Search

Cet ouvrage de Michèle Bacholle est le premier à examiner des écrits autobiographiques de romanciers français contemporains endeuillés après suicide. Alors que les livres de Fottorino et Vigan permettent une réflexion sur la famille, la filiation et les secrets (aux effets pathogènes et transgénérationnels), ceux de Grimbert et Rahmani montrent comment l'Histoire (l'Holocauste et les massacres des harkis) a causé des suicides retardés. Charneux et Delaume ouvrent, eux, une discussion sur les enfants endeuillés après suicide. Puisant dans la psychologie et la suicidologie, ce livre montre les stratégies utilisées pour dire l'indicible et que l'écriture permet une restructuration de soi. En explorant le suicide et les tenants et aboutissants de ce deuil particulier, il lève aussi un tabou. Michèle Bacholle's book is the first to examine autobiographical writings by contemporary French novelists, survivors of another person's suicide. While Fottorino's and Vigan's books allow a reflection on family, filiation, and family secrets (with their pathogenic and transgenerational effects), Grimbert's and Rahmani's show how History (the Holocaust and the harkis'massacres at the end of the Algerian War) caused delayed suicides, and Charneux and Delaume open a discussion on children as suicide survivors. Using sources in psychology and suicidology, this book shows the strategies these writers use to tell the unspeakable and shows how writing enables self-restructuration.By exploring suicide and the ins and outs of its specific kind of mourning, this book breaks a taboo.

Based upon Ajit Maan's groundbreaking theory of Internarrative Identity, this collection focuses upon redefining self, slave narrative, the black Caribbean diaspora, and cyberspace to explore the interconnection between identity and life experience as expressed through personal narrative.

How do memoirists make their work interesting, daring, exciting, and unorthodox enough so that they attract an audience, yet not so heinous and scandalous that their readers are unable to empathize or identify with them? In Justifiable Conduct, renowned sociologist Erich Goode explores the different strategies memoirists use to'neutralize'their alleged wrongdoing and fashion a more positive image of themselves for audiences. He examines how writers, including James Frey, Susan Cheever, Roman Polanski, Charles Van Doren and Elia Kazan, explain, justify, contextualize, excuse, or warrant their participation in activities such as criminal behavior, substance abuse, sexual transgressions, and political radicalism. Using a theory of deviance neutralization, Goode assesses the types of behavior exhibited by these memoirists to draw out generic narratives that are most effective in attempting to absolve the actor-author. Despite the highly individualistic and variable lives of these writers, Goode demonstrates that memoirists use a conventional vocabulary for their unconventional behavior.

Le récit de vie, sous sa forme biographique ou autobiographique, porte toujours une histoire individuelle, mais une histoire individuelle située socialement, traversée par des références à l'Histoire. C'est cette articulation entre l'individu sujet et la structuration historique du social qu'explorent les auteurs en s'intéressant plus particulièrement aux pratiques (auto)biographiques en contexte de modernité.

Was hat Liebe mit Identität zu tun? Alexandra Kofler geht anhand von Interviews der Frage nach, wie einzelne Personen ihre biografische Identität im Licht ihrer Liebeserfahrungen erzählerisch gestalten. Dabei verbindet sie philosophische Theorien der Identität und Narrativität mit Methoden der neueren Biografie- und Sozialforschung. Identität erweist sich in dieser Perspektive nicht nur als ein Produkt sozialer Beziehungen, sondern vor allem als eine praktische Aufgabe biografischer Selbstreflexion.

Reconsidering the relationship between autobiography and self-portraiture, The Body as Medium and Metaphor explores the intertextuality of self-representation in twentieth-century French art. Situating the body as the nexus of intersections between the written word and the visual image, this book rethinks the problematic status of the self. Starting at the twentieth-century's departure from figurative and mimetic representation, this study discusses the work of seminal artists and writers – including Marcel Duchamp, Michel Leiris, Francis Bacon, Bernard Noël, Gisèle Prassinos, Louise Bourgeois and Orlan – to articulate the twentieth century's radical revisions of subjectivity that originated from and returned to representations of the word, the image, and the body. This volume will be of interest to students of both French Literature and Art History, particularly those who are interested in the interdisciplinary exchanges between visual arts and literature.

This is Volume V of nine historical works from the International Library of Sociology. This is part two of two looking at the history of the autobiography. Appearing in isolation as they do, autobiographies demand for their description and appreciation, a comprehensive view of the development of the human mind. This volume covers the development of autobiogrpahy in the Philosophic and Religious Movement; general tendencies of autobiography near the end of the fourth century.

