CHAPTER SIX

After the Death of the

"Death of the Author"

Autobiography reveals gaps, and not only gaps in time and space or
between the individual and the social, but also a widening diver-
gence between the manner and matter of its discourse. That is, au-
tobiography reveals the impossibility of its own dream: what begins
on the presumption of self-knowledge ends in the creation of a fic-
tion that covers over the premises of its construction.
-Shari Benstock, "Authoring the Autobiographical"

But is the structure of autobiography different from that of fiction?

The referent of fiction is forever absent; it cannot be called forth in
its presence to give evidence for the truth of fictional writing. The
fictional referent is "ideal"-produced and sustained by conventions
and codes. But when is the referent, the object, of autobiographical
writing present? When does he step forth to give evidence?
-Michael Ryan, "Self-Evidence"

~The title of this chapter suggests a double negative. It

implies that the poststructuralist "death of the author," the chal-
lenge to the authorial autonomy associated with the humanist view
of the subject as something unified and constant, capable of under-
standing both world and self, is itself dated and possibly irrelevant.
This, however, could not be further from what I have in mind. Far
from asserting that two negatives add up to a positive, I would like
to dwell on the paradox implied by neither/nor. Rather than sug-
gest that the humanist subject should be resurrected, and that the
production of knowledge should return to the universalist princi-
ples that legitimated it in the past, this chapter seeks to explore the
conditions under which authorial identity might currently be envi-
sioned. What are the epistemological circumstances in which art
history currently operates? Did Roland Barthes's announcement of
the "death of the author" eliminate the need for a concept of
agency in historical interpretation, or has it instead forced us to
reconceive the nature of agency itself? 1 If knowledge no longer de-
pends upon the universalizing claims of the disembodied "voice
from nowhere," how should we redefine authorial agency? Do the
varied forms of identity that have laid claim to scholarly attention,
After
such as those posited by feminism, queer studies, and postcolonial-
the
ism, simply reproduce the universal pretensions once associated Death
with the humanist tradition, or can the ideas of agency and identity of
be understood in terms that differ radically from those of the past? the
Two crucial issues haunting the writing of history in the wake of "Death
poststructuralism are the question of identity and the definition of
of subjectivity. 2 Poststructuralist authors as various as Roland the
Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida ar- Author"
gued, not so long ago, that the autonomous subject of the human-
ist tradition was a utopian dream of the European Enlightenment.
This view of human identity had to be abandoned in a period that
recognized the existence of an unconscious mind, the opacity of
language, and the role of discursive practices in the dissemination
of social power.
This revision of the idea of subjectivity has had important rever-
berations for our conception of knowledge generally and of history
in particular. If identity is imagined as something unstable and
changing rather than transcendental and constant, then human
knowledge can no longer be viewed as a permanent edifice. We live
in an age that challenges the very foundation on which that struc-
ture was erected. Doubts about the traditional premises on which
the knowledge-producing activities of the humanities disciplines
were once based have provided the justification for the introduc-
tion of a variety of politically inspired forms of interpretation, such
as gender studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies. These new
approaches to historical interpretation no longer claim the episte-
mological status traditionally associated with positivistic scholar-
ship. Their findings and conclusions are specifically defined as

I. Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image, Music, Text, ed. and
trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142-48.
2. For reflections on the implications of poststructuralist theories of subjectivity
for artistic production, see Griselda Pollock, "Art, Art School, Culture: Individual-
ism after the Death of the Artist," in The "Block" Reader in Visual Culture, ed. Jon
Bird, eta!. (London: Routledge, 1996), so-67, and Catherine Soussloff, "The Aura
of Power and Mystery that Surrounds the Artist," in Riickkehr des Authors? ed. F o-
tisJannidis (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1999), 481-93.
 u6 forms of local knowledge that reject pretensions to universality.
These perspectives subvert previously established knowledge
claims by characterizing them as unavoidably tainted or colored by
the values inherent in the circumstances of their production. The
The
voice from nowhere, the objectivity posited by foundational episte-
Practice
mology, has come to be viewed as suspect because of its identifica-
of
tion with Western culture, the dominance of white races, mas-
Persuasion
culinist bias, and middle-class prejudice. The knowledge produced
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on which the disci-
plines of the humanities were founded is now seen as one way of
understanding the world, rather than the way in which the world
can be understood.
This conception of the status and function of knowledge has had
a dramatic impact on the history of art. If history is not regarded as
the interpretation of the past produced from a neutral perspective,
but rather as an interpretation of the past produced from a particu-
lar perspective, then it cannot be pursued for its own sake. The cul-
tural function of historical interpretation can be openly acknowl-
edged rather than masked behind an ideal of objectivity. As a
consequence, the shape of the discipline has been decisively altered.
Rather than operate according to an ideology of neutrality and dis-
interest that insists that the author repress his or her subjectivity in
the pursuit of the facts-and rather than fetishize empirical data by
suggesting that they might be relied upon to provide the interpreta-
tions that are actually forced on them by particular historians-
scholars have begun to foreground their commitment to a specific
form of understanding. In substituting an interpretive agenda for
the allegedly impartial dedication to description, many art historians
now offer us access to the methodological procedures and political
goals that inform their views. What was once hidden in the interest
of providing a common front, one that suggested that human sub-
jectivity was universal in nature, now appears in the open, asserting
the conflicting interests of different interpretive communities.
The consequences of these changes have been profound, if not
always beneficial. Art history is now characterized by a cacaphony
of voices, each seeking to represent the interests of different sec-
tors of the discipline's population. Disciplinary conferences offer a
variety of alternative points of view, all of which compete for the
attention of the professionals in the field. In this situation, identity
issues take on new meaning. It is not sufficient to destabilize hu- 127
manist notions of the subject as essential and autonomous without
reflecting upon the concept of identity that replaces them. The
problem is effectively stated by Emesto Laclau:
After
the
Thus once objectivism disappeared as an "epistemological obstacle,"
Death
it became possible to develop the full implications of the "death of
of
the subject." At that point, the latter showed the secret poison that
the
inhabited it, the possibility of a second death, "the death of the
"Death
death of the subject," the reemergence of the subject as a result of its
of
own death; the proliferation of concrete finitudes whose limitations
the
are the source of their strength; the realization that there can be
Author"
"subjects" because the gap that "the Subject" was supposed to bridge
is actually unbridgeable. 3

How is this subject (with a small s) to be theorized, if it is not sim-

ply to be an epigone of its ancestor? How is one, for example, to
theorize the historian's relation to his or her text? Is there a corre-
spondence between the historian's subjectivity on the one hand and
the text on the other? Do the class, gender, or ethnic identities of
the historian determine the nature of his or her intervention in the
writing of history? How are the politics of identity inscribed in his-
tory writing?
In the course of writing this book, I have had to reflect upon my
own relation to its argument. The circumstances in which this en-
terprise was undertaken are very different from those that reigned
just a few years ago. When I wrote The Practice ofTheory (1994), I
assumed that the history of art still had a disciplinary center, and
the voice I articulated was deliberately located in the margins. 4 I
characterized myself as a historian interested in theoretical initia-
tives that had affected the structure of neighboring disciplines
(such as literary studies, anthropology, and history), initiatives that
seemed to have had little impact on art history. The point of steep-
ing myself in these theories was to try to make them register in art
historical interpretations, to use theory to destabilize the master
narratives that had for so long dominated the discipline. I was

3· Ernesto Laclau, "Universalism, Particularism, and the Question ofldentity,"

in The Identity in Question, ed. John Rajchman (New York: Routledge, 1995), 94·
4· Keith Moxey, The Practice ofTheory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art
History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).
 128 openly engaged in a polemic, championing change and transfor-
mation in the articulation of multiple discourses and perspectives.
In the years that have elapsed since then, art history has changed
substantially. It is not as though the disciplinary establishment sud-
The
denly saw the light, abandoning a positivistic scholarship informed
Practice
by notions of objectivity for one that recognized the impossibility
of
of keeping subjectivity and objectivity apart. Instead, the establish-
Persuasion
ment has accommodated itself to the new theoretical and political
interests of many of its members. Indeed, there are relatively few
institutions, with the exception of some university departments
and an occasional fellowship-granting foundation, that have not
responded in some way to the changes wrought in the discipline's
way of doing business.
In an interesting twist of fate, scholars committed to established
methodologies often characterize themselves as "pluralists." Under
the aegis of "let many flowers bloom," these newly minted plural-
ists argue that since there is no objective way of determining the
value of one interpretation over another, then all must be equally
viable. 5 The apparent tolerance of this stance, however, masks the
necessary tensions that characterize the relations between different
forms of interpretation and often serves to defuse challenges levied
against the status quo. It frequently fails to recognize that
in the new theoretical landscape there is no such thing as a value-
neutral position. Theory and method have become as much a part
of the intellectual life of the discipline as empirical study. In these
circumstances, pluralists have found it more attractive to legitimate
their position and their power by appeals to tradition rather than
by subjecting their own assumptions to critical scrutiny. Thus they
deliberately evade one of the principal claims of the new perspec-
tives, namely, that scholarly discourse cannot be disassociated from
issues of power. "Tolerance," in other words, becomes one more
defense against change.
Before attempting to characterize my own position, and locate
my own voice within the new context of art history's multivocal
discourse, I want to return to a consideration of theories of
identity. How does a writer's personal consciousness register in a

