Page 305 - Contribution To Phenomenology

298 MANO DANIEL

of assumptions are employed and techniques deployed to account for its
object rather than a specific mode of inquiry with a specific methodol-
ogy. In an age of academic specialization, the practice of biography
exceeds traditional academic categories or classifications. Perceived as an
anomaly, it is shunted to the periphery of theoretical attention. Biogra-
phy is "generally considered a chameleon form: history, literary criticism,
or what you read at night, and there seemed Uttle need to go any
further, theoretically then that.'"^
This unreflective stance is emblematic of the extent to which biogra-
phy has become such an accepted phenomenon that its structure, rather
than revealing the fundamental problems that it is trying to overcome,
and the aims it is trying to accomplish, is seen as a transparent medium
that provides straightforward answers to unambiguous questions. The ease
with which practitioners and readers of biographies treat the practice as
a innocuous medium is indicative of a certain myopia to the procedures
and implicit assumptions of the discursive practice which are ignored or
glossed. For instance, historians and literary theorists appear more
concerned with claiming or reclaiming the practice as being within their
respective domains than with exploring the contours of the practice in its
own right They thus often fail to appreciate the practice's tendency to
interlace techniques from both. This defect is compounded by the
practice's inherently fungible nature and receptivity to methods and
research strategies developed in other theoretical endeavors in its task of
inscribing a body of experiences connected to the life of a given
individual. Hence, the healthy self-reflexivity which scrutinizes critically the
practice's implicit and imported assumptions and procedures is done
sporadically, and often in isolation. Faith in the veracity and accuracy of
biography is thus often not warranted and the practice is shrouded by a
shadow of suspicion.
This inattentiveness has also hindered the recognition of the practice
as an eminent cultural discipline. After all, the terrain occupied by the

^ Katherine Frank, "Writing Lives: Theory and Practice in Literary Biogra-
phy," Genre 13 (Winter 1980), 499. Similarly, Leon Edel, in the introduction to the
last volume of his Henry James writes: "I believe biography to be the most taken
for granted—and the least discussed—of all the branches of literature. Biographies
are widely read, but they are treated as if they came ready-made. . . . biographies
are accepted as they come and relished for their revelations. . . . [But] questions
of form, composition, structure are seldom raised." Leon Edel, Henry James: The
Master: 1901-1916 (New York: Lippincott, 1972), 19-20.