Abstract

LAHIRE, Bernard. Sociology and autobiography. Trab. soc. [online]. 2009, n.12. ISSN 1514-6871.

Autobiographical texts should be treated critically given autobiographies with their "rhetoric of the self" (in other words, the idea of authenticity and truth about oneself). It becomes impossible to use an autobiography as an object of study or as data for study without a radical challenge to the myth of authenticity. In order to utilize autobiographic texs as interpretable data, the sociologist should obtain information about the extratextual contexts (scholary, political, religious, domestic ones) corresponding to different moment in the narrative trajectory as well as about the moment when the writer talks about himself in order to understand which are the cultural presuppositions and historical cathegories of perception of the author in his "saying" and his "scenary setting".

Keywords : Oneself writing; Auto-analysis; Extra-textual contexts; Myth of authenticity; Frames of language; Critique of sources.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )