Looking at obituaries and other sources

Obituary is a popular form of life writing which encompasses the temporality of a life by its end. It is “undoubtedly the most widely disseminated life-writing genre and thus the one most widely consumed by the general public” (Couser, 2004, p.3)

The obituary is a retrospective life story usually devoted to people who had some public significance. The length of the obituary and its placement within an issue can tell us something about the significance of a person, but “obituaries are of necessity among the briefest forms of life writing” (Couser, 2004 p.9). Having said that it is interesting to observe the differences between the Simone’s obituary and Sartre’s, her longtime companion. In Simone’s obituaries (See Webster, 1986, Times, 1986) the reference to Sartre is quite significant, while the references to Simone’s in one of Sartre’s obituary takes nothing more than two lines (See Whitman, 1980). “The obituary makes a public statement of a life’s end. It represents a narrative form which goes from birth (the beginning), to death (the end). It gives a life a finite temporal space. It then fills out that space with the accomplishments of the person. It makes a life consubstantial with its achievements” (Denzin, 1997 p.79).

In addition to obituaries and the traditional biographies, currently there is a popular source of information accessed by the public that provides free content, Wikipedia. It is interesting to observe hoe these three life stories are portrayed in this popular encyclopaedia and the different emphasis given to each of them. Evelyn’s biography (Wikipedia, 2008b) comprises very little information most of them in need of references, while Simone’s biography (Wikipedia, 2008c) is well structured and thoroughly referenced. On the other hand, Benazir’s biography (Wikipedia, 2008a) is the most complete and extensive among the three. The extent and significance of Benazir’s story can be interrelated to contemporary issues, and to the current interest in famous people’s lives.

Conclusion

According to Dewey “an experience is always what it is because of a transaction taking place between an individual and what, at the time, constitutes his (sic) environment” (Dewey, 1997), p. 43). Environment is understood as whatever conditions that “interact with personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities to create the experience which is had” (Dewey, 1997 p.44). In view of this it seems clear to me how those women’s experiences were associated to their environment then. Evelyn, Simone and Benazir were who they were because of their family background, their beliefs and disbeliefs, their social and cultural environment and also because of themselves. They can be seen as three distinctive illustrations of their distinctive cultures, and their biographies are representative of those as “cultures can be written through lives” (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998, p.204). But this representation is a complex and sophisticated threat that requires accurate contextualisation, because “the locating of a biographical figure within the historical situation of their writing is something of a necessary context within the task of interpretation (Grimwood, 2008 p.199) . Because Simone was “a pioneering woman in her own time” (Moi, 1994, p.1), her individual trajectory can be regarded as a landmark into women’s rights movements, but also as a consequence of her time, culture and context. In the same way the extraordinary contributions of Evelyn and Benazir in their specific fields, are both a result of a time and an addition to that time and context history. This essay intended to look at those biographies and reflect upon this relation between the individual life and its social, cultural and political context. In Simone’s “texts, the conflicts and contradictions experienced by intellectual women in a patriarchal world emerge with unusual clarity” (Moi, 1994, p.1), and this is also true taking into account the other portrayed women’s production. Those three lives are representative of these contradictions that still survive to some extent in our society.

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Evelyn, Simone and Benazir: singular women, unique biographies [the complete series]:

Biography in three genres: an introduction
Evelyn, Simone and Benazir: Singular women, distinctive biographies

Autobiography of a daughter

Is it a hindsight[ful] biography? Looking at obituaries and other sources

Conclusion

REFERENCES