Autobiography: a relational journey

The chapter offers a systemic and relational view of auto/biographic writing in adult education, namely as a method to develop stories of change and continuity, in the building of identity and meaning of one's life. The author uses her own experience of relations (as a researcher and an academic author) as a basis to explore the metaphor of auto/biography as a relational journey, and the choice to write in the first person as a challenge for her as an adult learner to find her voice, to compose subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, hence to make a leap in learning (as in Bateson's concept of deuterolearning). The human struggle for identity and meaning meets "generative double binds" as well as impasses and closings. A second order leap is produced when subjectivity is composed with inter-subjectivity and the author is able to transcend her own (multiple) identity.