FICTION AND TRUTH[1]

by Ela Hornung (University of Wien, A)

 

When I started to think about this paper I asked myself, what the task of a speaker in this special context of this session can be. I see it as an honour for me to be invited as a speaker and I want to say thank you. There seems to be very different claims to fulfil, to present very short my own work, to discuss the key-terms of the workshop and to comment on the papers. How to do all this? I will start with my work and will try to connect it in some points with the papers I read. Andrea and I have decided each to choose these papers, which had most to do with our own work. I will refer to the paper of Brownyn Davies, together with others[2] about their ambivalent project of subjectification, the paper of Kristin Mattson about Life stories of Swedish-speaking Women in Finland and the paper of Efterpi Mitsi about the writings of English Women travelling to Greece. With remarks and questions I will try to stimulate the discussion.

In the last years I did historical research and worked a lot with the method of Oral History. That means that I dealt more with oral than with written biographical narrations. But there are things comparable. I did a research project about Austrian soldiers of the German Wehrmacht being Prisoners of War after 1945 in the USSR, on the problems of their reintegration after their return to Austria. I was interested in the consequences of National Socialism and World War II on female and male biographies, especially I was interested in the biographical narrations of heterosexual married couples.

Currently, I am leading a research project about „Forced labourers in agriculture in Lower Austria“ for the „Historical Commission of Austria“. For this project we will make interviews with former forced labourers, who live nowadays in the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Italy, France and Hungary.

        

Theoretical Frameworks

„I lived the life of somebody else, not my own. How much of the person I called ‘I’ was really me? And how much not? These hands, which were steering the wheel, how big was the percentage to be called my own? And how much of everything I saw, existed in reality? The longer I thought of it, the less I seemed to understand it.“[3]

 

All papers deal with autobiographical sources and the question of identity. „Life stories provide a unique perspective on the intersection of individual, collective, institutional and societal process. ...Empirically, they provide access to individuals’ claims about how their motivations, emotions, imaginations--in other words, about the subjective dimensions of social action.“[4]

Constructions of identity are subject to permanent modification: with the changes in social context, biographical patterns of what is “normal” always become questionable and fragile. “Gender” is also a temporary concept of identity which is in the dynamics of  discourses pre-formulated and continuously reformulated in the daily routine. „Gender“ is produced as „a ritualised repetition of conventions and this ritual is compelled in part by the force of a compulsory heterosexuality.“ [5] “Identities” are constructed in everyday life in contrast to others. This is very well demonstrated in the paper of Kristin Mattsson, who shows how „ethnicity as well as gender are shaped in the meetings with the other. Gender and ethnicity are both seen as relational, important parts in the formation of identities.“ (Mattsson, p. 2) Through movements and behaviour they are inscribed into our fantasies, bodies and sexuality. All these practices have their histories and are again prescripts for actions. According to this thesis, identities change over time, and are in that sense historical, they vary in different societies, contexts and even for the same person change continually depending on the context. As we can see in the paper of Efterpi Mitsi, who shows in her analyses of the travel texts of Victorian and Edwardian women, how these women reported the Greece culture they experienced not only according to their gender, but also to nationality and class.

The way someone reacts to social and cultural surroundings, defines them as somebody who engages in concrete actions  in a specific and also an individually deciding way.

But what can we then call the constant? How can we know who is changing?

Can we still speak of a subject, or can we only analyse „the illusion of autonomy through which modern subjects are made possible“ as Bronwyn and the other authors discuss in their paper. All authors are interested in the border positions, in the atypical, which shows the typical. We should discuss what „borders“ mean and what they show.

Although I think that most of us can agree to Butlers thesis, that discourses construct our identities, there is - to my opinion - still some room for decision and acting, otherwise we should discuss how to deal with the problem of personal responsibility. How can we imagine the process of incorporation of discourses into our „ego“? It seems to be a life long paradox process of „submission and mastery“ as Bronwyn et. al. analyse in their paper.

