Biography As a Carrier of Hope

Life-historical, autobiographical self-presentations are inherently processual, involving the continuous interplay between past, present and future. While the past undeniably shapes a person’s becoming, according to the constructivist methodology, as articulated by Rosenthal, the future also serves as a structuring dimension that shapes current existence and identity. Consequently, hope cannot be reduced to a mental idea nor to present actions but shaped by past experiences, memory and emerges through interactive practices, and its embeddedness within social contexts. I propose that “biographical hope” constitutes a structural and integral component of the overall "Gestalt" of life stories, drawing on Koffka's understanding of form and perception.
To explore this concept further, I will examine biographical self-presentations derived from data collected within the scope of the research project Shaping Future Society. The biographers whose narratives provide the empirical foundation for this study represent people of the current generation, whose life stories are characterized by anxieties about the future and concerns over existential survival. These narratives contrast with the individualized "promises of self-realization" that typified the experiences of preceding generations, such as their parents, or those of individuals from more privileged positions or regions of the world.
Drawing on life stories from diverse contexts —specifically, from Great Britain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Sudan— I reconstruct how individuals construct their biographies through future-oriented practices. Furthermore, it will examine how such practices and transformative life experiences are communicated in biographical self-representations. Finally, will argue that the act of narrating one's life story is a form of self-construction that inherently involves the projection of a future self, which is inconceivable without the element of hope.