The Narrative Construction of the Self – Selfhood as a Rhizomatic Story

In this article, the authors use the metaphor of the rhizome of the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari as an experimental methodological concept to study the narrative construction of the self. By considering the self as a rhizomatic story, the authors create a story structure that not only offers a useful view on the way in which people narratively construct their selfhood but also stimulates an experiment with alternative, non traditional presentation forms. The researcher is no longer listening from a distance to the stories of the participant and subsequently represents these stories. She or he becomes a part of the rhizome. The authors illustrate this rhizomatic approach and its research possibilities by presenting story fragments from their research.

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