Autonarrative Disruptor

Every conscious entity forms a narrative about themselves and their history. It is foundational to our cognition that we can temporalize and archive our experiences. I hear the music of a passing car, then I feel a drop of rain on my arm, then I stumble over a crack in the pavement. I went to grade school, then I went to university. We take for granted the neat temporal ordering that makes up the web of our memories and plans.

What if that were to become disrupted? Films like Memento and novels like Slaughterhouse V have imagined scenarios where one simply cannot piece together a coherent history. What does that imply for our identity, even our personhood?

In one way or another, the people in these stories have had their ability to create a narrative around their lives and their experience disrupted.