Coda

Abstract

Throughout this book, I have adopted a pragmatist perspective and advanced the idea that memoirs are actions that can influence, modify, and change individuals, institutions, networks, relationships, ideas, communities, and beliefs. Pragmatism is a term that denotes “a commitment to success in practical affairs, to ‘getting things done’” and pragmatists are motivated “not by their principle, but by the desire to achieve their ends” (Talisse and Aikin 1). Writers produce memoirs to establish new relations with the world, and offer their represented experience to others in the hope that readers may come to new understandings and positions, thus changing something about their situations and the world. Although memoirs are retrospective, they are written in the future because of what might be possible.

“Action takes up residence in the country of the possible.”

John McGowan