International Conference
Controlling Time and Shaping the Self: The Rise of Autobiographical Writing since 1750
Rotterdam 15-17 June 2006
Abstracts UPDATED 06-06-2006
Peter Burke ( This paper
is concerned with the relation between the microcosm of the self and the
macrocosm of the cultural environment, and more especially with the effect of
changing attitudes to the past in general on individuals perceptions of their
own past. Historiographically
speaking, I should like to juxtapose and compare Meinecke
and Koselleck on historicism and the Sattelzeit with (say) Philippe Lejeune
and Charles Taylor on the history of perceptions of the self. I shall do this from the standpoint of a
historian of early modern Peter Burke
is Professor of Cultural History at the See:
http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/teaching/fellows/display/index.cfm?fellow=49
In the seventeenth century
still-life painting became a significant site for artistic self-representation
and for reflection upon both art and temporality. Ubiquitous allusions in
these pictures to time's measurement and representation - watches, hourglasses,
almanacs, ledgers, journals and the like - suggest a range of contemporary
preoccupations with changing conceptions and experiences of time. The
novelty and interest of these works has been largely overshadowed by a rather
narrow interpretive focus on their symbolic meanings and place within the
traditions of vanitas and memento mori imagery. My paper asks how we might broaden this
view to take into account the distinctly visual evidence of historical
subjectivity and self-perception these pictures offer. I consider not only the
imagery of time but also various representational means by which Dutch
still-life painters evoked different kinds of temporality and temporal
experience. My analyses of pictures by Pieter Claesz,
Clara Peeters, Gerrit Dou, Evert Collier, and Cornelis Gijsbrechts
among others, suggest how Dutch still lifes invited
viewers to imagine themselves in and out of time, and to reflect simultaneously
on the temporal dimensions of art and of their own existence. Celeste Brusati
is Professor of the History of Art at the Marilyn
Himmesoete ( In the
nineteenth-century, keeping a diary was often pedagogically encouraged.
Although just entering their youth, many young diarists were paradoxically
taken up by an obsession with time. This study of about one hundred teenage
diaries, manuscripts, and printed texts uncovers a pervasive concern with daily
schedules and timetables, particularly among young women from the middle class
who, due to their gender, could not participate in the same scholarly
activities as their male peers. Since they were encouraged to observe
themselves and to practise a submissive comportment, dedicated to moderate and
patient behaviour, they were subjected to the weight of time: its passage (slow
or fast), its irreversible character, and the uncertainty of the future.
Teenage boys and girls did not only record the details of daily events, but
also reconsidered their existence in the present moment, becoming aware of it
for the first time, while inscribing themselves in a past childhood more or
less golden, and expressing their doubts about the future. How then does one
write about time constraints in a personal diary, which has its own
restrictions? Many teenagers wrote about their lack of freedom to experience
time as they wished. I will discuss how some diarists creatively used the
medium to free themselves from the constraints of their everyday lives. Through the use of several examples, I will
consider how the inscription and measurement of time by these
nineteenth-century diarists can be read as attempts to liberate themselves from
the chronological restraints of diaristic protocol.
Indeed, these diaries reveal a search for free space where the control of time
symbolizes a desire for illusory emancipation. Jeroen
Blaak ( In the
nineteenth century in the Jeroen Blaak is a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam,
participating in the program Controlling
Time and Shaping the Self. He studied history at the Pieter
Stokvis (Open University of the Since about 1825 matrimonial advertisements had
become an established if not openly acknowledged way to seek a partner, for in
the year 1850 the phrasing was already business-like and a reason was seldom
given. The framers were exclusively male with a good number of widowers among
them. The men desirous of marrying were in general over thirty. Social class
figured large in their self-portraits as did good looks and health and
qualities referred to as respectable. Considerations concerning property or
capital were stated in eight out of ten advertisements. The rare mention of
bonds of love
in 1850 and 1875 hints at more romantic longings. In 1875, 10 out of 25 (male)
framers asked for a photo, a new phenomenon which may have become taken for
granted in later years. On account of their capital, income or profession the
men aged between thirty and forty ranged from lower to upper middle class.
