Contingencies of Autobiography: Post-Foundational De-Centerings of "Self" and "Memory"

• In Event: Autobiographical Occasions: When I Allow Myself to Remember

Abstract

This paper springs from myriad interrogations of Enlightenment conceptions sovereign, rational, fully knowable selves who remember fully and perfectly. Responding to calls for heightened curiosity and accompanying experimentation in the becoming of existence (St. Pierre, Jackson & Mazzei, 2016), we here posit conceptions of autobiographical inquiry that challenge that Cartesian self and knowledge projects that reproduce dividing practices of “self” and “other.” We examine potencies of “post-foundational autobiography” for challenging not only exclusionary versions of self and other that can inhibit promises of equitable educational opportunity, but also of memory as mere retrieval of intact “truths” from a memory bank.

Authors

• Janet L, Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Elizabeth Macedo, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro