Narrative Identity and the Semiotic Self in Dialogical Semiosis of Narrative

The self is known as a term notorious for grasping its meaning. There are many different approaches to the notion of the self. Among these are the phenomenological, hermeneutical, semiotic, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and narrative. It can also be understood through an interdisciplinary approach. The distinction between different or competing notions of the self lies in whether the self is constructive or transcendental and fictional or real. Peirce’s semiotic approach to the self is concerned not with what the self is but with how the concept of self is acquired in relation to other within linguistic community in that self-awareness is derived from errors and ignorance evident from other people’s testimony. This presupposes that the concept of the self is associated with intersubjectivity, implying experiential and social dimensions from the first-person perspective. Traditionally, the first-person access to the self has been widely recognized by philosophers. But a competing idea arises, challenging the first-person givenness, from those who argue that self-interpretation and self-knowledge are acquired through the third-person perspective. I argue that these two dichotomous perspectives of the self can be mediated by the second-person perspective through dialogical semiosis of narrative. This means that self-narrative will be achieved by dialogical processes of self and other in a biographical form of narrative with an autobiographical tone by which narrative form as medium and genre becomes operative for symbolic mediation of the self. From the context of discussion on the concept of the self in terms of semiotics, it is clear that the self is not accessible directly; the self is mediated by sign, which means that it is expressed by sign, so as to be interpreted by another sign, leading to the evolutionary self. Thus, Peirce’s semiotic perspective on the self emphasizes the role of a semiotic subject that participates in sign processes as an interpreting agent. In this sense, the concept of self is acquired through semiosis of narrative and at the same time it is interpreted in narrative world, taking the role of character. It is character which makes a person identifiable as a person, since character is not substance but quality as a recognized pattern or type through time, which becomes a habit of act and thought, thus forming personal identity. Within this context, I argue that from the first-person perspective a deliberate subject of self as “subjective I” and from the third-person perspective a dynamic object of self as “objective I” are mediated by the relationship between self and other as an imaginary relation in narrative world, just like an imaginary line of identity, connecting word with thing. From the second-person perspective, oneself as another forms teridentity(co-identity) in textual world. I shall illustrate the interlock point of the semiotic self and narrative identity through Peirce’s semiotic approach to the self and Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity expressed in “oneself as another”.
País: 
Corea del Sur
Temas y ejes de trabajo: 
Semiótica y narratología
Institución: 
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea
Mail: 
yunheelee333@gmail.com

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.