Life Writing Research Articles

Life Writings, Autobiographical Subjects: Exploring Colonial Narratives and Anti-Memory in African Freedom Fighters’ Texts

ABSTRACT This article attempts to give voice to freedom fighters who died during the struggle for independence in Africa. Due to their untimely deaths, they could not self-narrate their encounters with colonial subjectivity. Taking cues from Patrice Lumumba and Steve Biko, it argues that the unlikely documents of these nationalists can be (re)constructed as autobiographies by reawakening their muted self and deploying them as anti-memory to de-centre colonial grand narratives. Through Howarth’s autobiographical elements, Ngugi’s history typologies, and postcolonial autobiography, the article contends that the absence of autobiographies of some African nationalists creates gaps in anti-colonial historical memory and African freedom fighting literature. It affirms the significance of updating the colonial archive, considering the exclusion of overriding historical contingencies from its memory. The article also asserts the importance of constructing self-narratives for African social activists and using the narratives as countervailing texts against dominant univocal narratives in colonial archival memory.

Youth Life Writing, Networked Media, Climate Change: The Challenge of Testimony to the Future

This article examines some of Greta Thunberg’s life writing as an example of the creativity and ingenuity with which some young people engage with the identity category of ‘youth’ in their life writing. It argues that Thunberg’s activism uses personal testimony in order to amplify expertise testimony as an epistemic source that demands action on climate change. This strategic use of life writing produces a paradoxical, but seemingly effective, form of life writing in which Thunberg provides personal testimony to the future. The article analyses how this paradoxical form of testimony is produced by situating Thunberg’s life writing in the context of the social and political investment in youth as an identity genre central to understanding of the human life course, and to how political responsibility is figured in contemporary western democracies. Drawing on theories of new media as an affective site in which life unfolds, rather than being represented, the paper concludes by reflecting on how Wendy Chun’s argument that networks involve the twinning of habituation and crisis mirrors Thunberg’s argument that action on climate change demands that habitual ways of living and acting must be rethought in response to the climate crisis.

A Victorious Roman Holiday: Life Writing and Loving Beyond Boundaries

Immobile during the Coronavirus pandemic, I question the PhD I am currently working on because it focuses on life writing about frequent international migration in childhood. Feeling stuck and disheartened, I look for a little ray of hope in order to escape my Covid-19 limbo. Thinking about how the life writers I am studying would deal with recounting the past experiences of my mobile family, through this Creative Matters piece, I ultimately win endurance and optimism by telling my parents’ story of conquering love beyond boundaries.

Beyond Boundaries. Authorship and Readership in Life Writing: Introduction

On 24 and 25 October 2019, a conference on life writing for young readers took place at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. This conference was organised by Helma van Lierop, Jane McVeigh and Monica Soeting. The main issue of the conference was that of boundaries with respect to authorship and readership in life writing.

Faraway Women and the Atlantic Monthly

<i>Faraway Women and the</i> Atlantic Monthly

Mikhail Semevsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky

The article presents the history of business and friendly relations between F. M. Dostoevsky and M. I. Semevsky, an employee of the “Vremya” journal and the editor of “Russkaya Starina”, the largest historical journal of the 19th century. Semevsky most likely met Dostoevsky in the early 1860s, when the former became a contributing author of the “Vremya” journal and wrote two large-scale historical essays for the publication: “Tsarina Praskovya” and “The Mons Family.” Dostoevsky was familiar with Semevsky’s works even prior to their personal meetings and intended to polemize with his concept of Peter's time, as evidenced by the surviving sketches of the writer's critical review. The idea of a polemic was rejected when Semevsky became the author of the “Vremya” journal. Its editors, the Dostoevsky brothers, appreciated his cooperation and, as confirmed in the fee book, paid him more than many other authors. The meetings of Dostoevsky and Semevsky were reflected in the epistolary legacy and in the notes of Semevsky, which he wrote in the autumn of 1866 after the trial of the revolutionary Nikolai Ishutin. In November 1876, Semevsky gave Dostoevsky the documents for “A Writer's Diary”, requesting him not to identify the source. The communication between Dostoevsky and Semevsky in the last year of the writer's life is mentioned in the memoirs of E. N. Opochinin. The article provides an overview of Dostoevsky's letters of 1854‒1879, published in “Russkaya Starina” in 1883‒1885, as well as of memoirs of various persons about Dostoevsky, published during the life of the editor and after his death. Archival documents revealing new facts of the biography of Dostoevsky, Semevsky and their contemporaries were used and introduced into scientific circulation in the study.

