a human individual is a being that not only exists over time, but also that the development which this being constantly undergoes is one of its essential ontological features. This leads to the assertion that the individual’s identity and ontological structure are ongoing processes; issues requiring constant updating and refinement. Reflexivity and thinking are thus the fundamental factors that constitute an individual’s identity. The concept of narrative helps us understand this, as a narrative creates a temporal structure, and so evolves over time, has a beginning and an end. In this sense, a story is a sequence of statements, the elements of which are arranged in linear interdependence and are ordered chronologically. In other words, a story is a structure that unfolds over time, that reproduces the passage of time, and as such it can reveal the temporal relation between two states of affairs and how a situation changes as time goes by. The concept of narrative is of course complex, and it is understood in various ways which focus on different defining aspects. It has been pointed out that a narrative includes descriptions of actions and past events that are deemed noteworthy—by the narrator and listener—because they deviate from ordinary events or situations. It has also been emphasized that a narrative statement is constructed on the basis of at least two appropriately related sentences, so there are no absolute or independent narrative sentences. Finally, Hayden White significantly expanded the concept of “narrative structure”, by introducing emplotment: