ABSTRACT
In the Lacanian perspective that we engage in this book, social existence is largely constituted by the identifications that language creates and the interrelationships – and often misrecognitions – that language facilitates. Narratives comprise the knowledges which shape each of our symbolic identifications. These identifications constitute our ego-ideals, our conscious self, which inter-reacts with the other members of society, seeking their acceptance through our speech and actions towards fulfilment of our often unconscious drives and desires (Lacan 1988, 141). For most poststructuralist thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, narratives are ‘multiple and competing sets of ideas and concepts which are produced, reproduced and transformed in everyday practices, and through which the material and social world is given meaning’; they ‘frame the possibilities of thought, communications and action for practitioners, for participants and non-participants in planning, and for theorists’ (Richardson 2002, 354).
