Self-narration as rehearsal

Commentary on Peter Redman's 'The Narrative Formation of Identity Revisited: Narrative Construction, Agency and the Unconscious' Redman's article employs both Lacanian and Kleinian accounts of the subject to consider a particular aspect of the 'narrative formation of identity': the meaning which the telling of a story has for the narrator. While agreeing with Redman that narrative analysts have paid too little attention to the pleasure speakers can take in positioning themselves within their own stories, I propose an alternative interpretation of this identity work, based on a discursive approach.