About their own looks and character they were very brief. The same is true for
the profile of the lady they were looking for. In 1900 women advertised too.
Status and wealth was indicated by mentioning specific professions. Appreciated in a partner
were as before, the input of capital and sometimes a distinguished appearance.
In 1925 more women than men mostly white-collar professionals advertised.
Most women professed to be looking for a man with a good job and capable of
supporting them. The favourite epithet was now civilized instead of
respectable. Other new features were the appreciation of a youthful
appearance and a good education, signalling a growing search for intellectual
equality and comradeship. In spite of the tendency of matrimonial
advertisements to become less personal, more condensed and standardized with
every sample year, they still reveal some remarkable shifts in portraying the
self and profiling a matching partner.
Pieter Stokvis is
senior lecturer in cultural history at the Open University of the Ofer
Nur ( Ofer Nordheimer Nur is a lecturer at the department of history at UCLA. In
2004 he received his PhD at the same department and then won a post-doctoral
fellowship at the Centre d'Etudes Juives
at the EHESS in Paris where he examined the work of Lucien Goldmann,
the death of God and the tragic vision of the world in the Zionist youth
movements intellectual orbit in Central Europe in the 1920s. For his
dissertation Dr Nur wrote a cultural history of a
group of young men and women who were some of the founders of the kibbutz
movement in Wim Denslagen ( It seems
that Romanticism created the cult of the authentic. Even in the arts one had to
be authentic, which entailed an attitude that resulted in the total rejection
of classicism. Romanticism killed the classical canon in the arts, with its
unceasing search for essentials. The cult of authenticity even showed a
sustained influence on the world of architectural preservation. In this domain
even historical architecture had to remain authentic and in this way the cult
created a second meaning for the notion of authenticity. Wim Denslagen is architectural historian and specialized in the
history and theory of conservation. He has published on architectural theory
and is author of Architectural
Restoration in Western Europe: Controversy and Continuity (Amsterdam, Architectura & Natura Press,
1994). His latest books include Romantisch modernisme. Nostalgie in de monumentenzorg ( Eveline Koolhaas-Grosfeld ( Does the
soul have a shape? Is it possible to know about someones inner life from her
or his face? In the eighteenth century this ancient question about the
possibilities of physiognomy became an urgent problem. For if we may believe
the spectators and other critical observers of social life, in their era the
art of pretence, formerly restricted to civility at court, had reached the
upper middle-class circles. If we look at portraits and examine books of
manners, there appears to be some truth in what they say. This lecture focuses
on some of the negative reactions to pretending, assuming that they reflect and
constitute a certain degree of self-awareness. My first example is a Dutch book
on civility published in 1735 (2nd edition 1755), in which pretence is
explained as hiding ones feelings, thoughts and character, in order to adopt the
personality of someone else, whose friendship might be useful, socially
speaking. However, the author labels this kind of behaviour as typically French
or Italian, and contrasts it with the typical Dutch openness, leaving his
readers the choice and stimulating reflection upon their own national,
republican identity. In books of manners such as this, physiognomic knowledge
is recommended as a tool to understanding the character of that important
friend, in fact to promote adaptation. But as I wish to show in the second
part of this lecture, in Lavaters immensely popular Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe
(1775-1778) it is the other way
round. Lavater presents his physiognomy as the cure
for the art of pretending. His method of tracing someones character in their
features, seems indeed to make pretence superfluous.
Since it is impossible to alter the forehead, nose, mouth, etcetera, everyone
is determined to keep their personal identity and according to Lavater, should be respected the way they are. After a
short discussion of Lavaters physiognomic method,
and why he thinks it benefits the whole of society, we finally turn to a
different, more sophisticated physiognomic technique such as proposed by the
Dutch physician and theorist of art, Petrus Camper.
