looking at narrative inquiry’s past in order to understand its present
TRANSCRIPT
Looking at Narrative Inquiry’s Past in order to Understand Its Present
Andrew J. Harris
Crown College
St. Bonifacius, MN 55375
Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Convention
Chicago, IL, November 20, 2014
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Looking at Narrative Inquiry’s Past in order to Understand Its Present
In recent years, some scholars have raised the question concerning the value of narrative
inquiry (NI) as a research paradigm. For instance, Woods (2011) argues that the question is no
longer “Why narrative?” but rather “What is post-narrative” (p. 404)? The point that Woods
seems intent on making is that narrative has become calcified into a set of critically untested
assumptions that hide the true nature of the story. The solution she offers is to go beyond (thus,
“post”) narrative to find critical tools that can help correct the failing of NI and thus revitalize the
method. There is certainly room to understand NI as a critical endeavor, and it is not the
intention of this essay to say otherwise. However, it is here argued that at the core of all NI there
must be a phenomenological understanding of how narrative works. If, as Woods believes, this
core has posited the necessity of narrative competence, then she is indeed correct in smashing
that misconception. However, if we return to the seminal texts of NI’s past, then we may lay a
better foundation for future theory and research in our present qualitative field.
What follows is an attempt to understand the current tensions surrounding narrative
methodologies by returning to some of the seminal works that shaped the narrative turn and NI’s
extended popularity. The essay will begin with a discussion of the elements around which the
controversy revolves, progress towards a realistic understanding of narrative knowing, address
the problems of bias and validity in NI, and end by formulating a tentative and broad definition
of NI incorporating the findings of the essay.
Narrative competence, narrative possibility. While there is a great deal of truth in what
Woods says, the idea that one must go beyond narrative in order to save it misses certain key
aspects of narrative that may hold the answer to the problems that Woods identifies. For one
thing, the fact that she obviously (and excellently) historicizes the field in her critique of NI
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indicates that Woods herself is creating narrative even as she calls for us to go beyond it. This is
the catch-22 for those trying to go beyond narrative in research: one must create a convincing
story explaining why and how NI has failed.
Although Woods’ call to “post-narrative” is ultimately untenable from a
phenomenological perspective, this does not mean that there is no need for a critique of certain
elements of NI. It seems that what Woods is reacting against is the kind of hardline theory of
narrative that encompasses every aspect of our waking (and sometimes sleeping) lives. This kind
of thinking is probably best represented by Fisher’s landmark theory of communication.
According to Fisher (1987), narrative as a metaphor of human existence “subsumes” all other
paradigms by characterizing them as narrative explanations of human thought and action (p. 62).
Perhaps it is the sometimes emotionally charged style of Fisher’s book that both gave it its initial
circulation and the warrant for its critique. Fisher’s argument is more tenable during his more
reserved moments, as when he simply states that “narrative enables us to understand the actions
of others” because we understand our own lives in terms of narrative. This recourse to
understanding through narrative as a cure for the reductive logic of modernity is the real
substance of the theory. Deciding whether or not our entire existence can be characterized in
terms of homo narrens is not essential to the measured use of narrative as a form of inquiry.
When narrative theorists focus on the activity of narration rather than attempting a
complete coup of phenomenological ontology and/or qualitative inquiry, then the argument put
forth by Woods fades away. Narrative need not be an unquestionable sum total of human life, but
merely a permeating aspect of living. When viewed in this way, narrative does not subsume
other metaphors of human living, but rather coexists with them. For instance, Gadamer’s (1984,
p. 330ff) metaphor for human communication as question-and-answer does not compete with a
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muted form of the narrative paradigm; it complements it. The idea that true conversation “really
considers the weight of the others opinion” rather than speaking over it does not cancel out the
possibility that the opinion may be in the form of narrative, nor does the idea that all
conversation is narrative in form preclude the questioning or interrupting of the story with
dialogic questioning.
