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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252075582 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2008 |
| Series: | Critical Perspectives in Criminology |
| Edition description: | 1st Edition |
| Pages: | 200 |
| Sales rank: | 897,077 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
BEEN A HEAVY LIFE
STORIES OF VIOLENT MENBy Lois Presser
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2008 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-07558-2
Chapter One
SELF AND STORY"Who are you?" is a question with a long answer or a short answer. —Louise Erdrich, "The Butcher's Wife," 2001
Complex personhood means that the stories people tell about themselves, about their troubles, about their social worlds, and about their society's problems are entangled and weave between what is immediately available as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward. —Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, 1997
In this book, I report on the talk of men who murdered, raped, and assaulted others. I focus on how these men spoke of who they are. During in-depth interviews with twenty-seven men in and out of correctional institutions, in halfway houses, and on death row, I heard depictions of the self as morally decent and as engaged in a heroic struggle of some sort. It is crucial that we understand such talk. Violence is excused and justified through talk about the self in relation to others: for example, by saying that the victim has wronged one in the past (Sykes and Matza 1957). Furthermore, one who has done harm may desist in the future by constructing a self that is capable of being good (Maruna 2001). In other words, the way people identify themselves makes harmful action (like all action) possible; in changing how they identify themselves, people are less likely to do harm.
Talk of violence by perpetrators of violence has been probed before, mainly for the purpose of understanding causes (Athens 1997; J. Gilligan 1997; Hearn 1998; Toch 1969; Vetlesen 2005). From these investigations, we have learned how actors' interpretations of harmful action and the situation for harmful action influence the action. Scholars have listened to what violent men have said about their violence: for example, that it is good (Toch 1993) or restorative (Alvarez 1997), it establishes justice (J. Gilligan 1997), or creates a better society (Alvarez 1997). I listen to how they say it, and particularly to how they situate their violent actions within a longer life story—a self-story. The whole self-story—the entire interpretive context for one's violent behavior—bears on the violence (Maruna and Copes 2005, 253).
People are not, of course, exactly who they say they are. Yet, neither are they who easily recorded "facts" such as criminal convictions—or even crimes they admit to having committed—say they are. (See table 1 in chapter 4 for "facts" about the men I interviewed.) Personhood, as Avery Gordon puts it, is complex. Our selves, including our preferred selves, are always still in the making. And so, I view even my interviews with these "violent men" as sites of identity construction. Here (but not only here) is where violent selves were made and unmade. This book both describes the life stories of violent male offenders and examines how these stories were collaboratively constructed. At the end of the book I suggest a theory of violence based on stories and the "heavy life" circumstances that underwrite them.
Narratives and Identities
What I call a narrative is more precisely an oral self-narrative, a spoken rendering of one's personal experience as an agent in the world (Rosenwald and Ochberg 1992). Narrative in this sense is sometimes called a life story or life history (Linde 1993). But a narrative is not a report on one's entire life so far. Rather, a narrative may attend to a specific period of one's life or to a single episode. Importantly, a narrative always draws selectively upon lived experience (Gergen and Gergen 1988; Polonoff 1987).
Narratives (self-narratives) have an evaluative point to make about the self. A description of the amount of water in my glass is not a narrative because it makes no evaluative point. But if I embed my description in a statement about how hard I am working—so hard that I take no time out to fill the glass, though I am thirsty—then it is part of a narrative. This narrative is a rendering of my experience of working hard.
What I call identity is one's sense of who one is. Scholarly approaches to identity are varied. One may be seen as "having" various categorical identities, which are akin to roles in society, such as daughter or student (G. Stone 1962; R. Turner 1976). Or, one's identity lies in the meaning that these roles hold for the individual. For example, Stryker and Craft (1982) observe that it is "not enough to know that a person appropriates a role label—say, male—as part of self; it is essential to ask what being a male 'means' to the person" (164; see also Burke 1991). Besides social roles and their meanings, identity is said to involve personal attributes (e.g., honest, shy) (C. Gordon 1968; Kinch 1963; Kuhn and McPartland 1954). Chad Gordon (1968) notes that "the ordinary member of the society conceives of himself [sic] in terms of both categories and attributes simultaneously" (117). Accordingly, identity is that which we share with other people and that which distinguishes us from other people (Jenkins 2004). Some identity theorists define these as social identity versus personal identity (Goffman 1963a; Tajfel 1981; J. Turner 1999; see Jenkins 2004 for a critique). Social identity calls upon one's perceived membership in a group; personal identity calls upon individual differences from the group (J. Turner 1999, 12).
