Self writing marks a turn in development of autobiographical writing in which focus shifts from a complete, encapsulated version of writer's life story to a searching discourse that attempts to redefine writer's relationship to present. (1) One of consequences of move to self writing is undermining of discourse of mastery that previously characterized autobiographical subject. In self writing, image of self that autobiography had posited as triumphant, unshakeable, fixed for eternity, (2) breaks up under effects of conflicting unconscious drives. Far from being in control of their destiny, self writer submits to vicissitudes of a subject that has now become site of return of repressed, (3) where it is exposed to phenomena such as eruption of affect, appearance of symptom, and manifestations of aggressivity. The aim of this paper is to examine two twentieth-century French pieces of self writing, Colette's Etoile Vesper and Michel Leiris' Fourbis, (4) focussing particularly on signs of aggressivity that appear in texts. The assumption is that aggressivity is not an incidental effect of self writing but an important part of its operation as a process of reconstitution of subject. More precisely, aggressivity informs self writing in so far as latter consists of multiple identifications that self writer only partially understands and almost never controls. The mandatory detour via psychoanalysis will be brief. Identification, Freud tells us, is the original form of emotional tie with an object, (5) and as such provides earliest form of contact that subject establishes with world and others. Of central importance is assertion made by Freud and Lacan, and supported by other writers such as Girard and Borch-Jacobsen, (6) that to extent that identification lays foundation for subject's relations with others, it is based on primordial forms of violence. Whether one considers, with Freud, that process of identification derives from libidinous object-ties, as exemplified by infant who assimilates through ingestion objects to which it is attracted, or whether one follows Lacan in privileging mirror stage in which infant discovers with jubilation, then attacks with fury, image of a fully formed being that it recognizes as its own, identification is accompanied by a release of affect that translates in behavioral terms into a hostile, aggressive attitude. Colette's and Leiris' texts are constructed around such identifications. These include objects, people or situations that self writer selects because of a perceived analogy with aspects of their life story. It will become apparent that each of these identifications is associated with some form of aggressivity, suggesting that it is precisely through aggressivity that identifications are authenticated. It is through aggressivity, in other words, that identifications mark themselves as compelling moments in playing out of self writer's life and destiny. Such is case in both Colette's and Leiris' texts. Here, subject of self writing is characterized by a chronic sense of vulnerability that is explicitly related to their physical and psychological state. Colette is a victim of an incapacitating arthritic condition, while Leiris suffers from a morbid disposition and a pathological fear of sexual relationships. It is not surprising, then, that identifications on which they base their self writing involve narrative patterns that convey outwardly or inwardly directed forms of aggressivity. Colette's Identifications of Pain To begin with aging and incapacitated Colette, self writing is a way of marking out boundaries of her world and ensuring its protection. Her world, consisting of her small apartment and Place du Palais Royal that she constantly surveys from her window, is a world in which she is at peace, as she puts it, to write and suffer. …