Biographical research approaches have been relevant for the analysis of transitions in the life course for a long time. A biographical perspective allows an analysis of how individuals act in transitions and how they describe their ways of coping with institutional expectations and normative orders in different phases of their life course (c.f. Hof, 2020, 103). A biographical-analytical approach is therefore based on the assumption that in biographical narratives, subjective perspectives and individual patterns of action can only be reconstructed against the background of concrete socio-structural and socio-historical conditions and daily life experiences (c.f. Hof, 2020, 106). From the beginning of the social science-based analysis of (auto-)biographical narratives, “biography” as concept was oriented towards understanding the “relationship between the development of individual identity, on the one hand, and the biographical work of shaping collective phenomena of all kinds as relevant for one’s life history “on the other (Schütze, 2014, 225 et seqq.). In this sense, talking about biographical experiences is also connected to discourses and discursive orientation patterns. But collective phenomena in biographical research have been examined with a focus on institutional aspects of the life course. Only in the last few years have the possibilities and methodological implications of analyzing the relationship between discourse and narrative analysis and biography been discussed more intensely (Spies & Tuider, 2017). At this point, using the concept of “articulation” appears to be an interesting approach in order to be able to grasp this connection more systematically in biographical analyzes. Articulation – in this sense – is a concept which was developed by the British social scientist Stuart Hall. It attempts to construct a link between discourses and subject positions, described as a suture between the two. Following from this, Spies has worked out how articulation can be integrated into biographical analyzes and linked with biographical-analytical perspectives. This modified concept of “biographical articulation” (Spies, 2009, 2017) is based on the idea that one can always find different forms of articulation in biographical narratives. In the following we refer to these considerations and use the concept of “biographical articulation” to ask how articulations “take place” in biographical narrations about relevant transition experiences in a life history. Which modes of articulation can we find in narrative interviews that are related to important decisions and processes in the lives of interviewees? Based on the re-analysis of three narrative interviews which are linked to different biographical research projects, we try to explain three modes of articulation which emerge in their life stories and which show examples of how interviewees develop new ways of self-positioning, legitimize important decisions, and give direction to their further course of life. To introduce the theoretical frame of our re-analysis, we first explain the most important basic assumptions of articulation in the sense of Stuart Hall (2). After this we present our findings alongside three cases which illustrate how individuals refer to transitions in their life courses by using different forms of articulation. The first research project, that of Andrea Pohling, is based on narrative interviews with people who have suffered sexual violence. The re-analysis of one of the interviews describes how articulation allows the interviewee to be able to speak about experiences of sexual violence and to construct a narrative identity as an affected person as “mode of recognition and recall” (3.1). Noreen Eberle, in the second project, studied decision-making processes of people who have tried to get a higher qualification by attending night school. The case study shows how the interviewees decision-making was accompanied by distancing herself from perceived normative ideas of her family and her religious community. We put the “mode of detachment from and attachment to subject positions” as a way to initiate a large transition but also as an example of the precarity of finding new subject positions in transitions (3.2). The third project, that of Jessica Lütgens, deals with the biographical development of young people who are politically active and who describe themselves as “left-wing” in a political sense. The example of “Sascha” illustrates how politicization can be developed as a mode of searching for alternative political perspectives, which is connected to an extensive process of identifying a new social positioning (3.3). At the end of the article, we shortly discuss the three different modes of articulation and try to compare them in a more systematic manner. All three modes of articulation illustrate the complexity and variety of social positioning and articulation in the sense of Hall. They also underline that it is necessary to understand how articulations are biographically based and, vice versa, how they initiate transitions and move forward important turning points in the life course (4).

Biographical Articulation

The concept of articulation as it is discussed here was developed mainly by Stuart Hall. Beginning in the 1980s, he dealt with the connection and intersection between identity, ethnicity, and culture, and with the influence of hegemonic discourses and structures of dominance. For Hall, identity refers to “the meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand the discourses and practices which attempt to ‘interpellate’, speak to us or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be ‘spoken’” (Hall, 1996a, 5). In this respect, identities are points of temporary attachment to subject positions, positions that can be taken within discourses in order to be able to speak. Hall calls the resulting connection articulation, a “‘chaining’ of the subject into the flow of the discourse” (Hall, 1996a, 6).