Narrative theory and NI need not argue that the permeating nature of narrative is sufficient
for human existence. However, they must consider whether or not it is essential. Polkinghorne’s
brave statement that narrative is “the primary form by which human experience is made
meaningful” (1988, p. 1, emphasis added) may have helped to launch the narrative revolution in
the social sciences, but it affirms narrative as a dominant phenomenon rather than as a
permeating, coexistent one within human communication. Polkinghorne’s seminal work brought
narrative into focus as a tool of inquiry by defending the theory that the ordering of experience
into cause-effect events gives knowledge its own most possibility. As narrative researchers, we
are indebted to the work of pioneers like Fisher and Polkinghorne who helped to rescue narrative
from a reductionist vision of the world, yet we must throw off the absolutist rhetoric that
(perhaps necessarily) accompanies revolutions.
It is my belief that this tendency to position narrative as the ultimate measure of our
communication has brought about the current critique of the general theory. For instance,
Westlund seems to take narrative’s dominance as a personal affront to those who do not typically
think of themselves as storytellers. After admitting her own failures as a storyteller, she asks,
“Why should my narrative (in)competence matter?”
The truth is, I am not convinced that narrative integration is required to have a self, or a
practical identity, or to act autonomously. (I do not feel that deficient.) But I cannot
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entirely shake the idea that narrative—and, in particular, autobiographical narrative—
matters in some way that is not captured by any of the theses I reject. (Westlund, 2011,
pp. 391-392)
Westlund’s critique should be well taken. If narrative competence is the focus of narrative theory
and NI, then our research runs the risk of disenfranchising those who do not feel that they can
tell a story well. Furthermore, the idea of narrative competence hides the fact of cultural diversity
in the understanding of what works in storytelling.
It is narrative possibility and not narrative competence that will sustain NI. We must assert
that we are all capable of telling stories even if our stories are poorly constructed. We must claim
that narrative itself is pervasive even as we downplay narrative competence. If Westlund rebels
against a perceived necessity of competence, her reaction is justified. However, she herself
recognizes that there is an importance to narrative that she cannot be denied even if she resents
its vogue.
The real importance of Westlund’s critique lies in the fact that she herself places the
burden of proof beyond narrative competence: “the challenge for strong narrative theorists is to
show not only that we can achieve agential unity and reason coherently in a narrative mode, but
that without narrative self-understanding we cannot do so” (2011, p. 393). Theorists such as
Fisher and Polkinghorne revitalized the respect for the power of narrative in theories of
communication and the other social sciences, but it must be further shown that we have not taken
the concept too far.
Narrative knowing: ambiguous, situated. In a more recent essay, Polkinghorne (2010)
contrasts the concept of narrative knowing to that of general knowledge, noting that general
theory does not account for the fact that real experience takes place in specific circumstances
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governed by a unique series of events that can only be understood temporally. It is NI’s goal to
give a “vicarious experience” (p. 396) of the temporality of thinking in all its messiness and
ambiguity. Actual experience, he reminds us, is fluid, unbound by normative social laws that say
y must follow x, choosing instead to create cause and effect based upon “multiple decisions, one
after another, [chosen] to guide a process toward achieving a goal” (p. 394).
Thus, knowledge of the social world is “something ‘in passing’” (Clandinin & Connelly,
2000, p. 19). Our understanding of humanity is not only relative to our moment in history but
also to the very language we use to craft the story, being molded by “the selection and
arrangement of words, the inclusion of some words to the exclusion of others, the consequent
concepts and associations that these words carry and convey” (Daya & Lau, 2007, p. 4). We do
not discover reality through the stories we tell about ourselves. We create it. Each new thought is
by nature a reinterpretation of the social world, neither wholly free from the interpretations that
precede it nor bound to their vision of existence.
Ricoeur traces this fluid nature of knowledge to the human experience of time, noting our
natural directedness towards our end, through which our past, present, and future unite in the
moment of thought and action. The past as a “having-been” and the future as a “coming-
towards” are ever reshaped by the moment of the present, as the clearing or clouding of the
meaning of events constantly rises over the horizons of our lives (Ricoeur, 1983-1988, vol. 3, p.
69). Knowledge, in this way, becomes ambiguous. What we thought we knew escapes us even as
things that seemed to be age-old problems become laughably simple.
