Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation

by Leigh Gilmore

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Theory

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 1994

About the author

Leigh Gilmore is the author of The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women(Columbia, 2023), Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives (Columbia, 2017), The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony (Cornell, 2023), and Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation (Cornell, 1994), as well as coauthor with Elizabeth Marshall of Witnessing Girlhood: Toward an Intersectional Tradition of Life Writing (Fordham, 2019). She lives in Cambridge, MA and contributes regularly to WBUR’s Cognoscenti.

Reviews

[Theryn Fleming]

In Autobiographics, Leigh Gilmore argues "that there are not so much autobiographies as autobiographics, those changing elements of the contradictory discourses and practices of truth and identity which represent the subject of autobiography" (p. 13). In doing so she aims to shift the practice of autobiography from grand narratives (dominated by the Western white male) to the fragmented subjectivity of the individual. She notes that in autobiography the value of the text is conflated with the value of the autobiographer, that is, the only autobiographies "worth reading" are those by people who are already known (valued) for some other reason. Gilmore argues that the "autobiographical subject is produced not by experience but by autobiography" (p. 25). She notes that discourse focuses on the autobiographical subject as a real person, not as an author, or as a fictional construct of the text. The theory here, particularly as it relates to her interpretation of Foucault, is of some interest.

[Melodie Roschman · Rating 2 out of 5]

So horrifically wordy and unnecessarily complicated that it was a struggle to make it through and I ended up skimming heavily. The chapter about medieval mysticism was good though (much to my mixed gratitude and chagrin)

[srevans]

Shari Benstock, who has written personal criticism in her book Textualizing the Feminine (1991), was one of the first feminists to argue that tradition autobiography is a gendered, "masculinist" genre. Its established conventions, feminists have recently pointed out, call for a life-plot that turns on action, triumph through conflict, intellectual self-discovery, and often public renown. [...:] Arguing that the lived experiences of women and men differ -- women's lives, for instance, are often characterized by interruption and deferral -- Leigh Gilmore has developed a theory of women's representation in her book Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation (1994).

-- ed. Walker, Nancy A. "What is feminist criticism?" The Awakening, Bedford: 2000.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

SNOOZEFEST. I tried to make it through the first third of this book, but couldn't. This is what people mean when they talk about academic works as inaccessible and filled with too much jargon.