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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
Momentary Expression through Addiction - Page 1
by Sarah Pacella
Autobiography is a genre of writing that assumes an autonomy within each individual person by presenting a narrative written by and about the subject himself. Therefore, when reading an autobiography, the audience assumes they are witnessing an expression of the singular self, presented through the interior character of the autobiographer. Robert Jay Lifton and Sidonie Smith have raised suspicions concerning the integrity of the autobiographical expression of a singular self by expressing their doubts about individual autonomy. By illustrating the common norms that many people adhere to in their daily lives, these authors suggest that the self is a social construction rather than something that comes from within each singular self. Smith observes the self within the autobiographical context in "Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance," while Lifton examines the notion of the singular self in relation to society in The Protean Self. The autobiography More, Now, Again, by Elizabeth Wurtzel, succeeds in further complicating the implications of singularity within the self by conveying a character that shows many different faces of her self, one of which is the face of a drug addict. Although Wurtzel is a woman inscribed by the conventional, gender-assigned roles of society, she begins her autobiography resisting these roles by describing her unconventional role as a drug addict, listing each drug she had become addicted to within the time frame of the text. For her, these pills created an escape from her roles; they helped to free her from the responsibilities of living. They took the place of every aspect of her daily life, including her relationships with family and friends. The more she sunk into her addiction, however, the more Wurtzel realized it was becoming a problem. In an attempt to leave the inescapability of the drug in New York, she moved to Florida in hopes that a geographical relocation would provide the necessary separation from her addiction. Although the quiet, peaceful setting provided by Florida seemed to have a positive impact on Wurtzel, she managed to slip back into her addiction while she attended therapy there. She was prescribed Ritalin in hopes that it would help her to combat her depression and enable her to leave the drugs behind, but this new pill simply became another source of dependency.
She was lead into her Ritalin addiction because of the positive effects it had on her emotions at the time: since the Ritalin seemed to quell her depression, she wanted to do more to maximize her happiness. By slipping into addiction, Wurtzel’s self is transformed into one that loses grip on her socially-normative selves and becomes a secluded, antisocial self. The self portrayed by Elizabeth Wurtzel is completely different from one moment to the next, which challenges the conventional notion that autobiographies present the audience with a singular self. This challenge shows that a person can have a multiplicity of constantly changing roles. Wurtzel is a woman who "finds herself on multiple stages simultaneously, called to heterogeneous recitations of identity"(Smith 110), which Smith might also see as performative roles. Wurtzel is called to portray the identities of writer, daughter, friend-roles that overwhelmed her to the point that she felt as though she needed to find an escape from them. Drugs provided her with the easy ability to break out of her expected roles, and she therefore moved from the roles of writer, daughter, friend, to the role of an addict. Robert Jay Lifton describes this fluidity and the ability to shift selves according to social influences as “proteanism.”
Not until after she became addicted to drugs could Elizabeth Wurtzel’s “protean” self emerge. The drugs helped to ease the necessity to transform her self because the addiction took the place of every other role Wurtzel had previously been accustomed to. As her protean self emerged, it gave Wurtzel the ability to change, which provided her with the willingness necessary to seek help for her addiction. This in turn led her to a state of mind in which she was able to re-embrace her performative roles. Proteanism became Wurtzel's savior as well as her downfall because, although it was necessary for her to use proteanism to be willing to change her addict self by checking into a rehabilitation center and embracing new ideas, it still left no permanence to her recovery because there was always the chance that she could re-embrace her habits as an addict. This addicted, protean self, formed by Wurtzel, is very performative in nature, as are her previous roles, but this particular role is also performatively resistant on a very basic level. Drug addiction in itself is a rebellion against society because there are no expectations placed on any person to become a drug addict. Therefore, since the selves portrayed by Elizabeth Wurtzel in this autobiography both support and dispute the arguments presented by Lifton and Smith, her autobiographical selves show that neither of their arguments is foolproof. The arguments do, however, succeed in illuminating the drawbacks of giving complete integrity to the author of an autobiography as presenting a unique self. For this reason, it is necessary to find a common ground between the belief that people have a singular self and the viewpoint that people are mere products of their social influences. In order to reach a better understanding of the importance of autobiography, it is essential to consider that a person can have a self-but it is sometimes only momentary. The self portrayed in an autobiography can be considered a person's momentary self and these selves can shift from one to something completely different on a momentary basis in reaction to events that occur. An autobiography, then, can be said to be an expressive compilation of momentary selves presented by the autobiographer.
According to Sidonie Smith, society expects each person "to signify a multiplicity of guarantees in response to a variety of different demands all at once" (Smith 110. People are expected to fulfill multiple roles in reaction to the different tasks they are faced with: a single mother who has to nurture her children is also expected to be a good worker in order to provide for her children. Therefore, the mother may play multiple roles, thus negating the singularity in the term “self.” This normative idea of the self is very important to Elizabeth Wurtzel because she is always reacting according to the expectations of society. Even when she is alone, she is being performative because she is very self-loathing and does not accept her own self. She is never good enough to live up to her own expectations; therefore, she uses the normative self to perform and fulfill her roles of society even when alone. It is necessary for her to have these multiple “meaningful roles” in order to be satisfied with herself.
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