Showing papers in "Biography in 2003"
232 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the diarists' place in the "global autobiography project" of the Internet (Mur- ray 252) and find that they adopt self-reflexive and self-deprecatory perspectives about their online lives, and acknowledge their personal and textual shortcomings with tongue in cheek.
Abstract: CONFESSION Something about the online journal and its generic cousin the Weblog, or blog, makes me distinctly uncomfortable. After several hours of reading these journals, I often feel sick, as if I've watched too many tell-all talk shows on daytime television. I've learned too much I didn't need to know about too many people's everyday lives—lives without anything particularly extraordi- nary to recommend them, except the diarists' own sense of importance and relevance. Some journals make me feel guilty, as if I have been looking at texts I should not be reading, that are too personal and not intended for me to see. I "lurk" on diary sites, refusing to participate in the communities by posting to their forums or signing their guestbooks. I am cross when the diaries are badly written, and occasionally offended by their contents; I con- tinue to visit these sites—for academic reasons—but I read with an entirely unscholarly sneer. When I find a diary I like, though, I engage in a marathon reading session to get caught up, then frequent the site daily, anxious for new entries. Such sites feature diaries that are much more literary and coherent narratives, in generally grammatical English. The diarists adopt self-reflexive and self-deprecatory perspectives about their online lives, and acknowledge their personal and textual shortcomings with tongue in cheek. Though my own life has little in common with the diarists' daily life experiences, all are my age or older, and share similar political views and other values. I mention these personal reactions as starting points for my exploration of the diary's place in the "global autobiography project" of the Internet (Mur- ray 252). Since I do not respond as viscerally to print diaries, why do online journals provoke me in this way? Perhaps my feelings reflect the collision
115 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of online diaries suggests some of the ways in which autobiographical stories and subjects are shaped on the Web, and how diaries are written, what is written and to whom, how they are read and interpreted.
Abstract: An analysis of online diaries suggests some of the ways in which autobiographical
stories and subjects are shaped on the Web. The computer as a
writing tool, and the Web as a publishing medium, influence the practices
of diary writing, affecting how diaries are written, what is written and to
whom, and how they are read and interpreted.
70 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that an important aspect of the differences lie in the experimental and material conditions of the Web itself, and that the differences between handwritten diaries and the online diaries that are increasingly appearing on the World Wide Web can be traced back to the fact that the experimental conditions are different.
Abstract: This article is based on a very straightforward question: what are the differences
between conventional handwritten diaries and the online diaries that
are increasingly appearing on the World Wide Web? I argue that an important
aspect of the differences lie in the experimental and material conditions
of the Web itself.
62 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that if we want to understand lived experiences of the Internet, we need to study not only online, virtual representations of selves, but also lives and selves situated within the social relations of the consumption and production of information and communication technologies.
Abstract: This article is an argument for technobiography, a term coined in Cyborg
Lives? Women's Technobiographies, a collection I coedited in 2001. I outline
what technobiography is, and how, by allowing access to what it feels like to
live certain digital experiences, it can contribute to building a comprehensive
picture of cybercultural landscapes. If we want to understand lived experiences
of the Internet, we need to study not only online, virtual representations
of selves, but also lives and selves situated within the social relations of
the consumption and production of information and communication technologies.
Drawing on two technobiographical projectsNone involving a
group of black, working-class women returning to education with the aid of
networked technologies and computer-mediated distance learning, and
another exploring social relations in a digital multimedia production center
-I indicate ways in which technobiography can contribute to this important
project
31 citations
TL;DR: The self-indulgence of personal home pages has been widely recognized as a signifier of self-deformation and self-destructiveness as discussed by the authors, which has led to their notoriety as self-disreputable and self censoring.
Abstract: SELF-ADVERTISEMENT AND SELF-CENSORSHIP If, as Paul de Man observes, literary autobiography looks “slightly disreputable and self-indulgent” (67–68), then one can well expect the reek of disreputability that has stigmatized the new genre of personal home pages. Such is their notoriety for self-indulgence that a dismissive quip by New York Times technology journalist Edward Rothstein—“Sartre had it only partly right. Hell is not just other people, it’s other people’s home pages”—has earned acknowledgment even in the scholarship of home page researchers
23 citations
TL;DR: On the back wall of the Sistine Chapel, in a dark corner of Michaelangelo's painting of the Last Judgment, the apostle Bartholomew clutches an empty human skin this article.
