Ignacio F. Rodeño Iturriaga - Four Books, One Latino Life

However, recognizing the autobiography as an established genre does not imply there have been no changes. Russian formalist Tynjanov already pointed out the variable nature of genres when he stated in “On Literary Evolution”: “The novel, which seems to be an integral genre that has developed in and of itself over the centuries, turns out to be not an integral whole but a variable. Its material changes from one literary system to another […] we cannot […] define the genre of a work if it is isolated from the system. For example, what was called an ode in the 1820s or by Fet was so labeled on the basis of features different from those used to define an ode in Lomonosov’s time.” (70)

Bruss cleverly points out that in spite of the existence of elements within a given text that “help us recognize what generic force it should have, we cannot state a priori what these features will be […] Outside the social and literary conventions that create and maintain it, autobiography has no features –has in fact no being at all.” (6) When it comes to consider autobiography as a literary genre, we need to combine change with continuity in autobiographical writing, and build our justification in a way that it will not misrepresent individual autobiographies. So as to achieve this, one needs to look at the form of a text, as well as at the function assigned to that text.

Although autobiography has been around in literature for centuries, and the subject referred to specifically with that name has existed for a bit more than two hundred years, as it was illustrated in the previous sections, critical interest in the field is more recent. German philosopher Georg Misch (1878-1965) wrote Geschichte der Autobiographie , a monumental history of autobiography in several volumes, the first of which was published in 1907. However, the first English edition would not come out until 1950 by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. Misch’s publication set off an increasing interest in studying the area from a critical and theoretical perspective. While the philosopher’s focus was from a historical perspective, it signaled some shift from previous interest in the field. In the past, both readers and critics expressed a concern for the self. Those who were attracted to a particular author’s work found in the writer’s life an answer that allowed them to better understand his or her texts and at the same time it was a motivator for reading. According to this deterministic outlook, one could understand a text through the analysis of its source, thus establishing a causal relation between the author and his/her work. By providing a more historical approach, Misch opened the door for other critics who dealt with the study of autobiography based on the notion of a preexisting ontological self. Misch defined autobiography as “the description ( graphia ) of an individual human life ( bios ) by the individual himself ( autos )” (5) and affirms that it is intrinsically linked to its time and period: “autobiographies are bound always to be representative of their period, within a range that will vary with the intensity of the author’s participation in contemporary life and with the sphere in which they moved.” (12) Thus, only individuals who have led lives in the public arena, or who have had crucial participation in historical events, and/or are famous, are the appropriate agents of an autobiography. This responds to the strict divide between high and low culture, proper of that time. This historical perspective, and consequently this division between high culture and low culture, will be challenged much later with the interest in micro-history by the marginalized minorities. In a sense they try to overcome Misch’s restrictive notion of autobiography; a notion that is also prescriptive, in the vogue of his time. By separating high and low culture, many forms of recording private life –letters, journals, diaries, etc.– were excluded from the genre, and from scholar attention.

New Criticism considered autobiography a lesser form of literature, and the critical study of the genre became dormant. Thus, the next seminal study on the genre, Georges Gusdorf’s “Conditions et limites de l’autobiographie,” published in 1956, became a milestone by claiming that autobiography is something specific to culture: “[t]he author of an autobiography gives a sort of relief to his image by reference to the environment with its independent existence.”(29) Gusdorf, who launched what later would be called the classic theory of autobiography, asserted that autobiography was a firmly established genre whose history could be easily established through the masterpieces of Western literature. For him, autobiography is limited in time and space: it is a late occurrence in Western culture, beginning with the embedding of Christian contributions –especially the idea of confession– into Western traditions. Gusdorf goes on further to affirm that non-Western narratives of the self, such as Gandhi’s, use Western means –the autobiographical genre– to uphold the East. Thus, he surmises that the concern of the self by Western man has been a useful tool in intellectually colonizing the other and a means to systematically conquer the world (28-29). Moreover, for Gusdorf, it is peculiar to western man the idea of narrating one’s own life in order to elongate such life even beyond death, again recalling Christian concepts and, therefore, obliterating Eastern notions of life writing. In a sense, and according to Gusdorf’s ideas, the autobiographer delights in being looked at and believes her/his achievements should not be forgotten, thus disappear, with her/his passing. Thus, autobiography develops in a cultural system where consciousness of self is central, which will point towards issues of identity. Gusdorf points out that while in biography the historian –who is aware of carrying out a task similar to that of an artist– is removed from his subject of study by the passage of time and/or a social distance, in autobiography artist and model coincide, and the historian regards himself as object of study. Thus, the interest, indicates Gusdorf, is turned from public to private history. As the theoretician explains, the image depicted in autobiography “is another “myself,” a double of my being […] invested with a sacred character that makes it at once fascinating and frightening.”(32) The critic brings in the psychological theories of Jacques Lacan about the mirror stage in the formation of the self. For Gusdorf, autobiography and the mirror reinforce the ritual of self-examination encouraged by Christianity: the self presents her/his accounts according to some rhetorical tenets. Renaissance and Reformation remove penitence from the self-examination, since Western man starts to disregard the tarnish of the transcendent, and sees himself a man of nature. This is the self that Montaigne brings forth in his Essays , where there is no adherence to any doctrine, thus becoming secularized, and man starts to reveal facets of his individuality. This new freedom of the individual allows him to believe that everything is at his reach. This praise of the individual self, heightened in Romanticism, brought new interest in autobiography. Individuality as a virtue is related to the concept of sincerity: the value of telling all, which Rousseau advocated. The emphasis now is on the complexity of man, and his contradictions as a human being. Therefore, autobiography is veering away from the model of Christian confession and into a form bolstered by the principles of the psychological.

We can argue, then, that Georges Gusdorf noticed the Western man’s common interest in the consciousness of the singularity of individual life, even if that life reflects a cultural and historical totality. With the studies in historiography by Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Misch, Gusdorf assumed that the artistic and literary purpose of autobiography was secondary to its anthropological function, an assumption which, on the one hand, was a departure from the tenets of the New Criticism and, on the other, established the basis to believe in autobiography as a genre committed to convey truth.