Narrative knowing is, therefore, double-sided. In one way, it eliminates a great deal of
confusion by accounting for the failure of actions to follow prescribed or predicted patterns of
behavior (Ochs & Capps, 1996). Drawing on Aristotle’s Poetics, Ricoeur calls this narrative
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quality emplotment, the feature of narrative that asks, “What is the ‘thought’ of this story?” It
orders otherwise random events into a meaningful whole (Ricoeur, 1983-1988, vol. 1, p. 65). NI
can make sense of narrative knowing by identifying the patterns of meaning that a person or
group of persons creates through the act of arrangement (Gubrium, 2010).
Yet in some ways, narrative knowing can foster confusion. While many narrators choose to
adhere to one single narrative explanation of events; others vacillate between or suspend
judgment on competing narratives (Ochs & Capps, 1996). Some even hold to conflicting
narratives simultaneously (Hamilton, 2010). Juzwick (2010) rightly argues that one of NI’s
failings is that it often misses the confusing aspects of narrative knowledge and the harmful
effects of the “negative, sinister, dividing, excluding, or falsifying purposes” (p. 376) to which
narratives can be put.
Despite the dangers of narrative knowing’s ambiguity, there are ways in which
admittance of our failures to overcome it can be turned into a more vibrant understanding of the
way in which we create meaning. Following Bakhtin’s dialogic theories (Bakhtin, Holquist,
McGee, & Emerson, 1986), Lannamann and McNamee (2011) focus on the “multi-vocality” of
the narrative process, expressing optimism in the give-and-take between narrative partners. They
argue that focusing primarily on the complete narrative—that is, the narrative whose life has
been textualized into a definitive form—runs the risk of missing the vitality of the narrative
moment. A textualized narrative can imply textualized knowledge and, if we are not careful,
textualized knowers. When the ambiguity of narrative knowledge is embraced, vitality may in
some way return to the picture of the knowing person or culture.
Ambiguity is normal. When this idea is accepted, the risk of narrative knowledge
becomes its utmost reward; for when ambiguity is understood as a natural condition of
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knowledge, we are no longer in search of definitive answers. Instead, we are directed towards
“questions, puzzles, fieldwork, and field texts of different kinds appropriate to different aspects
of the inquiry” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 55). Because narrative knowledge creates
lacunae even as it connects them, a hermeneutic circle is formed in which questions lead to
solutions that lead to questions. In this way, “no interpretation is ever complete” (van Manen,
2002, p. 7). There is always more to say.
In order to justify NI, one must not only remember the ambiguity of narrative but also its
situatedness. In order to reach the right questions, the researcher must have an understanding of
the context in which the story is created and told. Narrative knowing originates from context
carried over into the story from the realized world of the storyteller. As such, narrative
knowledge relies upon a tangible connection to the physical world. Audible and visual cues
influence meaning as storytellers position themselves across from audiences or (more correctly)
dialogic partners (Bamberg, 2011). The presence of the other shapes the story as much as it
prompts it. Presence also demands a holistic view of narrative existence. Understanding,
emotion, and practice cannot be separated from each other in the meeting of story, self, and
other. While any one of these elements can be the focus of the textual reconstruction of the
narrative, none of them can be described as “secondary” (Xu & Connelly, 2010, p. 354).
The situatedness of the original narrator suggests that the telling of the story is intimately
linked to local understanding, practice, and emotional expression. While the narrative moment is
in many ways the unique creation of the individual narrator, in a primordial way it is the creation
of one’s forebears who gave the narrator the drive to tell and the basic substance of the telling
(Freeman, 2007). In this way, no narrative can be truly called a monologue; instead each
narration is a “dialogue with the past” that anchors the story and provides the only means by
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which the teller may create something uniquely one’s own (Frank, 2011). Elkad-Lehman and
Greensfeld (2011) denote this relationship between self and other in the narrative moment as
intertextuality. While they admit that the term is difficult to define, they do locate several areas
of influence that cultural texts hold upon new narrative creation. For one, the structure and style
of the language and dialect in which the story is told delimit the possibilities of the narrative. For
another, word associations unique to a culture create subtexts that a surface reading might miss.
