Constructing and Reconstructing Narrative Identity

Abstract

The research work done by the author investigates a phenomenological field—the subjective experience of chronic illness and disability—by means of a specific research instrument, the autobiographical narrative interview. It focuses on the concept of narrative identity and its empirical substrate in the scientifically generated texts. Narrative identity is regarded as a situated, pragmatic, autoepistemic and interactive activity drawing on culturally transmitted narrative conventions which is performed within the research context. We have been working with a systematic analytic approach which covers interactive and contextual aspects of the interview situation as well as rhetoric and positioning strategies in the act of telling. Other research questions concern the concept of "narrative coping" and the comparison of partner's narratives on problems of illness and disability, especially on scrutinizing aspects of identity and alterity (self and other) in the texts. This work can be understood as combining aspects of the research domains of narratology, identity and coping on the background of a qualitative methodology. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs000218