85
Book
ReviewSome
MetamorphosisAutobiographical writing across the disciplines: a reader. Diane
P. Freedman and Olivia Frey, editors, 2003. London: Duke University Press; ISBN 0822332632, pbk, 424 pp., £18.50
SAGE Publications, Inc.2005DOI: 10.1177/09675507050130010504
Melissa Dearey
University of York
Even
at the initial stage of glancing at the table of contents, I have to admit
that this book took me slightly by surprise. It seems to me that in the cur-
rent climate of auto/biography studies, a title featuring the words `across
the disciplines' offers the promise of an interdisciplinary or maybe even
a radically transdisciplinary approach to the genre. But, as I say, a quick
perusal of the table of contents put paid to any suggestion of that, as each
contribution is categorized according to the author's `home' academic discipline,
from history and medicine to Africana Studies to mathematics, psychology and
science. Such an immediate capitulation to the structures of the subject disciplines
did seem a bit out of place as an organizing principle for a collection of
autobiographical writings by people who are – almost to a person – in the act of bemoaning the straightjacketed self- discipline with which they
are obliged to fall in line in the confines of the academy. In light of Paul
de Man's notorious tirade against autobiography because of its innately undisciplined
character (and glossing over for the moment what might have been his real
motivation for doing down autobiography), such an endorsement of the structuring
presence of the academic disciplines was a bit odd, to say the least. However,
other more welcome surprises were awaiting, first in the form of the editors'
introduction, an uncommonly incisive and scholarly account of autobiographical
writing, and one of the best I have come across during years as a reader and
researcher in this field. The influence of subjectivity and life narrative
as a platform for modern scientific induc- tive method was convincingly and
concisely recounted, as was the even- tual incursion of sexist language and
social practices into the rhetorics of scientivism and normative (male) subjectivity.
My only criticism here would be the wholesale condemnation the editors visit
on Descartes as the one who intentionally and virtually single-handedly kick-started
the oppression of women and non-privileged men in the first place in the
manner of a favoured pet project, but then this unfair depiction of Cartesian
autobiographical/philosophical writing is practically de rigueur
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in the
human sciences. I would encourage readers interested in redressing this specious
attack on Descartes to read Susan Bordo's excellent and instructive Feminist
interpretations of Descartes (1999), or for that matter to read the original
writings of the man himself. Unexpected pleasures also awaited, notably in
the selections on writing and literature offered by David Bleich and Brenda
Daly. Bleich's reflec- tions on the slow pace of self-inclusion in academic
discourse are engag- ingly filtered through his Jewishness and the memories
of his parents who he describes as `differently oriented as gendered people'.
His recorded attempts at implicating himself into the scholarly arena as a
teacher and researcher offer several suggestive insights both into the supposed
steril- ity of the academy as well as the pseudo-Christian and masculine bias
of the autobiographical genre as a method of self-examination. His convinc-
ingly sensitive renderings of the exemplary texts by Adrienne Rich and Andrea
Dworkin show how he has allowed academic life to work on him, but in ways
not restricted to the regulatory conventions of life in a `discipline'. Rather,
he has used their examples to open himself to the activity of writing and
teaching – and indeed the activity of teaching writ- ing – allowing
them to affect him in ways beyond his personal control and beyond the boundaries
of his individual academic career. Genuine meta- morphosis in autobiographical
writing is relatively rare, and is always a joy to witness, and to some extent
it is apparent in these two selections. Daly's brave revelations about herself
as an academic and incest survivor and her experience of working with literature
and how it still offers the possibility of reconstructing the good life in
the modern context are inspiring. In their way, these are revelations of truly
epic proportions. Unfortunately, this is where the surprises to be found between
the covers of this book start to be rather sparsely dispersed. All the old
familiar themes replete in autobiography studies are represented here: the
epistemological problem of resolving the universal with the particular (Cone),
the ethical necessity for the self to engage with the Other (Kaplan), and
the frustrations of finding oneself caught between the individual and the
institutional (Klass). Only Perri Klass, in her description of being a pregnant
medical student, offers a glimpse into some of the gut-wrenching personal
pain resulting from the real dilemma of studying something you know in your
bones to be so far from lived and embodied experience. But somehow, and frustratingly,
we get little sense of whether or not or how this has changed her as a doctor
(or indeed as a mother). The reader gets the distinct impres- sion that, following
the resolution of this pregnancy in eventual childbirth, it was more or less
back to business as usual for all parties concerned. So, while there were
positive aspects to this collection, I remain uncon- vinced about the `across
the disciplines' format as a basis for a collection of autobiographical writings.
This is mostly because the best selections
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were
distinguished by their willingness to venture outside of the disciplines,
or write across their boundaries or fossilized grains. Consequently they would
not have been out of place in other and better collections on auto- biography
and the process of education (e.g., Michael Erben (1998) Biography and education) – rather than prioritizing the subject disciplines and thereby encouraging the
tendency for some academics to indulge in the kind of self-narrative posturing
to which they sometimes aspire and which is undoubtedly a presence in this
book. But then again, there are signs of progress even on this front: at least
in this collection, the contrib- utors managed to restrain themselves and
leave the baby photos at home.