What is left to say about the GDR? – The interrelation between narration and discourse

People of Color have to deal with specific discourses; this raises the question of the interrelation between biography and discourse.

I will go into this question by applying empirical findings from my PhD project which carries the title: The Construction of the Self in Relation to Racism - Experiencing and Processing of Racialized Discourses and Practices by People of Color in Germany.

My presentation focuses on the methodical issue how to analyze the complex ways in which an individual is dealing/has to deal with discourses.

Discourses create possibilities to speak. Individuals refer to discourses to address particular views and themes. Biographical narrations are thus permeated by discourses. Biographical-narrative interviews therefore exemplify how discourses might be used by interviewees to position themselves or to establish a particular version of their live story or the history of their society.

In order to reconstruct the ways of referring to and dealing with discourses I will present a triangulation of biographical case reconstructions (Rosenthal 1995) and discourse analysis (Keller 2005).

As an example, I will introduce the interview with an Afro-German woman born and socialized in the GDR. Her ways of speaking about the GDR highlight the possibilities which such a triangulation might have when it comes to gaining knowledge about the complex interdependency between biography, discourse and narration. I will argue that the combination of case reconstruction and discourse analysis in the context of an interview text can be fruitful not only to visualize the ways in which people refer to specific discourses in their narration but also in order to gain insight into the factors that determine why particular references are made at specific points.