In each of these conceptions of identity, the self cannot be known without reference to other people. That insight is important to this book, which conceptualizes the researcher as one referent (and therefore the interview as a meaningful forum) for identity expression. But I wish to emphasize a conception of identity that moves beyond static positions altogether. In contrast to categorical or trait-based conceptions of identity is a dynamic, storied one that emphasizes our becoming. It locates identity "in overlapping networks of relations that shift over time and space" (Somers 1994, 607). A diverse group of scholars espouses this storied notion of identity, including sociologists (e.g., Somers 1994), sociolinguists (e.g., Linde 1993; O'Connor 2000), psychologists (e.g., J. Bruner 1990; Gergen and Gergen 1986, 1988; Polkinghorne 1988; Sarbin 1986), and philosophers (Kerby 1991).
According to this view, identity is not communicable in single terms but rather in past, present, and future tenses. The stuff of identity is lived social experience—the subjective past and present—as well as the desired future. Consider these features in Tim's narrative. Tim had committed rape and attempted homicide. "Been a heavy life [laugh] man—some weird stuff. I been involved in some of them dumb things, man. Heart-rending for me. You know, well—it's not so bad anymore 'cause I've pretty well come to grips on things an' I got a lot of things under control. An' I've had time to think about things, analyze things an' uh, just sorta reevaluate my priorities. You know, a lot of things. An' my value system's totally different than it had been." Tim's identity cannot be summed up in a few choice words. It demands fuller qualitative expression. Specifically, it demands narrative form: a discursive structuring of experiences such that they are connected both logically and temporally (Gergen and Gergen 1986; Linde 1993; Somers 1994). Tim's identity encompasses more than what he currently believes himself to be. It also encompasses what he has been. And it anticipates a future self—one guided by "totally different" values than he has lived by before.
Social group affiliations and traits do enter into this more dynamic conception of identity. For example, Tim told me that he raped a woman once but that he is "not a rapist." Repeatedly, over the course of four interviews, Tim stressed his struggle to escape the label of rapist, in part by appealing to traits that "rapists" purportedly lack. Yet Tim's identity, I contend, is not simply that of a "non-rapist." First, to state and to conceive that one is a non-rapist (or rapist) makes no sense disassociated from past events and future goals. Further, rape was just one of many actions Tim took in his life, and rapist is just one label he has adopted, albeit unwillingly. Tim's identity materializes in a tale of trying to reconcile socially ascribed labels (e.g., that of rapist) and all that they mean (e.g., bad) with other affiliations and traits—those valued and those not—as he encounters new experiences and new people. This is a formidable project but an important and a universal one.
We strive toward self-continuity in the face of observed variation in the self over the life course and across situations (Guerra 1993; Lecky 1945; Schwartz and Stryker 1970). Narrative helps us in that project "to tie together the more disparate strands of our lives, of our history" (Kerby 1991, 105). The intimate tie between identity and narrative is conceptualized especially well by Polkinghorne (1988): "We achieve our personal identities and self-concept through the use of the narrative configuration, and make our existence into a whole by understanding it as an expression of a single unfolding and developing story. We are in the middle of our stories and cannot be sure how they will end; we are constantly having to revise the plot as new events are added to our lives. Self, then, is not a static thing or a substance, but a configuring of personal events into an historical unity which includes not only what one has been but also anticipations of what one will be" (150). Specific linguistic characteristics of narrative are enlisted in establishing a cohesive self (Linde 1993; McAdams 1999). McAdams (1999) explains, "By scripting one's life in such a way that different characters or subselves take on different roles and attributes, the I is able to express the multiplicity of selfhood within a single story of the self. In this way, especially integrative life stories solve the perennial identity problem ... of the self's need to be many things and one thing at the same time" (486). In narrative it is common to have multiple selves. These correspond to different phases of or happenings in one's life. Narrative chronicles different events, up to and including, often explicitly, the event of narration. There is some disagreement about whether narrative order always reflects the order of actual events, or whether narrative order may upset the "actual" order in favor of the present logic—or plot—attributed to those events. Labov and Waletzky (1967), who advanced a popular model of narrative structure, state the former view: "The basic narrative units that we wish to isolate are defined by the fact that they recapitulate experience in the same order as the original events" (20–21). Linde (1993) concurs: "Temporal continuity of the self is built into the very fabric of narrative, since the defining characteristic of the narrative is its reliance on the principle of narrative order" (106–7).
An alternative perspective, articulated by poststructuralist literary scholars, holds that chronological order takes a backseat to logic. Roland Barthes (1977) suggests that narrative "ceaselessly substitutes meaning for the straightforward copy of the events recounted.... Thus is established a kind of logical time that has very little connection with real time" (119). Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1981) points out that our knowledge of actual past events, no less than that of fictional events, is highly impressionistic. Therefore there is reason to question "the notion of a set and sequence of events altogether prior and independent of the discourse through which they are narrated" (179). If recollected experience has no single and precise chronological order, then neither does narrative. Psychologists Gergen and Gergen (1988) also stress that ways of structuring narrative are virtually limitless; only cultural standards constrain them. It is merely conventional, though by no means necessary, for contemporary stories to order events as they supposedly occurred.
Boden (1990) resolves this disagreement by noting that the "sequential production [of stories] mimics though does not mirror the sequence of events being captured" (260). Likewise, Polkinghorne (1988) states that narrative "pays special attention" to the sequence of events remembered, but is fundamentally oriented toward a plot (36). In all of these perspectives, the emplotment of events—what they mean as a whole—is central. Even Labov and Waletzky's (1967) model assigns a primary role to the "evaluation" of a narrative, which "establishes the importance or point of the narrative" (32).
The plot of a personal narrative encapsulates our reasons for our experiences and actions. Social scientists join scholars from the humanities in associating narrative with explanation for deeds done. Literary theorist Albert Stone (1982) calls autobiography "the activity of explaining oneself by telling one's story" (10), and philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1984) states: "To identify an agent and to recognize this agent's motives are complementary operations" (55). In their classic article, sociologists Scott and Lyman (1968) argue that identity takes shape when we verbally account for our behavior. They define accounts in terms of deviance, as "linguistic forms that are offered for untoward action" (47). "Every account is a manifestation of the underlying negotiation of identities" (59). Psychologists Schlenker, Weigold, and Doherty (1991) concur that "identity is constructed via the layering of judgments that emerge from being accountable for events" (110).
By giving accounts acceptable to our audience, we might improve our social status. Thus, when a person is labeled as deviant in some way, narratives help him or her renegotiate that label, in part by complicating and historicizing "who he or she really is" in the eyes of others and thus ultimately in his or her own eyes. Thus we demand that critics let us tell "the whole story." For instance, according to Scott and Lyman (1968), "Those labeled as mentally ill may relieve themselves of the worst consequences of that label by recognizing before their psychiatrists the truth value of the label, by reconstructing their past to explain how they came to deviate from normal patterns, and by gradually coming to give acceptable accounts of their behavior" (54). Likewise, Benson (1985) found that white-collar offenders gave varied accounts of their crimes in order to "defeat the process of identity transformation" that comes with criminal justice processing (598). That process of identity transformation—ritualized by "status degradation ceremonies" (Garfinkel 1956)—would present the perpetrator stereotypically or "as all of one piece" (Benson 1985, 600). The narrated identity communicates instead a more complex and distinctive character that has unfolded over time and has the potential for further change. The evolution of one's deviance from identifiable causes positions us as less deviant than an ascribed label suggests.
The potential for narrative to attenuate one's supposed deviance lies also in the "consciousness of narrativity" (Polonoff 1987, 53). Narrative itself presupposes a moral self in the narrating present. Linde (1993) explains: "The act of narration itself creates a split between the narrator and the protagonist. It allows the narrator to stand apart from and comment on the actions of the protagonist. Even if the two have the same name and are connected in time, as is the case in first-person narrative, the reflexivity created by the act of narration means that the speaker is always moral, even if the protagonist of the narrative is not" (123). Simply by narrating, the moral deviant separates him- or herself from past wrongdoing. Jerome Bruner (1990) notes that narrators generally "come off best," whether the "protagonist" of the narrative is vilified or praised (96). One's narrative is a vehicle, and the setting in which it is told is a forum, for taking a moral stance.
The Stories Violent Men Tell: My Influences and Objectives
The identities and consequently the narratives of violent qua "serious" offenders hold particular interest because their behavior has been deemed immoral. By definition, within any society, serious crime warrants explanation—an "account" (Scott and Lyman 1968). Criminologists and laypersons alike pose the question: Why? Questions about causes of violent behavior inevitably turn to answers about who the violent person is and how he or she became that way. In other words, violent behavior commonly demands a story about its perpetrator.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BEEN A HEAVY LIFE by Lois Presser Copyright © 2008 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword Bruce A. Arrigo....................ixAcknowledgments....................xiii
1. Self and Story....................1
2. Offender Identities, Offender Narratives....................15
3. Thinking about Research Effects....................31
4. Research Methods When Research Is Being Researched....................46
5. Reform Narratives: Return of the Good Self....................62
6. Stability Narratives: Never a Bad Self....................71
7. Elastic Narratives: Creative Integration....................97
8. Tales of Heroic Struggle....................106
9. The Situated Construction of Narratives....................123
10. The Power of Stories....................145
Notes....................157
References....................161
Index....................179