The problem of bias. Thus, narrative knowing is already a complicated business by the
time researchers show up and insert their free-radical selves into the mix. The presentation of
oneself as a researcher adds another layer of difficulty to the interpretation of narrative in at least
two ways. The most obvious way concerns the fact that research brings storytelling to the level
of consciousness. The narrator becomes self aware of his role and reacts accordingly. Stories no
longer come freely; they must now pass through the gambit of the narrator’s own self-
censorship. A secondary effect of the insertion of the researcher involves the fact that the
researcher himself brings a unique and often wholly alien cultural outlook to the interpretation of
the already-situated telling of the tale. As van Manen puts it, the researcher comes to the field
with “a prior interest” (1990, p. 1). The tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics from which
van Manen writes refuses to discount the historicality of the researcher’s viewpoint. I believe
that NI must do the same, for the “outside standpoint” sought by reductionist science is not a
possibility, nor is a clean-cut, sterilized knowledge of human society. Knowledge can only ever
be potential, never final (Talburt, 2004). Ultimately, it is the narrative traditions of the researcher
will bring bias to the research process (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 64). We too are tellers of
tales; we too take the stories of our cultures’ blind poets as gospel truth. We cannot help it.
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For this reason, the researcher’s own tradition cannot be ignored if one is to understand
how knowing is experienced. Lincoln attests to this in a passage that is important enough to
quote at length:
Paradigms and metaphysics do matter. They matter because they tell us something
important about researcher standpoint. They tell us something about the researcher’s
proposed relationship to the Other(s). They tell us something about what the researcher
thinks counts as knowledge, and who can deliver the most valuable slice of this
knowledge. They tell us how the researcher intends to take account of multiple
conflicting and contradictory values she will encounter. (Lincoln, 2010)
MacIntyre’s project of demonstrating the frequent incommensurability of competing paradigms
reminds us that the culture to which the researcher goes may ultimately be beyond his or her
reach. Much like the academic traditions that provide the key example of MacIntyre’s critique
(1990, p. 216ff), when researchers encounter traditions radically different from their own, it is
only natural that the final product of their investigations will miss the mark of perfect
understanding. This becomes true in a more pronounced way when researchers refuse to accept
the cultures to which they go as equal unto their own. However, recognition of the subjectivity of
one’s own narrative tradition is necessary to reach any sort of practical understanding of the
other culture’s narratives. As MacIntyre says, “Only those traditions whose adherents recognize
the possibility of untranslatability into their own language-in-use are able to reckon adequately
with that possibility” (1988, p. 388).
This understanding of the research process suggests a certain antagonism between the
narratives of the researcher and the researched, but this cannot be entirely defused without
devitalizing the final research product. Researchers do not merely observe the battle of ideas
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present in each narrative moment; they enter the arena as fully equipped combatants. MacIntyre
reminds us that texts cannot be read “in terms of the conflicts in which they participate
independently of the reader’s participation in these same conflicts or at least in the analogous
conflicts of the present” (1990, p. 229). Narratives cannot simply be recorded; one must grapple
with them. Whether we like the implications or not, this means that there are winners and losers
in the process of narrative knowing. He who controls the narrative controls the destiny of
understanding. The presence of this researcher as opposed to another affects what story the
narrating culture will tell (Sparks & Smith, 2011); therefore, any research text that does not
explicitly and laboriously detail every aspect of the fieldwork process—that is to say, all research
texts—will for better or worse gloss over the dialogic quality of its path to understanding. Even
when the process is made explicit, the researcher still gets the final say on what does or does not
go into the final product (van Maanen, 2011, p. 137), making any claim to have produced a
“jointly-told tale” little more than a palliative for our restless consciences.
The problem of validity. After we have admitted the ambiguous, situated, and therefore
biased nature of our path to knowing, we are left with uncertainty not only about what we know
but also if we know at all. For those who fear the implications of uncertainty, its presence can
completely shut down the research process; but for those that embrace it, the possibilities it
engenders are immense. Recognition of uncertainty allows the researcher to suggest new
interpretations in opposition to well-established bias (Talburt, 2004). Furthermore, uncertainty
opens up the possibility of using less popular metaphysical paradigms as foundations for
knowing.
Geertz (1973) draws attention to the relativity of the research paradigm by pointing out
the fictive nature of textual creation, “in the sense that they are ‘something made,’ ‘something
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fashioned’ out of the researcher’s interpretations of the culture’s interpretations of the culture (p.
