In this paper, I wish to discuss the implications of the
poststructuralist/postmodern position to autobiography which - to put it
crudely - is that there is no Truth, no Reality, not one "true" way to
connect the object world and the spoken or written wor(l)d, but instead
lots of interpretations, all equally possible (or, as Peter Bürger
says: "It is a central thesis of postmodern thought that in our society
signs no longer refer to a designatum, but always only to other signs,
and that we thus in our discourse no longer arrive at anything resembling
meaning, but merely move around within an infinite chain of signifiers"
Burger in Lash-Friedman 1992, p. 95)
As Paul Ricoeur has noted, the history of thinking has
developed by the tension between the theories of "sens" and theories of
sign (see Ricoeur, Signe, in Encyclopedia universalis, Vol 20), a tension
which is presently expressed in the debate between poststructuralist and
"classical modern" thought. (I am using this architectural term to signify
all those who think that postmodernity has not completely thrown out the
"traditional" modernity and its principles, see Heller-Feher 1988, Toulmin
1989, Taylor 1990 and also Dosse 1992, Heiskala 1993).
In this paper, I wish to discuss this ambivalence from
the point of view of autobiographies, which are, in many ways, expectionally
problematic from both perspectives.
It is interesting that, as Liz Stanley (1992) has noted,
the autobiographic and biographic traditions have developed rather separately
after having for a long time been seen as almost identical, or at least
having had almost identical perspectives on their subject and its treatment.
This could be summed up in the idea that both autobiography and biography
strive to present the subject of the presentation in a serious manner,
tell the truth about the subject, as honestly and openly as possible. This
is well expressed in Richard J Coe's (1984, 1) definition of autobiography:
"Standard autobiography is the writer's attempt to tell the story of his
life in a manner as factually accurate, and yet as significant as possible;
to reveal from the inside that personality and those motivations which
his contemporaries hitherto have known ... from the outside". The biographer
and the autobiographer would in fact differ only in the minor detail that
the biographer is writing about somedoby else and the autobiographer about
himself, but the principle is the same.
Thus, the traditional view of a life story or autobiography
is that it is told by the person himself about his or her own life which
is something that has really happened and the life story is an attempt
to capture or represent this life in a faithful manner. The "best" autobiography
would be the one which most authentically and immediately (without literary,
psychological, sociological or other mediation) represents the real life
which has happened and been experienced by the person in question (the
French "vécu" comes close to this idea). In my notes I have inumerable
references to this classical autobiographic perspective which is still
quite strong, especially in the biographic genre, while the dramatic changes
I am going to discuss here, have taken place mainly in the field of autobiography.
Let me mention only such well-known authors as Olney 1972, Coe 1984, Gusdorf
1991, Pascal 1960, Niggl 1989, Denzin 1989 (see also Eakin 1992 who gives
a good overwiew). But of course this does not mean that the theory of biography
would be simple and that of autobiography complex: only that the problems
discussed here did come first to autobiography.
This is how I saw the situation as a newcomer to the field in
the beginning of the 1980's ignoring then the devastating effects of the
discussion started in the 60's and 70's and not directly related to the
autobiographies. I even wrote a book on Finnish autobiographies which was
fully in this spirit, taking the autobiographies seriously, discussing
their sociological significance, presenting interpretations about different
generations, class and gender. In fact, the early sociologists and historians
who rediscovered the autobiography as sociological data all approach this
wonderful material in this straightforward and euphoric manner: it is the
ideal material to get to know what really happens or has really happened
in the society, as well as to explain what has really happened (see the
well-known texts of Thompson 1978, Bertaux 1976, Bertaux-Kohli 1984, Lalive
d'Epinay, etc.)
But then something started to happen, a completely new
perspective on the subject matter of the subject was developed, under a
very heterogeneous but still sufficiently unified perspective or theoretical
"school", which has been given various names in various disciplines but
which I prefer to treat here as poststructuralism or even more generally
as the postmodern perspective on aesthetics, literature, philosophy, ethnography,
sociology, just to mention those fields which are relevant here (but e.g.
in geography or sociology of science the effects are only being felt).
Upon leaving the Paradise of True Autobiographies, we have
accepted the thesis that no text is innocent, independent of certain theoretical,
conceptual and textual frames. Nothing we describe or see in the world
we just see: it comes to us and through us always mediated by the current
way of seeing things. In the most extreme versions of this thought, texts
are simply written, the author has no significance and the reader is also
just an instance of a more general reader. Whereas the "facts" are not
facts but just figures of speech or text. As Eakin (1992) notes, every
element in the simple definition, "autobiographies are texts written by
the author, about the life of himself", has become suspect, and many
more besides: self, reality, life, culture etc etc.
In the most extreme case, then, anything goes (this claim
is, of course firmly rejected by the defenders of poststructuralist theorizing,
but at least in a relative sense it is true, and sometimes even proclaimed).
