Beyond Body–Mind: Self-narratives and

Consciousness

Sangeetha Menon, Meera Kumar &

Rakesh Kumar

Psychological Studies

ISSN 0033-2968
Volume 64
Number 3

Psychol Stud (2019) 64:266-274

DOI 10.1007/s12646-019-00519-w

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Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-019-00519-w
REVIEW ARTICLE
Beyond Body–Mind: Self-narratives and Consciousness
Sangeetha Menon1 • Meera Kumar1 • Rakesh Kumar1
Received: 14 October 2018 / Accepted: 15 August 2019 / Published online: 14 September 2019
 National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2019
Abstract Strong subjective factors embedded in self-ex-
istence and the non-reductive and encompassed existence
of the self imply the need for imagining self-representa-
tions that are inclusive and integrated. Towards this end,
arguments from philosophy of psychology, consciousness
studies, literature, and material culture are presented. They
facilitate understanding the presence and formation of self-
narratives. There is need to trace the presence of the self
both within and beyond the space of body–mind and the
self-narratives. Also, the understanding of subjective nature
of consciousness lies in the process of epsitemologizing
‘experience’ and its self.
Keywords Body–mind
Consciousness
Experience

Possibilities
Self
Self-narrative
Self-existence

Language
Material culture
Introduction
Is the existence of the self the result of biological, cultural
or individual factors and phenomena is an intense debate
that has a long history, and is today a debate which influ-
ences brain and consciousness studies. The current episte-
mological setting for ‘consciousness’ starts from, if not
leads to, conditional definitions of ‘consciousness’. Simple
and isolated building blocks are identified and are elabo-
rated without the specificities of the context in order to
arrive at parsimonious explanations of self-existence and
& Sangeetha Menon
sangeetha.menon@nias.res.in
1
Consciousness Studies Programme, National Institute of
Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, India
123
its attributes. Such a reductive and de-contextualized study
of human experiences, for instance in cognitive sciences,
has raised a larger debate questioning the very existence of
the self. The existence of the self is questioned and side-
lined by defining the same as a function of the brain pro-
cesses that can be traced to psychosomatic representations
mapped in the neural system. According to Damasio
‘consciousness is the process whereby a mind is imbued
with a reference we call self, and is said to know of its own
existence and of the existence of objects around it’ (Da-
masio, 2003, p. 192). ‘While the sixteenth century seemed
interested in body-as-person metaphors, a more complex
meaning emerged when Descartes separated body from the
mind and assigned considerably more importance to mind.
His philosophy dealt with epistemological issues that
could, and subsequently did, lead to a more general method
of knowing; a method that remains the gold standard for
rigorous cognitive research even today’ (Pollio, Finn, &
Custer, 2015). But in spite of tremendous development in
understanding ordinary cognitions, a satisfactory under-
standing of self through a cognitive framework that divides
body from mind and consciousness has not yet emerged.
The divisions of body and mind thus get revisited with
scepticism on the Cartesian doubt and the mind–body
divide. However, what is fascinating is that the famed ‘hard
problem’ continues to be a puzzle that has not been solved,
which in turn emphasizes the indubitable presence of self
that cannot be dismissed as a function of emergent phe-
nomena. The person and his subjective self persist to be
‘the epistemic object and practical problem’ (Langlitz,
2010) questioning our partial and homogenized notions of
human experience and self-identity even if it is in the
frameworks dominated by neuroscience.
For many developmental psychologists, the self is
important because it can be situated in the brain. Whether
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Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
the self is an emergent phenomenon, or is identical with the
brain processes, what makes the self interesting is its
relation with the brain in order to explain its existence.
Cognitive neuroscience has become successful because of
its exciting and impossible agenda to understand all human
expressions with the help of a biological organ and its
number and symbol crunching abilities. In short, the pro-
ject of mainstream trends in cognitive neuroscience is to
find how the brain creates the self and its experience.
Dennett (1989) considers the self is a ‘non-minimal self’,
while it is the abstract centre of narrative gravity according
to Dennett (1991). Strawson (1997) presents self as a
cognitive ‘distinctively mental’ phenomenon. According to
Gazzaniga (2006), ‘brain’s left hemisphere interpreter’ is
responsible for the ‘ongoing narrative of our self image’,
and for Gallagher (2000) it is a distributed and decentred
self. For Damasio (1999), the self is core and
autobiographical.
