To Pass Through on One’s Wings: The Poetry of Oleh Zujewskyj

Ivan Dmitriev has virtually disappeared from memory, but in the late eighteenth century he was known as one of Russia’s foremost poets. What even fewer readers know is that Dmitriev’s most significant contribution to Russia’s literary heritage may have been his decision to make poetry the centre of his prose autobiography. In the literary and social context of the 1810s and 20s, this was a remarkable step because it showed Dmitriev’s conviction that poetry had an inherent value that earned it a place in the narrative formulation of one’s “life plot.” Dmitriev’s approach is even more remarkable when his autobiography is compared to the prose autobiography of Gavrila Derzhavin, the greatest poet of his time. Derzhavin’s autobiography ignores poetry almost completely, and usually refers to the author’s literary endeavours only when they intersect with the dominant thread of his political life. This article looks at the social and literary contexts in which these autobiographical texts were written, and then examines closely the style and substance of each text to explore the way each poet creates his own life story. This comparison shows that the great poet Derzhavin depicts himself almost exclusively as a statesman, and it is the long-forgotten Dmitriev who reveals a profound allegiance to poetry as the most important part of his life.     

Manchester on my mind: a memoir

Abstract The author describes his intellectual journey in ten episodes, starting from his upbringing in Manchester and training in Cambridge. After pioneering research in Africa and work as a development advisor, he returned to Manchester as a teacher of social anthropology. Subsequently he spent periods in North America and the Caribbean, before returning to Cambridge for 15 years. He is currently trying to establish himself as a writer in Paris. What follows is neither social science nor autobiography, but a personal account of being in the world in which he tries to move, without discordance, along the whole length of the continuum linking the self to the rest of humanity. The star of the show, however, is Manchester, where his story begins.     

‘His Complete History’? Revisioning,Recreating and Reimagining Multiple Lives in Frederick Douglass's Life and Times (1881, 1892)

Frederick Douglass's final autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, remains a critically neglected work. On first glance, the Frederick Douglass of editions of this work published in the 1880s and 1890s seems to be a million miles away from the fiery, charismatic radical of the 1840s and 1850s. Probe deeper, however, and continuities remain vis-à-vis Douglass's commitment to literary experimentation in radical recreations, representations and reimaginations of an ever shifting and even contradictory public selfhood. Thus, Douglass's final work performs the deflating but fascinating work of a magician seeming to reveal the secret of his trick as he provides his readers with a self-reflexive, hybrid work in which he refuses to shy away from the ambiguities and ambivalences of his multiple existences.     

Reconstructing Missionary History in China Today: Cultural Heritage,Local Politics and Christianity in Xiamen

This article examines a memorial service held in Xiamen in 2010 for an American missionary who died and was buried there in 1910. The missionary, accused of association with imperialism under Mao, had been largely forgotten by the locals until this event. During the ceremony, all charges against the missionary were unofficially dropped and his service was highly commended. By attempting to explain what sociocultural mechanisms enabled Xiamen citizens to counter official amnesia and demolish the state’s domination of discourse on missionaries, I argue that the official manipulation of missionary discourse is not always effective; the reconstruction of missionary history in today’s China is an ongoing, dynamic process of negotiation in which all parties involved remake the past to suit their own interests.     

"The World's Against Me As A Black Man": Charles Mingus and Segregated America

This paper examines how the artistic output of Charles Mingus was influenced by the question of race in U.S. politics. Employing material from the liner notes of Mingus's albums, his autobiography, and interviews for his oral history, I argue that issues of race and their political manifestation were forced upon Mingus by the circumstances of American politics. Mingus's experience as an African American vehemently opposed to segregated race relations and alert, throughout his life, to racism, is part of his compositional presence.     

Legacies of slavery for race,religion, and empire: S.J. Celestine Edwards and the Hard Truth (1894)

ABSTRACT

S.J. Celestine Edwards (1857?–1894), the son of liberated West Indian slaves, was the publisher of Lux (1892) and Fraternity (1893). Edwards, a lay preacher, had established a national reputation before becoming the first black editor in the United Kingdom. In July 1894, shortly before his death, a new book, Hard Truth, presented a dialogue between Christ and Lucifer on slavery, emancipation, and imperialism. This novella and his journalism emphasised the continuities from the slave past for what he termed ‘Anglo-Saxonism’. Edwards offered a sophisticated analysis of slavery and racism and of its legacy for abolitionist, humanitarian, and missionary engagements with the empire.     

