The telling moment: Narrative as a discursive act.

摘要

As a work of interdisciplinary dialogue, Mary Jean Walker (2012) successfully straddles the fields ofudneuro- and cognitive science and social psychology in addressing key questions on the role, valueudand truth claims of narrative as a mode of self-understanding. However, in the context ofudneuroethical debate her article raises a set of parallel conceptual and epistemological concernsudwhich confuse and conflate what it is to tell stories. I suggest that Walker’s perspective isudphilosophically limited in that she does not explicitly acknowledge narrative as a discursive activity.udIn this, Walker is not alone – the neuro- and cognitive sciences frequently make assumptions aboutudwhat narrative is and what it is not. This is significant because a theory of narrative which is blind toudnarrative as a discursive activity risks diminishing important social contexts involved in theudconstruction of human self-understanding and truth.udOne of the most striking features of the disciplinary border-crossings which have resulted inudnarrative gaining conceptual prominence in fields such as psychology and neuroscience is the degreeudto which the term narrative is left undefined, or the degree to which it is conflated with prediscursive structures of action, experience or underlying neurobiological or cognitive substrateudcapable of being read in the same way we read narrative texts (Bamberg, 2006). While Walkerudacknowledges that narrative is interpretive, selective, relational and contextual, she subordinatesudthe very object of narration itself – social discourse – to the neuropsychological structures andudprocesses which underlie it.