According to Metzinger, the phenomenally transparent
representation of invariance and continuity constitutes the
intuitions that underlie many traditional philosophical fal-
lacies concerning the existence of selves as process-inde-
pendent individual entities, as ontological substances that
could in principle exist all by themselves, and as mysteri-
ously unchanging essences that generate a sharp trans-
temporal identity for persons. But at the end of this
investigation, we can clearly see how individuality (in
terms of simplicity and indivisibility), substantiality (in
terms of ontological autonomy), and essentiality (in terms
of trans-temporal sameness) are not properties of selves at
all (Metzinger, 2009, p. 626). The self-sense as a funda-
mental entity that drives, influences, and changes human
experiences is complex enough that a purely reductive
disciplinary orientation does not give satisfactory answers
on why we are what we are, beyond behavioural approa-
ches. The slippery problem that underlies the first-person
nature of consciousness is the entanglement of the body-
sense and the self-sense in it, which also forces us to revisit
the subject–object divide time and again. It is important to
examine both these senses. Are the body-sense and the self-
sense distinct, and if so, what demarcates the distinction?
Where and how are these senses entangled? What consti-
tutes the basic everyday senses that we possess in a default
mode? (Menon, 2014, p. 7).
These questions lead us to further explore the self-nar-
ratives in the context of material culture, epistemology of
self-existence, and finally the relation between self, self-
reflection and consciousness. To define self in any one way
reduces it to its specific functional nature and not as an
entity that is persistent all through different experiences.
Hence it is important to conceptualize the self as a non-
dual entity with core connectedness with consciousness.
Our attempt, through the subsequent sections of the paper,
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is to propose self-consciousness—holism as a response to
substance dualism. This paper argues that it is important to
address the complexity of the self as founded on both
cognitive sensory mechanisms and experiential meanings.
Self-narratives and its Material Culture
With the inclusion of non-human animals, technologies as
well as ecology in the periphery of the human geography,
the temporal rhythm of our cultural landscape experience
translated itself into a spatial praxis. It started 70,000 years
back with the ‘cognitive revolution’ (a new way thinking
and communicating), i.e. the ‘accidental genetic mutation
which changed the brain of sapiens, enabling them to think
in unprecedented way’ (Harari, 2015 pp. 23–44).
The nascent cognitive abilities triggered the story of
social evolution. The history of the lived time of the
individual experiences of the Sapiens can be seen in the
form of communication, capacity of skill development,
sharing of art, architecture, music and dance. The above-
mentioned ‘subjugation of skill development’ to the shar-
ing of joy can be seen in landscape and commodity
expressions during the ‘annual cycle’ (religion, ritual,
festival etc.) and ‘lifecycle’ (birth, marriage, death etc.) of
practical experience (Harari, 2015, p. 41).
Language as a ‘handful of shared symbols’ played a
major role in the translation of the cumulative material
cultural rhetoric which ranges from foraging and food
processing to tool making and gossiping (Laland, 2018).
For example, the interplay between folk narratives and
material evidence can be understood in the story of a
chariot and its association with royal family in Indian
mythology. The mythological chariot narrative is mean-
ingfully objectified by the archaeological discovery of
chariot along with royal object in the excavation of
Sanauli, Utter Pradesh. The cultural revolution studies as
well as ‘genomic analysis’ describe that the self as a sub-
ject is the representation of socially transmitted knowledge
and constructive feedback experience to prune modern
human mind and generate an evolved psychology of
identical (collective self as a community) as well as iden-
tifiable (individual) self (Laland, 2018). Language plays a
crucial role in the identity and definition of the self. Lan-
guage, as a group of shared signs which are articulated to
communicate, implies social identity in sharing thoughts,
emotion and opinion in grooming of culture (Zachariah &
Joseph, 2018).
Culture represents one’s social background, believes as
well as lived experiences of ‘life cycle’ which is commu-
nicated as well as bestowed to the next generations
(Zachariah & Joseph, 2018). Culture as an experience of
the self (in the form of knowledge, confidence, art, laws,
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customs, traditions) or culture in the form of shared
experiences (language, religion, celebrations, food and
clothing) is the part of folk narratives and is orally trans-
mitted as one’s heritage. The folk narrative includes the
myths, legends and folktales which were constructed in
infinite time and place and derived from certain human
experiences for validating the purpose of the society
(Oring, 1989; Hicks & Beaudry, 2010).
