Metabiography

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A metabiography or metabiography deals with the relationship between biographical representations and the temporal, geographical, institutional, intellectual or ideological location of their author.

Metabiographics is a hermeneutics of biographics. It regards the biographed person as a collective construct of different cultures of remembrance and thus takes into account the fundamental instability of historical life descriptions.

In the words of Steven Shapin , the metabiographical emphasizes "that changing biographical traditions lead to a person having multiple life stories", none of which can necessarily claim to be reality, for they are all "according to the sensitivities and needs of the changing cultural framework conditions designed and redesigned ". In this regard, metabiographics are an expression of the conviction that historical knowledge is always dependent on the viewer.

Metabiography vs. biography

Biographers have always used older biographical representations of the person they are treating to prepare their own work. When dealing with their predecessors, these authors pursued the goal of demonstrating the factual inadequacy of older research and refuting traditional "myths" and "errors", or they simply use them as the basis for a new, "final" presentation. Metabiographics, however, go beyond analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of previous studies on a particular life story. It is less about the truthfulness of biographical representations than about their inevitable relational character. It has been argued that metabiographics have a long tradition dating back fifty years in the history of science, ranging from Henry Guerlac's study of Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier and his biographers to Rupert Hall's reissue of Newton biographies from the 18th century and beyond . For these researchers, preoccupation with older biographers had a propaedeutic function with regard to the biographical works of their own epoch. They did not take a relational approach and thus do not have the crucial characteristic of metabiographical research.

Metabiographies from the field of general historiography

In the field of artist and writer biographies, the metabiographical approach can be found e.g. B. in a study by David Dennis on Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) and by Lucasta Miller (2001), which successfully applied it to the example of Emily Brontë (1818–48). Gordon S. Wood's work on the Americanization of Benjamin Franklin is not a metabiography , although the Franklin literature would represent an ideal material basis for such an investigation.

Metabiographies from the field of the historiography of the natural sciences

Examples of metabiographies about natural scientists are "The nine lives of Gregor Mendel " by Jan Sapp, Newton: the Making of Genius by Patricia Fara and Alexander von Humboldt : a Metabiography by Nicolaas Rupke . James Moore and Ralph Colp applied the metabiographical approach to Charles Darwin . A metabiographic trend can also be seen in the Reader's Guide to the History of Science (2000).

See also

Remarks

  1. ^ Rupke, Nicolaas, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (corrected edition). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2008, p. 214.
  2. ^ Shapin, Steven, "Lives after death," Nature , Vol. 441 (2006), p. 286; Quotations in the original wording: "that shifting biographical traditions make one person have many lives" and "configured and reconfigured according to the sensibilities and needs of the changing cultural settings".
  3. ^ Rupke, Nicolaas, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (corrected edition). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2008, p. 214.
  4. ^ Söderqvist, Thomas, [review by Nicolaas A. Rupke, Alexander von Humboldt: a Metabiography], Isis , Vol. 98 (2007), pp. 203-204; Söderqvist understands metabiographics as the traditional critical appraisal of the biographical literature on a specific person.
  5. ^ Guerlac, Henry, "Lavoisier and his biographers," Isis , Vol. 45 (1954), pp. 51-62.
  6. ^ Hall, A. Rupert, Isaac Newton: Eighteenth-Century Perspectives . Oxford [etc.]: Oxford University Press 1999.
  7. ^ Dennis, David B., Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 . New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1996.
  8. ↑ Miller, Lucasta, The Brontë Myth . London: Cape 2001.
  9. ^ Wood, Gordon S., The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin . New York, NY: Penguin 2004.
  10. ^ Sapp, Jan, "The nine lives of Gregor Mendel" in Le Grand, Homer E. (ed.), Experimental Inquiries . Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990, pp. 137–166. Sapp analyzes the various interpretations of Mendel's work on genetics by later specialists in this field, who select him as a Darwinist, anti-Darwinian, supporter of the theory of evolution, opponent of the theory of evolution, Mendelian, non-Mendelian and as a researcher who manipulated or manipulated his data. did not do so, and even as someone who completely made up his experiments on crossing plants.
  11. ^ Fara, Patricia, Newton: the Making of Genius . London: Macmillan 2002.
  12. ^ Rupke, Nicolaas, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (corrected edition). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2008; Rupke shows how Humboldt has been used as a projection surface for a succession of different socio-political ideologies in Germany since the mid-19th century and until today.
  13. ^ Moore, James, The Darwin Legend . Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books 1994; Moore, James, "Telling tales: Evangelicals and the Darwin legend" in Livingstone, David N., Hart, DG, and Noll, Mark A. (Eds.), Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective . New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, pp. 220-233; Colp, Ralph, "Charles Darwin's past and future biographies," History of Science , 27 (1989), 167-197.