5· For the function of an ideology of pluralism in blunting disciplinary change,

see Ellen Rooney, Seductive Reasoning: Pluralism as the Problematic of Contemporary
Literary Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
historical text? What is the relation between authorial identity and 129

textual product? Theories of identity and the nature of human

agency have been much discussed in the context of feminist theory.
Following Foucault's suggestion that subjectivity is defined by the
After
conventional systems responsible for making cultural meaning,
the
systems he terms discursive practices, Judith Butler has argued that
Death
identity is both constituted by those practices and empowered by
of
them to act upon the processes that gave them shape. Butler theo- the
rizes the instantiation of subjectivity by means of the concept of "Death
performance. Exploiting the ambivalence inherent in performance, of
she invokes its significance both as an act of repetition and as an act the
of personal agency. Identity (in Butler's case, gendered subjectivity) Author"
is a process with a prescribed script but a necessarily varied enact-
ment. The performance of identity is a form of repetition without
duplication, and it is this simultaneous production of sameness and
difference, or difference within sameness, that allows for the con-
ceptual possibility of agency.

Paradoxically, the reconceptualization of identity as an effect, that is,

as produced or generated, opens up possibilities of "agency" that are
insidiously foreclosed by positions that take identity categories as
foundational and fixed. For an identity to be an effect means that it
is neither fatally determined nor fully artificial and arbitrary....
Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of
agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes
culturally intelligible. 6

If, as Butler suggests, the subjectivity of the historian is both

constructed and constructing-if subjectivity is an effect of discur-
sive processes, and the link between an author and his or her text is
relational rather than determined-then it is impossible to claim
that the text is a reflection of a particular identity. Thus, the com-
peting perspectives that currently characterize the history of art
cannot be understood as wholly incommensurable with one an-
other. Rather than fixed and permanent, the identities that mani-
fest themselves in politically inspired forms of interpretation are
themselves part of a process of change and transformation.

6. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New
York: Routledge, 1990), 147.
 IJO Joan Scott, however, has noted the persistence of the rhetoric of
the humanist subject, of omniscience and finality, in forms of inter-
pretation that respond to notions of identity in the production of
situated knowledge. Such rhetoric, of course, could not be more
The
opposed to the idea of subjectivity as process. Scott argues that the
Practice
attempt to assert local interests by positing minority identities has
of
often been subverted by a tendency to conceive of them in terms
Persuasion
once used to ensure the dominance of the transcendental subject.

The logic of individualism has structured the approach to multicul-

turalism in many ways. The call for tolerance is framed in terms of
respect for individual characteristics and attitudes; group differences
are conceived categorically and not relationally, as distinct entities
rather than interconnected structures or systems created through re-
peated processes of the enunciation of difference. 7

The temptation to view the contestatory subjectivities that have

arisen in the wake of the demise of the humanist subject as radi-
cally incommensurable depends upon a survival of the notion of
individualism associated with the ancien regime. This tendency, ap-
parent in those whose political agendas have depended upon the
assertion of differences and in those who have sought to discredit
the politics of difference, is a travesty of the conception of subjec-
tivity proposed by Butler. Scott writes:

it makes more sense to teach our students and tell ourselves that
identities are historically conferred, that this conferral is ambiguous
(though it works precisely and necessarily by imposing a false clar-
ity), that subjects are produced through multiple identifications,
some of which become politically salient for a time in certain con-
texts, and that the project of history is not to reify identity but to
understand its production as an ongoing process of differentiation,
relentless in its repetition but also-and this seems to me the impor-
tant political point-subject to redefinition, resistance, and change. 8

Assuming then that identity is an "ongoing process of differenti-

ation," what conclusions can we draw from the theoretical insights

7· Joan Scott, "Multiculturalism and the Politics ofldentity," in The Identity in