Autobiography becomes simply a text heard by ears of certain size or form
which determine what we hear (Derrida's Otobiographie, see Levesque 1992)
and nothing is as it is said to be. There is no subject, no author, no
reader, no reference. I can write whatever I wish, call it autobiography
(or even not call it autobiography, but a novel or a text) and autobiography
it is (or if it is not, no matter).
But in a more ordered and academically disciplined life,
all this (for example the derridean or lacanian off-the-cuff metaphors)
becomes a well-defined, complex field whose mastery is not easy and where
many important rules apply. "Deconstruction" becomes something rather mysterious,
but very well fixed. Only the actual autobiographies are not so important
or seldom referred to. It becomes a highly theoretical and abstract field
where all concepts are redefined and transformed.
This is the field of intertextuality, of implied readers,
of palimpsest and of subtext - and of feminist, lesbian, and other kinds
of very complicated autobiographies.
Eakin's book (1992) begins with the famous autobiographical
quotation of Barthes "in the field of the subject, there is no referent"
and the main thrust is to show that the radical negation of referentiality
in autobiography by Barthes is not so clearcut after all, and that even
Barthes had to give up on this principle. In Barthes' metaphor, there is
a squid of referentiality which always lurks behind, even though we attempt
to avoid it.
Eakin takes Barthes seriously, perhaps too seriously,
and shows how much he contradicts himself all the time in trying to deny
referentiality in autobiography and falling back to the same referentiality
over and over again, so the squid metaphor is very apt, because the squid
hides itself behind ink!
Eakin (in 1985, 185) takes also seriously Paul de Man's well known
claim that "We assume that life produces the autobiography as an act produces
its consequences, but can we not suggest, with equal justice, that the
autobiographical project may itself produce and determine the life..."
Perhaps in the sense that a person who lives his of her life may be affected
by his autobiographical project, but still I find the idea rather impossible
that one could do much about one's life by way of writing an autobiography
(unless it becomes and enormous success and changes one's life completely)...
Yet it should be noted that de Man here assumes a relationship between
"life" and "autobiography", something that Derrida in his writings doesn't
do.
Michel Foucault has affected this discussion profoundly.
We use his concepts and what is even more important, view things differently.
Everything is interpretation, there is no real essence to be revealed behind
the façade (only new interpretations), there is no nature, only
cultural constructs - all these revelations of the social scientists are
related to poststructuralism, even if Foucault was not the only one and
even if philosophically there may be have been much more advanced interpretations
already. In any case the foucaldian revolution has had extremely important
effects in the social sciences, it has changed the relationship between
"words" and "things", to put it concisely (see e.g. Lash and Friedman (1992),
which in its introduction discusses a lot of this stuff, Bernstein (1992)
and Wakefield (1990)).
On the other hand, in the theory of literature, in history, in
anthropology related ideas changed the whole landscape in the 70's and
80's. There developed a sort of consensus according to which social sciences
as well as history or literature are sciences which rely on texts, and
not really on facts. These texts are always interpretations, so that historian's
accounts of the events, or a social scientist's analysis of the social
structure can never be construed as something approaching more or less
completely the reality, but rather as just another set of intepretations.
The thing to attempt in fact, is not to represent the reality but to achieve
a change in perspective which changes also completely our view of the "facts".
Thus, instead of progress, an end of history or literature or autobiography,
instead of repression vs. resistance, a view of resistance as a form of
repression too, thus serving the ubiquitous power as well etc, I don't
need to repeat this all too familiar story.
In autobiography, the effects of this "Fall", or loss
of innocence (except in the cases mentioned above, where innocence has
been preserved) have been devastating, as everybody understands.
If autobiography is in a sense the model of the classical representational
mirror theory of the reality, as well as based on the hated subjectivity,
unity and coherence of the subject, everything must be redone if the new
view of the state of things is to be accepted.
The important questions now become the production of the text,
the conditions for the production of texts, the different perspectives,
the intended audience, the metaphors used, the figures, the myths: in fact
all the ways society, culture and history infiltrate the process of writing
an autobiography. The simple original project: I want to write/tell about
my life, is totally discredited. In this perspective, there is no life
to tell about, there is no I telling the life, and even if there were,
there would be so many intervening factors that the resulting story would
have nothing to do with the actual intent. Not to speak of the existence
of the subject.
This canon is still very strong, even though some cracks
have begun the appear in the façade, some of them already a little
older (dating from the seventies, see next chapter) and some quite
fresh, depending on the part of the whole structure (literature, anthropology,
sociology, geography ...). So I shall not use more space to describe these
various elements, but rather move over to discussing the attempts to demolish
the structure.