Abstract: On the back wall of the Sistine Chapel, in a dark corner of Michaelangelo's painting of the Last Judgment, the apostle Bartholomew clutches an empty human skin. Flayed from the head to represent the saint's martyrdom, the limp skin dangles, a shocking contrast to the mass of muscled, curving forms that dominate the fresco. The shadowed image reminds me of a scene in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek-, a giant water bug attacks a frog and sucks its innards out, the skin collapsing like a kicked tent and drifting slowly to the bottom of the pond. Dillard evokes the scene sporadically in her book as an emblem for the essential estrangement of human experience from the world of nature. These images came to mind on a cold December midnight when I picked up the phone to hear a hoarse voice whisper "Slut!" and then a click. Late the next night, the call came again—and again and again over the next month. Of course, I was terrified—terrified not only because this man had made me his demented project, not only because my life might be in danger, but also because the late-night caller preying on me could have been any number of my own victims. My job consists of sucking people's guts out. Of course that's not my job at all. I am a journalist. I tell other people's stories, give them voice. I write with compassion and empathy. Forging peo ple's stories under the powerful label of "nonfiction" is a means of telling people they are not alone in the human comedy. "When I read your story," a reader once wrote to me, "I recognized my own situation. I thought, 'maybe I'm not just slime in the bottom of a jar.'" These are the elements of my job that don't trouble the soul. I try to be an honest journalist. I don't misquote people, invent scenes, or forge composite characters. I agonize over contexts and triple-check my Biography 26.2 (Spring 2003) © Biographical Research Center
20 citations
TL;DR: In the early 1990s, the authors identified a trend among media artists that still interests autobiographers: a common tendency both to represent historically positioned inscriptions of the self, and to research ways
Abstract: By the beginning of the twenty-first century, scholars and critics from a range of disciplines had amply documented the autobiographical impulse in everyday life. Communicated "on the body, on the air, in music, in print, on video, at meetings," as Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson observe, personal narratives intrigue cross-sections of the population in the United States and around the world ( Getting a Life 2). According to Smith and Watson, indi viduals of all kinds seem eager both to construct their own narratives and to learn about the life stories that other people tell (Getting a Life 3). Chroni cles about "getting a life" disseminated via the traditional mass media con tribute to cultural archives, as do autobiographical texts that have been con sidered '"merely personal' and extraliterary," such as "diaries, letters, journals, memoirs, travel narratives, meditations, cookbooks, family histories, spiritual records, collages, art books, and others" (Smith and Watson, "Introduction" 38-39). Hailed by Fredric Jameson as the dominant medium of postmodernism (201), video has also played an important role in reshaping autobiographical genres. This history encompasses productions made for network and cable television as well as for alternative venues, since makers often have chosen to work outside of commercial arenas, a practice that emerged during the 1970s when portable video equipment became available. Free to innovate and to identify their own audiences, independent media artists have experimented with autobiographical genres, and so have nonprofessional home users. Film and video scholar Michael Renov in 1989 identified a trend among media artists that still interests autobiographers. The examples he discusses in "The New Autobiography in Film and Video" share a common tendency both to represent historically positioned inscriptions of the self, and to research ways
19 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the cultural phenomenon that is Angela's Ashes, reading Frank McCourt's memoir against the grain of Carolyn Kay Steedman's Landscape for a good woman, focusing on two lines of inquiry regarding the book: why is this book of history-as-memory so popular and what kind of historiographical practices does the book engage in to achieve its aims of representing itself as an authentic, "true" history.
Abstract: Many memoirs, in addition to participating in the discursive community of life writing, also partake in the narrative conventions of historiography and fiction, frequently employing what Roland Barthes calls a "reality effect" to infuse their stories with a sense of verisimilitude. This essay explores the cultural phenomenon that is Angela's Ashes, reading Frank McCourt's memoir against the grain of Carolyn Kay Steedman's Landscape for a Good Woman. I am primarily concerned with two lines of inquiry regarding Angela's Ashes: why is this book of history-as-memory so popular-that is, what does its raging popularity reveal about the society that consumes and champions it; and what kind of historiographical practices does the book engage in to achieve its aims of representing itself as an authentic, "true" history?
15 citations
TL;DR: For example, the authors argues that the war stories that tend to be recorded, and therefore remembered, are the stories of soldiers, the ones who carried both the guns and the wounded.