Question, ed. John Rajchman (New York: Routledge, 1995), 9·
8. Ibid., I I.
of Butler and Scott for the work of the historian? How do we con- IJI
ceive of the discursive practices of which the historian is an "ef-
fect," and what is the nature of the "agency" he or she possesses in
the production of historical interpretation?
After
First of all, in order to intervene in the literary genre known as
the
art history, the scholar must have acquired a high degree of general
Death
and professional education. Not only is the historian constituted
of
by the discursive practices associated with educational institutions, the
but he or she must also absorb the reigning paradigms of knowl- "Death
edge production that characterize the historiographic moment. 9 of
The discursive practices of educational and professional formation the
are inevitably class-inflected. The art historian, for example, is Author"
necessarily implicated in the transmission of "cultural capital"
from one generation to another. 10 A knowledge of the visual arts
has traditionally been associated with the social elite, and, since the
late eighteenth century, works of visual art have been identified
with a form of spiritual value, known as aesthetic value, which has
been an integral part of the cultural life of the bourgeoisie. The art
his~orian is thus inextricably involved in both the creation and sup-
port of class distinctions. The art historical canon, that collection
of works of art to which the history of art traditionally has dedi-
cated its attention-a canon established on princely and aristo-
cratic tastes, nationalized to become state property during the
course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-was both en-
nobled and democratized by means of the idea of aesthetic value so
as to become an essential aspect of bourgeois education.
Does the art historian's formation by, and participation in, the
processes by which class distinctions are perpetuated inevitably
mean that elitist values are embedded in the histories they pro-
duce? Only the most reductive account of identity politics would
argue that this is necessarily the case. If the scholar is both an effect
of cultural formations and an agent of their construction, then his
or her text may either transmit the class ideology of art history's
academic discourse relatively unchanged, or it may bear only the
9· For a discussion of the concept of the paradigm in the sociology of knowl-
edge, see Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, zd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970).
ro. For a discussion of this concept, see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social
Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1989).
 most tangential relation to it. Given the importance of class identi-
fication for art historical discourse, however, I would argue that the
historian's relation to the discipline's social function must always be
significant. In evaluating the nature of a scholar's intervention in
The
the historiography of the discipline, his or her understanding of art
Practice
history's role in maintaining class distinctions should be of interest
of
to any reading of an author's work. If the connection between the
Persuasion
historian and text is relational rather than determined, as I have
been arguing, then the inscription of class attitudes can take many
forms. A fairly common one, for example, is the scholar who af-
firms the notion of aesthetic value, the idea that there is some spir-
itual sustenance to be drawn from works of art that sets them apart
from the rest of the paraphernalia of everyday life, without recog-
nizing that such an understanding of aesthetic value is a feature of
a social elite with the cultural capital to appreciate it.
Second, quite apart from the ideological processes in which the
historian is either wittingly or unwittingly involved, we must con-
sider the unconscious or psychoanalytic mechanisms that charac-
terize the historian's work both as a scholar of the past and as a
pedagogue of future generations. In other words, how rationally
are disciplinary paradigms of knowledge production transmitted
and received? To what extent is the absorption of the discursive
practices to which art history's methodological alternatives belong
unconsciously determined rather than consciously chosen?
Dominick La Capra has pointed out that the situation in which a
graduate student acquires the interpretive models of a discipline,
that is, his or her relation to a professor, is analogous to the rela-
tion that exists between an analyst and an analysand in psycho-
analysis. 11 The student is bound to the historiography of the disci-
pline in a highly personal manner, one in which an unconscious
bond may well be as important as a conscious one. Just as the
analysand adopts certain attitudes of the analyst in the attempt to
restructure past experience in relation to the present, a process
known as transference, so the student will adopt some of the char-
acteristics of the professor in order to transform him-or herself
into a figure of equivalent cultural authority. This kind of identifi-
cation often results in the perpetuation of accepted forms of mean-
I I. Dominick La Capra, "History and Psychoanalysis," in Soundings in Critical
Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, I989), 30-66.
ing production at the expense of more innovative alternatives. 1 33
Even if the student consciously repudiates the models absorbed
during the training period, that rejection will itself be relevant to
critical evaluation of his or her eventual historiographic contribu-
After
tion. The rejection might, for example, represent an "anxiety of in-
the
fluence," a fear of imitating a respected authority and a desire to
Death
break out of a professional mold in order to claim an authority
of
equivalent or superior to that of the original mentor. 12 the
And third, the discursive practices of professional formation de- "Death
mand that the art historian put a personal stamp on literary pro- of
duction, regardless of whether the scholar is simply duplicating or the
creatively extending and manipulating an established disciplinary Author"
paradigm. Paradoxical as it appears in a positivist tradition that in-
sists that the historian's task is to afford the public access to the
truth-a process that might be undertaken, presumably, by anyone