Poststructuralism has, of course, been constantly under
very diverse forms of attack: conservative, realistic, pragmatic, positivist
as well as something we could call "anti-intersemiotic" (using Risto Heiskala's
concept 1993), ie. refusal to accept the use of very different and non-communicative
codes in the same analysis.
In a recent issue of Contemporary sociology (1993), the reviewers
(Alan Sica, Jorge Arditi) seem to be rather unanimous that the textual,
poststructuralist turn has spent its energy and what is most important,
has been an interesting critique, but not given much by way of positive
impulses. Even though we don't accept the alarmist reactions of nihilism,
anything goes etc., we can still ask, what does deconstruction (or as Heidegger
(1956,53 defines it: "Destruktion bedeutet nicht zerstören, sondern
Abbauen, Abtragen und Auf-die-Seite-stellen ... und der Ohr öffnen
...") construct? But the same problem meets us when we go back to analysing
life stories after the detour of poststructuralism and textualism, after
the lost innocence.
In his history of structuralism (where he defines poststructuralism
as a historicised structuralism), François Dosse (1991, 1992) dates
the demise of structuralism in France to the early 1970's when it came
increasingly under criticism and even derision (the parodies of Foucault,
Barthes or Lacan started to appear and first fierce pamphlets were published),
and in the beginning of the 80's when all the great maîtres, with
the exception of Levi-Strauss (85 in 1993) and Derrida, died or eclipsed
inside a very short period of time (Althusser killed his wife in 1980;
he himself died in 1990) under various deplorable and exceptional circumstances:
Barthes' car accident (which was minor, but for some reason he never recovered),
Althusser's madness, Foucault's Aids, which he never recognized (no Confessions
of the flesh for him, see Eribon 1990, Miller 1992), Lacan's last years
were marred by tragicomic dissensions among his disciples, see Dosse 1992
and especially Roudinesco 1993). But this collective personal naufrage
did not mean the end of poststructuralism in the world, on the contrary.
It has continued to spread and be discussed in such peripheric (as seen
from Paris, which is the center of the universe in this paper, too) countries
as in the US where poststructuralism is still very much alive, especially
in the specific fields such as feminism or sexual minorities, or the UK,
where the literature is still full of poststructuralist author quotations
(Game 1991, Stanley 1992, Krell 1990) and where the TCS just feted its
first 10 years of existence and is still going strong (even though I happened
to, at the annniversary conference, discuss with one of the editors the
problem of what next, when postmodernism has practically lost its appeal,
perhaps we should go back to the problems of the aged people, for instance),
or in the Nordic countries, where some (albeit very few) researchers have
not yet even heard of poststructuralism (but where the journal, T&E
(founded in 1975) of which I am editor, is still mainly devoted to various
apparitions of poststructuralism). In Germany, whose thinkers have influenced
strongly the poststructuralist orientation, via France, the situation in
social sciences is more complex, with its many original theorists who have
been largely unaffected by the lighter versions of poststrucuralism.
The different disciplines, history, philosophy, literature,
sociology have also adopted in different ways and phases poststructuralist
ideas (PS is out of joint, to paraphrase Hamlet via Derrida). Thus sociology
is still very strongly in the grip of poststructuralism whereas in literature
the situation is more diversified (but see the testimony of Frank Kermode
1993!) and history has a strong non-structuralist tradition, for
example an orientation towards biography. On the other hand, postmodernism
is only being discovered in such disciplines as geography, for instance.
(see eg. Theory and Society, Vol 21/4, A Forum on Postmodernism). But it
all depends on the perspective of the viewer, as well as the more specific
delimitations of structuralism from post- .
In Dosse's (1992) version, Foucault, Barthes and also Derrida
belong to a ripe or late structuralism (und thus are passé), but
actually it is obvious that Foucault and Derrida together form a platform
against structuralism and are to be seen as really poststructuralists (or
neostructuralists, if we wish to use the term of Heiskala in 1993) who
have changed the perspective of structuralism almost completely. And neither
Foucault nor Derrida are today superseded: especially Derrida has an enormous,
although rather superficial following in the USA (so it is easy to predict
that his popularity will fall as rapidly as that of Althusser, when the
fashion part becomes stale, while Foucault has kept his ground pretty well).
But anyway I think it is safe to say that also postmodernism is already
way over its zenith and that the next stage, for a new wave of social theory
is presently being set (but it is as yet impossible to predict what this
will be, a new surge of moralism, mysticism, or what).
So, in recent times we have more and more people who have
been writing about the postructuralist/postmodernist fashion, either in
an outright critical, polemical (Ferry, Pawel, Paglia, Ferry, Bradbury
in Mensonge, which is either extremely funny or rather crude, depending
on the reader) or in a more or less balanced way (Dosse, Eakin, Stanley,
Arditi), but from the common standpoint that the zenith of these posts
is already passed and something else is now being sought but not yet found.
