Individuals may
be better understood when viewed through time. The best way might be to build
(writing / putting together) a life-history, our own or of someone else, that can
act as the glue that connects seemingly separate events in a coherent story. It
is a thread of time that connects and creates a sense of one-ness, explaining
the present and future in relation to the past.
When we think
of life-histories, we almost always think in terms of a biography. The problem
with biographies is that a description from one viewpoint of a life-history can
never completely describe all events. It can, however, act to communicate a
coherent perception even though there may be plenty of misunderstanding and
illusion remaining.
Autobiographies
are also flawed in that while they may or may not be honest, it is a singular
viewpoint from 'inside the machine' that can never be objective. They do,
however, give meaning to the individual as they stitch together events and find
personal meaning.
Bourdieu (1987)
notes that constructing a life-history has less to do with being a reflection
of life itself, but more to do with being a technique for reconstructing
experience, a device for producing the experience of self as being in harmony. He
also believes that while the 'unified-self' is not a complete illusion, it
neither is natural nor fundamentally human. Society includes many
individualizing methods.
As an example, he
describes a person's name like this:
"The
proper name is the visible affirmation of the identity of the bearer across
time and space, the basis of the unity of one's successive manifestations, and
of the socially accepted possibilities of integrating these manifestations in
official records, curriculum vitae, cursus honorum, police record, obituary, or
biography which constitute life as a finite sum through the verdict given in a
temporary or final reckoning." (Bourdieu, 1987)
The
life-history 'illusion' is that a proper name refers to a group of features or traits
that define the permanent core of a 'self' that exists before the history.
Bourdieu claims that no such basis exists, and that legal, governmental and beautiful
personalities are not related, therefore making it difficult to identify a
single 'person'. In the legal sense, many attributes of the person are
conferred rather than are intrinsic.
What would your
life-history look like?
Have you ever
thought about it?
Would you like
to better understand who you really are???
TJ
Works Cited:
Bourdieu,
P. (1987). The biographical illusion. Working Papers and Proceedings of the
Centre for Psychosocial Studies (Univ. of Chicago) 14, 1-7