Hall here refers to Althusser’s concept of interpellation (1977) and to the concept of articulation by Laclau and Mouffe (1985). However, Hall emphasizes more strongly the difference between individual and subject/position: subject positions emerge from discursive practices and must be taken by individuals so that they are able to speak out (c.f. Spies, 2010, 114). Moreover Hall assumes that different discourses generate different subject positions, so the resulting connection is or can be of short duration. No subject can be reduced to one single subject position. The variety of different discourses corresponds to a number of distinct subject positions, whereas individual positions can definitely be inconsistent with one another (c.f. Angus, 1998).

When people are interpellated they are constituted as subjects (c.f. also Butler, 1998, 42 et seqq.). This does not mean – as Althusser (1977) already pointed out – that there is something like an “empty space” (Hall, 1985, 101), because individuals “are ‘always-already’ subjects” (Hall, 1985, 109): “Actually, we are spoken by and spoken for, in the ideological discourses which await us even at our birth, into which we are born and find our place.” (ibid.)

The relation of subject and discursive formations Hall understands as an articulation – a “connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions”, but this “so-called ‘unity’” can also “be re-articulated in different ways” (Hall, 1986, 53).Footnote 1 “We are” – according to Hall – “confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible identities, any one of which we could identify with – at least temporarily.” (Hall, 1996b, 598)

Individuals are not constrained to one single position but can take up variable positions within different discursive contexts, especially when discursive contexts change – for instance, in the course of time or due to “biographical turning points” such as the appearance of new important people in the environment or changing institutional placement, as a result of which one can narrate new stories about oneself and take up new positions.

Therefore, difference is an essential part of every identity. With reference to Derrida, Hall leaves “identity” in its unifying meaning behind. At the same time, he distances himself from Derrida’s conception of différance that Hall calls an “enormous proliferation of extremely sophisticated, playful deconstruction which is a kind of endless academic game” (Hall, 1991, 50). For this reason, he refuses the idea of fixed identities, but also struggles with the conception of the utterly shifting, endless sliding of signifiers. Hall stands for the tension between what is positioned but still not fixed in this position:

We have then to go on thinking beyond that mere playfulness into the really hard game which the play of difference actually means to us historically. For if signification depends upon the endless repositioning of its differential terms, meaning in any specific instance depends on the contingent and arbitrary stop, the necessary break. (Hall, 1991, 50 et seqq.)

With the idea of such a break, a cut that constitutes meaning, Hall refers again to Laclau’s and Mouffe’s discourse theory (1985). In a situation of undecidability the subject is condemned to choose. Each position into which the subject is interpellated or “summoned” entails a decision (c.f. Laclau, 1999).

[…] to say anything at all in particular, you do have to stop talking. Of course every full stop is provisional. […] It is not forever, not totally universally true. It’s not underpinned by any infinite guarantees. But just now, this is what I mean; this is who I am. At a certain point, in a certain discourse we call these unfinished closures ‘the self’, ‘society’, ‘politics’, etc. Full stop. OK. (Hall, 1987, 45, see also Hall, 1995)

Such a “full stop” that makes meaning possible is by no means natural and permanent, but – and this is central to Hall’s line of argumentation – we have to be positioned and we have to position ourselves in order to speak. In this regard Hall compares identity to a bus ticket: to arrive anywhere, you have to first get on. In doing so it is clear that the ticket you carry can never represent the whole of you, “but you have to buy a ticket in order to get from here to there” (Hall, 1995, 65), in exactly the same way you have to be positioned somewhere to say anything at all. “Even if you are positioned in order to unposition yourself, even if you want to take it back, you have to come into language to get out of it.” (Hall, 1991, 51).

So a moment of agency is already inherent in the concept of interpellation, but when taking “articulation” into consideration agency is even more precisely conceptualized: Subjects are never constrained to one interpellation; no one can be reduced to one single subject position, e.g., as “immigrant” or “black” (Hall, 1985). At different moments and throughout our existence, in relation to specific discursive formations, we remain open to be positioned and situated in different ways (c.f. Hall, 1985, 106): “[T]here is no essential, unitary ‘I’ – only the fragmentary, contradictory subject I become.” (Hall, 1985, 109) In addition, Hall’s critique on “the endless repositioning” points to the necessity of decisions: in order to speak, (apparently explicit) positions have to be taken. This in turn implies a second moment of agency: if subjects have to be positioned to say anything at all, that means – and this is another advantage of the concept of articulation – that positions can be abandoned to take another, new, contradictory position. Every such position has to be understood as “strategic” – in Spivak’s sense – and arbitrary.

