Diane's Response to Freeman

Reflection #5 Diane Kuthy

Freeman, M. (2007). Autobiographical understanding and narrative inquiry. In J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 120-45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Autobiographical Understanding and Narrative Inquiry

Summary:

This chapter traces the historical development of conceptions of self that led to post-modern autobiographical understanding. Freeman suggests that studying the “condition and limits” of autobiography illuminates the “conditions and limitation” of narrative inquiry broadly. He argues that autobiography and generally narrative inquiry lessen the distance between science and art and therefore offer a way to more fully study the human realm.

Personal Reflection:

This entire chapter is extremely interesting and very relevant to any study of narrative inquiry. I read the chapter before our week together and once again preparing this reflection. The second read helped solidify some tacit understanding I have gleaned from experience writing narrative for the class. The question of truth and the role of memory and poetry were especially salient discussions. Although all three points overlap and intersect, I have pulled significant quotes for each and made comments.


Truth

“Narratives often seem able to give us understanding of people in a way that more ‘objective’ methodologies cannot. This is because they often emerge from a true rather than a false, scientific attitude, one to the whole person, the whole human life, in all of its ambiguous, messy, beautiful detail.” (134)

“One of the foremost aims of narrative inquiry, I want to argue, is to think beyond this subject-object split and thereby to move in the direction of that ‘new and more profound sense of truth’’ (137)

“It is perhaps preferable in this context to speak of a region of truth (Freeman, 2002a) rather than a discretely bounded one.” (137)

“’Creative redescription’ ……it is this narrative dimension that can open the way toward not only a more capacious conceptualization of truth but a more adequate and humane framework for exploring the human realm. “(137)

Questions about ethics and truth seem to always be at the center of issues for me as I find myself gravitating towards an ever larger “region” of truth. I mentioned in class about the controversy related to “truth” in Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, Narrative of a Life. Several years ago when I recommended it to a friend she mentioned that some of the “facts” in this autobiography were proven to be fabricated or actually happened to other slaves. She said that it might be a great book of fiction, but it was not nonfiction. We had a lively discussion at the time about the idea that the slaves he was writing about might not have been literate and therefore he might have been telling their “collective truth.” Until reading this article I had forgotten about the conversation I had with my friend.

Freeman’s discussion has offered some interesting ways to frame the conversation. Douglass’s Narrative of a Life is great example of many of the points Freeman was making especially about the limits of subject-object split. It might be fun to compare critical analysis of Narrative of a Life from different periods of history. I didn’t do a lot of research, but found this relevant quote which is from a contemporary introduction to Douglass’s book.

“Douglass’s audiences of the 1840s wanted him finally to divulge the ’facts’of his servitude—the names, the places, the dates. In writing the Narrative, Douglass supplied those facts, but he also challenged the conventional expectations of what exactly a fact of slavery might be. This occurred because he was writing a narrative that was to be as personal as it was historical. Douglass’s 1845 Narrative is a great American

book because it is a great American autobiography. Like so many fine autobiographers who followed him, Douglass knew that both his ’objective‘ facts and his ’subjective‘ facts were true, and that offering both was a key to telling his story well. Telling his story was part of daring to be free. Writing his story was a next step in inventing himself, a step confirming his hard-won literacy and his intention to take his place in the world.” (Stepto, 2009 p.26)



Fictional Characters and Autobiography

Thinking about Douglass and reading the article I found myself wanting Freeman to discuss how fiction has shaped autobiographical understanding. How for instance has Hamlet shaped the ideas we have about the invention of self? Had Douglass read Hamlet or other Shakespeare?
Role of Memory

“Perilously easy for autobiographers to fall prey to overly schematized renditions of the past-- ones that perhaps reveal more about extant ways of remembering and telling than about the particularities of the life in question” (141)

“To find a language that moves beyond these highly schematized, conventionalized, even clichéd portraits.” (141)

“The writer thus ‘has to fight constantly against the easy flow of words that offer themselves.’ Indeed, ‘iIt is this awareness and the struggle and the ability to narrow the gap between experience and words which make the writer and the poet.’”(141, quoting Schachtel)

Writing for this class and making art work has led me to experience some of the ideas Freeman has presented about the role of invention in memory. For me, invention during painting is informed by the internal logic of the painting and there is a constant struggle to not take the easy way. It cannot be too easy and at the same time it cannot be wildly fictitious; it must somehow ring true. My hope is that although words and writing don’t come easily to me I may nevertheless avoid the pitfalls suggested, but something tells me that I need to write enough so that words do flow easily and then struggle moving beyond convention.

The issue of memory is quite a dilemma in research and writing “other” people’s stories. I have no idea how to do this in an ethical way!

Poetry

“It means instead that a portion of narrative inquiry ought to be directed toward writing about human lives in such a way that their own inherent poetry can be made more visible.” (141, 142)

Oh there is so much to think about and so many questions to ask! Several years ago, I helped train 11 art teachers to work in the Baltimore City schools and was co-teaching/assisting an Urban Seminar class. One of the books my colleague selected was called Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. This critically acclaimed book is about two women and their extended families coming of age in the Bronx and is “non-fiction.” It is reads like a novel; the author says that no events were conflated and there were no composite characters. Something felt terribly wrong in the book, and I had a strong gut reaction against it. I think it was partly because the author didn’t make the characters inherent poetry visible. The characters didn’t have enough inner life and hardly any internal agency. Isn’t this the stereotype of poor people? The book was too much about plot. There were important things told about the systemic racism and classism in public agencies, but not enough personal reactions from the characters of the injustice. Under the guise of non-fiction the characters lacked fullness. Whose stories do we tell? What do we leave out? What questions do we ask? Can research and reflection change the participants in some way? What assumptions do we make about people that lead us to present research in a certain way? Do we allow “others” to co-construct their stories?