When to endure is to restart: the narrative of life as an intuition of the present

Abstract

This article proposes the concept of "instant’s intuition" as an instrument of analysis of life narratives as testimonials of the present. To do so, a conceptual discussion on the subject of duration from the perspectives of Gaston Bachelard and Henri Bergson is formulated in order to affirm the dramatics aspects of the instant as a condition of intelligibility of the present. In order to expand the analytical capability of this point of view, the close relationship between individual memory and collective memory is discussed according to the studies of Maurice Halbwachs. Finally, to demonstrate the dual capability of instant’s intuition as a source of historical and anthropological research, we study the life narrative of an aged women living in a institution as evidence about the ways in which different cultural determinants, economic and political organize the experiences of life from the present.