‘It’s ok!’ Autobiography and Ethics with Mich Page (Independent Academic)
A BSA Auto/Biography Study Group Event
7 October 2026 (1700-1800 BST)
Online
About the Event
Abstract
Autobiographies are far more than just personal stories. They are reflections of the values, rules, and social norms influencing life within situated contexts (Maynes et al 2008: Walker 2017). Because of these influences, this paper is not solely about me, even though I am its antagonist. Combining a social investigation with autobiography exposes personal vulnerabilities that must be acknowledged.
To date, ethics in autobiography has been under-discussed, and this paper now draws attention to this gap. What I wish to do is expose the relationship between the author, the readers, some relevant social issues and the question of truth, through seven difficult autobiographical episodes. Discussing ethics in detail demonstrates that the writer-reader relationship is taken seriously, addressing the challenges of other people’s judgments about our life and our writing (Wagner-Egelhaaf 2019).
Underlying most ethical codes of practice is the notion that we ‘do no harm’ and participants give fully informed consent. At first glance writing autobiographically implies personal consent. My argument is that our lives are entangled with other people and places, and consent is complicated and sometimes impossible. There is also an expectation that when writing an autobiography, we control the narrative, but this may be false and even absurd, given that our entanglements are compounded by history, contextualised personal impressions and complex institutional structures.
This is not a misery-memoir but more of a carefully considered confession!
Registration
- Auto/biography Study Group Member/BSA Member: FREE
- Non-Member: £10
Zoom joining instructions will be sent approximately 24 hours in advance of the event. We hope you can join us.
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