Abstract: Telling war stories, your own or those of others, is primarily an act of testi mony, a public ritual of healing. Through the act of telling, the stories, and hence the ones behind the stories, are remembered, are honored. Those who tell their own stories also begin to heal. In exchange, those who hear the sto ries, who bear witness to them, partially experience the inexpressible trauma faced by the ones who served. Rich with the possibility of both individual and collective catharsis, the telling of war stories is a time-honored practice. Such testimonies stretch from ancient cave paintings illustrating battle to contemporary accounts of war recited at Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa and Bosnia. For thousands of years, human beings have strug gled to record—literally to document but etymologically to enter into the heart—what comes after words fail. As with any act of public inscription, though, telling war stories is not a transparent practice. Questions of who is permitted to tell and what counts as a (war) story riddle the category of life writing in general, and military life writing in particular.1 Recent work on the life writing of those in marginal ized positions, those who have traditionally held neither gun nor pen, forces us to expand the definition of what autobiographical writing looks like, and to reconceptualize ideas of who has the right to speak from experience. The category of military life writing is no exception, since broadening this canon demands asking who can own the experience of war. Understandably, the war stories that tend to be recorded, and therefore remembered, are the stories of soldiers—the ones who carried both the guns and the wounded. While Tim O'Brien's work reminds us that no story can
TL;DR: The authors examines British working-class women's autobiography as a form of political dissidence and argues that women's collective autobiographical practice was written about the reproductive body within the socio/historical context of class and gender relations from the perspective of women.
Abstract: This article examines British working-class women's autobiography as a form of political dissidence. Crucial to guildswomen's collective autobiographical practice was writing about the reproductive body within the socio/historical context of class and gender relations from the perspective of women. As revealed in Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) and in Life as We Have Known It (1931), guildswomen's life writing contested boundaries between political and domestic spheres, shifted emphasis from the individual to a collective identity, and demanded the inclusion of reproductive rights within the domain of human rights.
TL;DR: Identical twins challenge the Western valorization of the individual, and thus the major life-writing genres, autobiography and biography as mentioned in this paper, but their obsessive journal-writing documented their lives in great detail.
Abstract: Identical twins challenge the Western valorization of the individual, and thus the major life-writing genres, autobiography and biography. The intense bond between Jennifer and June Gibbons, and their elective mutism, made their biography an unlikely project, but their obsessive journal-writing documented their lives in great detail. Marjorie Wallace's The Silent Twins demonstrates--and surmounts--the difficulty of representing identical twins.
TL;DR: Markus's recent retelling of the story of the marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning caused some interest outside the world of Browning scholarship by reviving and amplifying speculations about the ethnic origins of the two poets as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Dared and Done, Julia Markus's recent retelling of the story of the marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, caused some interest outside the world of Browning scholarship by reviving and amplifying speculations about the ethnic origins of the two poets.1 The possibility that Robert Browning might have had some African ancestry through Margaret Tittle, his grand mother on his father's side, was canvassed during and immediately after the poet's lifetime, and Markus adds to this the new suggestion that Elizabeth Barrett believed herself to have had African ancestry through her grandfather Charles Moulton (Orr; Chesterton 4; Markus 102-103). This latter hypoth esis is based on a number of factors—the acknowledged frequency of inter racial unions in colonial Jamaica, where the Barrett family made its fortune; Elizabeth's father's unwillingness to allow any of his children to marry; Eliz abeth's composition of the powerful anti-slavery ballad "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" during her pregnancy—and clinched by a passage in a Bar rett Browning letter of December 20, 1845, to her future husband in which she wishes she had "some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave!" (Markus 102). This passage has usually been interpreted as a critique of the Barrett family's involvement with the slave trade rather than an acknowl edgment of African ancestry (Karlin 51), but for Markus this reading simply highlights the collective unwillingness of the academic community to accept the most obvious explanation.2 One of the most important developments in the field of biography in recent years has been the attempt to expose the cultural and ideological assumptions underpinning the apparently neutral and fact-based discipline of life writing, and Markus's biography of the Brownings exemplifies this trend. She is attempting to restore what the editors of a recent collection of essays on biographical theory and practice call "the fullness of our cultural Biography 26.2 (Spring 2003) © Biographical Research Center
TL;DR: Manganyi as mentioned in this paper interviewed South African biographer, psychologist, and life writing theorist N. C. Manganyi, University of Pretoria, 5 March 2002, 5.
Abstract: An interview with South African biographer, psychologist, and life writing theorist N. C. Manganyi, University of Pretoria, 5 March 2002.
TL;DR: The fragility of the notion of identity can be seen in the fact that it is never simply enough to be what one is, rather one must become what one was in order to give shape to that identity, or make it function effectively in political contexts.
Abstract: The fragility of the notion of identity can be seen in the fact that it is never simply enough to be what one is, rather one must become what one is in order to give shape to that identity, or make it function effectively in political contexts. Yet this is to open up a dangerous gap between identity and identification, for identification in its emphasis on becoming what one is now has the capacity to change the content of identity into virtually anything. —Richard F. Calichman
TL;DR: The International Conference on Women's Life Writing (WCWLW) was held at the University of Bern, 6-9 November 2002 as mentioned in this paper, with a focus on women's life writing.
Abstract: Report on an International Conference on women's life writing held at the University of Bern, 6—9 November 2002.