Storying the Self: The Pluritemporal Memories of Rural Youth Identity and Place

Abstract

Memories are crucial to our sense of identity and emotional response to place, providing an anchor point from which we can tell different stories of our temporal encounters in the world. Through memory, we embed different spaces, pasts, and futures of ourselves in particular locales. These identities are not fixed, timeless, or geo-specific; they are the spontaneous assemblages of meaning, drawn from a multiplicity of memories, emotions, and thoughts that represent an “outpouring” of being in place. The mechanisms and processes by which meaning is articulated in these encounters are fundamental to our understandings of ourselves and places. This chapter brings together research on young people and identity to examine critically how rural youth tell stories to define themselves in the world through three themes. First, the role of memory in creating a sense of identity. Second, how individuals create memory images that are woven through with understandings of place. Finally, the chapter reconciles the inherent inconsistencies and flux of the selfhood project through the concept of pluritemporal memories of place.