Two senses of narrative unification

Mary Walker

Narrative theories of identity make a range of claims about using the notion of narrative to understand persons, and some claim that the synchronic and diachronic unity of a person can be understood in narrative terms. Focusing on Schechtman’s (1996) narrative account, I argue that such a claim reveals a tension in narrative theories, which I will demonstrate by showing that theory has conflicting implications when applied to cases of radical personal change.  I examine how attempts to resolve this problem have led Schechtman to modify her account in way that amounts to abandoning the use of the notion of narrative to capture a sense of personal unity. I then propose an alternative response, which could allow narrative theorists to retain some of their claims about narrative unity, by developing a distinction between two senses in which we might think that narrative is unifying.