Self-Narrative and Discourse: A Theoretical Framework

Linguistic Foundations

To understand how “self-narrative” functions, we must first establish the linguistic basis for meaning-making. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole provides this foundation:

“The first concerns the terms langue and parole. In French, langue refers to the idea of regarding language as a structured system. A langue is more than just the sum of all the linguistic capacities of all the people who speak it. A langue exists above and beyond each of these individual speakers. It is a structured system in and of itself. It is made up of a collection of words, and a set of rules for putting them together in particular ways, so that they seem meaningful to speakers and listeners. For speakers to make their utterances understandable to others using the same langue, they have to obey these rules of how to put sentences together. Specific uses of speech (utterances) made by individual speakers are called parole. Langue (the overall system) is more important than parole, because particular instances of parole are just utterances that follow the rules set by langue. To really understand how language works, one must focus on langue, and not the specific uses of it made by individuals.”

This linguistic framework becomes crucial when we consider how individual self-narratives operate within larger discursive systems.

Discourse and Subject Formation

Building on this linguistic foundation, structuralist theory suggests that what we call “self-narrative” emerges not from an autonomous self, but from external discursive structures:

“The various discourses profoundly shape each person’s ways of thinking and their sense of themselves (their ‘subjectivity’). This is done through the process of ‘interpellation’. When a person is confronted with a discourse that has thoroughly shaped their subjectivity, they ‘recognize’ themselves within it: the sense they have of themselves, created by the discourse, is reconfirmed constantly by ongoing exposure to the discourse.”

Post-Structuralist Implications

From this post-structuralist perspective, the relationship between language and reality becomes more complex. The claim that “nothing is an exact description of anything really” can be understood through the theory of signification:

“Each of these languages – or as later authors would call them, ‘discourses’ (see Figure 8.2) is made up of systems of signifiers and signifieds, the meanings of which are dictated not by the ‘outside world’ to which they apparently refer, but to the internal relationships within each langue between all of its signifiers, and between all of its signifieds. Thus each discourse does not reflect or represent the things it talks about, as those things are not ‘real’ objects in the world. Instead, each discourse creates its own reality and creates its own objects. A discourse may seem as if it is referring to real things; but it is actually referring merely to signifieds, its own construction of those things.”

Foucaultian Extensions

Regarding my earlier question about self-narrative’s potential for both stagnation and revolution, Foucault’s earlier perspective may offer some insights, though with important caveats about the limits of individual agency within discursive structures:

“But it is the discourses themselves that create the category of ‘patient’, ‘criminal’, and so on, such that these types of people are invented by the discourses themselves. It follows from this that power is not just negative, as Marxism claimed. (As we saw in Chapter 3, Marxism sees ruling class power acting as a negative brake on working-class revolutionary activities.) Instead, if power is seen as the capacity of discourses to invent new categories of people, then power is productive and, in a certain sense, ‘positive’, because it has the capacity to create, not just repress. A discourse creates the very things that it purports to study. When the discourse studies people defined as ‘psychiatric patients’, ‘criminals’, and so on, power is exercised upon those people. This is why Foucault understands knowledge to be power, and power to be knowledge, for the two are thoroughly interpenetrating.”

Theoretical Tensions and Limitations

This analysis raises a fundamental question: if our capacity for self-reflection and narrative construction is itself produced by discourse, what is the theoretical status of any proposed “revolutionary” use of self-narrative? This recursive problem requires further examination beyond the scope of these initial theoretical frameworks.