Narrative identity and sexual difference

This article adheres to the theorizing on narrative as dialogue and communication. It attempts to wed the notions of narrative and narrative identity — the words given to the self in time — to Luce Irigaray’s writings on dialogue and difference. In this frame, identity is regarded as a continuous becoming of an embodied self in relation to another self. The words that are needed in this becoming express the bodily self and touch the other at the same time. By emphasizing narrating as poiesis and creative work of imagination, it is possible to weave Irigaray’s ideas into a notion of narrative identity that moves between gathering the self in terms of emplotting on the one hand, and talking to the other in poetic words and rhythms that can express the identity as bodily and relational, on the other.