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Tuija Saresma

LANG UAG E
Various interests of feminist theory like the discussions about the fragmentary self; theLanguage
Select relations
between personal and political, and between personal and textual; the significance English
of reading wom
personal narratives; and the position of women in post-modern societies crystallize in the study
Submit
autobiographies. Womens autobiographical practices have become a terrain for feminist analysis b
they are a fruitful ground in examining the recent theoretical debates concerning the self, the su
JOURNAL
and the author (Stanley 3-4), and because they articulate both womens life experiences and fem
theory (Smith and Watson, Women, Autobiography, Theory 5). C ON T E N T
Search
In the genre, discourses of truth and identity meet and produce the subject of autobiography (Gilm
182). In her study of autobiography, Leigh Gilmore aims to chart the discourses of self-represe
Search Scope
differently by looking to noncanonical texts in order to understand how and in what ways womens
All
representation occurs and in relation to what cultural institutions and forms it is written (183). I w
this article, inspired by her mission, read an amateur autobiography as my case and study the se
Search
represented in it and the social formations and cultural modes of writing behind the personal narra
Besides, I explore the practical implications of feminist and post-structuralist theoretical
Browsediscussion
trouble the relationship between self, life, and writing in auto/bio/graphy. In reading actor and am
By Issue
writer Outi Nevanlinnas autobiographical writings and presenting the dialogue betweenBy myself
Authorand
my case, I experiment with fusing theoretical discussions about the autobiographical By Title
analysis of autobiographies.

When writing her twenty-pages-long autobiography in 1995, Outi Nevanlinna was FONT a professional
SIZE ac
her late thirties. It was fourteen years since she started acting in theatre, and she still liked her job
beginning of her autobiography, she evaluates her life:

I am healthy, pretty, and, at the moment, happy. I have a handsome man,INFORMAT two beautiful
ION
boys, my own flat and a couple of trusted, close friends. I have behind me a marriage of
For Readers
seven years, one and a half years of joblessness, a divorce, three years of lone parenthood
For Authors
and after that, living together with a man for four years by now. These are my outward
For Librarians
circumstances. When I look at the list above, I realise I havent got much to complain abou
. I have got many of the things I wanted, but also things I tried to avoid. Lots of hopes
unfulfilled, lots of attempts gone to pot. And also victories. Thus a lot like anybody elses
life.[1]

Outi is not a professional writer, but an amateur autobiographer. The majority of feminist autobio
studies have chosen to study published, literary autobiographies of famous women. I, on the contr
read an amateur writers autobiography. In my reading, I follow the advice of rejecting the conve
generic distinctions and separations, instead showing how the same analytic apparatus is required
engaging with all forms of life writing (Stanley 3). Most of the published autobiographies are writt

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royalty or politicians or generals or film stars,that is, members of particular elite groups (Stanley
For Stanley, however, the life and work of masses, or, the ordinary people, are the most meaning
study, because they constitute precisely the vast majority of the population and who therefore ha
greater historical significance than the merely important. I agree with Stanley that it is important
study the autobiographies of the so called ordinary people, yet my focus is not on the historical live
people, but in the contemporary autobiographical writing of an amateur writer. Still, Outis autobio
confirms that telling the tale of a life is a skill we all possess (Stanley 13).

Outis story was written as a submission for a contest Tracing art experiences, organised by a res
project at The Research Unit for Contemporary Culture, University of Jyvskyl, Finland, and by Th
Folklore Archives of Finnish Literature Society. Autobiography contests of this sort are quite comm
Finland, and there have been various thematic writing competitions that helped collect data for res
purposes.[2] This time, the autobiographies were not gathered only in order to get material for re
although 700 art autobiographies by people all over the country and of all ages and fields of life
constitutes a valuable text corpus when studying the meanings of art in peoples lives but also to
acknowledge the autobiographers important contribution in projects like this.

The research project produced a volume of edited academic articles (see: Eskola) and an antholog
amateur autobiographers (see: Eskola & Laaksonen), in which twenty-four of the total of 700
autobiographies were published as whole stories with the writers names attached. With this policy
wanted to comment on and question the prevailing convention of protecting the writers anonymity
only fragmentarily citing their stories in research. The two books can be read also separately, but t
they constitute a conversation of the meanings of art in various levels: both the experiential level o
personal autobiographical narration and the more abstract level of the researchers interpretations
autobiographies.

