Abstract
Based on the eight aspects of the sociological relationship between author and beholder sketched by Alfred Schutz ‘s “Construction” and using Simone de Beauvoir ‘s memoirs as an example, this chapter examines autobiography as mixed literary type. It illustrates how the autobiographer constructs from her solitude a totality centered upon her relevances and motives, shaped by her interconnecting of events, and dissimulated by the sincerety of her autobiographical I. Such totalizing, though, encounters and succumbs to detotalizing counterforces in the personal relationships between autobiographers, characters, and readers; in the continual, restless capacity of the autobiographer to reflect; and in the passage of time that leaves every event open-ended.
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References
Lester Embree, ed., “A Construction of Alfred Schutz’s ‘Sociological Aspect of Literature,” in Alfred Schutz’s “Sociological Aspect of Literature”: Construction and Complementary Essays, ed. Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 25–26. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “Construction.”
Fred Kersten, “Some Reflections on the Ground for Comparison of Multiple Realities” in Alfred Schutz’s “Sociological Aspect of Literature “: Construction and Complementary Essays, ed. Lester Embree(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 156–164.
“Construction,” 26–30; Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 126–129; Alfred Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, ed. Ilja Srubar, trans. Helmut R. Wagner (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 162.
Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, trans. Richard Howard (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965), 409 [Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “FC”]; Simone de Beauvoir, AllSaid and Done, trans. Patrick O’Brian (New York: Warner Books, 1974), 59, 149–150,155–156 [Hereafter, cited as “ASD”]; Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 73, 201, 215–216, 244–245.
“Construction,” 39–40; Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, trans. James Kirkup (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), 18, 26–27, 35–38, 84, 129, 143, 191, 192–193, 289, 308, 340, 393 [Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “MDD”]; Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, trans. Peter Green (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1962), 45–46, 120, 128, 195, 279, 292, 346, 417, 435 [Hereafter, cited as “PL”]; FC 15, 110–118, 122–123, 160, 185, 199, 255, 339, 374, 346, 367, 653, 655; ASD 26, 31, 66, 89, 153, 389–90.
Cf. also PL 18–24, 40, 286–289.
PL 110; FC 529; on her ageing, see Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, A Biography (New York: Summit Books, 1990), 190–191; FC 80, 197, 257, 306, 453, 467, 493, 507, 509, 584, 653.
“Construction,”41; PL 65, 92, 120–128, 132, 172, 175, 185, 195, 211, 216, 254ff. 238, 285, 288, 417, 423, 432–33, 434, 444,; FC, 16, 70, 88, 122–123, 290, 359, 374, 380, 423, 458, 644. Regarding the impurity of motives and need for dialogue, consult FC 199, 652; ASD 33.
Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 164, 202–203, 248, 310, 329, 33, 397, 460, 462, 469, 496, 502, 506, 591, 613, 614; Alfred Schutz, “The Well-Informed Citizen,” in Collected Papers, vol. 2, ed. Arvid Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 132.
Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 279, 280, 289, 303, 447.
Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 469, 500, 502.
MDD 101; FC 197, 306, 339, 357, 360, 453, 484; PL, 348, 399–400; cf. also 120, 157, 213, 302–303, 344–347, 380, 448, 457, 474, 478; ASD, 340–341, 358, 393, 418; Simone de Beauvoir, Adieux, A Farewell to Sartre, trans. Patrick O’Brian (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 34; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 540; on “the paramount reality of the world of working” and “standard time,” cf. Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 1, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 226, 242. Other types of reality, such as the world of dreams, do not appear in Beauvoir’s autobiography, although she does report on dreams she had of philosophical argumentation with Sartre (ASD 118).
“Construction,” 59–62; FC 658; ASD 126–127.
PL 22. Cf. also “Construction,” 59–62; MDD 57, 65, 84, 104, 133, 142, 174, 192–193, 195, 199, 273, 286–287, 289, 308, 313–314; PL 22, 252, 289, 292, 346; FC 77, 199, 242, 271, 653, 658; ASD 47, 129; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 486.
PL 132, 289; FC 461–462, 643, 655; ASD 37, 129, 154–155, 172; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 509.
PSW 91–96; cf. also Michael D. Barber, Social Typifications and the Elusive Other, The Place of Sociology of Knowledge in Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenology (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1988), 85–87.
MDD 36–37, 56, 72; PL 18, 19, 22, 65, 120, 128, 291; FC 192, 339; ASD 26, 127, 472.
MDD 111, 258; PL 93, 289; ASD 26, 47, 126.
MDD 345; PL 46, 301; FC 254.
Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 449; Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins, trans. Leonard Friedman (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1956), 586.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 73, 80–81.
cf. PL 117, 119, 185, 192, 194, 195, 203–204, 285; FC 88,110–118, 270, 275, 285, 290, 287, 644; ASD 46, 66. Beauvoir admits that at times she lapsed into being a disciple of Sartre’s, having given him too much reponsibility over her life, cf. PL 178, 252.
Indeed, a similar harshness manifests itself outside of her biography for instance when she did not hesitate to let Genet know how much she despised his “silly fairy entourage” or when she joked callously upon the death of H. M. Parshley, English translator of The Second Sex, that he had nothing more to live for after the translation. Cf. MDD 267, 286–287; on Camus see PL, 444; FC 122, 171, 254, 484; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 319.
FC 462; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 402, 439; Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 91 ff.
Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 15; PL 161.
MDD 35–38; PL 10,18,19, 22, 24, 56,135,194, 286–287, 474, 479; FC 38, 191, 367, 655; ASD 245,473; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 509; Alfred Schutz, The Problem of Social Reality, 99–101.
MDD 26–7,195. Cf. PL 10, 56, 77, 119, 152, 168, 194, 290, 417, 454, 457, 474, 479; FC 7, 119, 263, 319, 645, 655; ASD 152, 245; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 466, 509, 522.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 85.
MDD 45; PL 120, 128, 132, 172, 211, 254 ff., 283, 288.
FC 458, 535; ASD 473–478; Sartre, too, became endeared to a priest who exhibited great selflessness in prisoner camps, in PL 404. In spite of their own atheism, they could could be moved by ethical examples of believers.
MDD 26–27, 125, 136–137, 272, 349; PL 380–381, 448; FC 122–123, 366–367, 374, 535.
PL 18–22, 29, 56, 92, 170, 213, 242, 288, 346, 434, 474; FC 38, 167, 197, 199, 242, 257, 306, 467, 492, 507, 509, 584, 653, 655, 656; ASD 107, 126.
From an interview with Nina Sutton in The Guardian cited in Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 540; MDD 348, 359–360; PL 242; Adieux, 34, 64–64, 91.
FC 270, 643; ASD 37.
PSW 91–96; Schutz, The Problem of Social Reality, 69–72; cf. also PL 286–292; FC 652; ASD 9–10, 26.
PL 208–9; ASD 126–127, 472.
cf. also ASD 37, 47; PL 285.
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Barber, M. (1998). Autobiography: Precarious Totality. In: Embree, L. (eds) Alfred Schutz’s “Sociological Aspect of Literature”. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9042-6_11
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