Imperial Misnomers: Herman Melville's Subversion of Narratives of Exploration

Abstract

In his oeuvre the nineteenth-century American author Herman Melville engages critically with the role of narrative taxonomies in imperial praxis, particularly as they relate to his own country's emergence as imperial nation. The relativising influence of Melville's years at sea is an important factor in shaping the ontologically indeterminate and anti-teleological character of his narratives, which both critically and parodically recall the ways in which narrative representations serve imperial ends by bridging or overwriting epistemological lacunae. Melville's lectures ‘On Traveling’ and ‘The South Seas’ provide a useful introduction to his countervailing perspective: the former, by delineating a mode of travelling that remains open to that which is other; the latter by considering critically the introduction of the Pacific into Western historiography by means of several acts of misnaming and symbolic appropriation. Melville highlights the self-deconstructive nature of such acts, yet also shows a keen understanding of how nominal appropriation and exotic refiguration foreground and enable colonisation. This recognition informs Melville's first prose fiction, Typee, in which he launches a two-pronged critique of imperialism: by his first person narrator's polemic against missionary and naval activity in the Marquesas, but also, more tellingly, by exposing this narrator's own acts of misrepresentation, which suggest a deeper complicity in the discourse of empire.     

Using Autobiographical Approaches with People with Learning Difficulties

Biography and autobiography have been used in numerous ways to represent people with learning difficulties. In this paper we review a variety of approaches to biography and autobiography with people with learning difficulties, and discuss the roles researchers play. The paper ends with a discussion of the potential of autobiography as a means to change the power relationships in disability research.     

An interview with W. H. Hutt

W. H. Hutt is 85 years old and is one of the most important economists of this century. That this is too little appreciated is largely because his academic career did not take place in his native England. Instead, in 1928, after a short career in publishing, the graduate of the London School of Economics set sail for South Africa and the University of Cape Town. During his 37 years there, Professor Hutt produced an impressive body of work, some of which have become classics among his devotees, includingThe Theory of Collective Bargaining (1930),Economists and the Public (1936),The Theory of Idle Resources (1939),Plan for Reconstruction (1943),Keynesianism — Retrospect & Prospect (1963), andThe Economics of the Colour Bar (1964). Hutt came to the United States in December 1965 to serve as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, and has served in a similar capacity at many American universities. While in the United States Hutt has produced such works asThe Strike-Threat System (1973),A Rehabilitation of Say’s Law (1975), andThe Keynesian Episode (1979). Professor Hutt currently is Emeritus Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Dallas and he continues to work on an autobiography and a new book, tentatively titledLabor’s Disadvantage.     

POLITICAL IDENTITIES AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPES:

This article presents case studies of two men who have a history of political activism on "women's' issues. The aim of my analysis is to describe the interpretive practice (Gubrium and Holstein 1994) through which the respondents construct individual political identities that make sense of their activism. The analysis treats identity as a narrative construction and also demonstrates that the context of this identity work is itself a construction. When respondents talk about their involvement in women's issues, they simultaneously construct an image of the political landscape, their own identities, and a relationship between the two.
In their narratives, the two men constructed very different images of the political landscape and identities in relation to it. One man interpreted the autobiography he constructed in terms of socialization and social learning in an effort to demonstrate an ongoing engagement with feminist concerns. The other man invoked a folk theory, consistent with feminist standpoint epistemology (Harding 1990), that used his gender to "define him out' of activism on women's issues.
I argue that these cases (1) demonstrate that narrative operates as a site at which men negotiate their relationship to gendered politics and women's issues and (2) represent a previously unrecognized dynamic of interpretive practice (Gubrium and Holstein 1995) in which actors assume discretion over the narrative construction of both their identities and the context in which that identity is to be understood.     

Remembering reuel denney: Sociology as cultural studies

Selected writings from Reuel Denney’s work as a social analyst are reviewed in order to establish and highlight his often-overlooked contributions to sociology. Denney’s cultural studies of Americans at play, with specific reference to his writings on the subcultures of football and hot-rodding, and on television and the electronic media, advertising and architecture, are reviewed in examining some major themes emphasized in his sociology. These writings are discussed against the backdrop of Denney’s early life experiences drawn from his autobiography to better enable readers to gain an appreciation of his sociological thinking. The beginnings of a Denney postmodern are sketched as a conclusion to this paper’s major contention that Denney anticipated much of today’s sociology as cultural studies. As one of Reuel’s students, nearly forty years ago, I hope that this article serves not only to highlight Denney’s contributions and place within the discipline of sociology, but also that my personal recollections will serve to reveal the strong attachments we students felt toward him as our teacher, mentor, and friend. nt|mis|His teaching and research combine his interests in higher education and the professions, bureaucracy, social thought, mass media, and popular culture. His most recent book, Schooling As Entertainment: Corporate Education Meets Popular Culture, is available from Cedarreek Press.     

Life Review and Heroic Narrative: Embracing Pathology and Attention to Context

Holding the Man (Conigrave, 1995), chronicles a fifteen-year relationship between Timothy Conigrave and his partner, John, and the process of their coping with John's impending death from AIDS related illness. In this article I discuss the autobiography as a naturalistic example of the therapeutic method of life review. What result would have emerged if a narrative therapist had assisted in the writing of the book? Based on my friendship with the protagonists, I would have argued for a less negative picture of the author, but Tim's aim seems to have been to represent the relationship in a dramatic form, with the author embracing his own pathology, and the imbalances and unfairness in their relationship. I suggest that employing methods which externalise pathology to elicit ‘the heroic 2 narrative’ may have disregarded these goals. I highlight the need to recognise and understand individual pattern and context, and raise alternative, less interventionist positions as appropriate for clients involved in such reviews of their lives.     