Outis autobiography, Rikoksista suurin on, ett nyttelee huonosti [The biggest crime is to act ba
was one of the 24 stories published in the autobiography anthology (Nevanlinna). In my article in t
academic volume (Saresma, A dialogue with the women of art stories), I presented my analysis
conversation with three amateur autobiographers, one of them being Outi. After the books were
published, I wanted to go on with the dialogue, and asked all the three women to share their thoug
about their autobiographies now being published and analysed. This request lead me to an interest
correspondence with Outi. She sent me a self-reflexive letter and an e-mail message discussing he
feelings evoked in the process of writing and reading the original autobiography.

Before going to the detailed analysis of Outis autobiographical writings, let me place my approach
brief survey of the discussions of autobiographys subject in feminist theory.

Autobiographics and the many Is

Here, I focus on the autobiographical subject, for the major epistemological issues of our time are
in connection with the nature of selves, how to understand and how to study them under what kin
intellectual conditions and limitations (Stanley 5). Many feminist scholars have noticed that
autobiography can be a site for pondering both theoretical questions about the self or the subject,
empirical issues regarding e.g. gender and working life. My challenge here is to combine these two
approaches, theoretical and empirical, in the name of feminist politics. In doing that, I find Leigh G
term autobiographics useful. Autobiographics is both a description of self-representation and a re
practice, and it is concerned with interruptions and eruptions, with resistance and contradictions a
strategies of self-representation (Gilmore 184). When thinking about a texts autobiographics, it b
unavoidable to consider the autobiographical I, which is discursive and constituted in writing: an
exploration of a texts autobiographics allows us to recognize that the I is multiply coded in a range
discourses: it is the site of multiple solicitations, multiple markings of identity, multiple figurations
agency (Gilmore 184).

In what follows, I apply autobiographics as a practice of reading Outis autobiographical fragments


reading, I will contemplate the possible interruptions and eruptions in Outis narrative in order to d
places of discontinuity in it, which I believe can reveal the ideological discourses lurking behind pe
writing. I also explore the autobiographics of Outis texts in order to study the multiply coded
autobiographical I.

Not unlike Gilmore, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson emphasize the complexity of the autobiograph
their guide book Reading Autobiography. It is in the apparently simple act of people writing abou
they know best, their own lives where the unity of the I disintegrates. In the act of writing the wr
becomes split into both the observing subject and the object of investigation, remembrance, and

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contemplation (Smith & Watson 1). This emphasis on the many layers of the autobiographical sub
long been acknowledged but not soundly utilized in autobiography studies. This may have to do wi
fact that autobiography as a genre claims that the narrator and the protagonist are one and the sa
The autobiographical contract affirms the identity between the names of the author, narrator and
protagonist (Lejeune 27, qtd. in Marcus 47). Autobiography has been seen to secure, on one leve
least, the much desired unity of the subject and object of knowledge through the shared identity
author and the autobiographical subject (Marcus 42).

This alleged unity of the subject has been deconstructed in the post-structurally inspired discussion
the self. Simultaneously, the reading of the autobiographical I has become subtler; it has been
acknowledged e. g. that telling ones life story involves a narrator here and now telling about a
protagonist of the same name, there and then (Bruner 167). Even so, Sidonie Smith and Julia Wa
claim that when the critics analysing autobiographical acts distinguish between the
the narrating I who speaks and the narrated I who is spoken about, the separation between the t
them is too limited and cannot account for the complexities of self-narrating or the heterogenous
autobiographical modes; nor does it adequately capture the complexity of the
traditional of autobiographies (58).

Smith and Watson suggest that we need to think more critically about the producer of the life nar
and propose complicating this autobiographical I beyond the I-then and the I-now framework by
attending to the multiple I-thens, to the ideology spoken through the I, to the multiple
flesh-and-blood-author(5859). Thus, we are advised to talk about four layers of the autobiograp
First, there is the real or historical I. This is the authorial I that is assumed from the signature on
page of the autobiography. The real I is the historical person, the one producing the autobiograph
but it has to be remembered that this persons life is far more diverse and dispersed than the story
being told of it. It is possible, as Smith and Watson have it, to verify this Is existence, but this
unknown and unknowable by readers and is not the I that we gain access to in an autobiographic
narrative (Smith & Watson 59).

