The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

intercourse entailed in this metaphor of dramatisation is, according to David Chaney, an
essential element of modernity. 15
This chapter examines the career of biography as a method of research and field of
enquiry in the social sciences, history as well as literature. It also looks at the way these
disciplines have treated the individual as object of study. For much of its existence, the
discipline of history has tended to rely on a rather untheorised category of the
individual, with biography occupying an ambiguous position. While questions of
personhood and individual‐society relations have been key topics in sociology and
anthropology, substantial theoretical engagement has been quite limited. But it is mainly
within literary studies that the limitations of conventional biography, which constructed
linear masculine lives as authentic selves, have begun to be addressed. This has resulted
in the category of the ‘subject’ being opened up. While this chapter addresses the
disciplinary worlds of biography in the academy, it is important to note that these
disciplinary distinctions have specific histories of being created and reproduced, as well
as of being resisted. Indeed, beyond discreet disciplines, academic work also occurs in
relation to methodological paradigms and networks. It is also important to note that
from time to time, these critical approaches to subjectivity have raised their heads in the
public domain as well. 16
Across the disciplines of history and sociology, mainly from the 1970s, an increasing
emphasis on collective identities saw biography take shape as a mechanism through
which individuals were viewed as units of social forms, with life histories as prisms for
the study of social processes. However, these studies paid little theoretical and analytical
attention to the narration of lives and to the relationship between subjects and discursive
practices. In addressing insights developed within literary studies, this chapter suggests
15 David Chaney, Fictions of Collective Life: Public Drama in Late Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 1993).
16 Fields of study have modes of existence outside the academy, and biography continues to be a key
genre through which the public encounters accounts of the past populated by politicians and celebrities.
Beyond the academy and sometimes intersecting with it, historical depiction has also seen biography
take the form of visual studies, museum displays, exhibitions and film. See Chapter Two.
16