Who am ‘I’: Reauthoring self, stories and subjectivity in research with children

Abstract

The ‘new’ sociology of childhood sees an emergence of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding self, experience and subjectivity of children. As debates frame research with children, concerned with ‘ethics’ and ‘agency’, what is meant by the ‘subject’ of experience is given little attention. In this article, I ask whether narratives are a true representation of ‘self’; who is the ‘experiencer’ that stories refer to and what are the implications for claiming subjectivity through narrative structures? I suggest that ‘experience’ is an irreducible quality of reality that transcends personal self, and that a core subjectivity serves as the dative of experience, ‘ as natures sole ontological primitive. Understanding self, experience and subjectivity in line with an “Analytical Idealism”’, offers fresh insight into current sociological debates in Childhood Studies.