Whereas this historical I is related to the self of the real life and moves in the simple writer-as-an-
experiencer level of narration, the next Is are purely textual categories. The narrating
available to readers. It is the narrator, the I who tells the autobiographical narrative. It is neither
not stable but split, fragmented, provisional, multiple, a subject always in the process of coming
together and of dispersing (Smith & Watson 60). The third category of the autobiographical
narrated I or the Object I. It has to be distinguished from the narrating I. It is the subject of histo
whereas the narrating I is the agent of discourse. The narrated I is the protagonist of the narrati
version of the self that the narrating I chooses to constitute through recollection for the reader (6

The fourth category, the ideological I, reaches again out from the textual level and refers to broad
societal and cultural contexts. It is the concept of personhood culturally available to the narrator w
she/he tells her/his story. Smith and Watson point out that every autobiographical narrator is his
and culturally situated and each is a product of her or his particular time. Researchers of
autobiographies thus need to situate the narrator in the historical notion of personhood and the m
of lives at the time of writing. We are also reminded that at any historical moment, there are
heterogenous identities culturally available to the narrator and that the ground of the ideological
apparently stable and the possibilities for tension, adjustment, refixing, and unfixing are ever pres
(Smith & Watson 62).

With the help of the concept of autobiographics and the idea of the multilayered subject, I present
reading of Outis autobiographical texts where the interruptions and contradictions of the autobiogr
I are taken seriously. I do not strive for extensive and lucid analysis about a coherent self in Outis
autobiographical writings, but instead want to show the complicated processes of telling the
the points of discontinuity of her told identity. In what follows, I demonstrate by reading Outis
autobiographical writings how the understanding of the various layers of the autobiographical
processual nature of the self represented in autobiography can serve as tools for empirical analysis

Writing the self of a female actor

I first became interested in Outis autobiography and selected it for my close reading for two reaso
First, it is extremely captivating. Outi discusses the problems of being a woman in theatre, and the
and cons of being a professional actor. The issue of feminism is explicitly referred to, unlike in alm
every other art autobiography by amateur writers that took part to the writing contest. Secondly, O
autobiography is fascinating in its self-reflexivity and in the way it problematizes the autobiograph
subject.

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After the evaluative opening words I cited at the first pages of this article, Outi starts telling about
about her well-balanced childhood, the happy school years, getting married and starting a career a
actor. The most permeable theme of her autobiography is the discussion about being an actor, the
and downhills of the profession, the talent she has or lacks. Outi discusses her character as follows

I have the character, temperament, and the values of an actor, but with my talent it is a bit
ho hum.
This is not easy for me to admit, because the worst thing you can say to an actor is to
claim that she or he is not really a professional or that she or he does not really have any
talent. And yet the lack of talent is something the one in question can not do much about.

Throughout her autobiography, Outi has ambivalent feelings towards acting as a career. Only in th
first lines of her story (cited at the beginning of this article), does she situate herself in the subject
position of an actor self-confidently. After this prologue, the identity of an actor is written in a rath
assertive way. Or, rather, there are tensions between her desire to be an actor and her professiona
capabilities of actually performing as actor. Still, despite her alleged lack of talent, Outi is madly in
with theatre and acting, and wants to go on with this job, regardless of all the slings and arrows sh
to confront.

The autobiography focuses on the professional career the way that has been said to be characteris
male autobiographers. At the same time the narration is strikingly self-reflexive a trait commonly
associated with female autobiographers. Outi ponders a lot on the process of acting, for example in
next fragment:

The [] contradiction in acting fascinates me: one has to be the character one acts[], to
think the way the character does, to adopt her or his worldview and logic, and at the same
time one has to be her- or himself with all ones traumas, wounds, dreams and needs for
love. It is impossible to act anything, all one can do is to live and make public all that is
inside oneself.

In this quote, the contradiction between acting performing a role and the quest for or illusion o
authentic self becomes apparent. On the one hand, acting involves identifying with somebody else
pretending to be something else, to become someone else for a moment thus, in a way betrayin
oneself. And on the other hand, acting well requires being faithful to the core identity of oneself. O
describes the work of an actor: it is not really in the moments of acting pretending but the rare
only reach that state maybe once a year) moments of total honesty and exposing yourself to the
when acting gives the deepest satisfaction to Outi.

