Understanding our selves : the dangerous art of biography PDF
Preview Understanding our selves : the dangerous art of biography
E 12 u r Modern Western biography has become one of the most popular S Susan Tridgell o u and most controversial forms of literature. Critics have attacked s a its tendency to rely on a strong narrative drive, its focus on a n Understanding Our Selves p single person’s life and its tendency to delve ever more deeply T r i into that person’s inner, private experience, though these tenden- d g cies seem to have only increased biography’s popularity. To date, e The Dangerous Art of Biography e l however, biography has been a rarely studied literary form. Little l serious attention has been given to the light biographies can shed • a on philosophical problems, such as the intertwining of knowledge U and power, or the ways in which we can understand lives, or n n terms like ‘the self’. Should selves be seen as relational or as d e autonomous? What of the ‘lies and silences’ of biographies, the rs t ways in which embodiment can be ignored? A study of these a n problems allows engagement with a range of philosophers and d C i literary theorists, including Roland Barthes, Lorraine Code, n g Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Ray O Monk, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty and u o r Charles Taylor. Biography can be a dangerous art, claiming to S know ‘just how you feel’. This book explores the double-edged e l v nature of biography, looking at what it reveals about both nar- e n s ratives and selves. n e c t Susan Tridgell is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. She has taught at both the Australian National Uni- i versity and the Australian Catholic University and has published o articles on biography, nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, ethics and literature, Holocaust biography, philosophical bio- n graphy and conceptions of the self. Authors of interest have included Bertrand Russell, Emmanuel Levinas, George Eliot and 12 D.H. Lawrence. She received her doctorate in literature from the Peter Lang s Australian National University. UG European Connections 12.p65 1 15.09.2004, 13:14 E 12 u r Modern Western biography has become one of the most popular S Susan Tridgell o u and most controversial forms of literature. Critics have attacked s a its tendency to rely on a strong narrative drive, its focus on a n Understanding Our Selves p single person’s life and its tendency to delve ever more deeply T r i into that person’s inner, private experience, though these tenden- d g cies seem to have only increased biography’s popularity. To date, e The Dangerous Art of Biography e l however, biography has been a rarely studied literary form. Little l serious attention has been given to the light biographies can shed • a on philosophical problems, such as the intertwining of knowledge U and power, or the ways in which we can understand lives, or n n terms like ‘the self’. Should selves be seen as relational or as d e autonomous? What of the ‘lies and silences’ of biographies, the rs t ways in which embodiment can be ignored? A study of these a n problems allows engagement with a range of philosophers and d C i literary theorists, including Roland Barthes, Lorraine Code, n g Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Ray O Monk, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty and u o r Charles Taylor. Biography can be a dangerous art, claiming to S know ‘just how you feel’. This book explores the double-edged e l v nature of biography, looking at what it reveals about both nar- e n s ratives and selves. n e c t Susan Tridgell is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. She has taught at both the Australian National Uni- i versity and the Australian Catholic University and has published o articles on biography, nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, ethics and literature, Holocaust biography, philosophical bio- n graphy and conceptions of the self. Authors of interest have included Bertrand Russell, Emmanuel Levinas, George Eliot and 12 D.H. Lawrence. She received her doctorate in literature from the Peter Lang s Australian National University. UG European Connections 12.p65 1 15.09.2004, 13:14 Understanding Our Selves European Connections edited by Peter Collier Volume 12 PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien Susan Tridgell Understanding Our Selves The Dangerous Art of Biography PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.ddb.de›. British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA ISSN 1424-3792 ISBN 3-03910-166-8 E‐ISBN 978‐3‐0353‐0219‐6 US-ISBN 0-8204-6976-9 © Peter Lang AG, European Academic Publishers, Bern 2004 Hochfeldstrasse 32, Postfach 746, CH-3000 Bern 9 [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany Till min älskling, Andrew Contents Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 Chapter One: The Myth of Objective Biography 25 Chapter Two: Embodiment in Biography 47 Chapter Three: Lives as Narratives: Experiences of Time 63 Chapter Four: Moral Accountability and Narrating the Self 85 Chapter Five: Autonomous and Relational Selves 103 Chapter Six: Linear Narratives, Fragmented Selves 115 Chapter Seven: ‘I Know Just How You Feel’: The Ethics of Epistemology in Biography 133 Chapter Eight: Biography and Truth: The Limits of What Can be Said 165 Conclusion 187 Notes 191 Bibliography 209 Index 229
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