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Description
An exploration of contemporary life writing's dependence on different variants of the archive, this book examines the notion of the self-archive and how the modern emerging auto/biographical subject resists traditional narrative coherence and takes the form of a repository of self-contained elements.
An answer to the trend of biographers and auto-biographers to increasingly eschew narrative to accentuate the fragmentary character and nature of experience – the tendency to 'store' rather than 'story' the self – Self-Archives in Contemporary Life Writing defines the self-archive as an arrangement of auto-biographical material. From recollections and personal documentation to objects owned, these archives all posess components that have been selected, sorted, and placed alongside one another according to a specific system.
With each building block of the self-archive fragmentary and disconnected, author Wojciech Drag makes the case that so is the auto/biographical subject fragmented, unstable and elusive, defined by the data and objects they consume. With 20 experimental works of life writing considered, from Roland Barthes's auto-encyclopaedia to a digital biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the book draws from case studies from over the last 50 years, by authors from the US, the UK, Canada, France and Poland. Divided into sections devoted to texts that rely on the alphabet for their structure (the encyclopaedia, the bibliography and the index) and formats that favour arbitrary order (the list, the inventory, the portfolio and the database), this book puts forward new vehicles for the auto-biographical mode.
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Table of Contents
The rise of the archive
Conceptualizing the archive
Literary uses of the archive
The archive, the self and life writing
The structure of this book
1. The Encyclopaedia
The history and poetics of the encyclopaedia
Literary uses of the encyclopaedia
Roland Barthes's Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes
Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
2. The Bibliography
Literature and self-definition
The bibliomemoir
Rick Moody's “Primary Sources”
Brandon R. Schrand's Works Cited
Angela Genusa's Spam Bibliography
3. The Index
The history, poetics and politics of the index
The index in/as fiction
Alejandro Cesarco's Index project
Ander Monson's “Index for X and the Origin of Fires”
Joan Wickersham's The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order
4. The List
Definitions, types and characteristics
Lists in literature
Lists in life writing
Joe Brainard's I Remember
Later uses of the “I remember” format: Georges Perec, Harry Mathews, Rona Cran and Piotr Stankiewicz
5. The Inventory
Definitions and characteristics
Literary uses of the inventory
Inventories in/as life writing
Material objects and identity
Georges Perec's “Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four”
Nicholas Felton's Annual Reports
Steven Zultanski's Pad
6. The Portfolio
Definition and characteristics
Conceptual writing
Documental poetry
Dana Teen Lomax's Disclosure
Mathew Timmons's Credit
7. The Database
The poetics and politics of the database
Databases in life writing
Shelley Jackson's my body: a Wunderkammer
David Clark's 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein
Conclusion: We Make Archives Because We Don't Want to Die
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | Apr 01 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 9781350645462 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 4 bw illus |
| Series | New Directions in Life Narrative |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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