The article Narrating The Self by Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps examines the personal history of an individual from the perspective of linguistics, which includes language and storytelling. The activity of narrating brings meaning and conjoins various aspects of the self, which are separated by time, environmental factors, the psyche, our individual concept of right and wrong, etc. It is also a way for an individual to compromise her expectations and her experience.
My overall view of the article is that it was a bit wordy but interesting anyway. I found most intriguing, regarding my own personal narrative, the writer’s words on silence. “Silencing is a product of internal and interactional forces in that a person may repress and suppress emotions and events, but these processes are linked to external circumstances, including others’ expectations and evaluations. Silencing takes many forms, most of which do not lead to severe psychopathy” (32-33). Silencing myself from photographs most of the time is probably not psychologically detrimental to me nor does it represent a deeper issue.
The idea of the personal narrative relates to photography in that the individual (photographer and/or subject) shapes the ‘telling’ of her story (photograph). The same things that shape her linguistic narrative shape the characteristics of her photographic perspective. The photograph has a sense of permanence – tangible - over storytelling. The manifestations of perspective into the photograph can convey a sequence of events, such as a childhood, that usually carries a coherent mythos consistent to that of the verbal narrative. Yet, we have ways of hiding our narrative from others, even from ourselves. Other times, our narrative only becomes apparent in retrospect. Even other times, outsiders are keener to our personal narrative than we are because they provide an unobstructed objective perspective.
The writer spoke briefly about the way artists use narrative that “unsettles status quo principles of a genre” (29). I can think of this being a significant proponent of Modernism in art, literature and performance where the avant-gardes turned the middle class on its head. The list of the movements (almost every one from late nineteenth to the 1960’s) include Impressionism, Dadaism, everything Picasso did, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, etc, etc. Artists love the idea of confronting an audience with their narrative and the stronger the reaction, the better.
