Biographies bring life stories to light, make them emerge from the ‘unspoken’ and allow ourselves to see and read about others, as well as about ourselves.
As such, biographical narratives are not merely descriptions of past events, they are transformed instances of lived experiences of language.
told and retold in diverse modalities and ultimately relating memories to present discourses and future developments.
Maria Lassnig, an Austrian painter working on the emergence of the subject throughout the second half of the 20th century, has chosen the title “Heart Self-portrait in the Green Room” for her painting.
Throughout her life, she focused on bodies, her own body in particular and visually researched the transformations and experiences of the embodied self and the relationship between bodies and environments.
I will, after a discussion of the concept of biographies and biographical work, return to this painting for analysis.
Who am I? Who are you? Who am I now, and who was I then?
Biographies in an everyday sense are seen as life stories of the speaker, ready at any given time to give account of how one arrived at this very moment in time.
However, they are not neutral recordings of what had happened across one's lifespan, instead they are complex constructions, drawing on memories, affects, experiences and social and cultural knowledge.
In terms of language biograpies, the multilingual self constructs itself by drawing on lived language experience (as inspired by the works of Claire Kramsch and Brigitta Busch).
In order to understand how meaning-making is achieved in constructing autobiographies and biographical narratives, this contribution first revisits some important notions.
As biographical narratives are not detached from social circumstances and contexts, the relationship between the narrator and the addressed other,
in the form of a listener/interlocutor, e.g. as the co-present interviewer, as well as the imagined and narrated other is relevant.
I find this particularly important, as it influences the way we can make sense of biographical data:
by relying on and understanding dyadic relationships in eliciting and interpreting data.
I take inspiration from post-structuralist theory here, as do many colleagues in this field, with a particular interest in the collaborative construction and performance of (auto-)biography by the means of language.
Cavarero and Butler, along with others, insist that the biographical narrative always asks for a (real or imagined) other, a second person, and that the essence of biographical narratives lies between the narrator on the one hand and the addressee on the other. The addressed other is the attentive listener, but even more than that they are ever-present, even in cases where there is not a physical second person.
In a biographical sense, we only come into being when being addressed as a speaking subject, recognized as a person belonging to a social community, for instance through a languags that we were introduced to as a child. Biography and language thus never fully belong to one person alone.
Yet, each person’s sense of self is strongly related to the ability to narrate one’s own life story, changing across the lifespan but consistent with the (changing) image of the self.
Butler (2005) writes about the story of the self, and she recalls the most important aspects of establishing a time of narration and coherent sequential development, and thus of forming a narrative structure: [+ quote]
Butler’s work on performativity offers us an understanding of the life story as a performance, dependent on several actors, among them the author-narrator and the audience as co-producer. In formulating our life story, we relate to others around us. Butler reminds us that the narrative of a life story is in a way performed (and not merely narrated), and that such a doing of the I is a narrative in a wider sense of the term.
Cavarero, whose work has among others inspired Butler, spoke of the narratable self and again, I quote: [+ quote]
Cavarero insists on the potential of the narratable self, meaning that even in moments when the life story is not narrated, the work of memory is still ongoing.
As long as we perceive ourselves as narratable, we imagine a coherent self, one that is able to explain our whereabouts, our choices and experiences. On the other hand, as Cavarero points out, the self in the moment of a narration is challenged when the beginning of its own existence is addressed:
none of us is able to give first-hand accounts of our birth and early years, which were the times before our narratable self came into being and as such are subject to questionable selfhood.
In a way, this might be the time to think about the connections between the language portraits and the painting I keep showing you here...
Research on biographies dates back at least a hundred years, beginning with the works of Thomas and Znaniecki on Polish migrants in the USA, relying on letters, diaries and autobiographical accounts .
Also Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel incorporated autobiographical accounts in their study on effects of unemployment and poverty in a rural community in Austria and gained insights about expectations and experiences from the participants’ perspectives.
