Contributions to the debate on the study of identities and biographies (original) (raw)
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Identity as a narrative of autobiography
Journal of Education Culture and Society
This article is a proposal of identity research through its process and narrative character. As a starting point I present a definition of identity understood as the whole life process of finding identification. Next I present my own model of auto/biography-narrative research inspired by hermeneutic and phenomenological traditions of thinking about experiencing reality. I treat auto/biography-narrative research as a means of exploratory conduct, based on the narrator’s biography data, also considering the researcher’s autobiographical thought. In the final part of the article I focus on showing the narrative structure of identity and autobiography. I emphasise this relation in definitions qualifying autobiography as written life narration and identity as a narration of autobiography.
Prepublication of the introductory article of an issue of _Cercles, revue pluridisciplinaire d'études anglophones_. The biographical turn, as we find convenient to call the renewed interest in biography and biographic approaches that has been taking place over the last decades, converging from several disciplines of the humanities, appears like a paradigmatic debate of sorts, that both calls for a new definition of biography in the larger sense of the term, and generates a theoretical demand.This article positions biographical studies within the perimeter of life-writing considered as an emerging crossroads discipline in the humanities. It analyses some of the causes of the so-called "resistance to theory" of biography. It argues that the very reappraisal of the central concept of the subject operated by the philosophy of deconstruction and analytic philosophy has entailed the emergence of life-writing, and created the intellectual need to theorize biography in this la...
Annual Review of Critical Psychology, Vol. 16, 2019
In Critical Psychology biographical research has so far appeared only marginally. Key considerations on human biographies have been developed, but a subject-scientific approach of biographical research has not yet been developed. Klaus Holzkamp distinguishes between phenomenal and real biography. The 'phenomenal' is the biography as it is experienced by the subject herself. The 'real' biography captures the living conditions, abilities, needs etc. of a person together with the inherent opportunities and limitations at each point in time. From a temporal point of view, there is a reality of a person which transcends the mental state of the subject, but which only selectively becomes reality for the subject and necessarily goes beyond it. Biographical research in a subject-scientific sense therefore refers to research with the aid of the analytical categories "real/phenomenal biography". After an introductory positioning of a possible subject-scientific approach to biographical research, the second part of the paper is dealing with the question about what is and can be understood as a 'biography' and which new possibilities are offered by the categories of Critical Psychology in this context. Five theoretical horizons are presented and discussed in order to develop some kind of theory-led grid for analyzing concrete biographies in subject-scientific projects of biographical research. As an illustration the biography of the fictional person Amal is analyzed in part three. It is necessary to create a theoretical framework for subject-scientific biographical research before questions of research methodology and methodological procedure can be discussed. A short conclusion of essential methodological and methodical considerations is given in the fourth part.
SEARCHING PERSONAL AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES THROUGH BIOGRAPHICAL TRAJECTORIES. THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.
In a University Course entitled «The use of Biographical Approach» we lived experience and feelings that we wish to communicate and share with other students and professors. Using personal life documents we construct our family-tree through our family-history. As an end, we collect information about places of birth and residence, important dates, main occupation, moral and religious beliefs, political ideologies, financial statuses, family development, significant crisis and transitions. We search our roots in depth, helped by oral accounts of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents. We learn new and unexpected information for many unknown aspects of our familyhistory. We understand that the stories of our individual lives are interconnected with broader stories. All those small pieces of stories, in turn, are related to the great historical events of the 20th century. We hear for the population forced exchange between Greece and Turkey after the First World War, the German occupation of Greece during the Second World War, the Greek Civil War and the refugees of those times, the liberation of Berlin by the Soviet Red Army at the end of the Second World War. Furthermore, we hear stories about the everyday worries of people. We finally realize that our stories are parts of other stories like the Russian doll, Babushka. Keywords: identities, educational auto/biography, life-story, critical reflection
Life history approach beyond individualism psycho-societal interpretations of biographies
This paper offers a conception of life history research on the basis of a notion of social experience and ambivalence, which sees the learning of the emerging/visible subject as dynamics of cultural and social meaning making. Referring to a tradition of empirical cultural analysis it outlines a theoretical framework to understand the relation between social practice, language and learning. The key concepts of subjectivity and experience, derived from European critical theory, are briefly introduced with respect to their intellectual background. It is a framework based in psychoanalytical and critical social theory, and suggests that the individual learning biography can best be analyzed as a recording of the individual subject's participation in language games and social practice in a specific societal situation. Based on examples from the author's research into the professional learning, the article outlines the implications of these concepts in relation to an understanding of emotional aspects of learning in everyday life and to an understanding of knowledge.
Introduction: Analysing Personal Narratives
Southeast Asian Lives: Personal Narratives and Historical Experience, 2007
This chapter looks at how life histories have featured in anthropology, and asks how we could be making more consistent and creative use of them. Many 'ordinary', non-famous people have led extraordinary lives, living through dramatic social and political transformations. Anthropologists in the field have unique opportunities to record the lives of those who become our friends and acquaintances, but the very particularities of these narratives can make them seem difficult to analyse. The author proposes that historical consciousness - the individual's awareness of living in a particular place and time, making a life in the face of particular constraints and opportunities - provides a powerful framework for analysis, and vividly brings to life the interface between historical events and personal experience. The stories in this book have been produced in the dialogical encounter between a narrator and an anthropologist, and the contributions in this volume break new ground in their profound consideration of the nuances involved in this process, and the many possible audiences that such personal narratives may be designed to reach. The author argues that life stories are a fertile but still undervalued resource for a more multivocal anthropology that can do justice to personal experience.
Introduction: Reconstructive biographical research
Current Sociology, 2023
Reconstructive biographical research is a diverse and differentiated sociological field. In this introduction, we trace its interdisciplinary and transnational historical development, consider the most important theoretical influences, and characterize central research areas. In this way, we show that reconstructive biographical research is a distinct sociological approach to social analysis. It offers a reflexive access to understanding, classifying, and explaining social processes and social challenges through the analysis of experienced and/or narrated life stories.