Empirical Approach: Different Forms and Aspects of Biographical Articulation

In the following we present three different approaches to biographical articulation which illustrate and empirically illuminate different forms and aspects of the concept of articulation based on the introduced biographical research projects.

The Case Study of Susanne: The Modus of Articulation of Recognition and Recall

The case study of Susanne comes from a study which deals with the transition from not speaking to speaking about experiences of sexual violence in childhood and adolescence from the perspectives of the affected people.Footnote 2 It addresses the questions of how they transition to talking about their experience(s) in their life courses and how they shape these narratives in the context of their life histories. In doing so, it places a central focus on the influence of media-social discourses in this process. Regarding the context of the study, it should be said that after a long history of silence and de-thematization, the phenomenon of sexual violence against children and adolescents in Germany has, since March 2010, been increasingly represented in the media-public as well as in the political-scientific discourse. In the following, the life story and case study of Susanne will be presented in condensed form and the respective form of articulation of sexual violence in childhood and adolescence will be presented: the modus of recognition and recall.

Susanne is born in 1956, the second daughter of her parents. She grows up together with her siblings in a small West German town. Her father is well-respected in the town, as he runs a medium-sized company. Only 1 year after Susanne’s birth, the fifth child is born. It can be assumed that Susanne’s mother takes care of the children and manages the household, so the parents almost certainly lived and worked in the traditional distribution of gender roles, deviation from which is hardly imaginable at this time. Her father runs the family business and has the role of the family breadwinner. Since childcare outside the home was also an exception in West Germany at this time, Susanne probably does not go to kindergarten and spends a lot of time in her parents’ home in the care of her mother and older siblings. Susanne remembers that friendships or contact with children outside the family were very rare. In the narrative of her childhood, Susanne describes various forms of physical, but also psychological violence by both parents: “My childhood was also overshadowed by a lot of violence. We were beaten a lot. There was no-no warmth.” (Interview with Susanne, line 201). Additionally, Susanne’s father sexually abused Susanne since her earliest childhood, which she began to remember at the age of 48. In the narrative of her life story Susanne recalls feelings of fear of death and revenge that she experienced as a child in the context of sexual violence. She reports vaginal and oral sex with her father, but also with her uncle, as well as seemingly “non-violent”, consensual sexual experiences with her father, which she only of late and reluctantly also classifies as sexual abuse. In the analysis of the life story of Susanne it becomes clear that in telling her life story follows the sequence of events most relevant to her and does not orientate herself to a chronological narrative structure assumed to be collectively valid (c.f., Bukow & Spindler, 2006, 6). She begins the narration of her life story neither with her birth nor the place where she grew up, but with the recollection of sexual abuse by her father. Susanne’s expectation of herself is formulated right at the beginning of the main narrative when she expresses the hope of remembering “everything”, i.e. to tell as comprehensive and supposedly as complete a memory story as possible regarding the abuse. It can be shown that in her life story, like in a jigsaw puzzle, she puts her abuse story together piece by piece. Susanne’s life story narrative is therefore structured by her memories and insights regarding the “double”, i.e. sexual and financial abuse by two male figures central to her.

To sum up, it can be shown that the articulation mode of recognizing and remembering is based on the experience of many years of severe experiences of violence in various dimensions in childhood in the family context as well as on the experience of dissociative amnesia. The biographer began her transition to speaking about her experiences at a time when there were only a few public forms of engagement with this topic beyond a marginal, scientific discourse. The mode is based on biographical practices and strategies of processing these experiences with the help of confronting the abusive parents and working with self-help groups for many years. It is interwoven with a positioning with which the biographer distances herself from a psychological-medical subject position of an “incurably ill” person. On the one hand, she positions herself as a person affected by severe trauma and dissociative amnesia, while simultaneously and in contrast, she distances herself from the accompanying discursive pattern of the psychological-medical interpretation that she is thus quasi-incurably ill. In contrast, the experience is thematized as something that can heal and help others.