with the time, training, and inclination to do so-the conventions
of professional life insist that each scholar distinguish his or her
contribution from those of peers. It is one of the ironies of posi-
tivism that it should have emphasized rather than erased the role of
the individual interpreter. The call for the construction of a unique
subjectivity, the cult of the exceptional individual, is, of course, the
heritage of a culture deeply invested in the ideology of the human-
ist subject. The degree to which a historian is susceptible to these
ideological demands will also register significantly in any account
of the discipline's history. 13
I hope that this sketch of some of the discursive practices that
constitute, enable, and empower historical writing might help us to
think about the relation of historian and interpretive text. Because
the drives and neuroses that determine the historian's psychologi-
cal formation and the nature of the discursive practices that shape
his or her professional identity are not necessarily open to self-
reflection, it is inevitable that the character of the individual histori-
cal narrative, its full implications for the historical moment in which
it is composed, can never be fully recognized. (Often, the process of
rz. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1973).
r 3. The ideology of individualism is also the precondition for autobiography as
a literary genre. See Georges Gunsdorf, "Conditions and Limits of Autobiogra-
phy," trans. James Olney, in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James
Olney (Princeton: Princeton University Press, rg8o), 28-48.
 1 34 research and writing must come to an end before the scholar can
perceive the pattern that informs the work.) As LaCapra points out,
in the case of the historian there may well be a psychological mech-
anism that serves to make the work opaque to its creator.
The
In light of this, it is possible to argue both that a historical
Practice
text bears only an oblique relationship to authorial identity-that
of
is, the relation is mediated by a variety of cultural and psycho-
Persuasion
logical considerations-and that the text is nothing but an ex-
tended metaphor for the author's psychological, cultural, and pro-
fessional formation, as well as for his or her participation in the
pre-established discursive practices which enable the creation of
historical meaning. If, on the one hand, the full significance of a
historical text is never available to its author, and if, on the other,
it is impossible for the historian to discern the past because access
is mediated by the historically determined and psychologically in-
fleeted paradigms of meaning production that frame that en-
counter, then it seems possible to conclude that there is no rela-
tion between a historical text and its author and, simultaneously,
that the text is an allegory of authorial identity. It is precisely the
lack of a one-to-one correspondence between the discursive prac-
tices that have shaped the historian and the texts he or she pro-
duces that makes an analysis of the historian's life and an analysis
of the historical text relevant to an assessment of that text's histo-
riographic significance. While Barthes was correct in insisting
that the passage from author to text is barred by the angel with the
flaming sword, this does not necessarily mean that both life and
text, signs belonging to different registers or codes, cannot be of
value to those seeking to make sense of the past.
Given the complexity of the author/text relation, it seems para-
doxical to reintroduce a reference to this book's manifest role in
contemporary debates about the nature of art history as a disci-
pline. Some of the chapters constitute a plea for greater theoretical
and methodological diversity in the discipline's interpretive proce-
dures, while others seek to articulate the ways in which the discur-
sive practices that constitute the discipline's intellectual history re-
veal the attitudes that characterize their cultural location, as well as
the way in which particular historians have either reiterated those
ideologies or called them into question in the process of construct-
ing their own interventions. My purpose in theorizing the role of
identity and subjectivity in the production of historical narratives is 1 35
to denaturalize disciplinary traditions that seek to maintain the
idea that the historical voice is at best always a disembodied voice.
In calling attention to my own investment in these metahistori-
After
cal narratives, I am keenly aware of the debate that swirls around
the
the role of autobiography in scholarly writing. 14 The introduction
Death
of the personal into a discursive practice such as historical writing
of
can often constitute a form of essentialism, a way to posit a direct the
connection between an author and his or her text. In this scenario, "Death
the autobiographical serves to ground the narrative in the author's of
experience in such a way as to make the intimate bond between the
subjectivity and memory serve as an unassailable foundation for Author"
the views being presented. By this logic, for example, only Mrican
Americans can represent the views of African Americans, and only
women can articulate feminist agendas.
The concept of experience, that allegedly unmediated founda-
tion on which claims to situated knowledge are sometimes based,
has been usefully theorized by Joan Scott whose discussion of
identity I referred to earlier. Arguing that there is nothing trans-
parent or immediate about appeals to biography, she suggests that
those events we consider crucial to our definition of self are always
decided in retrospect. Indeed, the Freudian concept of Nachtrdg-
lichkeit suggests that what our memories call experience is subject
to a continual process of change, as those memories are recalled in
the dynamic circumstances of the present. 15 The quotidian flow of
events makes no distinction between those experiences we deem
formative and those we do not; indeed, only in retrospect does the
process of transforming an event into an experience reveal the
thought involved in that metamorphosis. And some of the most
important events that have affected us, those of a traumatic nature,
cannot be recalled in their original form, but only through the fil-
ter of constructed memories.