On the other hand those who never went along with this fashion are now
also hitting back and asserting that they had been right all along (Himmelfarb,
Gusdorf). Especially in the anglo-american scientific community there was
always strong resistance against the uncritical importation of the thought
of Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan et cie whereas on the other
hand the most faithful and numerous followers of these gentlemen are also
to be found in the feminist, multiculturalist and aesthetico-sociological-philosophical
communities of England and America, with the addition of some indigenous,
pragmatically oriented philosophers and historians (Rorty, White, Carr,
Harvey) who themselves have discussed related problems in a very interesting
way.
An interesting anecdotal example of a confrontation between
postmodernism and classicism in history concerns the article of Gertrud
Himmelfarb in TLS (1992) where she attacked David Carr and Hayden White,
among others. I happened to be present when Hayden White, in a seminar
at the UCSB commented Himmelfarb's critique, so to say, on the fly (it
had been pointed out to him on the same day, I believe).
The discussion Himmelfarb's polemical text by Hayden White
was also a good example of the postmodern-derridean technique of argumentation:
not only did he give a resume of what Himmelfarb had said, but used her
own expressions to create additional (unintended) meanings and interpretations.
The obviously sexual connotations of "hard and exciting" and "laid-back"
(used by Himmelfarb in her original text, and thrown back at her in a parodical
sense by White), were pointed out to him after his lecture (by a woman),
with the interesting result that White denied vehemently any intention
of such connotations. Apparently the audience had not been so innocent...
Rather simultaneously, I happened to read a letter by
Natasha Spender (TLS 9 Oct 1992) about the present day "post-modern" biography-writing
where Spender complains about the methods of modern biographers who
bully their informants, threaten them with fictionalised or "theoretical"
representations of the events and personnages if the informants are not
forthcoming etc.
To come back to biographies, although the "postmodern"
biographers are looking for "facts", they feel, on the other hand, perhaps
inspired by the books of Hayden White, Richard Rorty, as well as Derrida
or even Bourdieu (who gives several additional reasons why the subject's
version must be wrong, see not only his Illusion autobiographique, but
also Misère du monde), free to create their own interpretations
of facts, or even imagining "facts", which are equally or even more "true"
as the versions of the people they are writing about. They just use the
facts as freely disposable material, alongside of pure imaginary inventions,
for interpretations.
So this is perhaps the "newest" what is happening in biography,
the authentic, invented biographies (which has already a long tradition
in autobiography or hagiography) where the details are described as they
perhaps could have happened (of course this is not new, but there is a
new theoretical argument to justify this kind of literary activity).
I am personally very ambivalent about this. I dislike
very much both the requirement of an "hard and objective" social science
methodology (much "harder" than the one Himmelfarb is speaking about) and
the strict separation of genres, and I am all for freedom of interpretation.
But, on the other hand, in both cases my reason is that this leads us further
from the reality we are trying to capture: producing irrelevant quantitative
or wooden, unimaginative analyses of trivialities, whereas the postmodernist
argument is quite the opposite: there is no reality nor truth to be discovered.
Holocaust is an often used (too often, as some Germans
complain!), but still good example (and I think Himmelfarb has a good point
there). The Holocaust "as it really was" is almost impossible to represent,
but there have been many attempts, in literature, in documentary films
(Shoah) and even as a cartoon (Maus I-II, which from a biographical, oral
history point of view is one of the "best"). Zygmunt Bauman's (1991) book
is a good example of the kind of abstract, insensitive reasoning that only
"postmodern" sociology can produce (which I find astonishing because it
seems to have learned nothing of the experiences of his wife, Janina Bauman).
There Holocaust is rather treated as a mere representation which lacks
reality.
But the important thing is that in the case of Holocaust,
there is a strong interest to represent it "as it really was", because
we all feel that it is extremely relevant to many questions concerning
society, human life, ethics etc. In less serious matters (like one person's
life story) the urgency is not there, but I still think that the interest
should be - and in the case of autobiography, is - the same.
Also, as François Dosse notes (1992, 341) the Gulag (as
well as Holocaust) is something which needs only be heard or read about,
or to be "seen" in documentaries or museums to be understood as real,
we have no need for complicated constructions or conceptualisations (which,
as Bauman's example shows, are usually rather uninteresting). In an interview
Umberto Eco (1993, Nouvel Observateur) makes the same point, criticizing
those who refuse the reality of the Holocaust (and thus place themselves
outside the limits of plausibility) and tells that he himself "saw" the
Holocaust as a boy: how Jews were taken away and how people mourned for
their families. That even a great semiotician like Eco feels the need to
refer to real evidence, witnesses of the strong reality effects of the
Holocaust ...