Being an actor is a central part of Outis self-representation and of constructing her identity. In her
to me, dated 9th October, 1998, she evaluates her original autobiography: [] I thought: this doe
sound like it is written by an actor. Nothing suggests artistic desire or chaotic behaviour which is th
to be a part of the nature of an artist and yet, I am not a chaotic person. Thus, she sees herself
systematic person and not as an artistic being. This can be interpreted as the place of discontinuity
story of her self, of an identity crisis indeed: she interprets herself as being something different th
should be: she is a professional actor, yet she does not possess the characteristic features of an ac
artist.

There are other problematic aspects in being an actor as well. No matter how deeply Outi loves act
has problems in adapting to the gendered space of institutional theatre. In the following ironical ex
from her autobiography, she notices the stereotypical approach to women in theatre:

Being an actor is special in the sense that a woman doesnt have to give up her femininity i
order to have a successful career on the contrary, femininity is an advantage.
Unfortunately, it is men who define femininity. The most stupid male directors equate being
a woman with high heels, miniskirt and fake eyelashes. [] And women actors have
accepted the narrow view concerning their sex.

All in all, Outi is very conscious about the gendering practices of theatre. She writes:

Besides myself, I do not know one single female actor who says she is a feminist. []
Feminism is an absolute taboo word in theatre.

The derogation of feminism is quite typical to Finnish cultural climate. The discourse of gender equ
dominant and people believe in it to the extent that it becomes almost impossible to bring up the u
status of genders and the subject of feminism. Outi continues:

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if a woman in theatre starts to talk about gender equality, she is immediately silenced with
a patronizing and irritated please! [] The equality between genders is [] purely
theoretical. It can be seen already when comparing the salary of male and female actors: It
is a statistical fact that men get better paid.

Outis experiences are shared by many other feminists and also verified by several research results
However, the inaccurate but widely approved claim that Finland is a country where gender equality
been reached does have some empirical grounding. According to a comparison by World Economic
the five Scandinavian countries are the closest to equality between genders, the first being Sweden
Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and, as the fifth, Finland.[3] However, gender equality has not been fu
reached in any of these countries. The research was conducted based on the categorization by the
Nations fund for womens development, Unifem, of the basic variables of the inequality between w
and men: wages, access to work, the share of women in politics, access to education, and access t
care (Raeste 2005).

It is true that Finnish women are nowadays better educated than men; that we are well settled in
labor market; that we do earn our own money; that we can combine career and family due to long
maternity (and paternity) leaves and well organized municipal day care. Still women do earn less t
men, do most of the housework, and have to encounter domestic violence, inter alia. The illusion a
gender equality intertwines with the stereotype of the strong Finnish or, in the context of the
Scandinavian welfare state, Nordic woman. This myth dominates the representations of Finnish w
in literature, film, and so on, but it also affects the discussion about gender equality in Finland. The
stereotype highlights the individual strength of each woman and leaves no room for being weak. It
not agree with the slogan the personal is political, but instead teaches that everything is up to on

Even though she acknowledges the inequalities of gender and writes critically about mistreatment
women in theatre, there are traces of the ideological discourse of the strong Nordic woman in Outi
autobiography. At the beginning of her autobiography, Outi tells how her first marriage ended up i
divorce. She also mentions being unemployed for a while. Both of these episodes that she only lac
refers to are against the all-enduring and all-tolerating character of the strong woman: she has fai
her marriage, and she has failed in being the breadwinner. Luckily for her, these are only short epi
and these dissonances in the otherwise harmonical story of the strong woman can be set aside aft
laconic mention. Another point of discord with the myth is Outis lack of talent on the stage: she is
perfect in what she does, and she feels guilty about it. This is far more difficult to fit in the story of
strong Finnish female actor, and Outi keeps reworking this throughout her autobiographical writing

