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What is postmodern thought and how is it different from modern thought? That’s a huge question and rather than try to give a systematic answer to that question, I want to make an illustration or draw an analogy.

What is a memoir and what is an autobiography? What’s the difference? I think the difference between a memoir and autobiography closely parallels some of the differences between postmodernism and modernism.

I took a memoirs class in college where we had to learn about and read memoirs while writing our own memoirs. It was a very engaging class. I learned a lot about a lot of different classmates because we all had to read excerpts from our memoirs. I also read a lot of different books that I would never have thought to read.

In teaching us how to write our memoirs, the prof explained that we should not try to get the details completely accurate. We should not try to put down the events in chronological order. Some of the events may actually contradict each other. Sometimes the events do not make logical sense. The purpose of a memoir is not to give an accurate account of your life or a particular event in the past. The purpose of the memoir is to make meaning out of your own memories. Memoirs often focus on short periods of time and skip events.

An autobiography on the other hand is supposed to be a chronologically and historically correct account of your life. It should encompass most of the major events in your life. The autobiography should make logical sense to the reader.

It seems to me that a memoir is a postmodern work whereas the autobiography is a modern work. An autobiography seeks to systemitize and categorize life and memories around certain logical rules such as chronology and major life events. A memoir pays no attention to chronology or major life events. Many memoirs start off when a person is young and then all of a sudden they are old and married. Some memoirs start off old and then go back to being a kid without any transition or warning of any kind. Thus memoirs are more concerned with how the story is being told and the meaning is being made rather than chronology.

Memoirs are not concerned with objective accounts. Some memoirs border on fiction because the accounts clearly could not have happened or may have happened in the person’s fantasy. Yet the person’s memory could not distinguish between fantasy and reality… thus all gets written into the memoir. An autobiography is not a work of fiction and therefore the autobiographer needs to sort out what is really fiction and what is fantasy. The autobiographer may rely on other sources such as texts, letters, or interviewing people, but the writer of a memoir only relies on memories. The writer of a memoir knows that an unbiased account is impossible, therefore does not try to be unbiased. The writer of a memoir turns the bias and subjectivity into something that makes meaning in and of itself. The bias and subjectivity becomes a positive rather than a negative.

In the same way, postmoderns view bias as inevitable and use that subjectivity to enhance the conversation rather than trying to rid themselves of subjectivity. Moderns decry subjectivity and bias. They want an unbiased point of view in order to get at the truth.

Postmodernity basically seeks to bring diverse life experience into every encounter with the truth. I don’t think postmoderns are trying to say there is no truth. There is truth about life in every memoir. Rather these truths need to be made under more careful considerations of specific life situations.