Autobiography after Wittgenstein

Abstract

Béla Szabados claims that Wittgenstein in his observations on the roles, functions and possibility of autobiography anticipates the death of the traditional autobiography and points to a way of transforming the genre so as to make it suit our present concerns. The article addresses Wittgenstein’s strategies in his own autobiographical projects. Szabados points out that the eclipse of the traditional autobiography, as described and performed by Wittgenstein, refl ects the exhaustion of cultural forms that previously shored up confessional practices, and this exhaustion can be seen in the changes to the autobiographical form that have occurred since Augustine and Rousseau.