Thesis
Disciplining the subject: an interrogation of biographical practice and criticism
Southern Cross University, Faculty of Arts, Centre for Contemporary Arts
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
1997
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Abstract
This project seeks to interrogate biography and biographical criticism. Critically utilising Michel Foucault's notions of power, it demonstrates that historically biography has most often operated as a strategy of domination which, alongside other strategies, has served to regulate the individual in the interests of sanctioning authorities. However, it is also recognised that biography, and biographical criticism, have also been sites of resistance to domination.
Whilst utilising Foucault's theories of macro-- and micro--physical power, this thesis does not swerve from a structural identification of a group or class of individuals in whose interests biography and other techniques of domination have operated. It is argued that whilst Foucault focuses upon strategies of power, he does not preclude and, at times, actually promotes the identification of a ruling elite who benefit from these strategies.
The methodology is historical and the epistemological stance postmodern. It is demonstrated that the work of Plutarch of Chaeronea (c.46--c.120) ... the point to which modern biographical discourses inexorably return in order to locate the historical boundaries of the generic frame of 'biography' ... most often operated as a discourse deployed in the interests of Rome; that far from being politically benign, the genre of biography is predicated upon a discursive activity which served to both naturalise or sanction an appropriating, invasive power and to regulate or proscribe individual action.
Similarly, it is demonstrated that biographical discourse of the middle ages operated predominantly in order to regulate the individual and, in doing so, served to replicate and support existing power relationships. It is also demonstrated that an examination of the period of the northern European Renaissance shows biography undergoing a process of realignment from serving ecclesiastical interests to those of the secular state.
It is argued that the eighteenth century is the point at which biography undergoes a reformulation to become a more efficient and effective strategy of regulation. It is at this point, with the discourses of Roger North, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell that biography increasingly operates not as a mechanism which might instruct secular princes or serve receding authorities, but as a highly sophisticated strategy of appropriation. What occurs is a process which I have denoted as atomisation, a notion entirely consistent with Foucault's micro-physics of cellular power. This process involves an inexorable lowering of the threshold of description in relation to the individual. That is, from the eighteenth century biography increasingly serves to 'penetrate' the apparent subject, allegedly revealing motivations, emotions, and psychological complexities in increasing detail until, in the twentieth century, such explorations become virtually sub- atomic, representing a considerable enhancement to this technology of subjection.
This project also examines the operations of biographical criticism in the twentieth century, demonstrating that such operations are predominantly panoptic, serving to patrol the perimeters of biographical practice, measuring, including and excluding, authorising or rejecting biographical texts. It is demonstrated that biographical criticism authorises an increasing appropriation or regulation of the individual through processes of atomisation.
The history, then, of biographical procedures is revealed as predominantly disciplinary. However, biography and biographical criticism are also recognised as sites of resistance. For alongside the operations of biography as a strategy of appropriation is also its functioning as a discourse of opposition. However, it is argued that even as these resistances emerge they may themselves be subject to appropriation.
Details
- Title
- Disciplining the subject: an interrogation of biographical practice and criticism
- Creators
- Michael T Singleton
- Contributors
- Leon Cantrell (Supervisor) - Southern Cross University
- Awarding Institution
- Southern Cross University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Theses
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
- Publisher
- Southern Cross University, Faculty of Arts, Centre for Contemporary Arts
- Number of pages
- 324
- Identifiers
- 991012958500002368
- Copyright
- © Michael T. Singleton 1997
- Academic Unit
- School of Arts and Social Sciences
- Resource Type
- Thesis