2026-01Thematic Section
Are We Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On? Narrative and the Oneiric Imagination

Abstract: This essay examines dreaming as a challenge to the dichotomy between narrative and episodic conceptions of the self. Drawing on Sartre’s phenomenology of the imaginary, it argues that dreams elude both accounts: dream consciousness is episodic and pre-reflective – reflective awareness that one is dreaming would annihilate the dream – yet dreams are…