This is, then, a good place and time to try to draw
a balance sheet of what has taken place, what are the effects of poststructuralism
to the field of biographical research. In the field of autobiography, the
discussion has brought about:
a) An awareness of narrativity as a very important factor in the autobiography,
b) And of the often tenuous relationship between the author and the
self and the "reality".
c) The problem of the identity of the self (continuity, perspectives,
multiple identities, etc)
d) The multiple levels of authors and audiences
e) The primacy of the text, that it is the text, not the life that
we are dealing with
f) In the extreme case (eg. de Man) autobiography may be seen as determining
the life, not vice versa or in the other more Derridean extreme case, the
autobiography and the life may have a totally contingent relationship.
Or, to put it in a nutshell, we know now that is is impossible
to write an autobiography in the ordinary sense: all aspects of the process
are problematic: story, self, life etc. But as we (I) know from real life,
people go on writing their life stories under the assumption that there
is a life outside, that they are describing it, that their selves are contiguous,
not contingent and there is a causal narrative connecting the different
events etc.
5. The Redemption, or how to get out of this academic mess
While I admit that this change of perspective has had many
useful consequences (in the best case it is simply a question of increased
reflexivity, which I think is a good thing (see Giddens (1991)) and that
the questioning of the different aspects of the process of production of
the autobiography has greatly improved our insights in the different aspects
of the autobiographical I, (and precisely in all those astonishing ways
in which social and cultural codes or narrative strategies affect the autobiography),
I should like to propose a change of perspective once more. Admitting that
everything is much more complicated than previously thought, what if the
original supposition of I representing his or her life, were still true,
or to put it in another way, it is an essential aspect for understanding
the autobiography?
This is exactly what I wish to propose. The autobiographical
project or pact is that of an autographer wanting to tell others about
life, how it really was, what has happened, what are his/her views of it.
Unless we accept this, we may indeed talk about the end of autobiography,
not in the sense of the poststructuralist thought, but rather in the sense
of having thrown out the baby with the bathwater. But, on the other hand,
we cannot revert back to the old perspective. We have lost our innocence,
there is no paradise of true autobiography. Things may not be what they
look like, they may in fact be drastically different. But still, it is
not all interpretation. And most importantly, there is something outside
the text, outside the representation, outside the spoken or written wor(l)d.
We may have to put our ideas on paper or into words if we want to communicate
them, but we are still aware that there is something else, something that
we know very well exists but which we cannot (or need not) reach, or express.
It eludes us, but it is there. Because I am not a philosopher, I like to
call this reality, or real life. It need not be extreme, like a concentration
camp experience (but it is true that such "extreme" experiences are more
easily perceived as really real if we are sure that they have happened).
With practice, with hard work, with creative insights, flashes, we can
advance in our project and "get closer to the real truth" about a life.
And not only in the sense of discovering "secrets", which is a theme of
my next paper.
I tried to tread this minefield for a while, changing
my conceptions so that they fit into this general framework. But I soon
noticed that it was impossible to force my autobiographies to this mold.
If I wanted to discuss what they were about, what themes and problems were
discussed, all the concepts I had appropriated were useless or uninteresting
for me. Their narrative structures were of little importance when they
tried to tell a story of childhood relationships, abjections and the slow
development of a self-esteem so totally lost in previous life.
This was very frustrating. I saw no interest in approaching
the autobiographies in the "approved" manner, while a more straightforward
and in my eyes the only interesting approach was not acceptable, because
it was not theoretically or textually informed, it lacked the proper tools
of theoretical anlysis, it became just moralistic and romanticist storytelling
in the eyes of the dominant theory.
So I became increasingly ambivalent and uncomfortable
about some of the conclusions related to autobiographies which I first
took as granted. It is obvious that life stories are very much subjective
versions of something which may be very far from the truth, or that they
may change several times during the person's lifetime. Moreover. they can
never be real narratives. as they usually lack a proper ending and a "life
project" (most people are quite realistic about that)
But still, it is obvious to me that the writers of autobiography
are seeking a true and factual representation of their lives. They'd never
put "facts" or "truth" in quotation marks. And they make a clear distinction
between fiction and facts.
Life stories are serious texts, that's why I liked them. There
is no post-modern frivolity or lightness, play with identities or mere
identity-relationships a la gergen, derrida &co. For the people who
write of their lives, these lives are real, in a very concrete sense, not
just situation or relation or perspective bound.
Only recently did I - rather suddenly - realize that this
is not a problem, but just how it is. That the theoretical sidesteps, quagmires,
convolutions were perhaps irrelevant and unnecessary. That the theory simply
does not work in the analysis of autobiography, at least more often than
not. It is much better and more fruitful to go back to the lives themselves,
try to use common sense and experience in deducing more general conclusions
coming out of them, using general concepts only when they really were useful
and necessary, never theorizing unecessarily.