The material culture plays a major role in assigning
meaning to folk narratives. It forms the link between social
landscape, style, technology and the site in spatial and
temporal proximity of sequence. The assigning of meaning
and objectivity to all events and behaviours, all contin-
gencies and agencies as well as discontinuity and conti-
nuity of social structures is important. In the preservation
and communication of shared values, language is an
important component. For the preservation of culture, the
individual takes measures to present his experiences and
identity and not get side-lined by the influence of a
homogenous group. Though the relationship between sub-
ject (as a lived self) and object (as lived experience in the
form of material culture and tangible and intangible values)
is neither fixed nor ambiguous, the plot of the narration is
the re-descriptions of the myriad relationship between
elements, events, characters and conditions within the
sequential or non-sequential time, space and nature in the
form of translation of intangible culture in the tangible
mode of cultural deposition of lived experiences such as
rock art and terracotta art (Hicks & Beaudry, 2010; Plu-
ciennik, 1999).
Epistemology of Self-existence
We relate to objects, events and people based on an esti-
mate of the value of these by themselves and the meaning
we give them based on our previous experiences of similar
situations. Though we enjoy a consensus on perceived
physical objects, the relationship we form with them is not
strictly based on the consented meaning attributed to them
but by the unique attitudes we have and meanings we give
as individuals. The identity we form of ourselves is a
cumulative product of the relationships and responses we
have already made. At the same time, we respond to situ-
ations as the identities we have already formed. The dis-
tinctive way we respond to situations and the identity we
form of ourselves are mutually influenced.
How different is the knowledge about the ‘self’ from
other kinds of knowledge? The knowledge about the self is
different from other kinds of knowledge by being the only
means for the expression of self-existence. Self is the
continuous experience of a deep nature that everything else
is founded on it and interpreted by it. The complexity in
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Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
self-knowledge is that it is defined by the organic process
of the experiencer, ‘the conscious being’ integrating the
knowledge about itself into its being-ness. There is a ten-
sion between ‘the experiencer’ and ‘the experienced’,
which exists not only as a theoretical obstruct but also as an
ontological challenge. The past and the present are con-
nected through the actual act of recall with the help of a
self-narrative which is built along our life experiences. The
remembrance of a past event is necessarily accompanied
with the conviction of our own existence at the time the
event happened. I cannot remember a thing that happened a
year ago without a conviction as strong as memory can
give, that I, the same identical person who now remembers
that event, did then exist (Reid, 1994, p. 208). The puzzle is
whether self-existence is an experience in space and time
like any other experience or is it cognition of a certain si-
tuation. The challenge is to think about the metaphysical
status of the ‘present’ and ‘given’ experience which is
dualistic but still originating from the experiencer. The
‘other’ which is the basic epistemological component of
experience appears to have an independent existence when
the identity of the self is defined by the ‘other’. The ‘other’
corresponds to the responses (likes and dislikes) and basic
attitudes (identity and difference) by which we relate to
objects, people and events and not objects, people and
events by themselves.
The analysis of the basic epistemological components of
experience, when looked from the point of view of the self,
gives primary importance to the self-narratives and not the
‘other’. The ‘otherness’ of the object of experience is not
an intrinsic nature of self but the epistemological compo-
nent which generates meaning through a relationship
between the self and the object of experience. Hence it
cannot be removed as long as it is experienced. The
emphasis on self-existence is not on self as an object by
itself or the way we relate to that object but the ‘self’ which
is defined and perpetuated during the process of self-ex-
pression and construction of self-narratives. What is pivotal
to the epistemology of understanding self through self-
existence is the redefinition of the relationship with the
‘other’ world from the point of view of the self without
reducing it to a causal identity defined by the discrete
cognitive processes of knowing. Self-existence concept
gives an ontological value in order to serve as the foun-
dation of all cognitive processes.