“In came the self-evident and luminous little mess”: Ethical Life Writing in Muriel Spark’s Loitering with Intent i

Abstract Starting from a brief examination of Muriel Spark’s position as a Scottish novelist within the framework of her anti-essentialist, anti-authoritative aesthetics, my essay will take a seemingly abrupt, but in fact consequential turn to investigate the complex antinomies involved in her fictional representation of the lives of others. Although at home and abroad she is hailed as Scotland’s most celebrated author of the twentieth century, Spark’s writerly practice consists of regularly dismantling grand narratives or fixed, stable identities, often clashing with more localized or prescriptive views on the social and national functions of narrative. My argument, however, is that it is the very unease of her “Scottishness” that acts as one of the foundations of her literary ethics, embodied in her acute awareness of the antinomies involved in textualizing the lives of others. Spark’s shrewdly metafictional Loitering with Intent (1981) openly thematizes both the obligation, and the risks of telling one’s own and other people’s stories, performing a radical ethics of narrative alterity through its staging of the enmeshments of writing, (auto)biography and experience.

Struggles between Nationalism and Ethnicity in Eastern Europe and the United States, 1890s-1910s: The Life Writings of M.E. Ravage and Michael Gold

Struggles between Nationalism and Ethnicity in Eastern Europe and the United States, 1890s-1910s: The Life Writings of M.E. Ravage and Michael Gold

Elizabeth Grubgeld, Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland

Elizabeth Grubgeld, <i>Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland</i>

Epistemology of Prison Interpretation: Analysis of Hamka and Sayyid Qutb’s Political Thoughts

This article reviews the epistemology of the works of interpretation generated from prison rooms. Hamka and Qutb have similarities in their life struggles. Their presence in prison greatly influences the pattern of their phenomenal works in the field of interpretation, Al-Azhar and Fi Zilal al-Qur'an. The objective of writing this article is to make a typification through a hermeneutic-philosophy-based approach. From the analysis carried out, we find a conclusion that each character, even though both are in prison, both have differences and similarities in the character of the work produced. This can be seen from his interpretation of the verses concerning politics. A comparative analysis shows that three domains characterize the prison interpretation of the two: first, the interpretation is generated from a strong psychosocial aspect of the author's affection; second, the interpretation contains more explanations that are building a system of action; Third, the difference in interests in writing commentaries is caused by the external and internal background of the writer's life.

Contesting Lewd Banter at Work: Ottilie Baader and Heinrich Holek’s Autobiographies

This article argues that working-class life writings can be analyzed, not merely from a class perspective, but also as unique documentation of the particular purposes for which a worker constructs his or her autobiographical self. It then explores the autobiographies of two working-class authors who grew up in the late nineteenth century: Ottilie Baader, a leader of the German socialist women’s movement, and Heinrich Holek, an Austrian journalist and prominent Arbeiterdichter. In particular, this study focuses on the embodied self constructed in the two autobiographies, especially as these selves remember and reflect on erotic talk in the workplace. The article aims to answer two questions: 1) Which practical purpose do these narratives serve when they conjure up or condemn sexual conversations among proletarians, and 2) how are bodies implicated in the autobiographical process of self-identification?

Death Comes for the Poets

Death Comes for the Poets

Introduction: Life Writing and the Transnational

Introduction: Life Writing and the Transnational

Cross-Border Narratives and Life Writing: Émile Verhaeren by Stefan Zweig and its English Translation in Wartime

In 1910, the young Austrian writer Stefan Zweig dedicated a biographical study to the internationally acclaimed Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren. As part of Zweig's international publishing strategy, the study was translated into French and published in Paris a few months before it came out in its original language, German. An English translation was intended for publication at the same time, but was delayed until November 1914, when the First World War was to separate Verhaeren and Zweig forever. Zweig's biography permitted him to define his own European and cosmopolitan ideals through Verhaeren's life narrative. This article shows that one and the same text of life writing can be appropriated through national(ist) and cosmopolitan lenses within the context of ideological and political agendas. Zweig's biography presents Verhaeren as a ‘New European’, but at the same time as ‘part and parcel of German culture’. The publication of the English translation by Jethro Bithell in 1914 provoked criticism in the British press that was directed against Zweig's nationally biased perception and his alleged closeness to the Belgian poet. The example illustrates how claims of cosmopolitan openness are not always incompatible with a national or patriotic agenda. It also qualifies Zweig's reputation as the epitome of Europeanism and pacifism by providing new insight into his ideas before 1914.

Life Writing: A Literary Métissage During A Global Pandemic

As COVID-19 mutates and as our response to the virus evolves, this Literary Metissage documents our early reactions to the pandemics as phases or strands. Strand I, Navigating A Global Stand Still At Viral Speed, highlights our shock and incredulity. Strand II, Mediated: Slow Going - Virtually Alone, speaks to our slow acceptance of the situation and our readiness to begin adapting to it. Strand III, Social Distancing: Reflections Toward A Way Forward, engages with a phase of deep reflection and thought about the negative and positive implications of COVID-19 on and for shaping the social conditions of the world we live in.