It is not individuals who have experience, but subjects who are con-
stituted through experience. Experience in this definition then be-

I4. See Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Professor Narcissus: In Today's Academy,

Everything is Personal," The Weekly Standard, 2 June I997, I?-2 I.
I 5. J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald
Nicholson-Smith (New York: Norton, I973), I I I-I4.
 comes not the origin of our explanation, not the authoritative (be-
cause seen or felt) evidence that grounds what is known, but rather
that which we seek to explain, that about which knowledge is pro-
duced. To think about experience in this way is to historicize it as
The well as to historicize the identities it produces. 16
Practice
of If, as I have been arguing, there is no direct correspondence be-
Persuasion tween an author and his or her text, then what is the point of intro-
ducing the so-called personal at all? What epistemological purpose
can reference to biography serve in understanding a text, if it is im-
possible to demonstrate the connection between them? Returning
to Butler's notion of performance allows us to conceive of a partic-
ular subjectivity's acts of agency as both (1) prescribed, in the sense
of having been installed in that subjectivity by means of the discur-
sive practices that brought it into being, and (z) instantiated, as
those discursive practices must be enacted by the subjectivity in
question in everchanging circumstances that necessarily endow
them with new meaning. Just as it is necessary for an appreciation
of a scholar's historiographic location to acknowledge the psycho-
logical and cultural processes by which he or she was formed, so it
is appropriate to consider the autobiographical account of the au-
thor responsible for the production of a specific text.
The function of autobiography has been extensively theorized in
the wake of Roland Barthes's remarkable autobiographical sketch,
Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes. Barthes insists on textualizing his
life, rigorously refusing to see through the web of language to
some underlying reality, arguing that our notions of subjectivity
are the product of language itself.

This book consists of what I do not know: the unconscious and ide-
ology, things which utter themselves only by the voices of others. I
cannot put on stage (in the text), as such, the symbolic and the ideo-
logical which pass through me, since I am their blind spot.... 17

16. Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 779-8o.

For an earlier articulation of a similar point of view, see Teresa de Lauretis, "Semi-
otics and Experience," in Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984), 158-86.
17. Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 152.
Barthes's view foreshadows the more radical position of Derrida, 137
for whom language alienates subjectivity from experience. His in-
sistence that the "truth" of language lies in what is invested in it by
those who use it, rather than in its relation to the world, means that
After
autobiographical narratives represent only the order that their au-
the
thors have imposed on their existential circumstances, not those
Death
circumstances themselves. 18 Derrida's follower Paul de Man claims
of
that language even denies subjectivity the capacity to inflect and the
manipulate the processes by which meaning is made, implying that "Death
language inflicts a kind of metaphorical death on the notion of the of
subject as agent. 19 the
The idea that the subject is the product of language rather than Author"
its creator, however, has been interpreted very differently by other
theorists of autobiography. James Olney and Paul John Eakin, as
well as Liz Stanley, Shari Benstock, and other feminist authors, in-
terpret the prescriptive power of language positively, regarding it
as an empowering process that, in Butler's terms, enables particu-
lar subjectivities to play a performative and therefore an active
°
role within the culture that shapes them. 2 For Olney, autobiogra-
phy is not a reference to some pre-established reality but rather a
metaphor for the subject's attempt to make order of the universe.

