The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony

Leigh Gilmore

Published by Cornell University Press 2001

The Limits of Autobiography

Trauma and Testimony

Leigh Gilmore

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724343

Overview
Contents

About this book

Memoirs in which trauma takes a major—or the major—role challenge the limits of autobiography. Leigh Gilmore presents a series of "limit-cases"—texts that combine elements of autobiography, fiction, biography, history, and theory while representing trauma and the self—and demonstrates how and why their authors swerve from the formal constraints of autobiography when the representation of trauma coincides with self-representation. Gilmore maintains that conflicting demands on both the self and narrative may prompt formal experimentation by such writers and lead to texts that are not, strictly speaking, autobiography, but are nonetheless deeply engaged with its central concerns.In astute and compelling readings of texts by Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dorothy Allison, Mikal Gilmore, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jeanette Winterson, Gilmore explores how each of them poses the questions, "How have I lived? How will I live?" in relation to the social and psychic forms within which trauma emerges. Challenging the very boundaries of autobiography as well as trauma, these stories are not told in conventional ways: the writers testify to how self-representation and the representation of trauma grow beyond simple causes and effects, exceed their duration in time, and connect to other forms of historical, familial, and personal pain. In their movement from an overtly testimonial form to one that draws on legal as well as literary knowledge, such texts produce an alternative means of confronting kinship, violence, and self-representation.

Author / Editor information

Gilmore Leigh :

Leigh Gilmore is Visiting Professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at University of California-Berkeley. She is the author of Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Self-Representation, also from Cornell, and coeditor of Autobiography and Postmodernism.

Reviews

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat:

"Leigh Gilmore's The Limits of Autobiography is a fine addition to the body of excellent recent work in trauma studies, and is highly recommended for all working in the mental health disciplines.... The writing is extremely fine throughout, and the book is a rich cornucopia of literary and psychological analyses, theoretical sophistication, and interdisciplinary connectedness; these treasures can only be suggested here."

"Gilmore offers astute and compelling commentaries in relation to the social and psychic forms within which selected autobiographers told their personal stories in literate and unconventional ways.... Informative, thought-provoking chapters comprise this unique and highly recommended contribution to the literary study of the autobiography."

Susannah B. Mintz:

"Through theoretically nuanced, lucid, and insightful readings, Gilmore demonstrates the ability of narrative to transform trauma, to speak to a certain truth about the relationship between trauma and identity that goes beyond the exigencies of accuracy and objectivity that pertain to a juridical contect.... Any reader interested in the myriad interpenetrations of violence, the law, identity, family, and life writing will find much to admire in this impressive study."

Evan Watkins, Pennsylvania State University:

"Leigh Gilmore easily negotiates disparate fields of scholarship yet speaks significantly to all of them—from poststructuralist and feminist theory to medical studies of trauma. Her arguments are theoretically sophisticated and engaging, while her thinking about the individual texts is lucid, arresting, and new."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION. The Limits of Autobiography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Represent Yourself Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
2. Bastard Testimony Illegitimacy and Incest in Dorothy Allison’s: Bastard Out of Carolina Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3. There Will Always Be a Father: Transference and the Auto/biographical Demand in Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Heart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
4. There Will Always Be a Mother: Jamaica Kincaid’s Serial Autobiography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
5. Without Names: An Anatomy of Absence in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
CONCLUSION. The Knowing Subject and an Alternative Jurisprudence of Trauma Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 176
Keywords: Psychology & Psychiatry; Philosophy

eBook

Published: August 6, 2018
ISBN: 9781501724343