The self in process

In writing and reading an autobiography there is the danger of freezing the life into a monolith:
autobiography [] always risks becoming self-sealing in the sense that it may tempt the teller int
that suits circumstances so comfortably that it even conceals the possibilities of choice (Bruner 16
Outis case, however, there is no fear of that: her autobiography is just a starting point for the refl
of the self. Her later autobiographical writings demonstrate effectively how the self is never ready,
fixed, but in a constant process of becoming.

bell hooks (44), among others, has claimed that there is a huge gap between the thinking of the
contemporary theorists that emphasize the fragmentary nature and hybridity of the subject, and o
ordinary folks who see their identity as fixed and more or less stable. This common polarisation of
academics versus the others becomes questionable when reading Outis autobiographical fragment
comments on reading her autobiography published in the anthology in her letter of 9

I had written my autobiography three years earlier and had not read it ever since [] I did
recognise myself from the style of the text. I did not get the feeling that I have nothing to
do with the person that wrote this. Still, reading as an outsider made me notice things
that I did not remember writing at all.

Outi follows the convention of autobiography studies and distinguishes the I-now and the
fragment, Outi recognises a certain resemblance between the autobiographical
self, but she also notices things she had forgotten about herself. She continues:

While reading the autobiography I started to feel irritated by the Outi three years ago who
kept harping on about her own mediocrity. Well thats OK, if one thinks she is mediocre the
she sure is allowed to say it, but does it have to be repeated in every sentence! And still I
know and remember what was behind that harping. [] On the one hand, the fact that I

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have never, in the course of my career, had any unrealistic views about my talents. And, on
the other hand, by highlighting my own mediocrity I wanted to contract out of the
narcissism so typical of actors.

Here, Outi is utterly disturbed by the autobiographical I of her autobiography. Whereas the lack of
in acting was the main theme of the original autobiography, she now distances herself from the
autobiographical I of the original text. But she also draws a distinction between the typical actor
herself. In the original autobiography the disparity between the image of an actor and Outis image
herself caused her anxiety. This time, she knowingly constructs the contrast between the narcissis
actors and her modest self. Her self or identity now is less dependent on being an actor now than i
original autobiography. The fragment above shows the significance of the writing context for the w
itself: When writing the autobiography as a submission to the writing contest about art, she constr
herself as an actor par excellence albeit not a very talented one. Later, in a private corresponden
me, she deconstructs her identity as a mediocre actor, and highlights aspects of her person not so
characteristic to actors.

The autobiographical subject is never individual in the sense of isolation or autonomy, but it is alw
socially constructed in a particular situation, for someone. Writing autobiographically is always a se
reflexive and dialogic process where the story is addressed to others. Autobiography seldom (neve
story separate from the significant others parents, lovers with whom we continually make and
ourselves (Miller 123). The different layers of the I in Outis autobiographical writings have not em
in isolation, but the self is constituted through [her] writing and in relation to various and differen
communities (cf. Barbour 181182), e. g. to other actors, to feminists, to her beloved, and of cou
the jury of the writing competition and to me as a researcher.

Outi continues discussing the self that I as a researcher construct out of her autobiography in the r
article and how well it fits her:

According to her article, Tuija got the impression about me that I am a persistent and
independent will-person, powerful, self-assertive and courageous. Have I then in my
autobiography, without knowing it myself, written myself a character that I wished to have
but that I dont necessarily have, not that unambiguously anyway? In Tuijas article I was
interested in the thought that while writing their autobiographies, people at the same time
create and shape their lives, not just describe them. Have I, then, tried to mould for myself
a new character, more independent, one that does not care about other peoples opinions,
more courageous, by writing? Did I try to convince someone and if I did, whom? that I
am strong enough to obey my inner voice in every situation, upright enough not to let
flattering, bullying and horror scenarios affect my decisions, brave enough to fight alone the
superiority of others that I most certainly am not! firm enough to fight for my rights,
and above all, wise enough to recognize the best solution in every situation? But that is not
the truth about me.

In the fragment above, Outi seems to be very harsh on herself. She finds the autobiographical sub
construed by me to not be true. Still, she does not question my interpretations a sign of the une
power relations of the research process, perhaps but puts the blame on her own writing. She doe
however, judge herself as guilty of dishonesty, but instead reflects on the audience of her writing a
reasons of writing herself unconsciously, as she emphasizes a false identity.

