Critical autobiography: A new genre?

Abstract

Memoir, a genre that dates back, arguably, to Augustine’s Confessions, if not even earlier, is today enjoying enormous critical as well as popular success. In this essay, I discuss what I see as the most recent ramification of memoir, namely the development of a distinguishable new subgenre which I will call “critical autobiography.” Stemming from the long and complex tradition of literary memoirs, the critical autobiography flirts closely with fiction and literary criticism while challenging some of the structural and aesthetic features that characterize more traditional autobiographical works. In the course of this paper, I consider such challenges and their impact on the nature and classification of memoir. Grounding my analysis in genre theory (as opposed to strictly intentionalist classificatory strategies), I outline and defend three contra-standard features of the critical autobiography: critical autobiographies problematize the idea of an authentic confession, they refrain from causal narrative connections, and, lastly, they further contribute to the discussion on the nature of the self by providing a perhaps more scattered, but nonetheless compelling picture of what a contemporary autobiographical self may actually be.