May You Live Forever?: (Re)Writing the Narrative of the Self in a Cremation Volume For a Thai Funeral

As social saturation in postmodernity has decentred our experience into pieces (Firat and Venkatesh 1995), we are striving to bring together diverse elements into an integrated whole in order to live meaningfully (Gergen 1991). We try to re-organise and unify our saturated self into the narrative self (Giddens 1991; McAdams 1997). We make an effort to coordinate the multiple and conflicting facets of our lives within a narrative framework which connects past, present, and an anticipated future and confers upon our lives a sense of sameness and continuity (McAdams 1988). Ricoeur (1984;1992) also supports that we require a narrative identity for our self, that is, we make sense of ourselves and our lives by the stories we can (or cannot) tell. Presumably, we come to know ourselves by the narratives we construct to situate ourselves temporally and spatially. Coyle (1992) elaborates that a person creates a life story, a biography or a personal narrative in an attempt to impart meaning and coherence to his/her disparate life experiences by forging connections, imposing causality, and making it appear as if his/her life has unfolded or is unfolding in a purposeful way.

Citation:

Kritsadarat Wattanasuwan (2006) ,"May You Live Forever?: (Re)Writing the Narrative of the Self in a Cremation Volume For a Thai Funeral", in LA - Latin American Advances in Consumer Research Volume 1, eds. Silvia Gonzalez and David Luna, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 48-49.