Well, I think many doctors say that trauma can’t be cured or that it can’t be healed or something. That’s just not true, is it? So, in any case, I say that trauma can be cured. (Interview with Susanne, line 2325)

[…] I have the feeling that you can outgrow it, this abuse, and then you also become stronger in a certain way. So, the/ um I wouldn’t have been able to talk like that before, yes? I can also help others now. (Interview with Susanne, line 2206)

The research, of which Susanne‘s story is part, identified and described three forms of articulation used by persons affected by childhood sexual violence. These forms of articulation of sexual violence, condensed on the basis of the case reconstructions, answer the question of how those affected speak about their experiences and how they refer to social discourses by doing so. They not only provide information about the individual transition to speaking after sexual violence, but also about the time-dependent, discursive, and social influences which affect the way people express themselves as affected by this form of violence.

Within the framework of the discourse sketch, it could also be made clear that discourses on sexualized violence tend to be circular rather than progressive and are permeated by gender-specific, individualizing, as well as stigmatizing patterns of interpretation and bodies of knowledge, which point not only - but also - to the dominance of psychological-medical, but also pedagogical professional discourses. Possibilities of identification and positioning beyond normative and stigmatizing patterns of interpretation and subject positions, such as – in Susanne’s case – that of the incurably traumatized person who only “late” in life remembers the sexual violence experiences of childhood, seem rare for those affected. However, it was possible to show alternative positionings and refer to them. The study shows that articulations of sexual violence as results of disclosure processes are as diverse as the life-historical transitional processes to speaking that underlie them. It thus also highlights the diversity of the ways of experiencing, dealing with, and articulating experiences of sexual violence.

The Case Study of Maria: Detachment and Attachment to Subject Positions

The following part focuses on the question of how detachment from and attachment to subject positions is processed in biographical narrations. The empirical example discussed here is extracted from the unpublished study on interdependencies of educational choices using the example of persons returning to school in adulthood in order to obtain a high school diploma.Footnote 3 In light of educational inequalities based on social background, Noreen Eberle analyzes how people for whom achieving a high school diploma and attending university was not self-evident – that is, those for whom a standard education was assimilated with a lower secondary education or a secondary school certificate followed by professional training – embed their decision-making processes around making up their high school diploma (Abitur) later on. Accordingly, their biographies are particularly suited to demonstrating the negotiation and construction processes between (1) preconceived social role models, (2) institutional restrictions and (3) the reproduction of inequalities when it comes to educational decisions.

Through case reconstructions it became apparent that the interviewees both implicitly and explicitly emphasized their abilities to act and decide, along with their self-determination, throughout their biographical narratives, namely in decision-making processes regarding transitional phases in the life course and in non-standard transitions that are not necessarily expected in the “normal life course” (as described by Kohli). During the case reconstructions, the analytical question of how to theoretically embed and describe decision-making processes in biographical narratives arose. Martin Seel’s concept of self-determination (Seel, 2002, 2014) has proven to be a fruitful theoretical approach which grasps decision-making processes as multi-agential, socially embedded processes. Although Seel does not explicitly refer to biographical articulation and “subject positions” in the sense of Hall (see part 2), his concept of “decision making processes” is analytically connectable to these. Seel outlines that subjects cannot think and act either freely or determinately, but in dependency structures of recognition: in decision-making processes we are subsequently “[...] guided by possibilities in which we have open margins. In determining, we allow ourselves to be determined.” (Seel, 2014, 7 et seqq.)

These possibilities do not exist in a vacuum, but unfold in a historically and culturally predefined world “[...] in which all biographical experience is always in a context of social experience.” (Seel, 2002, 293). Subsequent possibilities “[...] cannot be invented straight away, they have to be found through conscious interaction with the world. Letting oneself be addressed by possibilities of the respective historical world is thereby not only a prerequisite and a consequence of practical determination; and it is more than just a procedure; it is almost its whole meaning.” (Seel, 2002, 291).

Whereas Seel does not explicitly refer to discourses which constitute subject positions, his concept of “being addressed by possibilities” shows remarkable similarities to Althussers’ concept of interpellation.

