Contribution
Description: As part of a research work for a doctoral thesis on education at the Universitat de Barcelona, I have been collecting and reflecting on stories of self. The broad goal for my doctoral thesis has been to reflect on a possible redefinition of education based on narratives of self, mainly through recorded interviews. As I have had the opportunity to compare this genre to other self narratives. I have observed that recorded interviews present a more institutionalized, harder concept of the individual, as opposed to a fuzzier, broader, image of a person who belongs in other genres in self narrative, some of which present an overwhelming institutionalization of other entities. This paper aims to share some of my reflections and findings concerning the implications of such a reified concept of the individual. I shall show some ways in which, through text & silence, the people who have told me their life-stories have made some sense of the processes of 1) reducing the experience of the person to the expected institutionalized individual; 2) surviving the disintegration of former identities; 3) finding ways to keep a healthy whole of their lives (both I and We), and reverting the reductionist process; 4) living with contradictions and tensions; 5) reflecting about learning, health, education, well being, being with others, and living with each one's self. Key words: Identity, Genres, Silence, Education as Social Practice.
Methodology: My methodology has gone back and forth from inductive to deductive practices, and from discipline-oriented to broadly transdisciplinary paths.
Conclusions: The implications of a reified concept of the individual point to: A) an impoverishment of the self image of persons; B) a greater delegation of responsibilities from other traditional institutions and from society as a whole, C) a new role for educational actors, whether self-educators, facilitators, or institutional mediators. This new role implies in turn the importance of action in several directions: 1) acknowledging a multiplicity of We-identities in the building of a healthy, dynamic I-identity; 2) combining a multiplicity of genres and languages for the expression of identity; 3) keeping in mind the need to acknowledge both the infinite richness of life, as it is phenomenologically experienced and the need to define (fuzzily) discrete categories in order to enable reference, understanding, and the sharing of experience; 4) recognizing the different functions and qualities of silence; and 5) for researchers, the importance to adopt an ethics of conversation: listening, or telling, or simply acknowledging the existence of the other, are not enough. It is crucial to converse. Because we need to secure the key to our shared home. It is also vital to allow for silence, distancing, and the development, over time, of a shared destiny. Finally, it is equally important to participate in a shared practice, attending to the call of the We, as well of the others, transcending the immediacy of self and group in the search of a possible utopia, the better world which, although we have experienced it somehow and carry it with us, won't be found ready made, but has to be built through joint action and the convergence of, and tension among, lives. This implies, dialectically, the need to articulate broad interpersonal movements with strong emphasis on each person, his and her commitments, and also his and her intimate needs.
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