Self-existence, Self-reflection and Consciousness
According to social cognitive approaches, the self is a
schema or a grand collection of several schemas. The self
is a schema or set of schemas which includes abstract
semantic knowledge as well as specific episodic memories
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Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
and may have hierarchical organization like other schemas
or concepts. The evidentiary basis for this view is an
increasingly large body of literature documenting the role
of self-schemas in information processing (Westen, 1992,
p. 3). Self-knowledge is not another kind of knowledge and
is not gained by a cognitive process. The hierarchy of
cognitive processes and functions are ruled out in the case
of the knowledge of the self. This is to reiterate that self-
knowledge is not the knowledge of something hitherto non-
existent or existed in disjunction. Our habitual categories of
thinking are unidirectional, linear and hierarchical. Such
categories of thinking cannot cause transcendence in our
thinking. At the same time what is experienced as dualistic
as a result of our cognitive understanding to follow a
reverse way and understand the duality itself has to again
use categories of thinking. But those categories of thinking
will not be different in degree but by their intrinsic nature.
The understanding of duality which is the hallmark of all
knowledge could take place only in a metaphysical order of
thinking. What is attempted for is not a new piece of
knowledge but a reorientation of experience through the
redirecting of it from self-existence.
I cognize the physical dimension of objects and events
through the information I get about them through my
physical eyes. I get to know about their indirect and
intrinsic features through the cognitive structures of my
body–mind system. I get to know about the way I know and
interact with them by a warring the structures of my
experience through self-reflection. Self-awareness, which
is influenced by agency and choice making, is also influ-
enced by the degree of self-reflection one is capable of.
Self-identity, or the underlying experience of a continuing
self, is reinforced by experiences that are private and
experientially contextualized (Rao & Menon, 2016). To
have the cognitive knowledge about the self which makes
possible the two degrees of cognition is primarily impor-
tant because self-existence alone has an ontological value,
while the other two are cognitive. The question is whether
all cognitive processes of identity spring forth from the
ontological foundation of self-existence. The experience of
alienation and search for identity starts from the moment
duality is given an ontological value and passing self and
experience through an epistemology meant for ordinary
cognitions. To know that which is beyond ordinary cog-
nitions and expressed through the relationship of self and
the other, what is necessary is practice of self-reflection.
The processes of ordinary cognitive processes are dis-
lodged of their physical and unidirectional function, in the
process of cognizing the self. Self-reflection is the ability to
reflect upon oneself objectifying the content of experience
and also the author and experiencer of experience.
This includes reflecting upon one’s own thinking that is
thinking about thinking, possessing discrete awareness of
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oneself, and the outer world other than the self, and the
ability to distance from the author, agent, and experiencer
of the experience (Rao & Menon, 2016). We are able to
give interconnected meanings to our experiences, learn
from our mistakes, form beliefs, cherish hopes, have
insecurities, express emotions, reflect upon faux pas we
make in life—all these rich forms of experiences with an
unwavering unity and coherence. The first and foremost
features of self are being (to put it more experientially, the
‘am-ness’), continuity, adherence, coherence and unity. All
through these several features of self what runs is that at
any point we are capable of different degrees of awareness
and reflection (Menon, 2014, p. 29). Thus, what we try to
argue for is to see the self not just from a cognitive func-
tional point of view, or a mere representation, but as ‘be-
ing’ which is fundamental to any mode of cognition or
emotion.
In employing epistemology of ordinary cognitions to
understand the self we search for the complex parts and
sub-parts of the third-person representation of the object of
experience. Seldom is it recognized that it is vital to review
the complexity of the tool we have design and engage in
order for it to measure or represent the phenomenon it
needs to report. The advancement in brain scanning tech-
nologies, for example, is widely considered to be revolu-
tionary in giving more knowledge about consciousness.
But it is naively assumed that the advancement in tech-
nologies would reveal what is unknown. The understanding
of consciousness is assumed to happen in a ‘gradual’
manner with the gradual advancement in technologies. This
is a round-a-way, circular and not progressive method,
since the ground for search is limited. This method can
give details of the third-person representation and not
facilitate a leap into the unknown aspects of the self. What
we seek is not just an analysis of the analysis and the
analysed but an analysis of that which will help us to
analyse, namely, the way we design our epistemological
tools.
Can consciousness be epistemologized, and ‘known’
like any other object? To theorize consciousness as a third-
person entity is the goal of empirical approaches. Though
the keyword is ‘understanding’, the cognitive processes we
design for the outside world as well as inner self are
founded on the experiencing of consciousness. The ‘un-
derstanding of consciousnesses is the process of epsite-
mologizing ‘experience’ and its self.