The question to be dealt with in the following empirical example extracted from the case reconstruction of Maria is how and to what extent the ability to make decisions (c.f. Seel, 2002, 2014) is marked in biographical narratives, in light of sometimes restrictive institutional settings and notions of normality, and under which premises detachment from and attachment to subject positions takes place.

Maria grows up in a fundamentalist Christian community and remains an active member until the age of 30. The incorporation of cultural capital and (school) education is attributed value within neither her family nor the religious community. As a woman in this religiously conservative environment, she finds no recognition for the acquisition of educational capital that she is striving for. Maria’s earliest memories of her childhood are already marked by experiences of rejection because of her striving for education:

And you don’t strive for higher school qualifications like the Abitur (slaps the table with the flat of her hand), although there are people ‘who aren’t stupid’, um, but they were all such worldly things, that you don’t need (Interviewer: “Yes.”). The men become craftsmen or women something (quite) normal (Interviewer: “Mmhm.”). Um-, you just have your, your, uh your, you have your family and ne, and the community, and that’s enough (speaks faster). (Maria, 2017, interview 1, p. 8, l. 8–13)

Later in her life Maria works in the administrative field and describes the constant switching between the attributed subject position by the strict family structures on the one hand and her job in the public sector on the other as a balancing act between “two parallel existences” (Maria, 2017, interview 1, p. l. 12, 5–6). Since her early childhood Maria has incorporated the ability to work hard physically in the household – a field of competence she cannot put to use in her everyday professional life as an administrative specialist, and she fails to compensate for her self-attested lack of professional profile through hard work. Her intellectual abilities are neither encouraged by her employer nor recognized by the community or family.

Maria links her narratives regarding the decision to enroll as a pupil at night school to processes of detachment from both her family and religious structures as well as her work environment: Maria can neither act out her joy of intellectual activity within the family/church setting nor in her job. This lack of a suitable counterpart leads to dissonances between external and incarnated structures (c.f. El-Mafaalani, 2017) and finally results in her leaving the religious community, breaking off contact with her family, and seeing a therapist who attests to her above-average talent. Through the processes of detachment from the church and family milieu, the external reassurance of her intellectual potential, and her enrollment in night school, Maria succeeds in (re)establishing a sense of self-determination:

And then it was one of those spontaneous decisions and I knew that I was going to make it (Interviewer: “Mmhm.”) [...] And then I... uh, I registered [at night school, note from the author] and went there with the idea, I... stop when I want (?). I do it as long as I enjoy it (Interviewer: “Yes.”) and when I don’t want to go there anymore, I decide to stop and then I’ve decided to stop and then I’ve decided about it and not anyone else. (Maria, 2017, interview 1, p. 5, l. 19–22)

The self-determined aspects she focuses on in the interview with regard to attending night school can be identified as a counter to the control that she felt was exerted upon her by her family, religious community, and work environment. Although Maria ties the acquisition of the Abitur to the possibility of being able to study medicine, the joy of intellectual activity appears as taking precedence over the principle of achievement (“I’ll do it for as long as I enjoy it”).

Despite the institutional setting of the evening high school, which she describes as restrictive, Maria uses her catching-up school time as a space where recognition is granted, both with regard to her person and her intellectual abilities: “Um, and of course it makes me happy to get feedback now at school, from the teachers and so on (speaks faster). That, to be seen and and the potential, um.” (Maria, 2017, interview 1, p. 25, l. 28–30).

Maria describes her time at night school as a space for development, in which she experiences being “seen” and recognized for the first time in her life. The time at night school is identified as a catalyst for emancipation processes, (re)orientation, and demarcation from others.

In the presented case study, the narration on the decision to acquire a high school diploma is accompanied by narrations of detachment from (overcome) subject positions that are no longer perceived as coherent and attachment to (new) subject positions that seem to be more appropriate. It is shown that attributed subject positions (e.g., by family, friends and peers as well as institutions) do not necessarily run in one direction, but rather, processes of distancing oneself from perceived normative ideas coming from the biographers’ environment take place. In order to continue her educational journey, Maria has to negate the subject positions attributed by her milieu of origin; she can adopt new subject positions only for the price of giving up overcome subject positions, which ultimately means breaking off contact with her entire milieu of origin. The empirical example shows that these processes of detachment and appropriation can sometimes be painful and precarious. Subsequently decisions were neither made “freely” nor “spontaneously”, but within complex (social) interdependencies of recognition, acceptance and appreciation.

