The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

historical circumstances of their situation”, and in this way, the exceptional figure
becomes representative “not only of wider patterns in society, but indeed of whole
historical moments”. Subjects of biographies
are often articulate members of a community who have
been through a range of fascinating experiences; in this
sense they are exceptional.... But if one sees this
exceptionality as condensing a much wider potential in
society, then such characters can also be seen as
representative of a range of experiences, patterns and
social meanings [which] comprised the matrix from
which a generalised experience was composed. 107
In this perspective, biography is a social form of representation, “the high road of social
investigation rather than an embarrassed by‐way”. 108 Once again, we are presented with
the biographical concept of the individual life as a ‘prism’ in which the individual
remains an expression of the social. We want to suggest that there is a third element in
the equation between ‘individual subject’ and ‘society’ that can enable the approach to
biography as ‘prism’ for social processes, collectivities and representativeness to be
transcended. This entails an approach that locates individual lives within human
relationships. Viewed in this way, Clingman’s notion of a life history as a ‘laboratory of
identity’ can really come into its own. Human beings enter into relations of many
different kinds with others, through which they construct meanings and narratives and
fashion their identities. 109 It becomes possible for biography to emerge as the study of
reciprocal constructions and the ways in which people narrate each other in relationships,
especially ones that are ongoing, regular and formative. It is in these ‘biographical
relations’ that individual‐society relations are mediated discursively. This is also where
identities are constituted through representation within specific institutional sites, and
107 Stephen Clingman, ‘Biography and Representation’, pp 8‐9.
108 Stephen Clingman, ‘Biography and Representationʹ, p 9.
109 There are some elements of this approach in Shula Marks, “Not Either an Experimental Doll” ‐ The
Separate Worlds of three South African Women, London: Women’s Press, 1987. This is a study of the
‘intesecting destinies’ of three South African womenʹs lives by searching into the sociocultural contexts
ʺfrom which each woman came onto the relationshipʺ. Their attitudes and experiences were influenced
by what each brought to the relationship, and its ultimate breakdown. For a discussion of this approach,
see Personal Narratives Group, ‘Conditions not of her own Making’, in Personal Narratives Group (eds),
Interpreting Women’s Lives, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
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