The phenomenology of the self commences from the
physical conveyor of experience, namely the body. The
immediate locus and unifier of experience is a sense of
‘body-feeling’ relating to physiological functions. How-
ever, experience cannot be understood in its totality if the
scope is restricted to empirical correlates, though they are
the immediate and visible representations for an objective
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study. Two challenges are important for analysis here: The
first challenge is that a third-person description of the
experience is complex and trans-physical. The second
challenge is that the cognition of self-existence is a vital
component of what constitutes experience.
The present empirical discussions on consciousness are
mostly directed by ideas about physical location, specific
and coordinated neural firings, and functions of cortical
areas, etc., all of which relate to a key physical centre
called the ‘brain’. The brain is both the cause and effect of
human experience from a neurological point of view. The
‘brain fixation’ is got over to some extent in the discussions
on ‘mirror-neurons’ which implies the complexity and
nonlinearity involved in human experience. It is to be
asked why the ‘brain’ as to be seen as the primary locus of
a phenomenon (experience) which is neither brain-centred
nor localized. It is also to be asked whether in the process
of understanding the immediate first-person representation
of consciousness, namely experience, if there is a mix-up
of the cause of experience and the effect of experience. The
effect of experience that leads to self-narratives is a key
phenomenological concept still alien to current empirical
dialogues. The meaning of experience is greatly con-
tributed to by the response and attitudes we develop
towards a particular situation and event. The shift in the
meaning of experience with the change in the kind of
responses and attitudes transcends the basic dualist pre-
sentation of any experience in terms of ‘me’ and ‘the
other’. Self-knowledge is not another kind of knowledge
but integrates the divided binary of ‘me’ and ‘the other’
into a continuous whole. The experience of self if has to be
another kind of experience it could only be like any other
experience, of the ‘other’ which is founded on basic cog-
nitive duality.
Thus, the self is not experienced as something extrane-
ous and separated in time and space. So as to transcend our
habitual cognitive methods of finding a meaning through
identity or difference, the experience of self is to be
described in juxtaposition with the analysis of the content
of experiences. In such juxtaposition, the description of the
‘other’ coalesces into the description of the self-narrative.
The process of self-inquiry transforms into the fruit of
inquiry through self-reflection without culminating at some
point of time and space to another ordinary cognition. The
questions about free will, character and the self are to be
situated in a common space in order to appreciate the
deeper levels of reflective capability that human con-
sciousness possesses. One’s sense of freedom to make
choices without being biased by favourable or unfavour-
able outcomes indicates that the human mind is not a
vacant tablet and the self is not a product of language and
changing environment nor is self an extended bodily
function (Menon, 2016, p. 45).
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Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
The basic duality involved in any experience cannot be
transcended by another kind of experience until the major
experiential component in an experience is factored into
the content of experience for analysis. The given content of
experience is something other than the self who under-
stands it or experiences it. Towards arriving at knowledge
of the self, the self defined by the other, who identifies with
the experiencer, also has to become a cognitive component.
Thus, self-existence is not another kind of experience or
identity but a shift in the meaning given to the content of
experience, and self-identity, through the process of cre-
ating and dissolving self-narratives. The essential meaning
of any content of cognition is transcendental. But the nat-
ure of our cognitive set up is not a sufficient epistemo-
logical system to know and experience the essential
meaning of the self. The process of knowing, the object of
knowledge and the knower of the object—all must be
meditated through the self-narrative through the process of
self-reflection. Self brings in consciousness in a unified
space by connecting knowledge to a knower. Thus, our
experiences are always tied to a personal self. Reflective
awareness is always tied to the self who reflects upon its
experiences. The experience of the self does not happen in
a linear space but through designing and redesigning of
self-narratives.
Self-narratives and Negotiating the Mind–Body
Language Nexus
Famous American author and lawyer Scott Fredrick Tur-
row in his work Ordinary Heroes profoundly states: ‘Who
are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves,
and believe’ (Turrow, 2005 p. 324). Our identities often
become the stories we tell ourselves, negotiating with our
environment and positioning ourselves in relation to others.
