NARRATIVE RESEARCH: BETWEEN THE DESCRIPTION OF LIVED EXPERIENCE AND BIOGRAPHICAL CONFIGURATION

Abstract

Narrative research seeks to understand the subject’s experience using life stories “in the first person” by apprehending and understanding the process of construction of “points of view” in a narrative activity that implies passing from experience into language and from text into story, assuming the performance of acts that render this possible. Based on Ricœur’s thesis of the principle of reciprocity between the temporalization of experience and the configuration of narrative, we distinguish between two narrative regimes: the biographical one and the one pertaining to phenomenological description. We seek to describe both regimes, formalize their processes and specify their effects in order to define the narrative regimes and examine their effects on adult education and on humanities research.

BIOGRAPHY; RESEARCH; NARRATIVE; PHENOMENOLOGY