ABSTRACT

This chapter suggests that the process of rewriting the self, as people have been exploring it, is better understood from the vantage point of 'art' rather than 'science'. It takes up a variety of issues pertinent to this notion of rewriting the self through exploring autobiographies and, in one case, a work of fiction. Despite calls throughout the history of the social sciences to take on the challenges posed by the kinds of works people have been considering, it has been done only rarely. Among the many reasons for this, there is but a single glaringly obvious one: inquiries of this sort have not been considered important enough and valid enough by traditional empiricist standards to warrant attention.