Biography, History, and Identity: A Proposal and an Example

Abstract

This article argues that biographies should not only examine the ontext, work and deeds of biographees, but also their own conceptions of identity. Following the analysis of Norbert Elias, it takes as an example José Gaos’ autobiographical project. The purpose of identifying the psychoanalytical background that lies beneath Gaos’ writing is to show that his personality does not correspond to the model fabricated during the 19th century. It was then when the idea and attributes of the liberal individual was erected into a paradigm of human nature. To question that model and to reconstruct the structures of meaning which sustain each identity would be, in that sense, a competence of the biographical genre.