This illumination came to me through Fred Weinsteins History
and theory after the fall (1990), which in itself is a rambling book and
seems to be more on the side of theory than history (it begins with Hayden
White and the "Fall", after which historians have lost their innocence
about "facts"). But in certain passages Weinstein hints at the idea that
when we make theoretical interpretations and explanations, the theories
used (psychoanalysis, sociological explanations etc.) are often useless,
simply uninformed, and the only working explanation is the one which really
considers the case in its concrete entirety. Hitler's accession to power
is not explained by his use of a superior theory, nor can we present a
general theory of how it happened, because it is simply a unique event,
combination of many different circumstances where even the elimination
of just one small event would have crashed the whole house of cards.
Hitler was not inevitable, and neither was Stalin. Concentration camps
and their specific forms are not a necessary result of a theoretical organization
concept (totalitarianism) but of very specific circumstances etc. (this
is where I find that Bauman errs grievously, in his Modernity and the Holocaust).
Of course one should not go too far. There are phenomena
which may be or have to be generalized. But individual lives are unique,
they are always a combination of accidents and there are never two similar
lives. For a theory of autobiography to be fruitful, it must always be
a very concrete generalisation.
This has been expressed very well by Thomas Scheff in an
unpublished text (Part/Whole Discovery: Stages of Inquiry, p. 7)
"The most successful inquiries have involved proceeding from the smallest
possible minutia up the largest possible theory".
In a recent article which is quite relevant from my perspective,
Abercrombie, Lash and Longhurst (1992, 120) define realism in the following
way:
1. The position of the producent is the referent of reality itself
2. The position of the audience is the perceptual rather than cognitive
apparatus
3. The position of the text is a window, stationed between the observer
and the referent;
all of which is an excellent description of the classical position
of autobiographical writing (only in the last third point we should say
reader instead of observer).
These realism assumptions govern the writing of popular autobiographies
and all the work around and about them. And the punch line of Abercrombie
et al (p. 138), "Critics of the twenty-first century, then, will be well
advised once again to take realism seriously", fits autobiographic theorizing
like a glove!
Of course I am not alone in this autocritical and "revisionist"
endeavour. Let me just comment two authors who discuss these problems,
not from the same perspective, but with a view of the full extent of problems
caused to autobiographies by the textual/poststructuralist turn: Paul John
Eakin (1992) and Liz Stanley (1992) (see also my review of the two books
in Biography (forthcoming)). Especially Eakin is also proposing solutions
about referentiality which come relatively close to those of my own, or
which have inspired my thoughts about the importance of life events and
their presentation.
Paul John Eakin, is thus one of the few contemporary authors
who propose a middle road. Well versed with the poststructuralist and semiological
approach towards non referentiality in the text, he still wants to preserve
reference as a cornerstone of autobiography. This is not easy if you are
prepared to accept the recent discussion in autobiography, and Eakin does
some acrobatics there. Also his examples are mainly literary, whereas the
referentiality problem is more complicated than in the non-literary autobiographies.
Eakin asks: (1992, p. 52) "What difference does it make that
I should continue to believe autobiography to be a profoundly referential
art, especially in light of my sense of the play of fiction in its practice?
This is a question I have been asking myself for a long time, and I recognize
that to some it may seem to be an unaccountable surrender to some impossible
Romance of the Real." (note the same a little ashamed-of-myself-tone that
I have used here; the power of a discourse is a very real thing!). Here
the predicament is quite clear: it is somehow "romantic" and antiquated
to be interested in the question of reality in connection with autobiographies.
We have also become accustomed to the idea that whatever facts
we may claim, whatever truthful description of reality we may come up with,
in the final analysis it is theory that dominates everything, that all
our facts are just theoretical configurations and illustrations. There
are no facts free from theoretical context, from conceptualisations, from
texts.
I am ready to say that this "theorycracy" is not "true", either.
That "facts" are always primary, that they determine our perspectives,
our theories, our conceptualisations, not vice versa. That in most cases
real explanations are based on real facts and the theory is just a smokescreen.
The more we are able to concretize instead of conceptualize, the more convincing
our explanations become. And when they are superseded, they are superseded
by new facts, not new theories to explain the same facts! (see Weinstein,
Scheff, Willke (1993) who represents the diametrically opposite standpoint
where every observation depends only of the observer ...)
All this may be more unclear and complicated in social sciences
than in the natural sciences, but even in social sciences, we cannot avoid
the world of facts, be they very concrete (birth, death, house etc) or
"merely" social or cultural, that is facts defined in a collective sense,
which become facts when they are recognized as such. Belonging to a nation
or religious group has very different significance when it becomes a hard
social fact, which may determine whether one can live in one's home or
whether you are raped or not, or when you discuss whether it is only a
question of the perspective of the observer ...