The Case Study of Sascha: A Search for Alternative Social Positioning Within Politicization

The third empirical example is focused on the process of biographical articulation as a search for alternative social positioning within politicization on the left, and is taken from a study analyzing how and why young people become politically active on the left. To answer this question, narrative interviews with politically active young people who positioned themselves as active in different segments of the left wing were conducted and analyzed. Even though the study did not have a discourse-analytical approach, the concepts of articulation as described here (see part two of this article) can give some insights into the structural aspects of biographical articulation as a search for alternative social positioning within politicization. In the following, the case of Sascha will be presented. Some of the structural aspects of politicization will be illustrated using this case, and then those aspects will be reframed by “articulation”. A short summary of the process of searching for alternative social positioning within politicization will be presented as a form of biographical articulation.

Sascha grows up in a family of low education in a rural area. In his young life he faces violence within his family and the separation of his parents. Furthermore, he experiences bullying by the boys in his football club and school and sexual violence by a friend of his parents. During this period of time, around the age of 13, Sascha becomes involved in the punk movement. After his mother’s remarriage when Sascha is 15 years old, the family moves to a bigger city where Sascha spends some time in a psychiatric hospital. A few weeks after he is released, he becomes active in a left-wing youth organization, and comes into contact with the queer and antifascist radical left. He describes his life being completely transformed by that experience. At the time of the interview, Sascha is 21 years old, has started studying in the social sector, identifies himself as “herself”, as a woman, and lives in a leftist housing project.

Sascha has been in his young life confronted with exclusion and violence, especially in institutions such as family and school. In school, she explains, she has been bullied, “because suddenly I belonged to the uncool ones; [...] no one wanted to spend time with me, I walked around all alone and hoped that no one would see me, no one would hear me, and that they would just ignore me.” In her youth Sascha felt as though being a ‘real man’ was something demanded of her, and when she was unable to live up to or conform to what that role entailed, was physically violated. As a 10-year-old, Sascha had been isolated and vulnerable and had no adult or peer group with which he could talk about his experiences. His life thereby starts with the inability to take part in a “normal life” and with the struggle to fit in as a boy in a male-dominated environment, as well as with the experience of failing when trying to speak about his experiences.

At about 13 Sascha starts to listen to punk music and wear clothes with spikes. He becomes politically active, in a sense, through aesthetics and music, and says: “Somehow I had colorful trousers, Doc Martens boots, listened to punk music all day long in my little village, and swore […] against God, the state and the nation.” (Interview with Sascha). This sequence shows how Sascha transforms through the youth subculture of punk from the young boy who was not able to participate in his environment into a person who does not want to. The researcher thereby concluded that in some cases politicization is performed by the “articulation of Not Taking Part” in groups, institutions, and ideologies that represent exclusion, discrimination and violence (c.f. Lütgens, 2021, 153 et seqq.). It could also have been read – following the concept of articulation – as Sascha starting diffusely to searching and try out other subject positions than the one into which he had been called to participate. These new subject positions allow him to show resistance to his environment.

Sascha’s life changes completely after he moves and becomes politically organized. Sometime after he becomes a member of the nationwide youth organization “Young Left”, Sascha is introduced to the queer wing of the left. There he comes into contact with theories about gender, sex, and sexism and recounts: “‘Gender’ was becoming very important in my friendship-circle [….], that I started [….] to think about the deconstruction of gender […] and everything changed quite quickly […].” (Interview with Sascha). Sascha learns during this time that the events that shape his biography, are coming together in the silver lining “gender”: his father attacking his mother, the boys bullying him, the man abusing him. Deconstructing gender and supporting LGBTIQ* thereby becomes the goal of Sascha’s political activism, and later Sascha will break from gender norms by becoming a woman. What the researcher reconstructed in her study of politicization as the “appropriation of transformative learning-experiences” (c.f. Lütgens, 2021, 161 et seqq.) could also be read – following the concept of articulation – as the process of applying a new, in this case political, discursive framing to her biography, and within that process choosing another subject position than the one into which she was previously a part.

