University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/36297 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. Locating the Self: Re-reading Autobiography as Theory and Practice, with particular reference to the writings of Janet Frame by Tonya Blowers Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick Centre for the Study of Women and Gender April 1998 Summary Title: Locating the Self: Re-reading Autobiography as Theory and Practice, with particular reference to the writings of Janet Frame The thesis is a three-part study of the theory and practice of autobiography. The writing of the New Zealand novelist, poet and autobiographer Janet Frame (1924-) is used as case- study throughout, juxtaposed to canonical texts of autobiography (typically written by white western males) which have been used to draw conclusions about the self. Frame's 'autobiographical' writings (in particular her three-volume autobiography, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy From Mirror City; and her novels Faces in the Water and Owls Do Cry) are used to suggest a new approach to interpreting both the self in society and the relationship between narrated self and context. Part One is a re-reading of three classic texts of the genre, St.Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Vita Nuova and John Bunyan's Grace Abounding. The assumption that such texts describe an 'autonomous, unitary' male protagonist is thoroughly questioned and the texts are read to reveal instead the characteristics of fragmentation and alterity usually reserved for descriptons of the self in women's autobiographies. The point is emphasised that the narrated self of autobiography must always be precisely located in time and space. In Part Two, the definition of autobiography as genre is explored. Two schools of thought are identified: one which focuses on the contract between reader and writer (Lejeune), the other which highlights that the self is constructed in and through the narrative which purports to represent it (Bruss, Barthes). Frame's writing is then used to test the application of such models. The relationship between 'history' and 'fiction' is discussed as the pivotal distinction on which the notion of autobiography hinges. Through a reading of Frame's autobiographies and Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative, the notion of a 'textual contract' as a new definition of autobiography as genre is developed: this definition maintains both the importance of the life outside the text but also the representative nature of narrative to transform that reality within the text. Part Three puts into practice the theory of 'locating the self'. Frame's autobiographies are first analysed through a series of categories of 'belonging': gender, class, race, nationality and coloniality. It is suggested, using Elspeth Probyn's notion of Outside Belonging, that Frame invents and performs the categories of both poet and schizophrenic in order to find a place to belong. Finally, Frame's narrated self is analysed in the very specific context of the local and national writing culture, demonstrating that the narrated self of autobiography is, to a large extent, instructed in society and rehearsed by the author long before she puts pen to paper. The thesis concludes with the notion of autobiography as metaphor which is seen as resolving many of the theoretical dilemmas posed throughout. The research for this thesis was made possible with a two-year grant fro,m the Warwick University Graduate Awards and a one-year grant in my final year from the British Academy. I was also awarded an International Federation of University Women scholarship which funded a three-month research trip to New Zealand. I am extremely grateful to these institutions. Declaration A very small portion of the Introduction to my Master's thesis (Marlboro College, Vermont, 1990) is used in the introduction to this thesis: notably the discussion of Foucault's concept of 'discourse'. Early versions of nearly all the chapters have been presented to various seminar groups and conferences and I am extremely grateful to the participants for their insights, comments and feedback. Such discussions invariably led to a re-write or the development of another strand of the thesis. Versions of Chapters Three and Four were presented as papers to the panel on 'Biography and Autobiography' at the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas at the University of Humanist Studies in Utrecht and to the Feminist Philosophy Society at the University of Warwick. Embryonic versions of and extracts from Chapters Five and Six were given to the Gender Studies Seminar at the University of Birmingham; The Aotearoa/ New Zealand Seminar Series at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London; the English Dept Faculty Seminar Series at the University of Otago (New Zealand); the