Self-Representation: Modes, Strategies and Procedures

Before proceeding to the issues of self-knowledge on the internet, let us consider how the self can be represented. That succession seems logical because to know something one first has to have it as a perceivable object. Self-knowledge, therefore, is inseparable from self-representation.

A person can represent himself using various means, some of which are more direct while others are more oblique. The basic distinction can be drawn between self-description and self-expression as the two general forms of self-representation. In the first case a person creates his own image using narrative or figurative means and ascribes to this image iconic similarity to himself as a personality; in the second case, the depicted object is different from the depicting person, and the author is presented in oblique or symbolic way. The common denominator here is the fact that both types of works are created by the person himself.

However, the person can be also represented through the works of others. First, he can be directly described by the others (which produces a variety of genres, from opinions and gossip to testimonial and biography); second, he can express himself through the selection of what he considers as interesting or noteworthy (here we have collections and compilations of every kind). In the first case, the self is described by others as an external object; in the second, the self is modelled as a principle of selection from ‘the world of things, ideas, values, and persons’ (Ricoeur 1986).

Thus, there are four forms or modes of self-representation that can be conventionally called autobiography, biography, portfolio and collection. The correlation between them is shown in Table 1:

These are logical classes that can be combined in different ways in real discursive practices. For example, a real autobiography can include references to what other people have said or written about the author (biography), samples of the author’s works (portfolio) and account of his or her interests (collection). However, the differentiation between these modes may help us to see clearly which kind of material is used in every particular case. Moreover, these four modes can be brought in correspondence with actual genres of self-representation according to which mode is predominant.

Historically, the question of “Who am I” has been answered in the genre of autobiography (although it has certainly been addressed in many other genres). Autobiography thus can be regarded as a meta-genre for various modes of self-description and self-knowledge. There exist many convergent definitions of autobiography. William Spengemann (1980) who studied the history of this genre in Western literature and also wrote an extensive bibliographical review on the study of autobiography (Spengemann 1980: 170-246) has noted that ‘the more the genre gets written about, the less agreement seems to be on what it properly includes’ (ibid, xi). Earlier, regardless of theoretical divergence whether it is admissible to take into consideration such literary forms as letters, journals, memoirs, and verse-narratives, people ‘generally agreed that an autobiography had to offer at least ostensibly factual account of the writer’s own life – that it had to be, in short, a self written biography’(ibid). Recently, with the exponential growth of research in the field, ‘the boundaries of the genre have extended proportionally until there is now virtually no written form that has not earlier been included in some study of autobiography’ (ibid, x).

Spengemann distinguishes between two principal approaches or “schools of thought” concerning autobiography:

On the one side are those critics who continue to insist that autobiography must employ biographical – which is to say historical rather than fictional – materials. On the other side, there are those who assert the right of autobiographers to present themselves in whatever form they may find appropriate and necessary. (ibid, xii)

It seems that the difference between these two approaches can be linked to the difference in understanding of what the self actually is. If the first approach proceeds from the presumption that one can know and explain the self by describing the facts concerning its becoming, development and manifestation in the real world, then the second is sceptical about such a possibility and believes that the “facts” can say nothing about the essence of the self, which can be only comprehended through the myth a person create about himself. In the first case, the self is thought of as factually given, and in the second case, as something that is being created.

‘Insofar as both of these views of autobiography conform to our experience with actual texts both are right’, states Spengemann (ibid, xiii) and proposes to consider autobiography historically,

not as one thing that writers have done again and again, but as the pattern described by the various things they have done in response to changing ideas about the nature of the self, the ways in which the self may be apprehended, and the proper methods of reporting those apprehensions (ibid).

In his analysis of the evolution of the genre from the early Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, he distinguishes between three forms of autobiography – historical, philosophical, and poetic. Although, as he notes, all these forms were employed in succession in St Augustine’s Confessions, the general evolution of autobiography during the next fifteen hundreds years have been from historical through philosophical to fictive mode, and this movement has been corresponded with the evolving views on the nature of reality and the self.

Every one of these modes uses its own constructing principles that Spengemann calls procedures:

Historical self-explanation, philosophical self-scrutiny, poetic self-expression, and poetic self-invention – these are, so far as I know, the only procedures available to autobiography, and the list was exhausted by the time Hawthorne finished The Scarlet Letter (ibid, xvi-xvii).

He is convinced that ‘all subsequent autobiographies may be described in terms of one more of these formal strategies’ (ibid, xvii).

These strategies are summarized in Table 2.

All these strategies are realized in online autobiographies. For example, traditional Curricula vitae, which are a common element of personal homepages clearly relate to the historical mode and provide self-explanation in terms of socially significant stages of personal development and personal accomplishments. In online diaries the strategy of self-expression usually dominates. Creation of virtual identities is an example of self-invention. Finally, philosophical self-scrutiny is a common denominator of online projects investigating the relationships between offline and online selves and the problem of the self in general.

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