In this article, the author argues that the narrative forms imposed on students closely follow the narrative conventions of the Bildungsroman, the novel of human emergence that has traditionally been associated with what educators of adults would call experiential learning. The author’s presenting question—If the self is a text, what genre is it?—is the literary form of the question of where the life narratives valorized in adult learning originate, why they appear to be unmediated and authentic, and what ideological meaning they carry. The author further argues that students are expected to reproduce quite particular narrative conventions: the use of the past to explain the present, and vice versa; memory as a form of psychic coherence; a double plot that has an echo in a split protagonist; and the erasure of social conflict. In the conclusion, the author briefly focuses on magical realism as an alternative narrative of experience.
ArmstrongN. (2005). How novels think: The limits of individualism from 1719-1900. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
2.
BakhtinM. M. (1986). The Bildungsroman and its significance in the history of realism (toward a historical typology of the novel). In EmersonC.HolquistM. (Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays (pp. 10-59). Austin: University of Texas Press.
3.
BrookfieldS. (2000). Transformative learning as ideological critique. In MezirowJ. & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives (pp. 125-150). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
4.
BrooksP. (1984). Reading for the plot. New York, NY: Alfred Knopf.
5.
BrownJ. (2002). Know thyself: The impact of portfolio development on adult learning. Adult Education Quarterly, 52, 228-245.
6.
BrownsteinR. (1994). On becoming a heroine. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
7.
BrunerJ. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
8.
BrunerJ. (2004). Life as narrative. Social Research: An International Quarterly of Social Sciences, 71, 691-710.
9.
CottomD. (1987). Social figures: George Eliot, social history, and literary representation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
10.
CrawfordM. (2009). Shop class as soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work. New York, NY: Penguin.
11.
DalozL. A. (1988). The story of Gladys, who refused to grow: A morality tale for mentors. Lifelong Learning: An Omnibus of Practice and Research, 11(4), 4-7.
12.
DamesN. (2001). Amnesiac selves: Nostalgia, forgetting, and British fiction, 1810-1870. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
13.
DavisL. J. (1987). Resisting novels. New York, NY: Methuen.
14.
DickensC. (1943). David Copperfield. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead. (Original work published 1850)
15.
DominiceP. (1990). Composing education biographies: Group reflection through life histories. In MezirowJ. & Associates (Eds.), Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: A guide to transformative and emancipatory learning (pp. 194-212). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
16.
DominiceP. (2000). Learning from our lives: Using educational biographies with adults. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
17.
EagletonT. (2006). Criticism and ideology: A study in Marxist literary theory. New York, NY: Verso. (Original work published 1976)
18.
EliotG. (2008). Middlemarch. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1874)
19.
ErmarthE. D. (1983). Realism and consensus in the English novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
20.
FarisW. B. (2004). Ordinary enchantments. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
21.
GeertzC. (1985). Blurred genres: The reconfiguration of social thought. In GeertzC. (Ed.), Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (pp. 19-35). New York, NY: Basic Books.
22.
HartS. M. (2005). Magical realism: Style and substance. In HartS. M.OuyangW. (Eds.), A companion to magical realism (pp. 1-13). Rochester, NY: Tamesis.
23.
HolsteinJ. A.GubriumJ. F. (1999). The self we live by: Narrative identity in a postmodern world. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
24.
JamesonF. (1981). The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic act. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
MichelsonE. (2011). Autobiography and selfhood in the practice of adult learning. Adult Education Quarterly, 61, 3-21.
28.
OuyangW. (2005). Magical realism and beyond: Ideology of fantasy. In HartS. M.OuyangW. (Eds.), A companion to magical realism (pp. 13-19). Rochester, NY: Tamesis.
29.
PolanyiM. (2009). The tacit dimension. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1966)
30.
RandallW. (1996). Restorying a life: Adult education and transformative learning. In BirrenJ. E.KenyonG.RuthJ.-E.SchrootsJ. J. F. (Eds.), Aging and biography: Explorations in adult development (pp. 224-247). New York, NY: Springer.
31.
RedingerR. V. (1975). George Eliot: The emergent self. Colchester, England: Bodley Head.
32.
RothI. (1990). Challenging habits of expectation. In MezirowJ. & Associates (Eds.), Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: A guide to transformative and emancipatory learning (pp. 116-133).San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
RuthJ. (2006). Novel professions: Interested disinterest and the making of the professional in the Victorian novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
35.
ScribnerS. (1984). Studying working intelligence. In RogoffB.LaveJ. (Eds.), Everyday cognition: Development in social context (pp. 9-40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
36.
SlaughterJ. R. (2007). Human rights, Inc.: The world novel, narrative form, and international law. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.
37.
SlemonS. (1995). Magic realism as postcolonialist discourse. In ZamoraL. P.FarisW. B. (Eds.), Magical realism: Theory, history, community (pp. 407-421). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
38.
TaylorK. (2000). Teaching with developmental intention. In MezirowJ. & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives (pp. 151-180). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
39.
WattI. (1959). The rise of the novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley: University of California Press.
40.
WebbI. (1981). From custom to capital: The English novel and the industrial revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
41.
WhiteH. (1987). The content of the form. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
