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Biography, History, Agency: Where Have All the 'Great Men' Gone?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Ward, Chloé E. |
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | AbstractFrom the 19th century, the biography has stood at the heart of the Western historical enterprise. The 'great men' of history have been valorised as the sources of change in the world. Yet, biography has equally been decried as ahistorical and elitist, leading to its widespread abandonment, by the second half of the 20th century, as a means of understanding and relating historical change. In the 1970s and 1980s approaches to biography attempted to restore its sense of political purpose and its academic reputation - with mixed results. However, in the past ten years theoretical attempts to reintroduce the notion of individual agency to history, and the emergence of works that successfully navigate the boundary between history and biography, have demonstrated the latter genre's validity as a means of historical analysis. This paper argues that these recent developments, when complemented by the historicisation of the Western biographical genre attempted here, show that the biography can make a valid contribution to the history, though not for the reasons given by both its traditional champions and its radical critics.This paper has been peer reviewedMuch like the extraordinary individuals traditionally claimed as its subjects, the biography in history has endured mixed fortunes. From a position of pre-eminence in historical writing in the 19th and early 20th century, the 'great men' of history were sidelined by the efforts of social history, which refused them their primacy as the motivators of historical change and, in so doing, repudiated biography's claim to be 'real' history. This was not the last indignity the 'great men' suffered: in the 1970s and 1980s poststructural theories questioned their very existence as coherent subjects of study, diminishing the possibility of their use even as solely narrative devices. Yet these same postmodern imperatives and techniques allowed feminist historians to go some way towards rehabilitating the biographical genre. However in ultimately conforming to the 'plot' and prerogatives of the Western biographical model, such works can still claim only limited historicity. With the development of new theoretical approaches to not only biography, but the problem of individual agency in history, along with the historicisation of biography as a Western phenomenon with its roots in 19th century conceptualisations of the individual and his worth, biography can, ultimately, be reinstated as a valuable means of historical analysis.The historiography of biographical writing shows how academic history has understood its relationship to the individual life story and also, by extension, how historians have conceived of and responded to the notion of individual agency. The incredulity with which historians often regard biographical endeavours exposes the limits of their belief in human agency as a source of historical change. For the purposes of this article, 'history' refers to an admittedly conservative definition of the discipline. As we shall see this definition is by no means uncontested; similarly, biography has a diversity of purposes beyond the explanation of historical change.1 However, taking on academic historians' challenge on their own terms and claiming biography as a means of 'proper' historical analysis can, perhaps, finally rebuffthe glib but persistent argument that biography's focus on the personal precludes it from real value as historical analysis.Accepting this limited understanding of what 'counts' as history effects the bifurcation of the question of the historicity of biography. In asking, does the individual matter to history? we ask if a focus on the individual biographical subject can be justified as anything apart from a narrative device, or a pedagogical or political statement. This leads to a second question: does the individual matter to the past? By establishing the latter, the former can be affirmed: if individuals did effect real historical change, then biography can make claims on history. … |
| Starting Page | 77 |
| Ending Page | 77 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 28 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/sis-files/history/FJHP/Volume%2028/Chloe%20Ward%20from%20FJHP%20Vol%2028%202012.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