A metaphor, then, through which we stamp our own image on the

face of nature, allows us to connect the known of ourselves to the
unknown of the world, and, making available new relational patterns
it simultaneously organizes the self into a new and richer entity; so

18. Robert Smith, Derrida and Autobiography (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1995).
19. Paul de Man, "Autobiography as De-facement," Modern Language Notes 94
( 1979): 9 19-3°·
20. See James Olney, Metaphors of the Self: The Meaning ofAutobiography (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1972); Paul John Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography:
Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985);
Shari Benstock, ed., The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical
Writings (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1988); Bella Brodzki and
Celeste Schenck, eds., Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1988); Liz Stanley, The Auto/Biographical 1: The Theory and Practice
of Feminist Auto-Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992); Kath-
leen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, and Gerald Peters, eds., Autobiography and Postmod-
ernism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994); and Leigh Gilmore, Au-
tobiographies: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1994). I am grateful to Janet Wolff for some of these references.
 that the old known self is joined to and transformed into the new
and heretofore unknown self.2 1

Pursuing this line of thought, Nancy Miller argues that autobiog-

The raphy is a "self-fiction," yet one that enables the historiographer to
Practice
comprehend the purposes behind the author's writing. She main-
of
tains that the introduction of the personal into the discursive prac-
Persuasion
tice of writing is not necessarily a form of essentialism, not a way of
suggesting that there is a correspondence between author and text,
for autobiography must necessarily be a carefully edited version of
personal experience that depends for its shape on the deferred ac-
tion of memory. Autobiography tells us which events in the au-
thor's life have been dignified with the status of experiences, which
of those experiences the author identifies with, and which he or she
does not. The insertion of an autobiographical myth is thought by
Miller to be a form of "personal materialism," one that calls atten-
tion to who is speaking.

By the risks of its writing, personal criticism embodies a pact, like

the "autobiographical pact" binding writer to reader in the fabrica-
tion of self-truth, that what is at stake matters also to others: some-
where in the self-fiction of the personal voice is a belief that the
writing is worth the risk. In this sense, by turning its authorial voice
into spectacle, personal writing theorizes the stakes of its own per-
formance: a personal materialism. 22

The value of Miller's conception of the personal as autobio-

graphical myth rather than autobiographical fact allows us to con-
sider the crucial function of the anecdote in a new light. Joel Fine-
man, for example, has theorized the anecdote as the creation of a
"reality effect," a way in which say, a historian, can nest one narra-
tive within another so that they mutually reinforce each other's
claims to the real. 23 Within the text, an anecdote opens a window
onto context, so that the latter can substantiate and support the
former. Anecdote steps outside the primary narrative so as to ges-

21. Olney, Metaphors of the Self, p-p.

22. Nancy Miller, "Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism," in
Getting Personal (New York: Routledge, 1991), 24.
2 3· Joel Fineman, "The History of the Anecdote: Fiction and Fiction," in The
New Historicism, ed. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989), 49-76.
ture more persuasively toward the real. By contrast, Miller's view 1 39

of anecdote as fabrication allows us to appreciate the role of auto-

biography not as an attempt to create a reality effect, but as an ef-
fort to draw attention to the author's self-fiction. The point of
After
making reference to myself and my own intentions is not to per-
the
suade you, my reader, of the "reality" of my argument, but rather
Death
to indicate the perspective from which I would like you to think
of
that my narrative is being written. Needless to say, neither the dis- the
cursive practices that have formed me nor the nature of my own in- "Death
tervention in those practices of history writing is transparently of
available to me. Nevertheless, I am assuming that my own inter- the
pretation of these cultural processes is relevant to an appreciation Author"
of the argument I have placed before you.
Returning one last time, then, to my own investment in writing
this book, it is difficult for me to know what form of autobiograph-
ical myth may be most useful to understanding the perspective
than informs my writing. Born to English parents in Buenos Aires,
I spent my school years following both Argentine and British pri-
mary school curricula. My "experience" in school and elsewhere
was complicated by the knowledge that I operated in two different
cultural systems, systems that had different attitudes to just about
every aspect of everyday life. Partway through my secondary edu-
cation, I had to decide whether to study for entry into a British or
an Argentine university. My choice of a British curriculum enabled
me to appreciate the extent to which national identities are fabri-
cated constructs dependent on processes of acculturation and edu-
cation. Upon completing secondary education in Argentina, I trav-
eled to Britain in order to attend the University of Edinburgh.
Having always thought that part of me was "British," it was a nasty
shock to discover that the Britain I had absorbed from my parents
and their friends was the Britain of the 1940s-a very different
place from the one I encountered in the 196os. Instead of cricket
and crumpets, I discovered sex, drugs and rock and roll! Graduate
school and professional life in the United States confirmed what I
had already suspected, that each national culture fabricates its own
version of reality, and that strangers must accommodate them-
selves to the identifications required by each national myth. 24
24. For theorizations of transnational hybridity, see Arjun Appadurai, Modernity
at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Min-
 I would argue that this potted self-fiction, one which I have
characterized as both determined and empowered by conflicting
national identities, can be used as a metaphor for my claim that all
identities are constructed and that the scope of knowledge produc-
The
tion must necessarily be limited and local. This self-fiction is
Practice
clearly a heuristic device, a means of extracting from the complex-
of
ity of my experiences some of the factors that I believe have a bear-
Persuasion
ing upon my thesis; it is an assertion that myths of identity matter,
even if their validity cannot be substantiated in the "real." The few
facts I have retrospectively culled from my experience are clearly
chosen for their application to the purpose of this essay, which is to
call into question history's voice from nowhere. If history writing
is to be genuinely historical, then it must be capable of acknowl-
edging the particular cultural agenda that informs its approach to
the past.
It seems clear, however, that constructions of identity of the type
essayed here can only be invested with cultural meaning if they co-
incide with the political interests of a significant sector of the pop-
ulation as a whole. The performance of identity can only acquire
political power if it can be shared. While this might appear to dis-
qualify my own autobiographical myth on the grounds of eccen-
tricity, I believe that its metaphorical value may have broad appeal.
The circumstances of contemporary culture are such that it is in-
creasingly difficult to subscribe to constructions of national
identity based on cultural homogeneity. The massive population
movements brought about by global capitalism in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries-movements responsible, for example, for
my own family's relocation from London to Buenos Aires-mean
that intercultural communication as well as intercultural friction
are a feature of many contemporary lives. My experience of Amer-
ican life, with its plethora of immigrant cultures, may have exacer-
bated my awareness of the limitations of my own formation. The
replacement of the notion of the "melting pot" with that of the
"culture wars" as the dominant trope of intercultural interaction
has affected not only my own self-awareness but that of many

nesota Press, 1996); May Joseph, Nomadic Identities: The Peiformance of Citizenship
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); and May] oseph and] ennifer
Fink, eds., Performing Hybridity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1999).
other segments of the population as well. In the United States,
these developments have placed a new emphasis on cultural differ-
ence, one that challenges the universalist ideology associated with
the eighteenth-century rhetoric of human nature that inspired the
After
framers of the Constitution. A bicultural background of the kind I
the
have been describing is clearly far from exceptional. Whether the
Death
metaphorical potential inherent in this kind of experience can ever
of
be exploited in the interests of politics dedicated to the premise the
that truth is a function of persuasion remains to be seen. "Death
Contemporary theories of subjectivity thus offer the historian a of
paradox. They suggest that personal experience, in the form of au- the
tobiography, both matters and does not matter to an understand- Author"
ing of a historical text. On the one hand, autobiography can never
afford us access to the relation between the historian and the text
because it depends upon the fabrication of a self-fiction based on
the deferred action of memory. Psychological and ideological
forces also intervene to ensure that the text is forever opaque to its
author. On the other hand, autobiography, or self-fiction, offers us
insight into the type of self-awareness that informs the agency of a
particular subjectivity. It affords the historiographer and the
philosopher of history a means of comprehending some of the
multitude of cultural practices that inform the writing. If autobiog-
raphy does not make them available, then at least it suggests the
complexity of the processes involved in the writing of history.
More important, autobiographic self-fictions can serve as a form of
persuasion. In articulating the particular perspective from which
a tale is told, they can invite identification of those whose self-
fictions coincide with that of the author, as well as those who can
empathize with the nature of the subject-position in question. By
giving authorial voice a location and a face, self-fictions can serve a
powerful role in persuading an audience of a particular political
agenda.
In conclusion, the demise of a notion of a wholly rational, au-
tonomous subject led to the proliferation of new voices based on
assertions of specific identities which had previously been re-
pressed or occluded by the dominant paradigm. In these circum-
stances it has become necessary to theorize a new concept of sub-
jectivity, one whose status as process ensures that it cannot be given
stable definition. The idea of subjectivity has been rethought in
 terms that would have made it unrecognizable to its late lamented
ancestor. In this new guise, reference to identity as agency also in-
vokes its status as the product of those unconscious and ideological
forces that haunt the production of meaning. Given this view, the
The
writing of history can never be an entirely rational process since its
Practice
narratives are always colored by the perspective of the author in
of
Persuasion
question. As we have seen, the absence of an essentialist definition
of identity does not necessarily exclude the possibility of informing
a text with the character of a particular subject position. The para-
dox of autobiographic self-fictions is that they can serve as a means
of creating effective narratives of persuasion.