The starting point of Outis self-reflection here is not her own text but my interpretation of her
autobiography. Thus, another layer is added to the temporal and relational construction of the
autobiographical subject. First, there was the in some sense innocent self of the original autobiogra
innocent or transparent, even though it in Outis case was actually quite self-reflexive from the beg
After a while, Outi reflected on her own previous writing in a letter, finding discrepancies between
self and her present self image. Still, at the same time, there is enough continuity between the sel
order to keep Outis identity coherent. But in my reading of the autobiographical
anything familiar, anything true, and this understandably causes her anxiety.

Researchers interpretations of the stories often differ from those of the narrating
caused by the fact that the researcher finds or highlights different aspects of the story than those
writer sees as important (see e. g. Josselson). Outi does not, however, really deny my reading of t
autobiographical I, but starts to reflect on her own writing process as the cause for the possible
misinterpretation. She ponders on whether she has, unconsciously, tried to write herself as someth
than she actually is and feels awkward for not reaching the truth about herself. Outi has again
feelings about the autobiographical I she reads retrospectively. On the one hand, she acknowledge

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the self in the text is a construction, but on the other, she still partly believes in the final truth abo
herself that could be captured in the autobiography, and feels that she failed in her effort to write
truthful a depiction of herself as possible.

When the temporal distance from the moment of writing the original autobiography increases, Out
reading of the autobiographical I and relating it to her present self becomes ever more complicated
concerns about her honesty and success in writing a true story of her self are revealed in an e-ma
letter, dated 5th April, 2001, which I received from her after sending her an article about the ethic
reading womens autobiographies, in which I analysed some of the comments Outi had sent me ea
(see Saresma, A monologue on dialogue). In the e-mail she continued re-evaluating the
autobiographical I of her original autobiography, written as long as six years previously.

My autobiography does give the impression that I think I am much worse an actor than the
average in our theatre. I do not think so, and I did not think so when I wrote my
autobiography. In my own theatre, I have nothing to be sorry or ashamed for. But I dont
blame the reader for getting that impression, when I am harping on about my poorness up
to brackishness. That was not humbleness that was servility. What I tried to say in my
biography was that there are only few really talented artists among professional actors, and
I am not one of them.

Again, Outi returns to the subject of the portrayal of herself as an actor and how it was not quite a
She is more merciful to herself now than in her previous self-beating but still she is dissatisfied w
autobiographical subject of her original autobiography, which appears inaccurate, and she still tries
the picture about herself as a professional actor more truthful. The kind of struggle Outi has subme
into has been pointed out by Paul Smith, who has it that there are tensions between the ideologic
demand that we be one cerned subject and the actual experience of a subjective history which co
a mobility, an unfixed repertoire of many subject-positions (Smith 106-107, qtd. in Probyn 114).

The notion of the real me suggests the fictive unity of the self and the essentialism entailed in th
search for such a person (McRobbie 129). However, the possibility of ever finding this real me is
questioned in feminist theoretical debates, and instead what will be explored is

what remains when we do away with the real me: how do we construct what I would define
as a sufficiently focused social self in order to be effective in politics? [] Who, therefore, i
the discursive I which speaks or writes, to whom and with what purpose. (129)

Angela McRobbie cites Judith Butler, who disputes the assumption that there must be a foundatio
stable subject to have a politics (129).

In Excitable Speech, Butler indeed suggests that becoming a subject is a linguistic and a social act
and as becoming a subject depends on the others addressing the subject, there is no such thing as
sovereign subject (27). This does not however mean that there is no room for agency or resistance
the time of feminist politics is over. On the contrary, for Butler the potential for agency and even
resistance is possible only through subjects being not sovereign but addressed by others linguistica
However, Butlers political goals are not clearly formulated, and what she says about resistance is
somewhat elusive (Mills 269).

It is, at any rate, encouraging for feminist politics to notice that postmodernism does not mean th
have to do away with the subject but rather that we ask after the process of its construction (McR
137). My effort in reading Outis autobiographical I is post-structurally inspired, emphasizing the g
breaks of the story of the I instead of construing the subject as coherent by means of analysis is e
this: not to eliminate the subject or the self altogether, but instead to concentrate on the subject i
process, focus on, with Stuart Halls words, the idea of becoming rather than being (qtd. in McRo
138). But what could the concrete implications of post-structurally inspired reading of the autobiog
Is for feminist politics be?

