According to Jerome Bruner's 1994 article, "the 'remembered' self," we constantly recreate our our understanding of "self" (53). In this process of re-creation we often use autobiography to explain away the differences, discrepancies, and anomalies that inevitably occur as we move through time. How we change and grow, how we alter our understanding of who we are -- these are activities for which personal narratives (whether internal or shared with others) are vitally necessary.

In Bruner's research, the subjects were found to have, on the whole, a fluent ability to reconcile events in their lives which might be identified as "out of character" or "dissonant" with their sense of self. He notes that the reconciliation of these accounts seems to require the use of an autobiographical style which sees the author as agent, and in fact, "the 'feel' of agency in our lives is ... what is most likely to undergo exaggeration in the remembering" (48). This sense of agency allows narrators to reduce the cognitive dissonance which occurs when anomalous events are recounted (47).

The introduction to Patricia Hill Collins' Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice, can serve as an example of the strength of agency in autobiographical narratives. Collins shares a story of the discrepancies she saw as a second-grade teacher between the sense of "community" promoted by the curriculum of her school and the radically different sense of community experienced by her students, who mostly "resided in a nearby racially segregated public housing project" (ix).

Collins' narration of this moment positions herself, and to some extent the students, as agents of change. However, in describing his research Bruner also mentions Patricia Williams' text The Alchemy of Race and Rights" as an example of autobiographical writing in which the sense of agency is complicated and transformed by social and cultural pressures.

Some of the stories in this text (told by me or contributed by others) are akin to those of Williams, and could be considered remarkable for the absence or complications of agency they present. These stories, although autobiographical, are closer to what Bruner (in reference to Charles Taylor) calls "radical reflection" (49). They do the work of disruption rather than the work of unification. The memories and experiences remain complex and poorly fitted to the work of creating a unified self; nevertheless, they may help me to create a more malleable sense of self, better suited to the work of examining race in my life and relationships.

The ability to utilize (or disrupt) a sense of personal agency through narrative is further developed by scholars such as Nedra Reynolds. Reynolds asserts that "agency is not simply about finding one's own voice but also about intervening in discourses of the everyday and cultivating rhetorical tactics that make interruptions and resistance an important part of any conversation" (59). However, Reynolds' stance regarding the status of "agency" as "more than personal" may in some ways illustrate the tendency that Min Zhan Lu describes, where "experiences which do not fit directly and neatly within simplistic notions of race, sex, class, and gender identity are then dismissed as private, non-political, and therefore irrelevant" (175).

Additionally, Reynolds notes that the importance and potential for interruption and resistance as rhetorical strategies are "most effective in the spaces where physical presence heightens the effect -- at conferences, in classrooms, around tables" (71). I'm not sure how the spaces of an electronic text such as this might be adapted to the goals of interruption and resistance.

My vision for these texts is that they might touch all of these boundaries.

In other words (and in a collage of others' words) I am trying to interrupt myself. To create spaces for personal reflection that are open for public examination, and to connect through these texts to others (known and unknown) in interactions that encourage both movement and reflection.