Objects as Armour; Objects as Container: Form and Thing-Writing as Means of Balancing Disclosure in Life Writing

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2023, I completed my Creative Writing PhD, which included a collection of personal essays that explored the relationship between autobiographical memory and objects, but also depicted some of my own experiences of grief, mental illness and other challenges. While writing these essays, I became attuned to the ways such self-representation can be psychologically and emotionally challenging, particularly when it involves drawing on adverse or traumatic lived experience—traditionally a somewhat neglected topic in studies of life writing ethics, but one whose relevance is increasingly being recognised in scholarly and wider publishing circles. In this essay, I delineate some of these challenges, suggesting they can be grouped into two distinct types: anxieties or issues relating to the production of the work, and those relating to its reception, post-publication. Accordingly, I identify two categories of potential responses to these risks: those extrinsic to the writing itself (such as consultation with a psychologist), and those intrinsic to it. In doing so, I draw on my practice-led research, and the work of essayist Brenda Miller, to propose that writing autobiographically with or through objects may be one way to help life writers to manage and mitigate some of the risks of self-representation.