 

The Interactive Construction of ‘Gender-Identity’ in Marriages during WWII in Austria

„As soon as she opened her mouth, accusations of senseless jealousy streamed out, everything that had tormented her in that half hour she was sitting motionless at the window. Now he realised thoroughly for the first time, what he had not understood, when he was leading her out of the church after the wedding-ceremony. He understood in that instance, that she was not only close to him, but that he did not know any longer, where her personality ended and his own started.“[6]

 

 

„Indeed, to accept this view, we must begin with the presupposition that masculine and feminine are not dispositions, as Freud sometimes argues, but accomplishments, ones that emerge in tandem with the achievement of heterosexuality.”[7]

 

The starting point of my own work about heterosexual married couples was the thesis that the gender identity of women and men is also constructed interactively and communicatively. My paper is based on experiences and reflections during my work on my dissertation “^‘Penelope and Odysseus’: Narratives of ‘waiting’ and ‘homecoming’ after 1945. Biographical case study of a married couple.[8] This does not only apply to couple relationships  - in this case intensified through the exceptional closeness of the partners - but also to other social contacts (family, friends etc.). “Identities” were here understood as changing, social constructs, organised in specific historical contexts and hierarchical gender relationships. Relationships as “social constructs” have a greater chance of a longer life, the nearer the actors are to each other in the social space[9], so my working thesis.

I was interested in the “frameworks” within which the interviewees developed their biographical narrations.[10] “‘Auto/biography’ and ‘lives’ do not consist of sealed units, but rather lives and fictional accounts of lives are intertextually related: everything is referential”[11], as Liz Stanley mentioned.

 

If we understand domination not only as a relation between ruler and somebody who is controlled, but also as an interactive social practice, then we have to ask for the motives, the room for action, the realised and the unrealised possibilities [12] in female and male lifestories. The range of identity we refer to, depends on the historical necessities and the cultural field. To take the status of subjectivity of women and men seriously, allows us to investigate the concrete options for actions in the historical context of hierarchical structures of gender relations. The oral history method as biographical research is especially suited to micro-analysis of women’s and men’s biographical narrations in the context of the „gender asymmetry“, as Judith Butler called it.[13]

 

The interview as ‘interactional text’

An interview is never an equal relationship between interviewer and interviewee, because the historian represents the scientific world, its institutional/symbolic power and is part of the interactional process of constructing the interview as biographical source. I regard an interview as an “interactional text”[14] (Denzin, 1989), or with Grele as “a conversational narrative”[15].

I carried out a large number of biographical, narrative interviews with heterosexual married couples for my dissertation.

The qualitative approach - characterised by openness - means neither quantification nor representativity. This offers the opportunity to investigate subtle nuances in male and female biographies. This kind of „open“ narrative interview means that the interviewer tries not to direct the interview with questions, so that the interviewee can present her/his life story and identity in the way he/she wants. The narrator can - in the main parts of the interview - determine length, form of speaking and the thematic sequence. That means that I asked one opening question, at the begin of the interview and then I tried not intervene the narration. This was then supplemented by a series of topic-centred follow-up questions concerning the Nazi-, war- and post-war period in Austria.

Many interviews showed that my part in the communication and in the “production” of the narration was greater than I thought at the beginning of the interpreting process. This means that we should also discuss the necessity of analysing the “biographical communication” methodologically, which implies looking more closely at the role of the interviewer and her/his biography. In some interviews I started to question my interview partners about their behaviour during the Nazi period, and influenced their narrations strongly and the course of the whole interview by intervening too much.

The interviews showed that my part in the communication and in the “production” of the narration was greater than I thought at the beginning of the interpreting process. This means that we should also discuss the necessity of analysing the “biographical communication” methodologically, which implies looking more closely at the role of the interviewer and her/his biography.

 

The researcher conducts the interview, interprets and writes a scientific text, which is published for another public, to whom most interview partners have only indirect access. Kristin Mattsson mentions in her paper that an autobiography is one interpretation and our analyses is another, but we could discuss what the differences between the constructions of the interviewee and the researchers are?

