Analytical Reading: The Need to Explain

Analytical Reading

Zhao, A Theory of Auto/biography

Chapter 5, section 1. Three basic tropes of the New Biography,Trope 2:

The Need to Explain 務必解釋.

Not just to explain, but to make your audience see things differently. Strachey, for example, was an iconoclast who wants us to see that so-called great figures of the Victorian age were actually depraved by their religious superstition. He pushes for detailed explanations of this depravity 野心; Florence Nightingale, for example, is consumed by [her own?] demons 惡魔繩身 [is this a psychological explanation? At times like this, Zhao's idiomatic language is a little too pat -- too terse].

Ludwig may not be quite as iconoclast, but he's even more meticulous 縝密 about explaining. Why was Napoleon successful in invading Italy, for example? His age, his army, his appeal to Italians for values like "freedom." He waged two wars: one with the gun, one with the pen. [Does Prof. Zhao realize this explanation is likely to be completely outdated?]

Napoleon was a very active man, and he was also a master of language. Speech at Milan. You are the suns of Great and Good men of the Past. This explanation is a creation of Ludwig. [I take it Zhao is emphasizing the 'constructedness' of the biographical subject at hand here. He goes on to reflect on a basic technique used in biographical explanation: comparison of the biographical subject with his actualizing other.

First he characterizes Strachey and Ludwig in comparison: Strachey is straight and direct where Ludwig is meandering. Yet, both were good at explaining via binary comparison 二元對立 [Zhao is himself applying just such binary comparison to begin this discussion. Is that a conscious testament to the validity, or just basic existence, of this form of argument?

Ludwig compared Goethe and Schiller; Bradford, Lee and Grant. This sort of nemesis comparison reaches its extreme in Maurois, who pitched Disraeli against Gladstone, called Inferno and Paradiso, respectively in Disraeli.

趙白生	Strachey	Ludwig
Ludwig
Bradford
Maurois

In a particularly fantastic passage, Prof. Zhao summarizes his conception of biographical technique that connects the artistry of comparison with the need to explain: it asks scholars to find hidden gold, and instructs in how to make the gold. "Art captures the ever-elusive Explanation," says Strachey. This is an example of Foucault's "effective history" 有效史. "Effective history (i.e. an approach to history in which there is consciousness of the myriad effects that history has) uproots the traditional foundations of the self." Stop! That's a quote from some other student's notes, but I can make sense of it here if I imagine Ludwig's, Bradford's, Maurois's, and Strachey's concept of historical truth. Why, for example, did Napoleon succeed in Italy? He would not have if he were not a good speech writer, for one thing. This shows the effect of being good with words. How is that an uprooting of the traditional foundations of the self? I suppose because it highlights not only a man's character but also a man's circumstances as the main factor determining whether he win a war or become a more famous poet. If indeed the machinations of other men are to blame, or if Italian's were simply ripe for democratic rhetoric, then what to say of Napoleon's self, except that he adapted to circumstance well? Rather than say that Napoleon won, we end up feeling that Napoleon played a good game, and the stakes were in his favor.

No matter how much we study a famous political figure, or artist, we still don't know whether his original, deepest character is good or bad. In fact, come to think of it, it is most likely neither good nor bad, but something of the character of a machine, one that wins, and then loses, perhaps to win again. Analysis of the technique of autobiography reveals just how constructed the explanations are. We step out of the suspended disbelief of the nonfiction, and read it as fiction. The virtual world with complete sensory perception becomes a sequence of static images again, not even a moving film. Slowed down, it is more like manga, comics, multiple portraits with some dialogue drawn in. One panel follows after another. There is a plot there, but it is not the true history, just the story the storytellers tell, and we are the story tellers.

is properly under “dissociative, directed against identity” (93) corresponding to specific attitudes and interests. genealogy: The goal is not to trace the evolution of a concept, but to "isolate the different scenes where they engage in different roles" (76). They make the gold they want. 風骨存也 -- Liu Xie. [THat's an issue to take seriously!]