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Abstract

This autoethnographic narrative inquiry examines how remembered childhood sensory encounters become available, in later narrative contexts, as orientations for self-positioning. Drawing on embodied cognition, implicit narrative, narrative agency, and aesthetic agency, it analyzes three sensory nodes: color and a candy wrapper, paper-cutting and frost on glass, and radio voice and classroom reading. Rather than treating sensory memories as intrinsic aesthetic truths, the article reads seeing, touching, and hearing as representative modalities reactivated in narrative meaning-making. Based on autobiographical field texts, a sensory archival journal, reflexive memos, and critical-friend conversations as resonance points, the findings suggest that early sensory traces participate in narrative agency by offering perceptual orientations: seeing otherwise, touching with restraint, and becoming audible within a collective soundscape. The article contributes to narrative inquiry by showing how sensory compensation, tactile restraint, and auditory repositioning make remembered sensory fragments narratively available.

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/content/journals/10.1075/ni.26022.zhu
2026-07-08
2026-07-16

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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: autoethnography ; childhood sensory experience ; narrative agency ; aesthetic agency ; implicit narrative ; embodied cognition

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