 

My methodological approach to interpretation was a variant of the “structural hermeneutics” developed by Ulrich Oevermann[16] and his team. The method was modified by Gabriele Rosenthal[17], who connected it with Fritz Schütze’s theories of narration, which I cannot explain here in detail, but it is also suitable for written texts.

One distinction was really important to my work and so I will mention it. It refers to the most papers of our session and it could help us for our further discussion.

 

The difference between the narrated and lived life story

The “remembered” and “narrated”[18] does not merely recall an event, it implies a meaningful structure in terms of situation and articulation, which is subject to con­stant change. In all texts we can find a latent, hidden sense.

In different analytic stages at different levels, I discussed in my work the extent to which identities have been formed in relation to the category of “gender” in the difference between “narrated and lived life stories”[19], in the field of tension between self- and external determination in the everyday practice of Austrian couples during and after the Second World War.

 

The lived life story  means to work with a data that can stand more independently of the narrator’s own interpretation. (Rosenthal, Reconstruction of Life Stories p. 68) That means biographical dates, which can be proofed by written official documents. In contrast to the analysis of the narrated life story, which analyses the material in the order in which it was presented during the interview, this first step attempts to reconstruct the actual chronology of the life story itself. I always used the interviewees’ total biography for interpretation.

On this level I asked what possibilities of actions were chosen, what were not chosen and how did the two interviewees define their gendered tasks and roles? To make these methodological distinction allow us to look more deeply at the more objective conditions and the cultural context of biographies. We are therefore able to visualise at each biographical data the specific historical, gendered, cultural and economical contexts and the resulting options for actions and decisions. So we can see what possibilities the interview partner had at that special time in this special context and which choice was made and which not; e.g. the beginning of school during the two world wars, the choice for profession in the fifties, the date of marriage during the war etc.. That shows a certain structure of decision, which chances were taken, which not. External conditions open up to us as limitations but also as areas for possible room for acting. Choices derive from the possibility of discourses, which prescribe what is desirable (Bronwyn S. 9), but - to my opinion - they have also to do with abilities (for example the ability of thinking etc.) which are situated in the individual.

Through this step we can analytically try to separate the layered possibilities for action in the life stories from the self-interpretation - the autobiographical narrations.

 This became backdrop for the analysis of narrations (the form and the themes), which allows us to see which biographical data are blown up narratively and in which thematic field they are presented. (Rosenthal p. 68)

 

In contrast to the level of biographical data, biographers mostly operate at the level of narrated life story. In an open narrative interview the narrator elaborates his/her life-story in his/her selection, length and order. The object of this analytical step is to reconstruct the form and structure of the narrated life story, that means the way in which it is temporally and thematically ordered in the interview. The narra­ted story of one's life is always a selected presentation of bio­graphy in a specific context as seen by the narrator in the present perspective. To analyse the narrated life story gives us the possibility to look at the present perspective of the narrator.

In preparation for the analysis of the narration, the interview text was first sequentialized, that is, briefly summarised in the form of a protocol/list of separated units that are divided up according to the following criteria: turn taking (changes of speaker), textual sorts (changes in style of presentation, such as argumentation, describing, or narration and thematic shifts). The theory of narrations says that narrations transmit former experiences, whereas argumentations represent more the perspective of the present. (Schütze, Rosenthal p. 69.) The analyses of the sequentialization follows the structure of the text, each sequence to be interpreted then considered without reference or knowledge of subsequent units.

The most important questions at that level of interpretation were to me:

Is the biographer generating a narrative, or being carried out along by a narrative flow in the story-telling?

In which thematic field is the single sequence embedded: What is the hidden agenda?

Why is the biographer using this specific sort of text to present the experienced or theme?

Which topics are addressed? Which biographical events are left out?

In which details are the experiences and themes presented and why?