Dept of English Visiting Scholars Seminar Programme at the University of Auckland; and the conference 'Representing Women's Lives: Women and Auto/biography' at Nottingham Trent University. Versions of Chapter Eight were presented to the Aotearoa/ New Zealand Seminar Series at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Humanities Postgraduate Research Forum at the University of Warwick. Publications: A version of chapter six, section three, is due to be published in the summer '98 issue of the Journal of New Zealand Literature as 'Madness, Philosophy and Literature: a reading of Janet Frame's Faces in the Water' A condensed version of chapters five and six is due to appear in an edited collection, Representing Lives: Women and Autobiography, edited by Alison Donnell and Pauline Polkey and published by Macmillan, summer 1998. Acknowledgements The greatest and most direct influence on this thesis must be my supervisor Professor Carolyn Steedman whose work in the field of autobiography has always been careful to consider historical and economic context as priorities: this perspective has kept me on my toes; her style (a mixture of discursive ingenuity and historical preci5ion) remains a model I can only aspire to. Her intellectual influence on my work has been profound. Many other faculty members from various institutions have generously given their time, reading and commenting on drafts, sharing ideas and suggesting reading material. In particular I would like to thank Benita Parry, Lawrence Jones, Rod Edmond, Ruth Brown, Janet Wilson, Christine Battersby, Adriana Cavarero and Michael Bell. Very special thanks are owed to those fellow students who, throughout my time at Warwick, have read and commented on drafts, discussed ideas and suggested appropriate reading, often photocopying relevant material: Emma Mason, Lynn Guyver, Irene Gedalof, Tracey Potts and Ruth Livesey. Prof. Steedman has consistently had great faith in my abilities to organise and has encouraged me to take on projects that I would not otherwise have had the confidence for. It was at her suggestion that I set up the Autobiography Workshop, a graduate forum for students in all disciplines. This Workshop proved to be a crucial ground for my reading and thinking and I would like to thank the various stalwart members over the years who kept it going: most especially in its embryonic phase Rachel Hepworth, Yonson Ahn and Linda Maitland, and later to Jean Rath, Jennie Antonio, Kathryn Winter and Antje Lindenmeyer. I was also privileged to be able to invite prestigious speakers in the field to the Workshop and am very grateful for the time and generosity the following speakers gave and for their advice and comments on my own work: in particular, Liz Stanley, Nancy K.Miller and Debra Kelly; also Carole Boyce Davis, Nicole Ward Jouve and Eva Hoffman. With a grant from the European Humanities Centre at Warwick (thanks to Peter Mack for putting his faith in a post-grad student) I was able to organise a one-day conference on autobiography. I would like to thank the speakers and chairs at this event: Carolyn Steedman, Maureen Duffy, Adriana Cavarero, Yonson Ahn, Jean Rath, Murray Pratt, Sara Ahmed and Ruth McElroy. Many other reading groups at Warwick sustained me both intellectually and socially: in particular, Challenging History (thanks to Ruth Livesey, Jonathan White, Seth Denbo and Ian Hill, all especially eloquent in the Arts Centre coffee bar); the Feminist Philosophy Society (Rachel and Cathrine); the Humanities Postgraduate Research Forum; the Feminist and Postcolonial Theory Reading Group (Irene Gedalof, Tracey Potts, Bibi Bakare-Yusef, Luciana Parisi, Jennie Antonio, Marsha Henry); the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender Research Student Seminar Programme; and the Centre for Social History Research Forum. The research for this thesis, though officially spanning three and a half years at the University of Warwick, has been inspired and encouraged by the members of many academic institutions in four different countries. It began in 1988 when I embarked on a two-year Master's thesis at Marlboro College in Vermont, supervised by Jay Birje-Patil or 'Birje' as he is known to his students. It is perhaps only now that I fully appreciate his immense learning and reading and above all his awareness of the most current thinking. Working closely with him in the tiny isolated college whose graduate population at the time numbered two, I developed a theoretical framework in postcolonial, feminist and poststructuralist theories which has served as the theoretical and methodological foundation for all subsequent research. I continue to be profoundly interested in notions of 'difference' and in debt to Birje for his insistence that even the most difficult theorists can only be fully appreciated and understood by painstakingly reading them in the original.