Anxieties of Authorship, Critique of Readership: Mishima Yukio’s Modern Noh Play Genji kuyō

Mishima Yukio's dramatic suicide half a century ago ensured that his name would forever be associated with a certain fanatic imperialism, and largely fulfilled his own wish that he would die as a military man. And yet, he was until the end foremost a literary artist, concerned with the critical reception of his written works and preoccupied with his lasting reputation as an author. This paper examines Mishima’s portrayal of the celebrity writer, as well as the potentials and limitations of literature as presented in his oft-neglected modern noh play Genji kuyō (Devotional offering for Genji, 1962). It positions the play within the long history of prayers for Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, ca. 1008) that began in the twelfth century in response to the perceived ambiguous morality of the author Murasaki Shikibu (d. ca. 1014). Mishima's Genji kuyō provides a pointed criticism of readers, as well as anxieties regarding a writer's life and literary recognition. Though Mishima himself famously disowned it after its initial publication, Genji kuyō offers critical insights regarding the writing and reading of literature.

Agency and Self Expression: Fan Writing as Life Writing

Fans, fandoms and fan activities have been part of every culture from time immemorial. Homer’s epics, Plato’s work all could be considered in a broad sense as belonging to the larger domain of fan activity or fan ‘art’ as they are termed in modern-day parlance. This paper examines India Forums a digital fan community based in India for audiences and fans of Indian television soaps/serials and attempts to understand how fanfiction and fan activities within this forum act as means of self-expression and enable its fans to develop a sense of agency that is indigenous to the space in itself. This community is predominantly populated by women or ‘gender anonymous’ and function as a space that allows fans to construct their own voices, identities and thereby agency, which is most often restricted to that space alone. The fans though not subaltern, in the technical sense of the term, as they belong to the urban space, have access to a computer and can read, write and speak English although not fluently, are still urban middle-class women who have been spoken for and never spoken themselves; and India Forums enable these unheard voices to be heard. This reading analyses the dynamics of this agential space, the politics of this agency and argues that all fan writing within this space functions as life writing within a hypertextual metaconversational paradigm which is not necessarily reflective of traditional forms of life writing using notions of revisionist Freudian psychoanalysis and paradigms of life writing.

Prospects of Digital Dostoevsky

There were several epochs in history that have altered the life of mankind. The first epoch was when the oral text was written down. The second was when the German scribe Guttenberg invented the printing press, and the handwritten text became printed. Now text is becoming digital, and there is a natural digitalization of all spheres of human activity, including the legacy of Dostoevsky. Modern information technologies create a new type of text that not only preserves the advantages of oral, handwritten and printed text, but also acquires new capabilities. The digital text expands the range of sources, the volume of information, and stimulates new methods of studying the writer's creative work. Despite the fact that electronic libraries, which currently dominate the Internet, present digital copies of Dostoevsky's printed publications, new types of electronic publications and new tools for analyzing not only handwritten and printed, but also digital text, are emerging. The idea of Digital Dostoevsky is being implemented in Petrozavodsk University projects (since 1995), the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 2016), and the University of Toronto (since 2019). Lexicographic work on Dostoevsky's vocabulary is being carried out in digital format at the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article provides an overview and outlines the prospects for the development of Digital Dostoevsky. An important task of the global Digital Dostoevsky is the creation of national bibliographies and electronic libraries and publication of new sources related to the writer's life and work. It is necessary to create the conditions for optimizing and integrating the existing resources. The digital format allows to actively use new text analysis tools and information technology capabilities for research and educational purposes.

Arms and Letters. Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain by Faith S. Harden

Arms and Letters. Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain by Faith S. Harden

‘A Present for My Daughter’: Gender and Posterity in Victorian Inter-generational Life Writing

ABSTRACT This article utilises a unique collection of life-writing manuscripts to reconsider generational difference, father/daughter relationships, and autobiography in nineteenth-century England. Although stemming from a family tradition of life writing, Martha Ann Howlett’s late-Victorian memoirs render a critical image of her upbringing and promote a vision of social and financial independence for the next generation of women. These memoirs sit in contrast to her father Samuel Burt Howlett’s ‘present’ to Martha Ann—his series of autobiographical volumes composed during her childhood—which borrow from multiple modes of life writing that prevailed in the early Victorian era. This collection, which has never been studied before, permits an understanding of complex and composite father/daughter relationships as told through life writing. Sustained comparative study of the two interconnected examples of life writing reveals the opposing narratives of continuation and disruption in the family’s record. These manuscripts ultimately demonstrate the importance of generational thought to life writing’s power to self-define, and expose the gendered (though contested) understandings of work, creativity, education, and family contained within relational archives.