These stories we tell ourselves about our own lives are
often characterized by a retelling of our lived experiences,
and definitely involve a process of self-reflexivity. These
narratives also negotiate between temporality, incorporat-
ing into it the past, present and future and are structured
with a beginning, middle and end. Narrative identity
according to McAdam’s framework (2001, 100–122)
encompasses the internalized evolving story of the self.
While there are two approaches to the understanding of
narratives, namely hermeneutic and paradigmatic, the for-
mer seeks to look at the specific and contextualized ele-
ments of the society, whereas the latter tries to transcend
these particulars and make generalizable scientific findings.
Bluck (Habermas & Bluck, 2000, pp. 748–769) identifies
four types of coherences that emerge in an individual’s
ability to tell stories. This includes Temporal, Causal,
Thematic, and the cultural concept of biography, which is
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Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
‘the story assuming the format and prose common to the
narrator’s culture and context’. To isolate the narrator from
the narrative, and the narrative from its cultural context is
to problematize the very positioning of these two subjects.
In his paper titled ‘Who am I? Narration and its con-
tribution to Self and Identity’, Bamberg (2010) examines
narrative as tools for identity construction and analysis. He
tries to make a distinction between self (sense of self) and
identity. The question he poses seems to be central to any
enquiry that tries to transcend the boundaries of identity
formation and self-reflexivity. ‘Do identities and sense of
self encompass whole lives—all experiences ever made?
Or do they consist of memories that are considered rele-
vant-enough to feed into one’s life story?’ (Bamberg,
2010). He further elaborates that ‘Identity is a label
attributed to the attempt to differentiate and integrate a
sense of self along different social and personal dimen-
sions. Consequently, identities can be differentiated and
claimed according to varying social- cultural categories
such as gender, race, occupation, gangs, socio-economic
status, ethnicity, class, nation states or regional territory’
(Bamberg, 2010).
The narrative presence has no basis or ground except in
the narrative act, and that act cannot carry within itself its
own predetermined meanings and effects like a performa-
tive statement; it requires a context, the cultural context of
the reader, to gain meaning. The narrative act is indeed a
suspended performative, or a performative that may be
realized in a wide variety of contexts (McDonald 11). To
elucidate this view further, it would prove useful to look at
the retellings of myths. To consider a specific example
from one of India’s most powerful feminist authors,
Mahasveta Devi in her short story ‘Draupadi’ tells the story
of a tribal woman ‘Dopdi’ who is arrested and sexually
assaulted by government officials. While the name Dopdi is
a reference to the character Draupadi in Mahabharata, to
merely allude to it by the use of the name is enough to
establish a relationship between the protagonists, but at the
same time also draw upon the similarities and differences
between the two characters, placed in two varying contexts.
Gayatri Spivak in her forward to Mahasweta Devi’s story
writes, ‘It would be a mistake, I think, to read the modern
story as a refutation of the ancient. Dopdi is (as heroic as)
Draupadi. She is also what Draupadi-written into the
patriarchal and authoritative sacred text as proof of male
power-could not be. Dopdi is at once a palimpsest and a
contradiction’ (Spivak, 1981). Archetypes and myths retold
in this manner induce a collaborative cognitive process as
well as specify distinctions of the newly constructed
identities.
Singer writes: ‘Underlying this linkage of memory and
personality is the cognitive construct of a schema and its
subtype, the script. If schemas, as articulated by Piaget, are
271
organized bodies of knowledge, then the script, as defined
by both Tomkins (1979) and Schank and Abelson (1977)
are schemas that contain information about sequences of
events and the causal linkages that bind these sequences
together. They specify rules about what precedes what in a
particular type of experience, and they alert individuals to
diversions from the expected sequence. For Tomkins,
scripts contain information, most often in an interpersonal
context, about the sequence of emotions that adhere to an
unfolding series of events. Scenes are the manifestations in
a given moment in time of these abstracted affect-event
sequences, along with the unique imagery that accrues to a
specific episode from one’s life’ (Singer, 2004, p. 441).
