The dynamic and recursive interplay of embodiment and narrative identity

ABSTRACT

Although there is an increase in research into how narrative identity interrelates with embodiment, the mechanisms underlying this interplay are hardly addressed. In this paper, I target this hiatus in the literature by proposing two mechanisms that can help to (non-exhaustively) elucidate the dynamic interplay of narrative identity and embodiment. I start by briefly sketching the debate so far and then go on to argue that the way narrative self-understanding affects our embodiment can be understood on the model of narrative self-programming. After that I turn to the other side of the interaction. Drawing on research in ecological psychology and phenomenology, I show how embodiment affects our narrative self-understanding through the way in which we engage with affordances in our narrative background. After that I highlight the dynamic and recursive character of this interplay. I end with some conclusions and unresolved issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Affordances
• embodiment
• lived body
• narrative background
• narrative identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For instance, philosophers disagree on to what extent we should understand an individual’s life narrative as being analogous to a fictional, literary narrative, and what the role of narrativity is in our moral lives. For a recent discussion of such topics see Lippitt and Stokes (2015).

2. However, what is less clear on Mackenzie’s account is the extent to which they overlap. This critique is voiced by Meyers (2014), who worries that Mackenzie had in previous work (i.e., Mackenzie, 2009) succumbed “to the siren song of mentalization,” and did not sufficiently acknowledge the pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic aspects of bodily self-experience. In other words, Meyers criticizes Mackenzie’s proposal because although it does acknowledge the importance of the lived body (which Meyers takes to be a good thing), it nevertheless “illicitly assimilates elements of corporeal experience to the mental” (Meyers, 2014, p. 144). Consequently, Meyers questions Mackenzie’s account by asking whether “the mind’s ratiocinative capabilities can translate lived bodily experience into a self-narrative.” After clarifying her own account in light of Meyers’ worries, Mackenzie’s (2014) reply “is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’: ‘yes’, because qua agents we make sense of our embodiment through processes of narrative self-interpretation, but ‘no’, because there are dimensions of our embodiment that necessarily elude integration into the embodied first-person perspective” (p. 164). The resulting picture, then, seems to be that embodied and narrative selves overlap, but only to a limited extent.

3. Adopting a more diachronic approach to investigating the interplay of narrativity and embodiment, as Brandon and others have suggested, also allows us to re-interpret the debate I sketched: although I have presented these authors here as being opposed, they may be to some extent compatible. That is, it may be that the narrative self emerges, developmentally, from the embodied self but that, from that point onwards, both affect each other. So the interrelation itself may change over time. On such an interpretation of the debate, Menary and Zahavi simply focus on the earlier developmental stages of this interrelation, whereas Mackenzie and others focus on the later stages where mutual interaction takes place. At any rate, the interrelation of embodiment and narrative is a complex one, and it may be that the various authors discussed so far are merely highlighting different aspects of this interrelation (Køster, 2017a).

4. For more on this distinction, see, for example, Pacherie (2006).

5. Note that one need not be aware of the fact that one is trying to alter one’s bodily responsiveness. In the example, Jacob indeed does not say to himself: “I should decrease my responsiveness to enter the study on Sunday.” Instead, he says to himself that he should be a better father. However, such “self-talk” is best understood in terms of forming certain commitments, and these commitments play a crucial role in the agent’s action coordination (see Geurts, 2018).

6. Of course one’s feelings toward one’s spouse may also change regardless of whether one employs narrative self-programming (thanks to an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this point). However, we are not passive with regard to such changes in how we feel. Rather, many people would also feel urged to make sense of this new state of affairs. The point, to be defended in section 4, is that this “feeling urged” is a bodily and affective signal to our narrative selves to “make sense.”

7. One might ask by means of what mechanism people are able to program themselves. This is an important yet unresolved issue in contemporary psychological research (see a discussion and overview in Custers & Aarts, 2010; Baumeister et al., 2011). There appear to be several options on the table, including cue-behavior association (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006) and mental practice and simulation (Papies, Aarts & De Vries, 2009). I remain agnostic on this issue and consider it essentially an empirical question which of these mechanisms is employed by agents. A likely outcome seems to me that there are in fact various mechanisms that can be employed in different situations (e.g., depending on the motivational force behind the goal, or whether or not the agent is fatigued).

8. This is a simplified picture, as there may be additional factors in determining the soliciting character of an affordance (e.g., skill, perceived effort, cultural factors, et cetera). For a discussion see Withagen et al. (2017).

9. The notion of “mineness” employed here is broader than, for example, Zahavi’s (2014) and more in line with the term as it is used by Slors and Jongepier (2014).

10. A somewhat extreme but illuminating example is the unwilling addict who might report “that the force moving him to take the drug is a force other than his own, and that it is not of his own free will but rather against his will that this force moves him to take it” (Frankfurt, 1988, p. 13).

11. Empirical research into the interplay of embodied and narrative self-experience is scarce (however, see, e.g., Cunliffe & Coupland, 2012), but in clinical settings the importance of a degree of congruence between embodiment and narrative for living a normal life is often acknowledged by both clinicians and researchers (personal communication). To illustrate, recent work in psychomotor physiotherapy emphasizes the complex interplay of embodiment and narrative in patients (cf. Marie Øien, Iversen, & Stensland, 2007; Sviland, Martinsen, & Råheim, 2018, p. 22). By analyzing patient-narratives, these authors show how bodily feedback (e.g., reaction patterns, muscular tensions) may be informative of narrative disruptions and how a patient may resolve these bodily symptoms by establishing a more coherent embodied narrative (which sometimes requires the help of a clinician). Similar points are made in regard to treating chronic fatigue (van Geelen et al., 2011) and understanding psychiatric conditions, such as personality disorders (Køster, 2017b).

12. Research on soliciting affordances is rapidly increasing (cf. De Haan et al., 2015; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014; Withagen et al., 2017) but is still in a theoretical phase, integrating insights from, for example, ecological psychology, phenomenology, and dynamical systems theory. Unfortunately therefore, it is not possible to corroborate the current proposal (in terms of self-programming and interacting with soliciting affordances) by means of empirical results. What is promising however is that the current proposal does seem compatible with other theoretical work on soliciting affordances. For instance, Withagen et al. (2017, p.14) similarly hold that “agency can be conceived of as the animal’s capacity to modulate the coupling strength with these affordances – the agent can influence to what extent each invitation influences him or her.”

13. In this regard, consider that many views on the self hold that extended aspects, such as personal belongings, can be incorporated to the self (see, e.g., Gallagher, 2013).

14. Interestingly, Schechtman (2007, p. 176) seems to work toward a similar position but does not elaborate on this.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [36020360].

Notes on contributors

Roy Dings

Roy Dings is at the Department of Philosophy, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.