The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the transformation of
Western autobiographical writings in history. This study is not merely to
consider the history of the autobiographical writing simply as a generic
development. By focusing on the problem of subjectivity and its relation
with the discourses of each age, my reading of these autobiographies of the
past might be much more significant and rewarding, for I have disconered
that this literature of the self is closely related to the changing ideas
of each age. As man's relation to himself or the idea of the self changes,
his reading, understanding, or writing of himself is also transformed.
Thus, the methodology adopted in this dissertation is mainly
Foucauldian. By applying Foucault's ideas on history, genealogy, and
discourse, this study discusses the problem of the ways of man's
self-construction within the episteme of each age. In Greek ethos of
self-care, what was constructed in autobiographical texts was a
man-in-action. But in the frame of Christian asceticism, it was a
man-in-thinking that was scrutinized. As self-concern for man is changed
to make himself into a well-styled subject, he ofter follwes the pattern
that he finds in his culture or in his social group. And as social
sciences emerge in the nineteenth century and a modern disciplnary society
is formed, which is studied in the later part of this dissertation, man's
relation to himself is more and more linked to all forms of truths. He has
to fit his self in with truths, principles, or regulations of various
forms.
To conclude, man does not construct himself. The construction of self
is by no means a self-suffiecient work, nor once for all, Instead, it is
an infinite process of being constructed. The actual history of a self's
exerience is in fact a mobility, an unfixed repertoire of many
self-positions. There is not any substantial self, but different positions
relating the self to games of truth. A genealogical research of self like
this makes us have a better understanding of ourselves. After
understanding the process of constructing and deconstrucing the self, it is
hoped to clarify the fact that a modern man has many positions to present
himself. Even though none of these positions is definite and final, none
of them can be exhausted.