His physiognomic lectures at the Eveline Koolhaas-Grosfeld is an art historian. She has published
several articles on nationalism in Dutch art criticism of the 18th- and early
19th-century, on Dutch landscape and genre-painting and ethnographic prints of
the same period; she is co-author with J. Kloek and
W. Mijnhardt, of 1800
Blueprints for a National Community (Assen, Van Gorcum 2004) and published Father and Sons. Jacob de Vos Wzn (1774-1844) in which she edited the journals Jacob
de Vos drew daily for his children ( Lisa Kuitert ( In this
paper I would like to examine writers and photography by focusing on the impact
of photographic portraits of writers on the production, distribution and
consumption of literature in the 19th century. What was the specific nature of
writers portraits, and what were the conventions in this respect. Was the
writer the owner of his own image? Or is it more appropriate to speak of a
new marketing/publishing strategy? How
did the public react to the writer's image?
For many people, the visual aspect of culture is a powerful component of
cultural communication, because what is seen may be the surface of an
underlying and unseen system of meaning. The 19th century is particularly
interesting in this respect, as the visual began to be more and more exploited
during this period. For the 19th-century reader, words and images were combined
increasingly often, in the form of illustrated novels and magazines. Lisa Kuitert is professor in Book and Manuscript Studies at the Ann Jensen
Adams ( This paper
examines some of the varieties of time both as idea and as experience, as
revealed through a few portraits commissioned by 17th-century Dutch men and
women. As I discuss, academic concepts of time, pressures to measure
increasingly smaller units of time, and the resulting subjective experience of
time underwent radical transformation over the course of the century. In some
of their very novel and experimental qualities they provide a material and
accessible visual counterpart to and in some cases precedents for, debates
concerning the nature of time, raging in humanist circles, and pressures to
more precisely measure time, promoted in commercial ones. In explicating
the different forms of time evidenced in seventeenth-century Dutch thought
and portraits the paper distinguishes
concepts of time between "God's Time - Eternity" and then discusses
the various forms of "Man's Time" focusing upon the narrative of time
and the description of a particular moment for both the sitter and particularly
the viewer. Ann Jensen
Adams received her PhD in Fine Arts from See: http://www.arthistory.ucsb.edu/faculty/adams.php
Philippe Lejeune (University of Paris-Nord):
M.A.
Jullien Jr et le contrôle du temps. I will present the educational project of
Marc-Antoine Jullien (1775-1848), author of
pedagogical treatises in part inspired by Pestalozzi.
Starting point is his Essai sur l'emploi du temps
(1808), a method for self surveillance which at the time corresponded with its
spatial counterpart, the panopticon of Bentham
(1790), an architectural plan for prisons, in which everything which happened
inside could be observed from a central point. Jullien
proposed applying the three methods to a personal life, which had made modern
civilization a success: a religious and philosophical method (self-examination
of conscience), a military method (inspection), and a commercial method
(keeping an account book). Addressing boys of 15 to 25 years, he wanted them to
write three journals each day (The Mémorial
analytique, the Agenda général
and the Biomčtre) to use their time in the
most useful and virtuous way. We scarcely know who actually applied this
method, but the regular reprinting of these books from 1810 to 1830 seems to
indicate that they were influential. Philippe Lejeune taught French Literature at the Université
Paris-Nord from 1972 to See:
http://www.autopacte.org/ Marina Warner ( The word
medium was extended to include individuals in l854, and trance mediums -
especially female mediums - began channelling different personalities from
other places and other times. Many of these spirit visitors, or spirit
'controls', communicated the medium's earlier existences and alter egos. These
experiences helped fashion modern conceptions of 'the multiple self', and continue to
illuminate problems about the stability and unity of individual consciousness.
Such ethereal presences are also often exotic: time travelling also offered
writers such as W.B. Yeats and James Merrill possibilities of occupying a
different sex, gender, and ethnos. The talk will be illustrated with records
from the work of the mediums Eusapia Paladino, Helene Smith, and Eva Carriere.
