# 159: The Identification Pact
Story behind the Passage
There is a problem that I desperately need to do more research on: Why do some people value and appreciate life writing as a source of personal learning and why do others not? And do certain people only identify with certain authors or do certain people never identify with any author? There are many more questions that are related to this but I am going to leave it at these. This issue has been moving my mind for a while not but now I need to really get to the roots of it. Since I cannot let go of the power of literature, particularly biographies, as didactic tools, this is something that might make a fundamental difference. I do not think that it will completely destroy my logic. But there might be variables that I need to pay more attention to.
The topic came up yesterday again when someone from a publishing house told me that the experiences with certain autobiographies were very mixed. Some autobiographies sell really well. Others do not. That in and of itself is nothing surprising, it is the case with any book. The problem is just that they obviously have no clue why that is. I just learned — and this was not the first time that someone told me about this — that they are extremely careful when selecting autobiographical books for publication. So, obviously, as my headline reveals, my assumption is that identification is a major issue when it comes to explaining this phenomenon. And it is one that I already encountered when teaching business biographies.
My Learnings
“According to Lejeune, what counts as autobiography is somewhat blurry, since it is based on a ‘pact’ between author and reader that is not directly traceable down into the textual qualities.” The autobiographical pact described in the passage is one of the most essential theoretical paradigms that literary studies students learn about life writing. But I am calling it identification pact above not because I mean something inherently different, my focus is just more oriented towards the reader. And I never actually thought of the autobiographical pact when thinking about identification in the context of my “learning from life writing” approach. But, of course, the two are closely connected. In which way, I cannot tell. As the idea of the “pact” basically suggests, there is a (tacit) agreement between reader and author that incolves trust when it comes to life narrative as a somewhat “truthful” account.
What matters to me is not necessarily the factfulness of the account as it is perceived by the reader. It is more the ability to actually enter this pact in the first place. And this is where identification plays a major role, I think. The etymology dictionary defines identification, among other things, as:
“1640s, “treating of a thing as the same as another; act of making or proving to be the same,” from French identification, probably from identifier (see identify). Psychological sense of “becoming or feeling oneself one with another” is from 1857.” Etymonline
My experience is that certain characterisics fundamentally stay in the way of this ability to “becoming or feeling oneself one with another.” One crucial criterion is gender, at least for many and based on my experience with students. I know, for example, that most female students do not identify that easily with male authors of autobiographies and/or novels. And, please, I am not saying this because of some stereotypes. It is simply what I have learned from teaching these books to young women. Many repeatedly shared that they simply did not take away that much from these male stories and from their feedback I have learned, even though most of them used different words for describing this, that they could not identify with them. This was always a surprise for me because I never thought about that before. To be honest, I do not make a difference. It is true that sometimes, I intentionally want to read about the experience of a woman in some context. But when it comes to learning from the life story of an entrepreneur, I would never not choose a story because it was written by a guy.
Of course, there are numerous other things that stay in the way of entering this identification pact, I suppose. Disciplinay/education background or even nationality and culture are also prominent characteristics. So, all these things probably prevent people from identifying with the author of an autobiography and therefore they also hinder the reading experience in many ways. For me, reading experience equals learning experience and that is where the need for more research starts because there is another even more fundamental question that needs to be clarified: Are all people equally able to learn from narratives? Maybe I am so biased that I think everyone can learn from books if you provide the right means and some additional didactic devices. But maybe this is not true. Maybe some people will never learn from books, no matter if they are reading autobiographies or novels. And if that is the case, identification does not happen, no matter what the genre. Therefore, the pact would also become irrelevant.
But you know what, to be honest, I am quite convinced that the worst case scenario, i.e., nobody really identifies with authors who are not like them does not hold true. I just need to learn more about the different aspects that do make a difference and take them into account. Or, in the other scenario, I need to simply focus on these target groups who do learn from life writing, no matter what the others do. I believe in the power of literature and life stories as means of teaching in areas outside of literary and cultural studies a 100%. Of course, research on this already exists in various fields. And I think, I am ready to explore it and take the next step towards researchin, writing, and teaching about the gaps that still need to be filled.
Reflection Questions
1) Are there authors or protagonists that you can easily identify with? Who are they?
2) Do you think that literature can teach people knowledge and/or skills which other didactic means cannot? Why/not?
3) How do you think about the “autobiographical pact” by Lejeune?