One of the arguments against the referential point of
view is that texts (or transcriptions of speech) are the only things we
can actually have and know about: there is no life outside the text because
there is no other way to make statements about life and thus is it nonsense
to speak about real life outside the text or spoken word (see Rahkonen
1992). I find this implausible and also a very positivistic: a simple redefinition
of evidence, which an autobiography is definitely not. Of course we use
mainly texts, but these texts are nothing if we don't impute an external
reality to them, "something" out there which they try to describe, more
or less adequately. And which we try to understand, and make understandable
to others, communicate.
As distinct of fiction, autobiographies are often quite
illogical and fragmented, in the sense that you can never know "what happens
next" while in fiction the story has usually a certain narrative logic
(the alternatives are that the hero overcomes the obstacles or does not
overcome). As James Olney says (1972) autobiography is the form of literature
most appealing for the "common reader" because it "most immediately and
deeply engages our interest and holds it and that in the end seems to mean
the most to us because it brings an increased self-awareness, through an
understanding of another life in another time and place, of the nature
of our own selves and our share in the human condition". This is a point
which is still valid, although "old-fashioned" (On the other hand, this
seems to be true of only a very select group of autobiographies, which
have found a universal readership. The majority of autobiographies finds
only a very restricted readership: local people, relatives, people belonging
to the same national group, the same class etc.)
The fundamental question is this: what is the essence
of the autobiographical from the sociological point of view, what are the
basic assumptions of research, in what way can one use life stories? That
is, when the dust raised by the poststructuralist theory construction has
subsided.
I thus propose to treat the autobiographies (as different
from biographies) as essentially reality- and truth oriented narratives
where the truth is seen from a unique, concrete viewing point, that of
the author, who is simultaneously the narrator in the story, and sees himself
as such. Central to the story are life/events, things that have happened
in his life, some of which are seen as turning points or definitely important
events, while most are ordinary events. But the important thing is that
they have happened in the narrator's presence, (or been told to him by
sources known and trustworthy to him). An autobiography which would refer
only to - say - news in newspapers would not be interesting or believable.
As a sociologist I am not interested in confessedly fictive
or contrived or imaginary autobiographies (of course they might bear witness
to the author's state of mind, as the first Althusser (1992) autobiography
where he tells of meetings with the pope etc.) and equally little in such
autobiographies in which the identity of the author is technically problematic
or where the project is simply not autobiographic. Therefore: let me suggest
a reintroduction and reformulation of the concepts of context and authenticity.
Context means here: concrete conditions and the significance
structure of the autobiography, as intendend explicitly by the author.
A good example of context in autobiography is when the story is only
understandable in the framework of a given generation and its experiences
so that continuous difficulties, deceptions etc. turn finally into a very
positive picture of the whole life.
Authenticity (see also Taylor 1991) again means: the endeavour
of the author to present his life as directly, naturally, realistically
as possible with no other ambitions (ie. levels of representation or signification,
changes of perspective, etc.): in the same spirit as Abercrombie, Lash
and Longhurst wish to reintroduce realism starting from the observation
that it is still the most pervasive regime of "signification" in popular
culture today, (1992, 115). So I find all the discussions about the different
levels and apparitions of the "I" of ordinary autobiography as more or
less meaningless, to tell the truth (no insult intended).
The important thing in an autobiography is that the author
knows of things (events, relationships) that have happened in his past
and wants to tell them. That is the essential difference for the author,
as well as for the reader, whatever icing he wants to put on the cake.
In fact, I'd be prepared to go further than Eakin (1992) and claim that
the problematic circular relationship between "self" and autobiography
is actually quite unnecessary: what is needed is simply "experience of
life events", i.e. in an autobiography the author tells not the story of
"self" but of his personal life experiences, which belong to him and nobody
else (in their totality; many of these experiences may be shared with different
other persons).
There is no need to resort to a mythical modern, European self
to make autobiography possible: anybody equipped with a functioning memory
(I have myself interviewed several older persons with important memory
failures and hence the conclusion: when you don't remember, you don't have
an autobiography) and ability to textualize/verbalize his or her life experiences
can tell a life story. In other words, all that is needed is referentiality,
the fact that I am telling about something that has actually happened to
me, that I have experienced. Of course, it helps to have a conception of
self, but it is not necessary, at least not historically. And what other
way there is to create a self, unless by telling an autobiography?
Let me end with a personal confession. It is no
accident that I have used as chapter titles Biblical references: the more
I have read autobiographies and the literature about them (especially Gusdorf,
Misch, Steiner, Taylor, Ricoeur), the more convinced have I become of the
Truth that God and Autobiography are somehow related. In creating an autobiography
the author is engaged in an act which is very godlike, and the answer of
God to Moses (I am what I am) is still valid as a motto for autobiography
(see Hahn 1992), and the words of Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount: I am
the Way, the Truth, and the Life provide a very concise autobiographical
statement. Not to speak of the historical role of the confession: from
1215 on every catholic was supposed to confess at least once a year,
and not only that, but a good confession was defined as: "simple, modest,
pure, reliable, honest, rich, unembellished, full of tears, expeditious,
complete and well prepared", see Zimmermann (1989, 346).
