This work features essays by leading feminist scholars from a variety of disciplines on the developments in autobiographical studies. The central questions addressed include whether autobiography is a genre, and if so what it consists of, and whether autobiography is the product of an internal urge, or of external forms and pressures. The collection is structured around th
This work features essays by leading feminist scholars from a variety of disciplines on the developments in autobiographical studies. The central questions addressed include whether autobiography is a genre, and if so what it consists of, and whether autobiography is the product of an internal urge, or of external forms and pressures. The collection is structured around the inter-linked concepts of genre, inter-subjectivity and memory. Whilst exemplifying the very different levels of autobiographical activity going on in feminist studies, the contributions chart a movement from autobiography as genre to autobiography as cultural practice, and from the analysis of autobiographical texts to a preoccupation with autobiography as method. The detailed introduction situates the essays in the collection within the history of feminist engagements with the autobiographical.
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Paperback
,
288 pages
Published
November 30th 2000
by Routledge
(first published October 19th 2000)
Feminism and Autobiography
is a collection of essays on autobiography by feminist academics in a variety of disciplines. The book is organized around three concepts: genre, intersubjectivity and memory. Section one focuses on genre, specifically the different kinds of writing—different mediations—that can be considered authobiography and the interdisciplinarity of the practice. Section two focuses on intersubjectivity, which refers to both the relationship between personal narratives and public
Feminism and Autobiography
is a collection of essays on autobiography by feminist academics in a variety of disciplines. The book is organized around three concepts: genre, intersubjectivity and memory. Section one focuses on genre, specifically the different kinds of writing—different mediations—that can be considered authobiography and the interdisciplinarity of the practice. Section two focuses on intersubjectivity, which refers to both the relationship between personal narratives and public stories and the relationship between narrator and audience. The implication is that the subject can never be isolated; others are always a part of the production of a narrative. Section three focuses on memory, which the editors call intersubjective and dialogical: "Autobiography … depends on the deployment of an often shifting, partial and contested set of personal or collective memories." (p. 4).
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