The Collective Artistry of Activism: A Review of Making Trouble: Life and Politics

Lynne Segal's autobiography upholds the feminist tradition of writing about women's marginalized experiences but she does so without creating the traditional unitary isolated subject. Consciously or not, she has written an autobiography that is psychosocial, often focusing on the social in favor of the psyche. This review discusses this unique book, which writes a life always within a rich cultural context. We are taken from her childhood life in Australia to her days as a single mother in the political and cultural maelstrom of 1960s London. Here her book becomes not just autobiography but also a cultural history of radical movements and the change they created. Written clearly with personal stories from other women, Segal's book is a timely reminder of how simply complicated social activism can be.     

Ethics,human rights and sociological inquiry: Genocide,politicide and other issues of organizational power

This paper introduces a human rights (in contrast to an ethicist) perspective into sociological investigation. Moreover, it indicates why a human rights orientation is necessary for examining genocide, politicide and other issues of organizational power. For years he has been concerned with the sociology of ethics, human rights and bureaucracy. Her research focuses on formal organizations, criminology/deviance, family life and medical sociology. Her primary interests are race and ethnic relations, family life and social psychology. Her interests include formal organizations, American studies and autobiography.     

Going to Pieces: Paul Monette and the Fragments of the Tribe

Author of the highly acclaimed Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) and winner of the 1992 National Book Award for his autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette died of complications from AIDS in Los Angeles on February 12, 1995. His most recent work, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise (1994), is his third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical writing on growing up gay, coming-out, and living with AIDS. A graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, Monette received a number of awards for his writing and his work as an outspoken voice in the battle against AIDS, including the National Book Award, three Lambda Literary awards, the PEN Center West Freedom to Write Award, and three honorary doctorate degrees, from Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Oswego. A memorial service was held for Monette on Sunday, February 19, 1995, at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Paul Monette was 49.     

Becoming the Family Archivist

The author describes some of the ways in which conventional amateur family histories fail to portray the emotional realities of family life. Recent trends in biography and autobiography are explored briefly, and the possibility of a family history informed by systemic as well as psychoanalytic insights is considered. The author's own work, A Family in Time, attempts such a history. The author outlines his sources of information, both documentary and oral, and the special challenges posed by their interpretation. The decisions governing the ordering and selection of data for publication are explored, the author's aim being to present the facts in such a way that a systemic conception of family process over time will be implicit in the material. Implications for the author, for the family itself, and for therapists working with intergenerational process are briefly considered.     

Illness and Autobiographical Work: Dialogue as Narrative Destabilization

Illness is an occasion for autobiography, and memoirs of illness present openings to ethical ways of living. This work describes illness memoirs as performative, creating the self they claim as their origin. The self that is claimed is dialogical, and the tension of this dialogue is to include the voices of others without assimilating these voices to one's own. Physician memoirs, a spiritual autobiography, and a web site are presented as examples of dialogical autobiographical work occasioned by illness.     

‘Shoot with your pen’: Isaac William(s) Wauchope’s Ingcamango Ebunzimeni and the power of speaking obscurely in public

This article explores Ingcamango Ebunzimeni, a collection of poems published in the latter months of 1912 by the African intellectual and missionary Isaac William(s) Wauchope (1852–1917). Wauchope is most prominently known for having written a poem that, among other things, incites his peers to ‘take paper and ink’ and ‘[s]hoot with your pen’. Ingcamango Ebunzimeni is a peculiar moment in the life and writing of Wauchope. In a remarkable series of events, Wauchope served a two‐year prison sentence in Tokai between 1910 and 1912. In the argument that follows, I raise a number of issues regarding the circumstances leading to the writing and publication of Ingcamango Ebunzimeni. Taking as a point of departure Wauchope’s seeming reluctance to explicitly engage his feelings about his imprisonment, I suggest that speaking ‘obscurely’ within a public context allows Wauchope to make utterances that begin to contest, in very complex ways, the fall from grace occasioned by his imprisonment. Wauchope’s poems address themselves to a context where the recent events of his life give rise to dire tensions between the dominant colonial version of his life story that holds him to be a ‘masquerading minister’ and its resistive corollary which seeks to redeem him as the unwilling victim of an unremorseful social order that, having generated a class of Christianised Africans as an example of civilisation, casts them down as a symptomatic failure of the very same process. Indeed, it is in addressing himself to both spheres of meaning simultaneously that Wauchope defines the complexity of Ingcamango Ebunzimeni.