1/23
Exit post: What is something important you learned today? What is a question you have about what we covered today? Please add a post entitled “exit note: ‘your name’” which answers these two questions in a sentence or two. You will add to this post after each class.
It was interesting to hear about Barthes’ works about the death of the author, especially in conjunction with Foucault’s idea of the author function. Both of these works argued that the emphasis should be put on the reader–what they get from the experience and what they create as the author function.
To what extent are autobiographies expected to be 100% truth? Do writers lose credibility if their autobiography is not completely truthful? Even so, would they be caught? Who would be able to judge?
1/25
A biographer has less of a choice when constructing a story of someone else’s life. When writing an autobiography, you choose which stories are presented as your identifying moments. A biographer must work with the stories and pieces of information they have.
Is there a certain type of person who is more likely to write an autobiography?
1/30
Overall, I had difficulty reading St. Augustine’s Confessions. Perhaps it was just me, but perhaps it also is indicative of the difficulty in accessing other peoples’ experiences and memories.
The idea of instinct and sin is very interesting, which comes from St. Augustine’s view of sinning as an infant. We can become uncomfortable when we realize how instinct can often lead to sin. If we act upon an instinct, and the resulting action is sinful, what does this say about human nature? What would St. Augustine claim about human nature? Are we good or bad?
Furthermore, I’m curious about this idea of being overly conscious of our memories. If we focus on memory while experiencing new things, will our memories be authentic, or will they be skewed in the direction we wanted to remember them?
2/1
I’m interested in types of memory — both sensible and knowledge. A lot of times there is a disconnect between our ability to identify how something makes us feel and our ability to describe it. We can describe it to ourselves in terms of our senses, but our ability to verbalize the feeling is lacking. For example, an early-life trauma can have a lasting impact on a child, though they might not be able to verbalize it. They may only realize the trauma’s impact once that feeling is triggered once more.
What knowledge memory is available without family history? If you don’t have family history to trace back through, then how does one understand their knowledge memory?
2/6
I hate talking about myself and I didn’t really know what to say when describing my photos. It did get easier after going through the photos multiple times, but I still struggled to explain their importance. It was also hard because of my limited access to photos. I have an idea of what photos I would show in my autobiography, but I don’t know where I can find them.
Why is it that some people love talking about themselves while other people hate it? Do we *need* to write an autobiography? What if one does not want to?
2/8
I think conducting oral interviews will be incredibly fascinating. Nonetheless, it puts a huge amount of responsibility on us. Not only are we to parse their responses, but we are also to portray their lives as accurately as possible. I think the interviews will also be challenging in the sense that we may have trouble picking up on connections they draw between themselves, their lives, and their location. We can do research on Coal Country and do our best to understand them and the history of the region, but it isn’t guaranteed that we will be able to understand completely.
What prevents people in Coal Country from writing their own memoirs or autobiographies? Do you think they would have considered doing so if this project weren’t happening?
2/13
It’s interesting to discuss how women write about themselves and then reflect on how and if I would write about myself in a similar manner. In general I do tend to define myself by the people in my life I interact with. After reading memoirs of Moravian women, it’s an interesting comparison to make. The Moravian women describe powerful relationships with God, whereas the relationships I’d discuss would most likely be friendships. I also think it’s fascinating that the ending of some of the memoirs are written by an outside source after the woman’s death. We discussed in class today how women must speak through someone else to be heard. Memoirs give women the opportunity to have their own voice (Zinzendorf said some interesting things about women and the reason for writing memoirs), so it’s interesting that in order for these memoirs to be accessible to others, someone else had to facilitate the process, sometimes adding to the end of the memoir.
I wonder if mentioning God so often made women more comfortable with writing about themselves? Moravian women looked to God for comfort and companionship and more, so I wonder if describing their relationship with God gave them the confidence and sense of importance to share their stories?
2/15
I’m so intrigued by Zinzendorf’s idea that all souls were female, and when men died, they turned into women. Considering Moravian women’s memoirs are a topic of interest, is there the concept of Moravian men’s memoirs? Were men to write memoirs as women were?
2/20
I wasn’t aware that sections of the beginning of Equiano’s autobiography were taken from Anthony Benezet. This can be seen in multiple ways. It can challenge the authenticity of his piece, considering he’s taking someone else’s words and experiences and presenting them as his own. Perhaps he never experienced anything like it. This can also be seen as an attempt to associate his own voice with a white man’s. Equiano takes the words of a white man, and continues to surround the words with his own. Using a white man’s words to describe setting might actually work to create a sense of authenticity by using a voice a white reader might subconsciously trust more.
Growing up, I loved historical fiction (and I still do). Looking back, I realize now that many of the historical fiction books I read were fictional autobiographies. I’m curious whether there was something about the first-person narrative that made me reach for more, rather than reading a third-person historical fiction novel? The fictional autobiographies I tended to read were those of young girls, so perhaps I liked the connection I could form with the narrator.
After reflecting on “A Danger of a Single Story,” it’s absolutely fascinating how authenticity can be viewed from both sides. Adiche talks about criticism she faced after her novel was “not authentic enough.” There’s an issue from an opposing perspective, however, because there would be criticism if the text wasn’t accessible to the reader. There’s a level of expected foreignness without being too foreign.
2/22
We briefly discussed how the autobiography would have differed if Olaudah Equiano was a free black man, rather than a slave. As an abolitionist, was Equiano seen as more trustworthy because he had experience as a slave? Would his experiences as a slave be perceived as more authentic of an experience? I’m curious how authenticity enters the conversation about expectations.
2/27
We talked a lot about why Obama wrote his autobiography. I’m curious if there was pressure to write an autobiography as a form of justification of one’s past and one’s life. It is also interesting to look at the commentary on Obama’s autobiography (the book review in the NYT, in particular). I haven’t read reviews of any other memoirs or autobiographies, but it’s interesting that a people claim the right to judge the validity of what one says. Are people more likely to question the truth value of one’s story if the subject/autobiographer is not white?
3/27
When interviewing Anna, I generally had to ask multiple clarifying questions in order to pull out specific information from her. She would give general statements and would be surprised when I asked her to explain further. It’s interesting to reflect back and see how she framed her own life. When responding, she was very reflective, but it seemed as though she hadn’t given it much thought. This could perhaps be tied to the fact that she made comments to me about “why would you want to hear about my life?” while laughing.
In past readings, I looked at how Moravian women tended to write about their lives in terms of God. It was interesting because Anna was religious and part of the church, but God seemed to be a fairly marginal part of her life. She didn’t talk much about her family, either, so I’m curious to look back through the interview and see in what terms she talked about herself. She barely mentioned her kids. In fact, she wasn’t very clear on how many children she asked, even with further prompting.
Something I struggled with was how in-depth my questions could be without invading her privacy. I know she had lost her husband and special-needs daughter recently, and I did not want to jeopardize the rest of the interview by prying.
3/29
I think the idea of objects being read allegorically. In my interview, I was told to ask about Anna’s wedding dress.
My evocative object is my pair of lion slippers from when I was a tiny child. These I will write about in my reflections.
4/3
I just reread “The Death of the Author” for Web Design. How would Barthes feel about Holocaust memoirs?