Marina
Warner is professor at the See:http://www.marinawarner.com/
Dror
Wahrman ( In recent years we have grown accustomed to the idea that the supposed
universality of the individual subject with a well-defined, stable, centred
self is in fact a charged, far from natural, recent Western construct. While
this insight has been pioneered by philosophers, anthropologists and literary
critics, it puts the ball squarely back in the historians court: if this
construct is not universal and trans-historical, then what were the historical
circumstances, specific to a particular time and place, that
can account for its emergence, its development, and its ultimate naturalization
as a supposed universal? In my lecture,
based on my recent book The Making of the Modern Self, I will offer a
historical narrative for the development of modern notions of identity and
self. Employing a comparative analysis across time of a variety of cultural
forms, I will set up a contrast between two very different identity regimes: an
ancien régime
of identity in the eighteenth century, and a more recognizably
modern one in the closing decades of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth
century. In addition to documenting the sharp, discontinuous shift from one to
the other, I hope as far as time will allow to gesture toward a possible
explanation of this shift in its particular historical circumstances; as well
as to point to its consequences, observable across a wide cross-section of
eighteenth-century culture, that underlay many of the new departures we
associate with the modern . Dror Wahrman, Ruth N. Halls Professor of History and Director of
the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at See:
http://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/pages/faculty_and_staff/biographies/wahrman.htm Alfred
Messerli ( The starting point is a corpus of Swiss-German popular almanacs
comprising all the extant issues from the earliest examples through to the year
1800, which have been documented, described and evaluated by three doctoral
researchers in a four-year SNSF research project (2003-2007). These form the
basis for some fundamental reflections on the time concept and the developmental
logic of ideas of time as contained in these almanacs and offered for
consideration and consumption. Three levels of mediation can be distinguished:
time concepts are thematized narratively,
as exempla; furthermore they are depicted visually, for instance on the cover
pages; and finally they are incorporated into the arrangement and layout of the
calendar as a perceptual grid. One unanswered question is how great a role the
almanac played in the popularization of innovative time concepts. It also remains
to be determined how and when during the evolution of the printed almanac the
various time-levels of present, past and future are activated. Cognisance of
temporality is followed by the striving to deal with it economically, which is
attained by evaluating the past. Only in the course of the 19th century is
active time planning extended to include the future. Time now becomes a factor
in production and people gradually learn to live with notice periods and
deadlines. Another issue to be addressed is that different time concepts
coexist with and alongside one another in the almanac. Alfred Messerli
studied German Language and Literature, Social History and European Folk
Literature at the Universities of Zurich and http://www.ipk.unizh.ch/vl/institut/p-am.html Molly
MacCarthy ( This paper
will examine how nineteenth-century Americans told time. In spite of the mass production of
watches and the rise of clock time, many
Americans were connected to older ways of understanding time, as evidenced by another pocket-sized innovation
that had grown in popularity by the
mid-nineteenth century the prefabricated diary. The day, and not the hour, remained supreme
for many who did not
require the temporal precision of a pocket watch and instead
turned to their diaries to tell the
time. Molly A. McCarthey is since 2004 visiting Assistant
Professor, Avriel Bar-Levav (The Open University of Israel): The
Right T ime in Nineteenth-Century Hebrew Autobiographies.
