Wole Soyinka and Autobiography as Political Unconscious*
Susan Friedman launches a useful critique of general theories of auto/ biography that postulate it as having to do solely with a growth of individualism. She is right in arguing, counter to Gusdorf and others, that the form depends on identification, interdependence and community as means of enablement. For Friedman, &dquo;individualistic paradigms of the self ignore the role of collective and relational identities in the individuation process of women and minorities&dquo;, and she shows how particularly relevant relationality is in assessing the process of women’s self-individuation.’ Though her critique is raised mainly in the context of women’s auto/biography, she offers an interesting way of considering questions of auto/biographies in general. Yet her propositions, though useful, require qualification. In my view, the site of the development of selfhood or individualism is not an interface solely of individual selves with other selves. It is important to take account also of the fact that selfhood or individualism cannot be fully understood without reference to social and other institutions with which
The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings
This collection of twelve essays discusses the principles and practices of women's autobiographical writing in the United States, England, and France from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Employing feminist and poststructuralist methodologies, the essays examine a wide range of private life writings -- letters, journals, diaries, memoirs, pedagogical texts, and fictional and factual autobiographies. The concepts of theory and practice -- as opposing and mutually exclusive methodologies, as focal points for conflicting interpretations, and finally as complementary approaches to the study of literature -- are central to this collection. The Private Self explores the links between the historical devaluation of women's writings and the cultural definitions of women that have constrained their writing practices and excluded them from the canon of traditional autobiographical texts. Collectively, these essays expose the cultural biases that derive from notions of selfhood defined by a white, masculine, and Christian experience. In an effort to revise our prevailing concept of autobiography, these essays deal with differences of race, class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender. Discussed here are writings by more than two dozen women including Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Alice James, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Forten Grimke, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Sophie Kovalevsky, Anais Nin, Hilda Doolittle, and Simone de Beauvoir. The work of these writers reveals a split between public and private self-representations, and it is the notion of a private self expressed through women's autobiographical writings that forms the link among all the essays.
Super-resolution of overlapped waves in time and frequency domain in a directional borehole radar measurement
The Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm is modified in order to resolve multiple waves and to estimate reflection points in 3-D space. This algorithm is suitable for directional borehole radar with a circular dipole array antenna. Making use of the spatial frequency difference of acquired array signals, the signals are decorrelated, and the 3-D MUSIC algorithm is applied. The time domain signals of the singlehole array-type borehole radar are used in order to form a measurement vector in the MUSIC algorithm. A computer simulation confirms that the proposed algorithm may estimate the directions of arrival (DOA) for three signals. Applying the proposed algorithm to field experiment data successfully estimates the DOA of a reflected wave from a fracture in rock.