The politics of many Is

When reflecting her life story, Outi draws attention to all the three aspects of auto/bio/graphy: to t
or the autobiographical I construed in the story, to the style of the autobiography, or the
a lesser extent to the life she is depicting. In evaluating her style of writing, Outi takes a critical
In her first response letter, she is quite content with her writing skills: the text is fluent, clear, an
clever, as she has it. But in her e-mail response, after a few more years, she thinks that her writin
stinks. When reflecting back to her life, she acknowledges that writing is about selecting, highligh
even censoring; and that the text was a description about my way of seeing and experiencing thin

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that moment, as she puts it. She states clearly that her autobiography was written from a certain
time, and would, if written now, be very different.

In addition to reflecting her writing skills and her ability to capture the essentials about her life, Ou
repeatedly evaluates the self she has been construing in her autobiography. The
autobiography is neither solid nor final. The four Is that were distinguished above can be sorted ou
citations. The historical I is the Outi Nevanlinna that wrote the original autobiography and the resp
letters to me. The narrating I is trying make sense of the fragmentary nature of the
ideological I seems to be striving for continuity, or, rather, is caught in struggles between the pow
continuity and of fragmentation that are in constant struggle in autobiographical writing. I revise th
layers of the autobiographical I in Outis autobiography and the letters presented above from the p
view of politics of feminist reading. Separating the different layers of the autobiographical
purposes of analysis is not a process of dispersal. Instead, its purpose is to demonstrate that there
potential for change for the subject both on the textual level and on the societal level. In order to g
deeper understanding of the gender system, in my example, the distinguishing of these levels of th
autobiographical I proves to be a usable tool.

First, there is the historical gendered subject, Outi, as a female actor and the writer of the story. S
explicitly tells about the gendered, repressive practices of theatre in her autobiography. Even if the
analysis was performed only on the surface level, the unequal aspects of the seemingly equal Finn
society would have been revealed. But with more subtle instruments of analysis, like the distinguis
more layers of the autobiographical I, the exploration of the text produces something more. The n
I the one producing the style of narration can be brought under close scrutiny. Earlier, I threw
notion of the modes of writing that Outi has used, that is, whether the style of narration is masculi
feminine, or, what the typical themes in feminine or masculine writing are. This examination of fe
and masculine style of writing used to be quite popular in feminist autobiography research some d
ago, and it had political implications, like the increased appreciation of womens autobiographical w
that was formerly excluded from the masculine canon of autobiographical writing. However, as I w
my analysis of Outis autobiography earlier (Saresma, A dialogue with the women of art stories,
244245), there are both masculine and feminine features in it, and analysing them is not very fru
because it is difficult to say anything profound about these differences or their societal relevance.

If the analysis is focused on the narrated I, it will become evident that it is produced in certain disc
that are available or forbidden, predominant or suppressed, in a certain socio-cultural context. The
narrated I is the product of the choices that the writer makes. Outi has chosen to present the
autobiography as having a certain character and, as was seen above, this character does not ple
any more when she is reading the autobiography after some years. When thinking about feminist
research, it is interesting that Outis narrated I is depicted as a feminist in theatre, in a sphere tha
to be very gendered, but unconcerned about this. To depict the narrated I as a feminist is a courag
move even nowadays, but it would have been almost impossible some decades earlier.

The fourth layer of the autobiographical I, the ideological I, is very much a product of the surround
society and its values. The ideological I of Outis autobiography is clearly formed by the constraints
stereotype of the strong Nordic woman. The myth is so strong and internalized that the discourses
supporting it creep through Outis writing and become an essential part of the autobiographical sub
without her even noticing it. This is how ideology works: it becomes so internalized that it seems n
(Smith & Watson, Reading Autobiography 62). It was not while writing the autobiography but only
reading my interpretations when Outi started paying attention to the fact that the
was not equivalent to the image she has about herself, and this caused substantial anxiety for her,
probably partly because of the ideological tension of being one coherent subject. This tension is
intertwined with the act of writing autobiography as an example of the demand of constructing a fi
identity, and with the discourse of knowing and stocktaking oneself, so dominant in the contempor
society as a Foucauldian formation of confession and control (Kaskisaari 2000, 6).