Writing an autobiography in Hebrew in the
nineteenth century was both an act of rebellion against Jewish tradition and an
attempt to reconstruct a better Jewish society, together with shaping and
presenting the author's life. The concept of doing things at the right time is
an important theme in those autobiographies. This theme will be analyzed in the
paper. Avriel Bar-Levav is head of the department of History, Philosophy and
J udaic Studies at the Open U niversity
of Davíđ Ólafsson ( Diary Writing
in Nineteenth-Century In this paper I will approach the rise of diary
writing among common Icelanders in the nineteenth century within the framework
of the democratization of scribal culture in the modern period. From the odd
circumstances of universal reading-skills and ever-increasing ability to write
among the general public from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but at
the same time, only an embryonic print culture and a virtual lack of a cultural
structure usually associated with print culture, grew a period of popular
scribal culture consisting of circulation, creation and consumption of
handwritten texts. This goes hand in hand with the growth of other uses of
writing, for example diaries, autobiographies and correspondence in what can be
termed the age of popular handwriting in Icelandic cultural history. Drawing
from the studies by scholars like Harold Love, Peter Beal and Margaret Ezell of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, I will argue that the
act of handwriting endured as an important medium of literature and historical
writings up to the turn of the twentieth century and that the rise of
diary-writing and indeed autobiographical writings in the nineteenth century
was embedded in and empowered by that cultural situation. Davíđ Ólafsson received his BA in History and Literary Studies
from the See: http://www.microhistory.org Sigurđur
Gylfi Magnússon (The Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon completed his BA
in history at the University of Iceland in 1984 and PhD at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburg, USA in 1993 (Dissertation: The Continuity of Everyday Life: Popular
Culture in Iceland 1850-1940). Sigurđur has
worked as an independent researcher at the See:http://www.akademia.is/sigm and www.microhistory.org Thomas Max Safley ( Time plays
a role in business failure as
well. In the testimonies
of early modern bankrupts, the timing of events and their precise sequence
forms an integral part of the
defaulters' self-representations.
This paper will explore the changing relationship between remembered time and represented self in order to come to a more precise
understanding of both. Thomas Max Safley is Professor of Early Modern European History at the See:
http://www.history.upenn.edu/faculty/safley.htm James Amelang ( Jeopardy in
the past can be a source of comfort in the present. Such, at least, is the
typically grateful reaction of the historian who reads the numerous trazas de la vida -
literally, "traces of life" - whose creation was mandated by the
Spanish Inquisition during the early modern era. Distinct from the often close
questioning of suspects during interrogations, these were oral autobiographies
brought into being by the simple command at the beginning of proceedings to
tell one's life story. There were substantial variations among such narratives;
some were telegraphically brief and unrevealing, while others ran to a
considerable length and dealt with a wide range of topics, including intimate
beliefs and behaviour. However, all shared at least three characteristics:
looseness of structure (thanks to the absence of any specific model apart from
general confessions); transformation of their oral origins into written
outcomes (thanks to their transcription by notarial
scribes); and above all, the paradox of existing as a spontaneous tale within a
setting that was anything but spontaneous, and indeed, full of risk. This paper
briefly examines trazas as a source for early
modern autobiography, within a historiographic
context that is at last beginning to pay attention to them. James S. Amelang has been Professor of Early Modern History at the
Universidad Autónoma of See: http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/filoyletras/amelang/
Peter
Fritzsche ( History and
the Production of Autobiography. Peter Fritzsche studied history at the Stranded
in the Present: Modern Time and the
Melancholy of History,
Harvard 2004 Germans into Nazis, Harvard 1998 (pub. 1999).
Celeste Brusati (Marilyn Himmesoete is Teaching Assistant at the
My paper examines a collective "diary" of a group of Zionists who
came to
Tales of War are an amazing mass phenomenon in
Petra Bucholz received the Diplom-Pädagogin in 1975, and did several years of professional work in education, for instance the founding and supervision of a
See: http://web.fu-berlin.de/japanologie/mitarbeiter/buchholz.shtmlMy contribution intends to indicate the ways in which history reconstituted private life, or more precisely how perceptions of historical change after 1800 rearranged conceptions of the autobiographical self and domestic space. Rather than opposing public and private, I explore how historical eventfulness in the early nineteenth century made more pertinent (or dramatized) the idea of the contemporary or the "Zeitgenossen" and thus enabled the production, consumption, and back-and-forth traffic of autobiographical texts. Private histories also became more "telling" in marking differences among cultural traditions in what might be called the domestication of history. Finally, I suggest how formal models of historical change came to be applied to the visualization of change in personal time and to the archiving of personal continuities in a trans-Atlantic context.