Thinking Bios in Autobiography: Biological Elements of the Experience of the Self

Abstract

I intend to address the biological preconditions of autobiographical discourse. I will follow some questions by John Paul Eakin about the primary relation, prior to retrospective discourse, between the narrative of the self, personal experience and the body. Three authors pay special attention to these material preconditions of autobiography: Stacy Alaimo, with the notion of "material memories"; Catherine Malabou, with her studies on the relation between philosophy and neuroscience; and Antonio Damasio, with his stratified and complex conception of the neuronal self, which includes an autobiographical level. I will argue that the imperative to construct a narrative identity is existential or vital rather than textual, and that it arises from the neurophysiologically mediated, embodied experience of being a self.