Narrative and biographical forms of research – are we just telling stories?

[02 May 2007]
  Jens Brockmeier
  (Universities of Manitoba & East London)

  and Tom Wengraf
  (University of East London)

Mike Erben


[Jens Brockmeier]

The autobiographical process:

-memory, narrative and the self

 

Identity and Self:

* The self is already there, identity is constructed

* Identity construction:

  • is a process in time

  • is based on consciousness

  • we produce, we create, we construct it

  • is the situation of the self in time

  • we create our identity by our past, our memories, by the stories we tell about ourselves

* An autobiographical act is mixed together with other autobiogrphical acts.

* We often reencode memory in new contexts

* Autobiographical process is intermingled with other perceptual, cognitive and affective processes; and it is typically part of, or trigerred by, social interaction.

* Autobiographical process and narrative come from the same source

 Narrative techniques and devices:

  1. Switch between Fabula and Sjuzet

  2. Switch between different levels of time

  3. Switch between different mental stages

  4. Switch between different narrative perspectives/voices

  5. Switch between foreground and background

  6. Switch between individual and cultural memory

  7. tropes:

  • metaphors

  • metonomies

  • similies, comparsons

  • pictures

[Mike Erben]

Biography and Research Methods

* A full biography is not feasable, what we have are fragments of life

Theoretical perspectives:

  • The Philosophical

  • The sociological

  • The Psychoanalitic

Practical activities:

  • Creating the data

  • Imagination and the data

  • The data

 * Self definitions

* Most of our data must be reconstructed by imagination

* Comprehensive mode of inquiry

Section in a book:

Nostalgia and Autobiogfraphy: the past in the present, in Auto/Biography (2006) vol. 14

* Nostalgia as a sense of lost of a positive past

[Emerged from audience’s questions]

  • Interpreting your data through good faith is a moral act

  • A good description is an explanation

  • A good description is blended with interpretation