Nearer my God: an autobiography of faith

Reviewed Book: Buckley, William F. (William Frank). Nearer my God: an autobiography of faith. New York: Doubleday, 1997

Body and mind in two discourses on method : Descartes, Dilthey, and Misch

The point of departure of my presentation will be the fact that in his monumental History of Autobiography, Georg Misch considered Descartes’ Discourse on Method a fine example of intellectual autobiography. Yet, the Discourse is a highly complex text far from a simple autobiography. And what is even more, and more disturbing is that for his work, Misch made intensive use of Dilthey’s concept of an autobiography that was meant to capture the sense of “life as narrating itself” laying down the proper, i.e. “objective” foundation for the historical sciences. But how shall we take “sincerity” in this case, which is the distinguishing feature of a real autobiography in the Dilthey-Misch sense? I will apply a kind of hermeneutic method trying to move back and forth in a double hermeneutic circle: I will take a look at Misch’s whole concept of an autobiography, and at the historical data in Descartes’s life and works presented in Baillet’s The Life of Monsieur Des Cartes in order to understand the autobiographic character of the Discourse moving again from the details to the whole and vice versa. In my view, Descartes’ “history of his intellect” cannot be taken as an autobiography in the Dilthey-Misch sense nor in a usual sense. The body-mind problem will play an important role in my argumentation

READING AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HELEN KELLER’S THE STORY OF MY LIFE

Membaca autobiografi adalah membaca suatu peristiwa, memori dan kenangan yang dituliskan oleh pengarang tentang dirinya sendiri. Persitiwa- peristiwa tersebut lebih banyak mengabarkan tentang sebuah kebenaran subjektif daripada fakta yang sebenarnya. Itu dikarenakan pengarang sebagai subjek yang membaca masa lalunya menjadi tokoh utama dalam autobiografi. Hal ini dapat dikaji dan dibuktikan melalui beberapa aspek di dalam autobiografi. Ruang lingkup dari tulisan ini adalah bagaimana narrator dalam menarasikan cerita dapat membangun wacana dan berbicara langsung dengan narratee. Pengalaman- pengalaman yang diceritakan oleh narrator, identitas yang ditampilkan dan juga peran editor di dalam pembuatan autobiografi. Adapun tujuan dari tulisan ini adalah untuk mengimplementasikan teori Reading Autobiography yang digunakan untuk menganalisis The Story of My Life yang merupakan autobiografi dari Helen Keller. Metode yang digunakan dalam tulisan ini adalah metode penelitian kepustakaan dan metode pendekatan teori membaca autobiografi. Metode yang pertama digunakan untuk mengumpul data dan informasi dari sumber-sumber kepustakaan yang mendukung pembahasan. Metode yang kedua digunakan sebagai acuan utama dalam menganalisis aspek yang dominan dalam autobiografi. Hasil dari analisis menunjukkan bahwa teknik penceritaan yang digunakan oleh pengarang sangat mengesankan, baik dalam segi penceritaan “aku”, ideologi maupun konsep yang dimiliki banyak memproyeksikan tokoh sebagai tokoh yang sempurna secara fisik. Begitu juga pengalaman yang dialami tokoh sengaja dipilihkan pengalaman yang istimewa Selain itu, identitas yang ditampilkan oleh pengarang bertujuan mengkonstruksikan kesan dirinya seabagai pribadi yang baik kepada pembaca. Di samping itu, adanya peran John Macy sebagai editor di dalam pembuatan autobiografi adalah untuk kepentingan sosial. Hal ini dikarenakan John Macy membantu memproyeksikan Helen Keller sebagai tokoh utama yang hampir sempurna walau dengan keterbatasan fisik. Dia juga mampu membantu Helen dalam mengklarifikasi isu negatif yang berkembang pada masa itu

The most profound spiritual autobiography of all time? - a review of "The Knee of Listening" by Adi Da (Franklin Jones) (1995) (review revised 2019)

A brief review of the life and spiritual autobiography of the unique American mystic Adi Da (Franklin Jones). The sticker on the cover of some editions says `The most profound spiritual autobiography of all time` and this might well be true. I am in my 70´s and have read many books by spiritual teachers and on spirituality, and this is one of the greatest. Certainly, it is by far the fullest and clearest account of the process of enlightenment I have ever seen. Even if you have no interest at all in the most fascinating of all human psychological processes, it is an amazing document that reveals a great deal about religion, yoga, and human psychology and probes the depths and limits of human possibilities. I describe it in some detail and compare his teaching with that of the Contemporary Indian mystic Osho. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

My Autobiography

En présentant sa démission au Dáil en novembre 1994, Albert Reynolds avait promis que le moment venu, il s’expliquerait et mettrait les choses au clair (set the record straight). Le moment semblait opportun quinze ans plus tard puisque, comme il l’écrit dans le prologue, la paix était installée en Irlande du Nord de manière durable. Bien que son récit s’organise autour des deux points précédents, l’on peut diviser cette autobiographie en trois parties, d’une manière fort arbitraire il est vra..

‘Second World Life Writing: Doris Lessing’s Under My Skin’

The first volume of Doris Lessing’s official autobiography, Under My Skin (1994) returns her to memories of her African childhood, but also necessitates that she reassess the status of official and ‘fictionalised’ accounts of the past, especially her own story of the impact of colonization and Empire on her family, herself and the native African population in Southern Rhodesia. At the time Under My Skin appeared In the 1990s, feminist critics were working out the distinctive features of women’s autobiographical writing, and much more recently those of postcolonial life writing have been identified by critics such as Bart Moore-Gilbert (2009). This article will consider whether categories such as feminist autobiography, autobiography of empire or postcolonial autobiography are actually helpful in reading Under My Skin, and will investigate whether or not it is more appropriate to consider the text as an example of ‘second world’ life writing. As a second-world writer, to use Stephen Slemon’s 1990 term, Lessing’s ambivalence about issues of gender, race, empire and nation, both her complicity with colonialism as the daughter of white invader settlers and her resistance to it, become easier to analyse. In order to understand how this ambivalence plays out in the text the article will investigate whether the trope Helen Tiffin (1998) identifies as particular to second world women’s life writing – dispersive citation – is useful in reading Lessing’s autobiography and making sense of her intervention in the genre of life writing

The Red Memory of My Hand (Original writing, Autobiography)

This Creative Writing Project, The Red Memory of My Hand, is Part One of my autobiography and it explores the narrator\u27s developing subjectivity in the context of a dysfunctional matriarchal family. I wrote this autobiography to seize my own power from my existing family structure. In breaking the taboo of silence around my family history and risking rejection by both my family and readers, I claim the right to my history and identity. I am declaring my own agency, my right to tell my story, in the transgressive act of writing The Red Memory of My Hand. As the title implies, given the incident it alludes to, this is a text that is mingled with both pride and shame about where I have come from; The Red Memory of My Hand is a literal slap in the face that comes, strangely, out of love. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0079. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2006

Vicente Cabrera publishes fourth novel

“I like to make literature of my life. It’s not that my literature is an autobiography, but rather that my novels are mirrors that reflect my life and the lives of others.” Spanish Professor Vicente Cabrera has had his fourth novel published