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We also consider that the forms acquired by dialogues among fragments, the rela-
tion between the events in a narrative, are an expression of consciousness, of creativity
and, particularly, of temporal creativity. We shall now be discussing these last ideas,
one's narrative as an application representation of consciousness of the world (and of
its times) and, in consequence, of identity. But fi rst, we should remember that the
purpose of all this discourse is to show that people's narratives possess a powerful
symbolic load, which even transcends their own consciousness and that of its effects.
5.3
Narrative and Consciousness
The idea that narrative is a form of consciousness and comprehension of the world,
developed on the basis of each individual's concept of time, is not new. Beyond the
perspectives of strictly literary theories, thinkers associated to different disciplines, in
particular philosophers, as stated in the introduction, have dealt with the subject. We
shall now offer some related academic contributions. We will start at the beginning.
Some suggest that life is nothing more than a biological phenomenon until it is
interpreted (Ricoeur
1991
). Narratives are born because in order to understand the
world, humans have to confi gure it symbolically. To do so, we articulate our percep-
tions into signs, rules and standards (Bell
1990
). This means that, as we order the
world from its very reception, human experience is already semantically and lin-
guistically preconfi gured at birth. In any case, narrative is produced when, in order
to write life, construct it, invent it or describe it, we have no option but to design a
plot: to consider the structural relations among the elements.
So, the concept of the plot, as Carr (
1991
) points out, forcibly implies developing
a temporal consciousness of the objects that form part of this narrative. And this is
only possible because of our memory and our experience of time. In reality, con-
sciousness of a happening, of an action or of an experience is its process. Its con-
sciousness is, in short, its course, change or permanence. We experience objects
retained in subjective conceptions of the past and their projection into the future. So
this would constitute, in itself, a conception in the present. Narrative form, or a
story, is therefore a representation of our real perception (Rankin
2002
), and con-
sciousness, in turn, is narrative in essence, i.e. the signs, rules and standards that
form part of a narrative being told are always those of consciousness: those of reten-
tion and anticipation, of before and after and of the preceding and posterior states.
And this is so even though said facts are reproduced and refi gured in different forms
of narrative communication. Narrative, in short, is consciousness and, particularly,
consciousness of time.
1
The idea of narrative communication challenges any attempt to believe that nar-
rative, our narrative, as a product derived from our consciousness, is an egoistic,
individual and personal product. Actually, to a large extent, it is quite the opposite.
To begin with, the projection of our identity, our narrative as a product, is a form of
1
The psychological relation between time and consciousness is discussed by Bergson in his
