What is something important you learned today? What is a question you have about what we covered today?
1/23
The different ways of approaching the idea of an Author and their function. I have questions about position of examining your life in fictional situations. I don’t understand necessarily how to express degrees of fictionality.
1/25
If different autobiographical views are like a fun house mirror room, can we use Snapchat filters to talk about how we view ourselves? Using the concept of the selfie, how does the filter affect your idea of the self you project to others?
1/30
In many cases, autobiographical acts are self-…indulgent(?) questions and reflections on the motivations of your (past) self. With a goal of acceptance or forgiveness, does the credibility of the memories you recount decrease because you want forgiveness for your past actions? Is this why you try(consciously or not) to construct a different past ‘you’, so like St. Augustine, you can imagine it was not your life but this past-self’s life?
2/1
The way we interact with people and the world around us is a context you must frame your memories. Parrhesia was presented as something that is necessary in order to have authenticity. Does a societal pressure toward parrhesia harm those going through things like realizing their sexuality or not cis-gendered-ness? There are parts of society that say you aren’t gay or bi until you have kissed someone of the same gender, or have come out to their family. At the risk of being murdered, why do we still pressure some people to parrhesia? Why do we not allow an internalized proclamation to be truth value enough?
I like the use of the metaphor of the mind as a stomach. It gives a very nice frame for the terms we use about digesting our past experiences or ideas. The idea that we reconstruct our experiences through memories based on only one sense is interesting. How does this connect to the idea of a photographic memory? How can one explain people who’s memories are primarily in one form, or another?(two of my siblings have no photographic memory at all, they have no “mind’s eye”)
2/6
I feel like there are a lot of narratives that my family tells about our childhoods. We sort of always frame it certain ways to avoid approaching some topics. I think about those topics as I tell the stories, so in a way I am still doing a full remembering of the context of the photo without actually telling any whole story. I noticed this in other people’s stories as well. There was always a phrase chosen noticeably carefully.
When do we choose people from perhaps farther away from our life in our family to attach ourselves to their stories? I know I chose photos including my cousins who are Mexican. When does the “childhood” end, compared with the “youth”? I don’t feel like I’m at the end of my “youth” yet.
2/8
I enjoy hearing other people’s stories largely because of the outside relationships (siblings, parents, friends) that come up. Sharing my own photos is still uncomfortable. I think it’s difficult for me to try and piece together a stable narrative out of some very contradictory parts (dance to farm life, racist history and family and town to my Filipino family, disability into all of it). I wonder: is there a minimum number of pictures someone would need to tell their life story? A picture tells a 1000 words, so how many is an autobiography? And how many would need to include you or would any?
2/15
I was interested in the discussion about the present-tense narrator. I know I shift between tenses in my own narrative and only when I get very in depth and “in the zone” am I able to switch into an owning of my past self. We talked a lot about the autobiographical functions of the change, but how are these tense shifts affect readers? What is the stylistic impact of a narrative tense change?
2/20
For any who are interested: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story#t-88557 . Today we spoke about the purpose of a slave narrative in the age of abolitionism in Britain and its purpose in the 20th and the 21st centuries.
2/22
I loved the ideas we got to at the end of the class of the erasure of the agency of the black Moravian. How can links be found in the history of peoples who have been claimed as saved by white people (or dominant group of any kind)?
2/27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqXX6kuk_XQ . I was wondering if perhaps Obama would write a “political autobiography” before his political career really began because as a successful black man, his journey is already somewhat over from a racial autobiography perspective. If a racial autobiography goes from childhood innocence to struggle to salvation and living righteously, then by becoming the president of the Harvard Law Review, has Obama completed that journey?
3/1
It’s interesting how in black a/b, so much time and effort is given to needing a community. It goes so against the “Western” ideals of heroism, to need others, but sort of reminds me of the Odyssean work towards a homecoming through individual struggle.
3/27
I found it powerful to consider what my interviewees saw as the profit or benefit of doing the interview. I do believe that imparting a moral ‘lesson’ was a strong motivator for Rosemary. I wonder what interviewers like our class can do to remove or minimize our framework from the questions we ask and the way we present, especially given that our audience will include the group we interviewed.
