Narrative, Moral Identity and Historical Consciousness: a Social Constructionist Account

Two decades ago inquiry into narrative played but a minor role in scholarly deliberation; the relationship between narrative analysis and historiography was little explored; the term "narrative" had scarcely entered the vocabulary of psychological science. Today the study of narrative concatenates throughout the humanities and the social sciences, and the problems raised by such analyses for our conception of history, along with the historical consciousness of the individual are profound. Further, there are now many distinct and well articulated orientations toward narrative realist, phenomenological, psychodynamic, cognitive, textual, and rhetorical among them. Each raises different implications for our understanding of history, identity, and the place of historical consciousness in contemporary society. My aim here is not to review, contrast or compare these various approaches, but rather to elucidate the rudiments of but a single orientation, recent in its emerging self-consciousness, but bold and exciting in implication. I wish, then, to outline a social constructionist account of narratives, and to explore several of its implications with respect to both identity and history. Of ultimate concern will be the role of historical consciousness in the achievement of moral identity. Social constructionist dialogues have long played a role in human sciences deliberation, with the classic work of Berger and Luckmann (1966) fostering lively and broadscale debate. However, contemporary constructionism has largely abandoned the social phenomenology and social structural analysis of former years. Rather, it draws its primary sustenance from recent history of science, social studies of science, ideological critique, post-structural literary theory, and the renaissance of rhetorical study.1 As many now see it, social constructionism serves as the principle successor to empiricist foundationalism now a moribund relic of "high modernism" as the chief means of understanding the acquisition and generation of what we as human scientists take to be knowledge of the world. For purposes of illuminating the social constructionist view, and providing a platform for contrasting other modes of approach, I shall proceed seriatim to develop a number of rudimentary assumptions regarding narrative, personal identity, and the achievement of moral consciousness through historical narration.