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Title Narrative Identity and the Rhetoric of Self Change: A comparative Analysis of Selected Memories

Author(s) KHALID RAHIM

Abstract Title: Narrative Identity and the Rhetoric of Self-Change: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Memoirs This research study seeks to investigate two selected memoirs, i.e., Becoming (2018) and My Feudal Lord (1995), by Michelle Obama and Tehmina Durrani, respectively. The theoretical underpinnings of narrative identity, through the qualitative mode of inquiry, are applied speculative lenses to unmask the problems faced by women while constructing their self-identity under the patriarchal constraints of conservative as well as black American societies. Moreover, the study focuses on cultural and social norms, patriarchy, religion, class, feudalism, and racism. These established standards are the root cause of women’s oppression, stereotypical discrimination, sociopolitical and economic exploitation, and intersectional subjugation across the globe. Consequently, building an identity in a patriarchal environment is seen as an uphill task for women. In this regard, the personality psychologists illustrate that the self-narrative helps to reconstruct one’s own identity as the narrators (autobiographers) derive redemptive meanings out of adversity, affliction, and calamities in their lives. They, consequently, tend to exhibit a higher level of psychological maturity, generativity, and well-being. Substantially, in the 1980s this idea of narrative identity was coined by Paul Ricoeur, a French philosopher. It is generally an integrative psychological concept that bridges cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and the humanities in the form of literary narrative. Narrative identity, however, has been further modified by Dan P. McAdams and Kat C. McLean, in 2013. They have modified the critique under seven coding constructs, i.e., agency, communication, redemption, contamination, meaning making, ENP (Exploratory Narrative Processing), and CPR (Coherent Positive Resolution). The study foregrounds the redemptive nature of the selected autobiographers and their contaminations through the politics of memory in the selected memoirs under the lenses of these seven codes of identity construction, Furthermore, the feminist theoretical analysis of the study is based on Intersectionality, a concept introduced in 1989 by Kimberley Crenshaw.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2023-10-19

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