The analysis thus separates the many layers of the autobiographical I in Outis texts. But instead o
being totally dispersed, denying of any truth about the self, it is comprised of overlapping truths.
as lived and the experiences of the writer are connected with the strategies of narrating and with t
broader socio-cultural context. The formation of the autobiographical I is not something that starts
certain point and finishes up in another, but a process, constantly in change. In Outis case it is the
temporal dimension that allows the many versions of truth: the fact that the temporal distance and
perspective change makes it possible for Outi to accept the different versions of the truth about he

By distinguishing the different layers of the autobiographical I the analysis can be directed to many
of life: the personal, the narrated, the cultural, and the social. It may also prove to be an ethical s

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for autobiography research to make this distinction: when the various levels of the autobiographica
analysed, it becomes clear that the analysis is not directed to the real writers as persons. Critical
observations can be made about the text, because they are clearly not aimed against the writer, b
generally to the society that enables, for example, certain forms of oppression of women that are c
to all the levels of life, from the sphere of the society to the (seemingly) most personal that is,
autobiographical writing.

The autobiographics of the actors story

In conclusion, Ill come back to the question of autobiographics. If autobiography provokes fantas
the real, then autobiographics explores the constrained real for the reworking of identity in the di
of womens self-representation (Gilmore 189). In analysing the autobiographics of Outis texts, I h
instead of searching for the real Outi, focused on the analysis of reworking her identity, or on the
transitions of the autobiographical subject: how it is negotiated as truthful as possible, but how it a
same time escapes definition, slips away from analysis.

I have used Gilmores notion of autobiographics as a reading practice emphasizing the interruption
eruptions of Outis identity, resistance to certain discourses and contradictions of her personal narr
her strategies of self-representation. I have tried to recognize the I as multiply coded in a range of
discourses, like the discourse of a strong Nordic woman, of a skeptical feminist, of an insecure divo
woman, of a self-assured mother, of a fragile professional actor. I have tried to distinguish the mu
markings of identity, multiple figurations of identity in Outis autobiographical fragments (Gilmore
The notion emphasizes the complexity and stratification of the autobiographical
identity categories, like a wanton actress, or an all-capable professional, or an even-tempered wife
mother.

Theatre is for Outi the very discourse of self-representation. Acting, playing roles, is a suitable and
commonly used metaphor for identity, because it acknowledges that the I is not permanent. In wri
about her changing views about being an actor, Outi crystallizes the process of writing the
autobiographical self: it is always performed, again and again, and it changes a little every time it
performed. It is context where and to whom one performs that defines how the self emerges e
time.

Outi perceives being an actor as a sort of self-exposure. This notion implicates a core identity be
changing roles on stage. More than acting, autobiography is a place for representing a real or tru
identity. It is a prerequisite of the genre that the truth about the self be sincerely revealed. In read
Outis autobiographical fragments, the impossibility of this endeavour, and the anxiety this causes,
becomes evident. The quotes from her autobiographical writings show that it is an illusion to be ab
find or present the authentic self, either on stage or in real life. Still, in acting she sees the possibi
the fantasy of creating a coherent life:

I try to drum into my head that I will never experience that state of wholeness and
omniscience: incoherence continues even if I live to be one hundred years old. The only
place where I can construct completeness and come to a clear outcome is theatre. Scenes
are being rehearsed [] and in the end they are put together as a show. Life as represente
does indeed get its frames and final form that real life never gets.

Notes

*I want to thank the anonymous reviewers and my colleagues at the Research Centre for Contem
Culture as well as Marja Kaskisaari and Urpo Kovala for commenting on the manuscript.

1 All the following translations from the original autobiography, the letter, and the e-mail, are mine

2 Finns participate in these contests eagerly; the motivation behind sending personal accounts to b
evaluated by jury is probably not so much the bid for reward than getting recognition as a writer
least, the knowledge that someone out there is interested in ones life story. Writing is a common
Finland; about 20% of Finnish people can be called amateur writers: they write journals, poems,
autobiographies, short stories, etc, in their spare time, and take part in writing courses of various
back
3 The next gender-equal five countries at the time of this publication are New Zealand, Canada, Gr

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Britain, Germany, and Australia, in that order.

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