15). This allows the researcher to hold fast to “local truth” and resist the well-developed urge
within the social sciences to seek out general knowledge (p. 21). This does not mean that Geertz
believes that general knowledge is a worthless enterprise, only that whatever might be called
general knowledge can only be understood within the context of culturally specific human
experience. Statistics may be able to tell us that people tend to act in a certain way, but they fall
short of a complete picture of why they act. For this, one must turn to an ontology of human
being, a project that is notoriously hazy when it comes to anything but private interpretation.
Since most qualitative methodologies, NI included, accept such lack of real
transferability outside of the cultural and philosophical paradigms in which the research is
created, modern notions of rigor cannot be used to test the value of findings. While narrative
constructs an idea of causality, narrative knowledge never assumes that this causality can be
validated outside of the human experience. Thus, causality in living narratives is always
tentative, never certain (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 31).
Lack of transferability also effects how utility is viewed. Beyond the creation of one’s
localized interpretation of another’s local meaning, narrative knowing does not presume that any
verifiable actuality can be reached or derived from a call for action. In this way, narrative
knowing presents a philosophical hermeneutic that relies on potential meaning, subjecting all
utility and action to the situated nature of its creation and the possibility of its mistakenness
(Talburt, 2004). NI’s possibility of mistakenness and the deep sense of personal influence on the
research process may seem anti-scientific and therefore inappropriate for research, but these
necessary limitations to the utility of the methodology may also be viewed as a corrective to our
own assuredness and remind the research community of Kuhn’s demonstration that all science is
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ultimately localized to the time and place in which it is practiced (Kuhn, 2012). NI’s limitations
allow science to reconnect to philosophy and confessional as Geertz recommends (1973, p. 346).
When this occurs, research becomes not only a search for knowledge but also an opportunity to
pursue freedom from utility and become a philosophical discipline that exists for its own sake
rather than to serve some external cause (Pieper, 1992, p. 42).
Perhaps validity is the wrong word to apply to the process of narrative knowledge.
Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the relativity of faith-based foundations of narrative
reality. Certain authors have called faith-based knowledge “believed-in imaginings” and
relegated them to the status of mental fantasy (De Rivera & Sarbin, 1998). Sarbin (1998) says
that these imaginings deny the skeptic’s use of “traditional logic,” leaving the believer within a
closed world. Sarbin uses religious examples to prove his point, classifying prayers to saints
together with the Heaven’s Gate group suicide. The connotation is obvious: religion must be
treated as a psychosis. However, Wiener gives an alternative view of the believed-in imagining,
pointing out the bias of Sarbin’s description of religious actions. “Would we classify,” he asks,
“devout people who say daily personal prayers aloud after kneeling, genuflecting, and lighting
candles because they believe in sin, redemption, and resurrection as having believed-in
imaginings or being a mental health case” (Wiener, 1998, p. 39)? Weiner goes on to point out
that if Sarbin’s examples are to be consider psychoses simply because they are taken on faith
instead of some notion of hard evidence then one must also classify tribal peoples and Albert
Einstein (among others) as mentally disturbed.
Wiener’s critique of Sarbin represents the beginnings of the narrative turn in a
researcher’s thinking. His goal is not classification into preconceived categories but
understanding from within the narrative itself. Real narrative knowing, whether in religious
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belief or scientific rhetoric, does not concern itself with the actuality of the (meta)physical
universe, choosing instead to bypass the problem of actuality for that of meaning. The question
of NI is not whether or not the story holds validity, even though this too is an important question.
Rather, the narrative researcher seeks to discover whether or not the story demonstrates
verisimilitude, in other words “does it convince and how” (Weiner, 1998)? In other words, we
seek to understand how narrative functions within a society. Applied to the stories we tell
ourselves, the magnitude of their convicting power depends on how well we tell the story, where
we are, and who is listening.
Looking to the past and present to define NI. By way of conclusion, let us ask, “How
shall we understand NI?” Upon raising this question, we must immediately confess that we will
neither completely answer it to the satisfaction of our individual selves nor begin to reach
consensus among our various opinions. However, it may do some good to at least begin a
discussion on the essential elements of our narrative methodologies.