 

Desires and fantasies

As a third level of analyses I was interested in the role of desires and fantasies in the construction of these biographies. They are - according to the thesis - important elements for the construction of relationships. They are often decisive for our life planning and life conditions. In the interviews some sequences show how desire and fantasies are implicit concepts of manliness and femaleness significant for the milieu and the historical/cultural context and how they cooperate. For this I want to give you a short example of my interviews. The examination of social and political surroundings in which gender is constructed, must include attention to the erotic and fantasy components of human life.[20]

During the war Gerlinde and Franz Bittner like most couples, had news of each other through letters and from men on leave. This does not mean that they really had any knowledge about their different experiences, as both women and men tried to keep the leave periods as times for pleasure and not to talk too much about sorrows and fears. The long separation and communication gap created a wide field for gendered idealising fantasies and projections of each other. The collapse of the postal system at the end of the war interrupted the flow of communication and this inevitably led to an increase in fears for each other. In addition, Gerlinde and Franz Bittner were terrified of the approaching Soviet troops. This was a typical reaction for many Austrians of this political milieu.

Racist Nazi propaganda filled men and women with ideological images about the “Russian subhumans” and advised all women to leave Vienna. Men were personally afraid of being captured in the Soviet Union, they were obsessed about acts of retaliation at home, above all

- rape. Women were afraid of the “Russian rapist and plunderer”[21]. In reality, Gerlinde Bittner managed to save her family and never had any adverse experiences with Soviet soldiers.

After the end of the war Gerlinde Bittner had no news of her husband. She told me: “I did not receive any letters any more. I only knew where he was when the war came to an end. He had told me before that he would not leave me alone, and so I had always waited for him to come and fetch me. But that was not possible. He did not come . . . He was in Germany, somewhere ‑ still on duty at that time. And so I thought, maybe he’ll come by plane one day and fetch me. Since he was a high‑ranking officer then, that was how I imagined it. He had said he wouldn’t leave me alone, and least of all, in the Russian Zone. But he never came, nothing, it was all in vain. In spite of everything I had to stay in the Russian Zone.”

Gerlinde Bittner described her husband using the fantastic figure of “the rescuer”, of the “prince charming”, who would come by plane and save her, using the figure of the waiting princess or Penelope (passive part),  from the “Russians”, which shows her gender constructions and their ideological NS-orientated background.

Franz Bittner also styled himself as a “brave soldier fighting for the fatherland and the family”, who had to protect his wife against the “Russians” (active part), but had problems in admitting that he could not do anything for his family. He told me: “But then, in the end the situation was such that, well yes, for God's sake, it concerned your own family back home as well! To surrender at this moment concerned not only myself, but also my family ‑ the Russians had a bad reputation: they had also been attacked. We didn't know this at the time, we learned only later, that WE had invaded them.”  In this sequence he expresses his own fears over whether to surrender or not and his ideological background of fighting against „the red menace“. Using the word “also” in this context could mean that after the war he had to accept that the German Wehrmacht had attacked the Soviet Union, but that even today he is not fully sure about the correct version of events.

 

These two narrative figures show the use of gendered constructions and fantasies, which were especially (re-)produced in this field of tension, the critical period of  time and the total lack of communication. The importance of images and fantasies increases during periods of separation. Gendered fantasies always influence the reservoir of  behavior patterns, and this becomes especially important in situations of crisis.[22]

Identities are thus not only socially determined and lived in reality, but also pre-conceived and ideologically mediated through fantasies and desires. We can agree to Renata Salecl, that there exists a  discourse of the unconscious: „The unconscious is structured like a language“ and therefore represents the obligations, „which are effective in this discourse, this obligation is the real existence of the unconscious  - there is no hidden unconscious behind these obligations, which would articulate in the discourse.[23]

This addresses the precarious status of “reality”. Slavoj Sizek points out that the subject always differentiates between the hallucinatory object of desire and the perceived real object. But the subject could never assume a neutral location that would allow him or her to exclude the phantasmagoric reality. In other words, the framework of reality was also thereby always “preconstructed by the remainder of the hallucinatory fantasy.” [24]