Around the age of 20 Sascha is becoming highly active in the left scene and lives in a queer and antifascist housing project. She tells us about her collective:

These people have the same ideas on living-together, communication [….] to try to deconstruct society […] and to live these ideas as an example. [….] Because every time someone is facing [….] utopian ideas, saying ‚ “That will not work,” […] but when you just […] make it possible to live these ideas, then this argumentation is not working anymore. Cause you can say “Look, there it is!” (Interview Sascha)

This sequence shows how Sascha is now together with her group, producing and living new ideas on politics, forms of living, and being in relationship to one another. Politicization happens by “the making of solidary relationships” (c.f. Lütgens, 2021, 156 et seqq.); but in the light of articulation, this sequence could also be read as the process of Sascha producing and establishing those new subject positions not just for herself, but also with and for others.

Applying Hall’s concept of articulation, biographical articulation can be read as a search for alternative social positioning within politicization. This process is performed in four structural elements: firstly, the biographer is making experiences of being called into a subject position and affectively expressing the attitude of Not Taking Part. Secondly, he/she is diffusely searching for other subject positions by trying out other discursive framings for biographical experiences. Thirdly, she is choosing another subject position within a political discursive framing for oneself and, fourthly, she is establishing those new possible subject positions collectively with and for others as a way of “doing” politics. Politicization as a continuous, diachronic, and interdependent biographical transformation process of articulation does not stop, but goes on and on; there are new experiences to be made, new calls to take subject positions, to get experiences and new potential positions, etc. Politics, from this perspective, could be read not just as something one consciously does to make an impact on or influence society, but also as individual and collective transformation of established subject positions and the production of new subject positions by articulation, positions that in this case support marginalized individuals and collectives in their attempt to live in and survive society.

Conclusion

The results of the three case studies underline the assumption that discourses are powerful opportunities to gain a voice, to be able to speak and/or to transition into new subject positions. In the empirical cases three dominant modes of biographical articulation as nurturing discourses and subject positioning were discovered:

In the first example, the case of Susanne, the process of articulation is understood as the possibility to construct an identity-forming and progressive positioning as a person who is affected by sexual violence. In confrontation with discourses on the necessity of investigating sexual abuse, the linking of one’s own person with these discourses opens up the possibility of speaking. At the same time, the confrontation with these discourses requires affected persons to position themselves in the face of potential attribution of a victim status, making it necessary to defend themselves against being pathologized by the medical discourse and social stigmatization.

The second example, the case of Maria, showed that opposing subject positions can also become precarious. In this case self-initiated biographical change becomes visible as something in which the abandonment of no-longer sustainable subject positions is felt as a painful process. Articulation in Maria’s case goes hand in hand with parting and the loss of strong family ties. Even though articulation can be understood as something that refers to a wide range of possibilities in the alternation of articulating and rearticulation, this biographical case shows how much articulation is related to the structures of and the struggle for recognition.

In Sascha’s case we can see how articulation can be understood as testing and creating new subject positions by taking on a pioneering role. Living in a collective framed as politically left-wing gives Sascha the chance to position herself in a radical new way within an intertwining of an individual and collective politicization process. The case analysis also underscores that political collectives still hold to the idea that the private is political (and vice versa) and that articulation could thereby be read as one personal and collective step in changing the society, for example facing and confronting gender identities.

The recourse to a concept of biographical articulation requires carefully identifying and justifying the biographically relevant positioning processes against the background of a diverse universe of other possible subject positions and offerings. Three different modes of articulation were identified in the empirical cases: in the first case recognition and recall, in the second detachment and attachment and in the third the search for alternative social positioning. These three modes of articulation can be read as patterns of biographical articulation and have in common that they work as engines for transitions in the life course. Through the change of reference points, such as discursive fragments, appearances of new peers and new institutional settings, different modes of articulation open up. The reformulation of biographical patterns as forms of articulation refers significantly to the possibilities of taking up new subject positions in a life course, especially in biographical turning points, but always in relation to social (im-)possibility structures. Specific discourses open up possibilities at the price of becoming entangled in some and detached from others. In a biographical context, articulation can therefore be described as a way of finding a new language for existential biographical questions, the searching and following of a path and while doing so and repositioning oneself in a different way in order to accomplish transitions.