Walking in the world of ruins : explorations in the processes and products of autobiographical fiction

I continue his [Sebald's] walks in the world of ruins, of what is dead. I continue his contact with a stimulating tendency of the contemporary novel, a tendency that opens new ground in between essay, fiction and autobiography... So writes Enrique Vila-Matas in his innovative text, Montano. In attempting to map this new ground, the processes and products of autobiographical fictions will be scrutinised with particular reference to questions of authenticity and voice, drawing examples from texts including James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which problematise genre boundaries, question the relationship between reader and author, and demonstrate how life experience now, literally, has a price. The paper will conclude by proposing the first steps towards a reading and writing practice where, in the words of Goldberg, ‘every page trembles, vulnerable to manifold incursions - of prior texts, of future accidents, of reading and writing’

Autofiction: The Forgotten Face of French Theory

This paper argues that, compared to other components of French critical theory (structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminism and intertextuality), autofiction has been less influential both in its ‘home’ country and in the English-speaking world. This relative neglect is ironic because, as the paper shows, those different areas of theoretical inquiry each helped pave the way for the development of ideas about autofiction, but simultaneously eclipsed them so that for decades autofiction remained under-conceptualized and under-researched. Having identified and critiqued a number of reasons for this belatedness, the paper then identifies two recent contexts that are more auspicious for the evolution of theories of autofiction. Specifically, it argues that developments in the concept of participatory culture (including audience research) on the one hand and the proliferation of various forms of historical and/or cultural memorials, commemorative events and public anniversaries on the other both provide meaningful contexts in which theories of autofiction have recently started to reach their full potential

Broadcasting the self : autofiction, television and representations of authorship in contemporary French literature

This work was supported by a research grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland which funded research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.This article examines the rise of autofiction as literary notion and cultural phenomenon in modern France. The past decades saw the rise of texts which not only challenge the convention of traditional autobiography and its reader-writer ‘pact’, but also integrate visual modes of representation in the fabric of the narrative, as tools and metaphors for the process of projection of the self that is autofiction. As television became an essential medium to promote and disseminate the figure of the intellectual in France, it has also been used as a tool to shape and manipulate the notion of authorship in life-writing. Drawing on examples including Duras’s televised performance and more recent texts by Beigbeder, Angot, Nothomb and Delaume, this article examines the use of the televised medium as site of contention for authors who have aptly exploited the potential of the small screen within and outside their textual productions. The conclusion asks if autofiction can be perceived as a literary equivalent of reality television.PostprintPeer reviewe

Exile and the (im)possible nostos: Greek autofiction and politics in the 1970s

This paper considers Vassilikos’ Γλαύκος Θρασάκης (written in 1973–4) and Axioti’s Η Κάδμω (written in 1971–2) as postmodern narratives of exile, against the politics of their time. What is essentially new about my reading is that it is informed by the theoretical discourse of autofiction — a term devised by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977. Αutofiction encompasses fictional texts that are at the crossroads between the autobiography and the novel. Both texts oscillate between the two aforementioned writing tropes and are based on the authors’ experience of exile. I shall investigate why two politically engaged writers produced “autofictions” during the final years of the dictatorship. Building upon existing argumentation suggesting that the political condition in Greece encouraged postmodern literary modes (Papanikolaou, 2005), I shall argue that Axioti and Vassilikos formulated a Greek version of autofiction avant la lettre in order to articulate the identity of the writer in exile

Autofiction and Fictionalisation: J.M. Coetzee’s Novels and Boyhood

This article tackles the issue of autobiography or self-representation in J.M. Coetzee's fictionalised memoir Boyhood in terms of the useful insights of fictionalised autobiographies to the study of fictional ones by the same author. I seek to resolve the tension between fiction and autobiography in the aforementioned works. My goal is showing how a fictionalised memoir with autobiographical value like Boyhood is a helpful tool for understanding and engaging Coetzee’s other fictions. Therefore, and using textual evidence, I draw parallels between Boyhood and other representative novels from Coetzee’s oeuvre like Life and Times of Michael K, Disgrace, and Waiting for the Barbarians. Among the intertextual clues I discuss are notions like desire/the body, animals, and farm life. The study concludes by recommending an intra-comparative approach to Coetzee’s works whereby we gain so much by juxtaposing one Coetzee work against another in a process of mirroring or doubling. This article is significant because it elaborates an intertextual model for reading Coetzee’s fictionalised autobiographies and ‘autobiographical’ novels against each other, and away from the muddle of existing theory and Coetzee criticism. The autobiographical value of Coetzee’s fiction is worth analysis, and genre distinctions between autobiographies disguised/fictionalised as novels (autofictions) and novels with autobiographical import are flimsy

Autofiction théorique queer : mélange dans le(s) genre(s)

La théorie queer et l’autofiction théorique sont intimement liées au renouveau féministe et à la résistance envers un essentialisme réducteur imposé tant par le patriarcat que par un féminisme libéral. En redéfinissant leurs rapports à la théorie et à l’action, certaines écrivaines féministes de la nouvelle vague explorent les nombreuses possibilités offertes par le discours postmoderne du soi. En regard de l’émergence contemporaine des théories queer, il est possible de s’interroger sur les transformations survenues au cours des dernières décennies en ce qui a trait à la bicatégorisation du genre (littéraire et sexuel) et à la refonte des identités (sexe/genre/sexualité) à travers trois oeuvres représentatives du genre littéraire qu’est l’autofiction théorique : King Kong théorie (2006) de Virginie Despentes, Insurrections! en territoire sexuel (2009) de Wendy Delorme et Testo Junkie (2008) de Beatriz Preciado.Abtract: Queer theory and theoretical autofiction are closely tied to a feminist revival and to a resistance towards a reductive essentialism imposed both by patriarchy and liberal feminism. By redefining their relationship with theory and with action, some feminist writers of the new wave explore the numerous possibilities offered by the postmodern discourse of the self. In regards to the contemporary emergence of queer theories, it is possible to question the transformations that happened in the last decades to the bicategorisation of gender (literary and sexual) and to the rewriting of identities (sex/gender/sexuality) through three texts that are representative of the genre of theoretical autofiction: King Kong théorie (2006) by Virginie Despentes, Insurrections! en territoire sexuel (2009) by Wendy Delorme, and Testo Junkie (2008) by Beatriz Preciado

¿Existe la autoficción hispanoamericana?

Este artículo da cuenta de una investigación, que se podría denominar, con palabras de Philippe Lejeune, de poética aplicada. A partir del concepto de autoficción, en boga desde hace unos años en la teoría autobiográfica, compruebo que en la narrativa hispanoamericana del siglo XX existen numerosos relatos que responden perfectamente, y de manera parecida a la de otras literaturas, a este nuevo subgénero autobiográfico y/o novelesco.This paper will examine a research that could be called ‘applied poetics’, following Philippe Lejeune’s terminology. Starting from the concept of self-fiction, which has been fashionable for these last years, I verify that there are a lot of stories in twentieth century South-American narrative which could be included -similarly to other literatures - in this new autobiographic subgenre and/or novelesque.Fil: Alberca, Manuel