Narrative Analysis and Political Autobiography

Journal of Political Science Volume 20 Number 1 Article 5 November 1992 Narrative Analysis and Political Autobiography Matti Hyvarinen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Hyvarinen, Matti (1992) "Narrative Analysis and Political Autobiography," Journal of Political Science: Vol. 20 : No. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops/vol20/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Politics at CCU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Political Science by an authorized editor of CCU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NARRATIVE ANALYSIS AND POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY Matti Hyvarinen University of Tampere The study of autobiographies has become increasingly important during recent decades both in sociology and literature. 1 It is also noteworthy that a number of classical autobiographies can be read as major texts in political writing. The confessions of St. Au gustine and of Jean-Jacques Rousseau were decisive for the progress of the autobiographical tradition; these pioneers were followed by eminent writers such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry David Thoreau. 2 Despite the proliferation of political autobiography, political scientists (along with sociologists and practitioners of oral history) have not been overly eager to elaborate a methodology for reading them, nor to write at any length about the collection of autobiographical or biographical interviews. 3 For my own research I have interviewed 36 former student activists in order to understand the political culture of the Finnish student movement of the 1970s. My strategy has been to approach as closely as possible the autobiographical narrative, and to let the interviewees tell their stories very much as they like. Developing this strategy-which I call "narrative interview"-has, of course, resulted in substantial problems, which must be addressed using narrative analysis. These are problems germane to the collection and evaluation of autobiographical or biographical material. POLITICS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A CASE-STUDY Publishing a political autobiography or biography or writing one's own autobiography are undoubtedly political acts, often with further political implications. A famous Finnish example involves Ahti Karjalainen, the former prime minister and foreign minister, who published his memoirs in the fall of 1989. The book, written with the collaboration of the notable Finnish politi cal historian Juk.ka Tark.ka, was important politically because of the intimate and decade-long cooperation between Karjalainen and the former president Urho Kekkonen. This intimacy was accurately expressed in the title given to the book, The President's Minister. 51 The impact of the book was remarkable, particularly with respect to the re-evaluation of President Kekkonen's years in office. It laid bare Kekkonen's strategic use of his position in Finnish foreign affairs, and particularly his warm relationship with the leaders of the Soviet Union, to promote his own interests in internal politics. More intriguing were the revelations concern ing Paavo Vliyrynen, leader of the Center Party and former foreign minister, who had been involved in negotiations with a high ranking Soviet diplomat and KGB colonel, Viktor Vladimirov, before the presidential elections of 1982. Karjalainen' s memoirs disclosed that Vliyrynen and Vladimirov had discussed Soviet support for Karjalainen 's candidacy in a forthcoming presidential election-race against Dr. Mauno Koivisto. These autobiographical memoirs generated a political debate which continued for several months and involved major politicians, including the reserved and normally silent President Koivisto. Ironically, the popularity of Vliyrynen-the ostensible villain of the story-and of his Centre Party did not diminish during or after this debate, but actually increased. Vliyrynen prudently left the party leadership in the spring 1990, but was nominated once again for foreign minister after the Center Party's massive electoral victory in the parliamentary elections of March 1991. My point here is not to evaluate the political impact of this debate, but simply to cite it as an incident in which autobiography becomes political. But a further question arises concerning the role of the political historian Tarkka. In his own preface, Tarkka tells us that he merely helped Karjalainen in his work, and that all the material was chosen by the presumed author. Tarkka informs us that he interviewed Karj alainen for ten hours and that the voice in the book is "the voice of Karjalainen." 4 Karjalainen, for his part, declared that he would "sign everything" in his memoirs, and that the book was definitely his own story. 5 TI-IE POLITICS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY The Karjalainen example illustrates the triad of factors-writing, interviewing and signing-which must be considered when using autobiographical and biographical resources in political science and political history. Literary theorists are well acquainted with the question, "Who is the 'I' speaking here?" An "I" could be a narrator in the text, or a character divulging thoughts to the text as if in the past, or a person who has grown up during the story and is now reflecting on his or her past, or an authorial persona 52 constructed during the process of writing. 6 Manine Burgos has aniculated this abundance of "subjects" very well: ... we should distinguish carefully between three types of concretization of the subject: the subject as a real interviewee, the subject who is constructed in the story, and the narrator of the story. Each of these concretizations refers, in the story, to the same person; but each nonetheless has a particular place within the narrative structure. 7 "I can sign every word" simply attempts to dispel this multiplicity and to incorporate all these different persons into a single solid and continuous subject. But this subject is highly artificial; one can sign statements, declarations or testimonies for different reasons without having previously written or thought about these expres sions of selfhood. To sign is a legal act and as such is quite different from constructing oneself through autobiographical writing .8 "I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent," wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions, "and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself ... But I am made unlike any one I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world." These opening words alone would have made Rousseau's fascinating Confessions memorable-and imitated . In spite of the fact that he had countless predecessors in religious confessions and then followers in all walks of life, his insistence on originality and uniqueness has nonetheless pervaded the entire autobiographical tradition. 9 This "tradition of originality" is indisputably a paradoxi cal, even contradictory phenomenon. After Rousseau we must speak of "tradition," "genre" or "socially determined ways of telling one's life." But as this genre presumes novelty and uniqueness, so" ... each specific instance seems to be an exception to the norm. "10 The way of narrating is fundamental to the whole act of telling one's own life story . Following Rousseau ' s lead, the significance of language, style, metaphors and other rhetorical strategies must be recognized. The selection of rhetorical strate gies is directly linked to perspectives that are genuinely political. Jerome Bruner has delineated the constructivist or "world making" aspects of different life stories in a compelling way. From his perspective, stories "do not 'happen' in the real world 53 but, rather, are constructed in people's heads." 11 Telling stories is the most ubiquitous way of representing one's life, occurring more frequently and habitually than any presumed logical way of thinking. Bruner's starring point is the concept of "lived time," and the problem of describing it. As a constructivist he denies the psychological reality of "life itself," because the psychological experience of"lived ti.me" is already itself a narrative. 12 So we live in the midst of stories, we compare these stories, and we construct new ones. "We belong to history before telling stories or writing history," as Paul Ricoeur put it.13 As constructions, life stories are situated in time and place; they are oriented to the present, and hence to current personal, social, and political perspectives. It is generally accepted that telling one's life story inevitably involves some rationalization of the past. 14 As Daphne Patai puts it, "a particular version of one's life story may become an essential component of one's sense of identi.ty." 15 From the constructivist point of view, then, the telling of one's life story covers not only the past, but incorporates the present situation and future perspectives as well. The daring Confessions of Rousseau were, of course, published only posthu mously and would thus have to be interpreted as an exception. But the book itself concludes with a vivid depiction of how Rousseau is telling the story to a group of his closest friends. This emphasis on the present situation has far-reaching political implications. Burgos goes on to inquire as to the ultimate "need" to tell a life story, which she does not take to be a natural activity. She concludes: "A life story can be considered as a reaction to an actual situation in which the subject's self-identity (which is something he must have in order to be able to present a narrator's point of view) seems to be threatened. 16 To tell one's story means to construct oneself in a threatening situation. How, then, are we to understand this "threat"? Here we are quite close to the difference between biography and autobiogra phy.

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