Life narrative inextricably links memory, subjectivity, and the materiality of the body. As Paul John Eakin argues in How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, "our lives in and as bodies profoundly shape our sense of identity" (xi). The ability to recover memories, in fact, depends upon the material body. There must be a body that per

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You might imagine, moreover, that living with such an unrealistic sense of your own historical importance would make life feel more meaningful, by investing your every action with a feeling of cosmic significance, however unwarranted. But what actually happens is that this overvaluing of your existence gives rise to an unrealistic definition of wha... See more