From the 1970s on, research employing methods concerned with (auto-)biographical life stories and interest in the biographical development of people, gained popularity in the social sciences across Europe and also other places, particularly in sociology, history and education.
The shared aim of the analysis as described by Breckner is the wish to understand the meaning of social phenomena such as inclusion, exclusion, social and educational success for speakers.
As these experiences are not isolated incidents but consist of lived social practices, their meaning can only be understood if they are analysed in the context of a life story (in what Dilthey termed Lebenszusammenhang). As such they are very attractive for biographical approaches.
By analysing individual life stories, effects of social processes that are relevant in structuring people’s lives and experiences emerge.
Moments of biographical transformations, which comprise not only migration but also changes in occupation or work environment as well as parenthood or serious illness make the effects of social forces visible and highlight power relations in societies.
Aligning the reflections about the narratable self with biographical approaches, the life story that appears through (auto-)biographical tellings is emerging in the same way as the image of the body is appearing through the canvas in the paintings of Maria Lassnig,
letting us see some parts of the body (of the self) quite clearly, while other parts remain in the dark and behind the canvas.
As narrators, we might be aware of the invisible connections of what lies beneath the surface, but as researchers we are forced into dealing only with the parts of the life story that emerge (i.e. that are constructed for us by the narrator).
Our task as researchers is not only to think of ways to enable the narrators to bring their stories to the fore, but also to be cautious about drawing conclusions when only some (body) parts can be seen.
The parts that are visible will thus most likely be incomplete albeit perfectly formed parts of the story, waiting to be reconstructed (or else: be told another time).
Each telling of the (auto-)biography, depending on the persons involved, the circumstances, etc., will alter the image that is present(ed) in front of us.
In a constant development that is not directed towards one clear goal, we see certain parts of the narrative emerge just as the body parts in Maria Lassnig’s self-portrait seem to penetrate the canvas.
Depending on the angle and position of the viewer/listener, we might be able to see more or understand certain connections, but we are relying on the moving body to guide us.
As we can see in the language portrait there are certains parts that are highlighted whereas other parts of the language biography are for example backgrounded and might at the moment not be visible to us.
In the self-portrait of the woman going through the canvas, and Maria Lassning describe this movement as the body of the woman appearing, we can see how forces behind and in front of the canvas, i.e. the narrative, influence how social dimensions and individual experiences can be seen and interpreted.
Linking these thoughts to narrative studies, we see that De Fina and Georgakopoulou agree with the constituting function of the narrative, i.e. narratives are texts that produce and perform identity and positioning of the subject.
The different temporal, spatial and narrative layers need to be taken into account when reconstructing life stories using biographical approaches.
In a way, they are all showing us different parts that emerge through the canvas or that appear on the paper as we can see to the left and thus will give us some ways of understanding, som eways of analysing.
Knowing that what we see is part of the story and not necessarily all of it or usually not all of it. In a way we are trying the stretch the canvas, to make more of the underlying structures appear as we do in research and to better understand the connections between them.
Biographical research takes speaking subjects with their embodied experience into account. For, as Maria Lassnig wrote, the inner and outer world can not be separated: the gaze is directed by the body just as the body is in turn shaped by the gaze and viewer.
This holds equally true for the experiences of the speaking subject as they influence language and are themselves shaped by language in use.
Languages and means of expressions are inherently connected to those that speak or sign them and come to life through the manifold ways how speakers make use of them.
As such, they are not only linked to social contexts and interactions, past and present, but are also shaped by the very moment the narratives are told.
Much like Lassnig’s self portrait, biographical details appear from below the surface where they are contextually, variably and discursively connected and may at times present themselves bright and clear
while at other times, we might struggle to even recognise a pattern. While nobody can map a person’s multilingual self once and for all, these connections can be approached through research, opening paths to understand language as a social practice, imbued with functional and imaginary relevance.
But the sense, what we see and what we are able to make of it will always depend on how well we are able to figure out what is still beneath the surfaces or else finding ways to make these aspects beneath the surface appear.
Thank you for listening & reading and here are some final references (that can also be found in the slides).