The engagement in activities that are interpretable of
making claims vis-a-vis the ‘Who am I’ question requires
acts of self-identification by implementing and choosing
from particular repertoires that identify and contextualize
speakers/writers along various sociocultural categories. It
might be helpful to consider these repertoires not as men-
tal/linguistic schemata located inside the mind, but rather
as preconscious, not fixed and open to change, depending
on context and function (Bamberg, 2010). ‘Can a person’s
mind be described as, in part, a by-product of how he or she
is situated at the intersection of multiple storylines? Can
ideology in general, and normative assumptions about
identity in particular, be redefined as entrenched storyli-
nes—master narratives that arise through an iterative pro-
cess of assigning the same position to the same kind of
agent, until the agent and her position appear to be indis-
solubly linked? And if so, to what extent can storytelling
interrupt or even derail this process, working to uncouple
positions from types of agents and thereby rewrite domi-
nant storylines?’ (Herman, 2007, p. 317).
Devi’s retelling of Draupadi’s story for instance looks at
the altering of a myth at its head, by placing the woman in
a contrasting setting, where she uses her own agency to
give it up, as an act of defiance. Dopdi walks naked to the
‘Senanayak’, refusing to be clothed by her assaulters, an
unarmed target, inducing fear, even in her predators.
Through the story line, the protagonist’s identity as a
doubly marginalized tribal woman (as opposed to her
namesake who was a queen and yet shamed in the court) as
well as her helplessness is redefined.
Although the complex relation between the formation of
identity and narratives can to a large extend be unfurled,
the discipline of discursive psychology further explores the
narratives of ‘self’. ‘The sense of self has its origin in
certain narrative practices in which an infant is treated as a
nascent person. It is sustained or undercut by their aban-
donment. However, narratives of self are complicated. The
rules by which the cluster of concepts around personhood
and ‘‘the self’’ are managed need to be carefully teased
apart into several interwoven strands. For example, more is
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272
comprehended under the polysemic concept of ‘‘self’’ than
one’s sense of personal identity’. For Harre (2001), ‘Self 1’
is generally presented as a unique, context-free location,
always related to where the body is in space and strictly
contemporary, so there is little room for diversity. How-
ever, there are cultural settings (e.g. Carlos Castaneda-type
mysticism) in which the one person may lay claim to more
than one perceptual standpoint. But it is significant that in
their narratives the body is left behind in out-of-the-body
experiences. The complementary rule, ‘one person per
body’, is generally enforced, not least, by treating claims
for multiple occupancy as pathological, for instance in
diagnosing such claims as the mark of Multiple Personality
Disorder. He also mentions two other types of selves, ‘Self
2’ which is dynamic due to the accumulative process of
knowledge acquisition and ‘Self 3’ referring to different
selves that the same person portrays to different people in
terms of impression management.
While ‘Positioning’ is an important tool in understand-
ing where the self is placed in relation with the narrative,
Herman (2007 pp. 314–325) also describes embodiment,
distributed versus localized nature of mind, emotion dis-
course and etymology. He elaborates that although lan-
guage structures can be related with the ‘physical
embodiment of the mind … stories help constitute char-
acters as embodied: the process of narration constructs the
experience of self as inalienably linked to a spatially and
temporally oriented body in the world. Scholars in the field
of cognitive linguistics have explored ways in which the
structure of language is grounded in (and constitutes a
ground for) embodied human experience’. For example,
the mind–body language nexus manifests itself in metaphor
systems deriving from the experience of navigating the
world in, preferably an upright position. While Dopdi
becomes an icon of the helpless Dalit woman, she also
exemplifies the position of Scripture Feminine, roughly
translated as Women’s writing, a theory that foregrounds
the importance of language for the psychic understanding
of the self. The theory elaborates upon how women can
find an enabling alternative where she is considered as
merely the ‘other’ in a phallocentric world.
While narrative identity theories and discursive psy-
chology seems to answer complex questions on the rela-
tionship between the self-personhood and narrative
identity, what remains ineffable is a space that might be a
centre where these are interlinked. Whether there is such a
space, or a lack of it, seems to be a question worthy of
research, to trace what lays beyond the understanding of
self as merely a sense of personhood, but of a conscious-
ness that is closer, that which is often termed a ‘core self’.
Whether experiential knowledge is facilitated through
language actions/narratives or whether it is facilitated vice
versa seems to be a mystery yet to be solved. ‘That is, do
123
Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
stories in fact enable us to know ‘‘what it is like’’ to be
someone else, and maybe also ourselves? More radically,
could we even have a notion of the felt quality of experi-
ence without the narrative?’ (Herman, 2007, p. 325).