Questions of space, place and identity have become increasingly prominent throughout the arts and humanities in recent times. This study begins by investigating the reasons for this growth in interest and analyses the underlying assumptions on which interdisciplinary discussions about space are often based. After tracing back the history of contact between Geography and Literary Studies from both disciplinary perspectives, it goes on to discuss recent academic work in the field and seeks to forge a new conceptual framework through which contemporary discussions of space and literature can operate. The book then moves on to a thorough application of the interdisciplinary model that it has established. Having argued that the experience of contemporary space has rendered questions of home and belonging particularly pressing, it undertakes detailed analysis of how these phenomena are articulated in a selection of recent French life writing texts. The close, text-led readings reveal that whilst not often highlighted for their relevance to the analysis of space, these works do in fact narrate the impact of some of the most significant cultural experiences of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust and the AIDS crisis, upon geo-cultural senses of identity. Home is shown to be a deeply problematic, yet strongly desired, element of the contemporary world.The book concludes by addressing the underlying thesis that contemporary life writing might provide just the ‘postmodern maps'that could help not only literary scholars, but also geographers, better understand the world today. Key names and concepts: Serge Doubrovsky - Hervé Guibert - Fredric Jameson - Philippe Lejeune - Régine Robin; Autofiction - Cultural Geography - Interdisciplinarity - Place and Identity - Postmodernism - Space - Postmodern Space - Literary Studies - Twentieth-Century Life Writing.

Gay men and lesbians present humorous and hard-hitting accounts of the need to belong... somewhere Why would a lesbian raised in a Jewish home have a sudden desire to be a tough-talking Catholic girl? And why would a gay man travel to Ireland in a desperate attempt to escape his hillbilly roots? Identity EnvyWanting to Be Who We're Not explores the connections gay men and lesbians have to religions, races, ethnicities, classes, families of origin, and genders not their own. This unique anthology takes both humorous and serious looks at the identities of others as queer writers explore their own identity envies in personal essays, memoirs, and other creative nonfiction.Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, intersex, and other sexual minorities often feel marginalized by mainstream culture and have a need to belong somewhere, to claim a group as their own. This surprising book presents stories of identity envy that are humorous and hard-hitting, poignant and provocative, written with energy, wit, and candor by many of your favorite writers-and some exciting newcomers. Identity EnvyWanting to Be Who We're Not includes: Gerard Wozek's King Fu-infused Chasing the Grasshopper Max Pierce's fantasy of being a Child Star that helped him through a troubled family life Lori Horvitz's Shiksa in my Living Room D. Travers Scott's EuroTex Perry Brass's A Serene Invisibility: Turning Myself into a Christian Girl Jim Tushinski's ode to Lost in Space, The Perfect Space Family Al Cho's unlikely identification with Laura Ingalls Wilder characters, Farmer Boy Irish-American John Gilgun wishes he could be one of those Italian-American Boys Joan Annsfire rejects her Jewish heritage to become Catholic schoolgirl Corinne O'Donnell in The Promise of Redemption Andrew Ramer's Tales of a Male Lesbian city slicker Mike McGinty's life with the cattle folk, You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Helen and much more! Identity EnvyWanting to Be Who We're Not is a must-read for anyone who appreciates good writingespecially gay and lesbian readers who know what it's like to wish you were someone else.

Much has been written on Simone de Beauvoir, one of France's leading intellectual figures of the 20th century. The sheer volume of her autobiographical writings testifies to her indefatigable questioning of the nature of existence and her personal and public engagement in the world over the best part of a century. This study aims to re-evaluate her extensive autobiographical œuvre, exploring its place in relation to the French autobiographical canon, and in the light of recent theorisations of autobiography. It presents readings which engage critically with existentialism, feminist theory, and autobiography studies generally, in particular focusing on the question of ‘autothanatography', a term developed by theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Louis Marin. A new reading of the autobiographies via the lens of thanatos is presented with questions of gender in mind, and the nature of autobiography as genre is also explored more fully with particular attention paid to narrative voice. Close readings of the autobiographical œuvre combine with contextual details, critical overviews and links to recent developments in critiques of Beauvoir's fiction and philosophy. The study would be of particular interest to scholars in the following areas: 20th century French literature and culture; Autobiography studies; Literary theory; existentialism; Women's studies.

Borderlines. Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Life Writing locates and investigates the borderlines between autobiography and fiction in various kinds of life-writing dating from the last thirty years. This volume offers a valuable comparative approach to texts by French, English, American, and German authors to illustrate the different forms of experimentation with the borders between genres and literary modes. Gudmundsdóttir tackles important contemporary concerns such as autobiography's relationship to postmodernism by investigating themes such as memory and crossing cultural divides, the use of photographs in autobiography and the role of narrative in life-writing. This work is of interest to students and scholars of comparative literature, postmodernism and contemporary life-writing.