The transitional potential of ‘biographicity’

Abstract

‘Biographicity’ is a concept that has been discussed in international adult education for more than 30 years. It has stimulated research concepts and has become a metaphor for the resilience potential of biographical learning processes in modernised modern societies. A basic theoretical foundation has so far been lacking. This article attempts to provide such a foundation. It first introduces the quite sophisticated conception of ‘biography’ and emphasises the dialectical tension between
structure and emergence (1), then turns to the challenge of describing ‘the social’ from the perspective of the acting subject – the ‘biographicity of the social’, as it were (2), and ends with a reflection on biographical learning (3) that overcomes its own limits (‘transitional learning’).