Joanna Żeromska-Charlińska

The aim of this study is an attempt to understand the functioning of women in roles, the dynamics of epiphanies and the actions taken within the limits of the temporal perspective, and to approximate the phenomenon of biographical identity construction, peculiarly the category of excluded. It is also an attempt at depiction and understanding of life situations, revealing the boundaries of real visibility, provoking the questions: How does a person construct himself and what meanings does the person give to expressions of everyday life? How does a person make his world? How does the trajectory determine the boundaries of a person’s experiences?

The article is the reflection on a biographic study I conducted, whose location in interpretive orientation creates the opportunity to learn the perspective of the participant. Reconstruction of the trajectory of the experiences process reveals three phases: on the edge, in between and outside. Individual life experience is an element of the person’s biographical knowledge, his biographical thinking and initiates the individual’s reflectiveness, indicating the essence of human forces in shaping his biographical experiences. Retrospective defining of the life situation in three interweaving aspects leads to taking control over a trajectory’s dynamics –apparent causative activity, kinematic attitude – the struggle for survival, and static attitude – nonegalitarian optics, demanding for normativity of a person’s functioning. Peculiarly the category of excluded entity.

At the margin of life’s implication – biographical epiphanies of elderly imprisoned

Ageing prisoners represent for penitentiary institutions some kind of issue. Taking care of them is not only supervision but above of all holding medical care. One should find answers for the following questions: How should assistance be organized for condemned also for individuals with dementia? What are key factors in organizing such assistance? Regarding growing demand for elderly care in penitentiary, such questions cannot remain without answers. Subject of my analysis was senior after life sentence, exhibiting ability for functioning in a prison. Whereas subject of research was phenomenon of distinct perception and spending time by imprisoned, particularly a life’s turning points. Intention of researcher was extracting something, that was unperceivable. Text pictures biography analysis of individual, who faces critical moments in his life, interpreted by including them in the history about life’s turning points. Regarding depicted background, additional framework clarifying intentions of researcher working in the field of hermeneutics, was epiphany, used as genuine experience, dividing seniors’ life for “before” and “after, for “at the time” and “at present”