...efter mange måneders læsning og skrivning har jeg nu afleveret mit speciale. Jeg ville ønske jeg kunne være blevet ved. I ti år.
Hvis nogen derude skulle have lyst til at få et indtryk af, hvad det er der virkelig interesserer mig her i verden, ligger specialet lige her.
| masters_thesis_mikka_lene_hjholt_pers.pdf |
ABSTRACT
In this thesis we propose that the individual relates to its life and itself by telling stories. We argue that the study of life stories gives valuable insight into the complex temporality that is at play when the individual seeks to understand its life and who it is as a person. Employing narrative as a functional concept, we investigate what specific narrative configurations 'make present' in the context they are situated in, and what they achieve for the individual.
We first provide a brief historical overview of the field of narrative research, which is populated by a diversity of conceptualisations of narrative. This overview forms a backdrop to the approach we take to our empirical investigation. We conduct interviews with four interviewees for whom it has been important not to repeat what they consider to be dysfunctional patterns of their childhood homes. Through an inquiry into the ways in which these self-identified 'pattern-breakers' make their life present to us, we analyse and discuss the dynamic quality of life stories: The individual when framing its life in narrative terms can revisit its past and re-evaluate previously held perspectives on it, rendering visible the direction its life has taken.
Our analysis shows that the individual ascribes meanings to its life through interplays between simultaneously present narrative points of view. Life stories are innately relational in that they allow the narrating individual to view its life from different positions that relate to each other in various ways. We observe how the individual can actively develop stances to its life by playing out dialogues between temporally distributed versions of its self that can co-exist in life stories. Furthermore, we identify the manners in which life stories are tied up in the lives led - and stories told - by specific and general others. In our analysis we see that interpersonal encounters can open new perspectives to the individual, and we explore how others can be granted a say in the intra-narrative dynamic that the individual defines its life through.
We conclude that the self that emerges in life stories is in fact a larger self, as it contains a plurality of viewpoints that engage in ongoing dialogues. This perspective on narrative composition gives us a better understanding as to how the individual by working on its life stories can become able to envisage ever-new interpretations of its life.
/menschenkind
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