Perhaps it is best to start with the negative answer. Given how we understand narrative
knowing, what does NI not suggest? The principle answer to this is that NI, despite its name,
does not concern itself with the grand narrative. Whether or not there is one and what it might be
is simply not a part of its project. It is enough to know that each narrative will come out of a
culture that has its own idea of the grand narrative. To superimpose one’s own grand narrative
upon another’s narrative is to create a false transparency in the context of the story. Narrative
details become distorted through application of categories and motifs irrelevant or not available
to the originating culture. Even language itself can become a stumbling block as word choice and
definition are assumed to have only one possible identity and context (Reismann, 1993, p. 4).
Instead of this or that grand narrative, NI assumes grand narratives. This applies to both
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researched cultures and researchers; each interaction between grand narratives will result in
variation among interpretations.
This leads us to question the unity of NI. Are there one or many narrative methodologies?
On the one hand, some methodologists stress an NI core. Spector-Mersel (2010) does not deny
the versatility and diversity of NI yet at the same time argues that a core must be defined if NI is
to remain a cohesive methodological discipline. Otherwise, narrative and narrative research
come to mean “anything and everything.” On the other hand, many scholars value the
multiplicity of concepts within what is broadly held to be the NI field. These researchers stress,
as van Maanen (2011) does, that “we need more, not fewer, ways to tell of culture” (p. 140). The
myriad of perspectives that are afforded to narrative knowing should also be accorded to NI,
making it “an umbrella term for a mosaic of research efforts, with diverse theoretical musings,
methods, empirical groundings, and/or significance” whose only connecting thread is an interest
in narrative (Smith, 2007, p. 392).
The tension between these two concerns comes not only from the wide variety of
applications to which NI is put but also from the wide variety of perspectives from which NI is
practiced. Analyzing cultural practices as opposed to a modern novel is just as big of a step as
analyzing narratives from a psychological perspective as opposed to a rhetorical one. One must
never lose sight of the fact that NI represents multiple disciplines as much as it does multiple
concerns. Many disciplines have contributed their own “fumblings toward” (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000, p. 18) what we know today as NI.
The concern that NI remain cross-disciplinary and cross-concern and therefore loosely
defined is here respected, and yet we must not allow the term to spread itself so thin that it has no
functional definition. What then sets apart NI from other disciplines? Reissman (2008, p. 11)
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believes that NI should give special attention to the sequence of action in the story. This
naturally flows out of narrative knowing’s desire for a cause-effect explanation of events.
While her description of NI is not as precise as Reissman’s, Wells (2011, pp.7-9) does
contribute a more provocative answer to the question. Comparing it to discourse analysis, she
separates NI by noting that it is more concerned with the individual event as opposed to the
commonalities of all communicative exchanges. She also separates NI from conversation
analysis in that the latter focuses on the mundane event while the former focuses on the
transformative one.
This second distinction closely resembles Heidegger’s distinction between fallenness and
authentic being. To be fallen is to be absorbed by the world. This type of fallenness is Dasein’s
concern with living in the world in which it is originally found, using its tools for living and
doing the work natural to that world. To live only in this way is to miss authentic being, for
Dasein must resist “becoming so fascinated by or taken over by the everyday activities that it
loses itself and its primordial relation to its situation” (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 228, italics in original).
According to Heidegger, Dasein allows itself to be overtaken by this structural aspect of
fallenness due to the experience of existential guilt:
Dasein’s…absorption in the “world” of its concern, make manifest something like a
fleeing of Dasein in the face of itself—of itself as an authentic potentiality-for-Being-its-
Self….To bring itself face to face with itself, is precisely what Dasein does not do when
it thus flees. It turns away from itself in accordance with its ownmost inertia [Zug] of
falling. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 229, italics in original)
In other words, to avoid total absorption into the mundane concerns of everyday living, one must
own up to the possibilities of one’s own existence, to greet them head on and contemplate what
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they imply about oneself. The provocative implication of this is that narrative analysis is
concerned with how we address the big questions, with those times that we rise above everyday
distractions and attempt to make sense of why we are here and what we are doing.
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