Hannah Arendt and The Narratable Self

By Laurie Naranch

“In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and the sound of the voice. This disclosure of ‘who’ in contradistinction to ‘what’ somebody is . . . is implicit in everything somebody says and does."

-- Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

To be reduced to a “what” for Arendt is to deny the uniqueness of each individual. That individuality is disclosed through acting and speaking together. For Arendt politics is about collective action rooted in and created through shared space. Acting and speaking together in the appearance of a public world provides the possibility for disclosing “who” one is. That is, while Arendt mentions that “what” somebody is may relate to “qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings,” we also know that “what” somebody is – just a Jew, woman, disabled, or disgusting – is a way of denying the uniqueness of a person with a proper name. Narration of the “who” is essential to both ethical and political life.

[caption id="attachment_15663" align="alignleft" width="300"] Adriana Cavarero (Source: Uncò Mag)[/caption]

Drawing on this insight from Arendt, the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero argues for a vision of the self as a “narratable self.” In Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (2000), Cavarero disputes the dominant vision of self-narration as emerging from the old idea of the independent will who writes his or her own autobiography without dependence on others. Instead, Cavarero argues for a fundamentally dependent view of the self, a view that shows how our autobiographies are given to us by others. This autobiographical-biographical practice is what Cavarero finds in women’s consciousness-raising activities in the 1970s. She also draws on other tales of “self” disclosure, from Odysseus, Orpheus, and Scheherazade to those found in the settings of Milan and New York City bookstores.

For example, Cavarero relates the story of Amalia and Emilia, two women in Milan who are enrolled in a 150-hour adult education class. (These types of classes started with trade union movements and became part of the practices of women’s groups as well.) As Cavarero notes, the story of Amalia and Emilia emerges in one of the most famous books of Italian feminism, Don’t Think You Have Any Rights (1987). Amalia reports the story of her friend Emilia, who dies prematurely at age fifty-three. Emilia was struggling to write her life story, which she never managed to tell or write in a beautiful or coherent way. Her friend, Amalia, the one who could narrate more potently, realizes that following their exchanges in writing, she knows the story of her friend so well that she writes it for her. Emilia carries the typed story with her in her handbag: pulling it out, reading it, overcome with emotion at the recognition of her self.

The episode “almost seems like a transposition of the Homeric Ulysses to the outskirts of contemporary Milan” (55). There is the weeping with emotion at the recognition of ones story narrated by another. But these are not strangers and this is not a tale of heroism that may live on for centuries, tales that Arendt often praises. Instead, as Cavarero puts it: “Of course, Emilia could have written her autobiography with her own hand – in fact she tried. Like Arendt, we nonetheless begin to suspect that what prevented her from successfully completing the undertaking was not so much a lack of literary talent, but rather the impossibility of personally objectifying the material of her own desire” (56). That is, “the who of Emilia shows itself here with clarity in the perception of a narratable self that desires the tale of her own life-story” (56). But it takes the other to recognize this desire. Therefore, “the political thought of Arendt, reinterpreted in light of feminist experience” helps us to better understand the ontological desire for a self that can come through the political act of narration among friends. This equality does not mean that each person is in the same position of expertise or that there is no recognition of power. Quite the opposite: yet through the relation of narration, each is dependent on the other.

Although Cavarero doesn’t use this language explicitly, we can see this as a democratic exchange. This is particularly challenging when addressing situations of structural inequality based on colonization or class or racial privilege as she herself briefly acknowledges. It’s also an open question as to where the act of interpretation or translation may be in this view of the “narratable self.” Nonetheless, the concept of the narratable self allows for a vision of the self that is different from the individualist horizon whereby we are “different or equal” to those in front of us with whom we “establish rules for living together” (88). Instead, the other “embodies the constitutive relationship of our inscrutable identity”(88).

[caption id="attachment_15665" align="alignright" width="300"] Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness, by Rita Charon (Source: Barnes & Noble)[/caption]

This intervention--in fact, we could say “invention”--of the self at the level of an embodied philosophy and political practice is also usefully drawn upon in the emerging practice of narrative medicine. At Columbia University Medical Center, the Program in Narrative Medicine revolves around these insights. As their mission statement says: “Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. Through narrative training, the Program in Narrative Medicine helps physicians, nurses, social workers, mental health professionals, chaplains, academics, and all those interested in the intersection between narrative and medicine improve the effectiveness of care by developing these skills with patients and colleagues.”

How can narration disclose the “who” of a person and not the “what” of a category? How does this lead to a philosophy, politics, and practice of health that is ethical and democratic? It is through the disclosure/creation of a “who” not a “what.” And we could ask both Adriana Cavarero and the executive director of the Program in Narrative Medicine Dr. Rita Charon (MD, PhD in English) more about this idea of the narratable self and narration. If you are in the Albany area next academic year, both will be on Siena College’s campus as part of a yearlong Symposium on the philosophy of Cavarero – both are deeply inspired by and critically engaged with Arendt and narration -- as we should be, too.

(Featured Image: Abstract Self Portrait; Source: imgbuddy.com)