This Truth-God-Autobiography connection goes in the final analysis
back to the Augustine idea of confession: because God knows everything
anyway, it is best to tell everything as it was, and not try to hide anything,
just tell the truth and nothing but the truth, when you write your autobiography.
Let there be no misunderstanding: I am not declaring here my
reborn religious beliefs, only trying to make the point that the basic
themes and principles of autobiography are certainly older than Christianity
and that truth as an autobiographical endeavor comes with very serious
connotations and cannot be dismissed lightly.
(not included in the published version):
There is another poststructuralist insight, the genealogy
of Foucault, which is equally important in our thinking about autobiography.
This is the idea that there is a precise moment in history when it became
possible to present an autobiography, when autobiography became a historical,
cultural and social reality. This is very much related to the idea of identity,
self, subjectivity. In order to present one's autobiography the subject
must be able to see as himself as a person, as having a singular life,
not just as a member or even unseparable part of a collectivity. The most
extreme position is that this kind of autobiographical self is possible
only in the Occident (see Delhez-Catani), and only rather recently (Taylor,
Coe, Lejeune ...) and even if there are known autobiographies in China,
India, Japan, they are all somehow different, lacking the Real autobiographic
self.
Thus this idea of beginning (connected with the idea of
a possible end) of autobiography (and of course not only autobiography
but zillions of other things, from cleanliness and love to sunbathing and
sports) is nowadays very pervasive, especially if we connect it to, say
the fascinating ideas of Norbert Elias about the development of self-discipline,
of power, of table manners. For example: there was a time when everybody
was a child and adult thinking the way we see it did not exist at all,
or there was a time when everybody was very vague about the person, about
self and could not separate it from mother or father community (a very
important difference!). For instance Charles Taylor (1989) claims very
strongly that even if the Greeks already knew the adage "know thyself"
or look after yourself, they did not mean the same self or the same knowledge
than we (another interesting problem, who are these "we") mean when we
use it. Not to speak of Freud, after whom the whole concept of knowing
oneself was decentred, in the same way as Copernic showed that the earth
was not in the centre of the universe or as Darwin discovered that humans
were not "different" from other living species . This may be so, but still
it is not trivial to ask what was the self the Greeks or Romans were speaking
about, and even question the assumption that it must have been different.
While I am quite ready to admit decisive historical moments
in the development of autobiographies: technologies such as writing,
printing, recording, as well as the emergence of certain conceptions connected
with autobiography: telling stories instead of "just" chronicling, confessing
instead of just telling stories, reflection on the self instead of just
confessing different actions, and of course all the real historical events
which change the context of the autobiography (social and economic development,
wars and other catastrophes etc.), and, last but not least, the changes
in the understanding of the self, I still wish to remind that there
are also several elements in the autobiographies which are historically
rather permanent, and one of these is certainly the impulse to tell stories
relating to one's life. A simple question: what did the hunter-gatherers
talk about when they were sitting or making tools around the fire and could
talk (I shall not speculate about the time when speech was not yet developed
or when they did not have fire!)? I would be greatly astonished if they
did not tell "stories" concerning their life! More seriously, I strongly
believe that an autobiography contains elements, which have remained largely
permanent since the development of spoken communication, such as "I did,
I saw, something happened ..." Thus, in their simplest form, the stories
of events happened to real people have always existed. In fact, it makes
no sense to articifially date the first autobiography to say, late 17th
century like for instance Philippe Lejeune or Richard Coe do (as little
as to say that intellectuals came around in the late 18th century) or even
to try to give a date to the first "real" autobiography (Momigliano mentions
as a well-known first example the political autobiography of Plato: quite
recognizable and understandable as such, although a little ambiguous, just
as present day amateur autobiographies, Plato, Letter VII, Momigliano 1991,
90-91)
In fact, one could perhaps defend the idea that the history
of autobiography is essentially a series of loops, which explains that
same problems come back all over again, but with different forms. The problem
of telling one's life story is always the same, as well as the basic sentiments,
subjectivity connected with it, but they come back in different forms,
depending on the evolution of the forms of presentation, historical situations
etc.. So the development of the concept of the self, of family forms,
of writing (instead of just telling of dictating), printing, the emergence
of the novel, mass culture etc. have all had their impact on autobiographies,
but in a metonymical sense: the original principle of the I telling about
life still remains the same.
In any case, I should always hesitate when talking
about "beginning" or the "end" in connection with human history, something
which, since Foucault and the Annales school has become rather commonplace.
see also the Auto/Biography version which contains several smaller
corrections compared to the original!