The Self Beyond
Our cultural lives and accumulation of experiences have
helped us to build and preserve a self-narrative with
meaningful experiences. A word remains abstract and
representational until we give emotional valence to it. Each
of our experiences is presented after being filtered through
our feelings, memories, attitudes, beliefs, value systems
and the self-narrative with which we stitch all of these
together. We know about our inner world through our
moods, physiological, and mental states, physical disposi-
tion, and a self-narrative that is readily available to our
awareness at any point of time. We possess and use self-
awareness and empathy to bridge the two worlds of ‘me
and the other’. The integration of these two characteristics
also is essential to determine our psychological and social
wellbeing. When the two become disconnected or these
functions become hampered, we are faced with cognitive
dysfunctions and other pathologies.
In a study which says that phenomenological philosophy
do not give enough analysis on the body, five themes are
suggested to elaborate on the everyday and theoretical
meaning of the experience of the human body such as:
inside/outside, visible/not visible, vitality/activity, instru-
ment/object, appearance/self-expression. Several functions
of the self are transferred on to the body which help build
narratives with attributes of experience. The recognition of
self as self-narratives of self-existence will help highlight
the meaning and purpose of life and living from the most
intimate point of view which is of ‘my-self’. Such a stance
will be different from the goal to achieve a detached re-
organization of the basic epistemology of experience. But
then, the magic of the self and the self-narrative to re-
construct and reinvent is not fully known until we see the
space that facilitates the union and division of the body and
the mind. It is such a space where the self emerges, sub-
merge, and remerge. That is also the space where self-
placements and self-displacements happen, where the
content of experience becomes the question for mainstream
disciplines and practises to define identity, normalcy and
challenges.
How united or/and divided are body and mind? What is
the focus for the union and division? What are the fringes
of the union and division and what happens in the fringe
space? These questions pose the primary challenge to
define what is ‘beyond’. ‘Beyond’ is the yet undefined
space, yet undefined time, yet undefined ‘I’, and the yet
 Author's personal copy
Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):266–274
undefined ‘we’. The tricky irony is that the ‘I’ and the
‘you’ can change each other mutually, and one changes
according to the changes in the other. Our daily lives are
affected by the possibilities of the ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’,
which at any moment is dynamic and changing. How does
the self narrate itself beyond the body–mind system which
we usually label as union and division of the two funda-
mental entities that define our identity more for the main-
stream ‘other’ than oneself? What is ‘beyond’ the body–
mind system? The only way we can imagine the beyond of
the body–mind system is by four avenues: Possibilities,
Imagination, Inclusive self and Consciousness.
Human body is the basic instrument given to us and that
which we call as ‘me’. Is that ‘me’ primarily a body?
Whatever that is, a large amount of the ‘I’ is made possible
through the body, which at many points gains psycholog-
ical characteristics. We carry our body–mind through the
continuous and contiguous experience of me and fringed
by the norms imposed by the ‘other’, often. Is the ‘I’ a
body, ‘mind’ or something else? The current discussions on
body maps that the brain continuously make as we expe-
rience and change our views, viewpoints based on
reviewing our experiences and estimations, is a major turn
to also look at the subjective elements the brain is con-
strued with and what we call as intelligence or rationality is
no more alienated from the foibles of the body–mind. The
questions that emerge without absolute certainty are whe-
ther what we call and experience as the ‘body’ is an
abstract notion or a concrete entity. There is a binary
opposition of nature and culture in designing the body and
the self, by projecting the bipolarity of body and mind. We
live through a body–mind system in a world defined by
cultural and social space and both influenced by a self.
Anthropologists study body as a ‘subject of culture’ and
not a physical entity. The discourse on body itself as pos-
sessing many functions and qualities of the self are
demonstrated through embodiment theories, phenomenol-
ogy, and ethnographic practises. Several eastern philo-
sophical approaches emphasize the interconnected and
integrated views on body–mind-self framework. The
important idea that is conveyed through an analysis of the
body–mind structures and the self-constructions is that it is
only through an uninterrupted self-documentation that the
forces that work within us to narrate our stories can be
unravelled and for which the tools of self-reflection
become significant.
Acknowledgements We thank the anonymous reviewer for the very
helpful comments and detailed analysis. This study acknowledges the
support received from The Tata Trusts for a project funded through
the NIAS Consciousness Studies Programme.
273
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