Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: postcolonial literature in a changing historical frame
- 2 Postcolonial fictions of slavery
- 3 Postcolonialism and travel writing
- 4 Missionary writing and postcolonialism
- 5 Postcolonial auto/biography
- 6 Orality and the genres of African postcolonial writing
- 7 Canadian literatures and the postcolonial
- 8 Postcolonialism and Caribbean literature
- 9 Postcolonialism and Arab literature
- 10 Postcolonialism and postcolonial writing in Latin America
- 11 Postcolonial writing in South Africa
- 12 Postcolonial literature in Southeast Asia
- 13 Postcolonial South Asian poetry
- 14 Postcolonial writing in India
- 15 Postcolonial writing in Australia and New Zealand
- 16 Indigenous writing in Canada, Australia and New Zealand
- 17 Postcolonial writing in Ireland
- 18 Postcolonial writing in Britain
- 19 Postcolonial writing in France
- 20 Postcolonial writing in Germany
- References
5 - Postcolonial auto/biography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: postcolonial literature in a changing historical frame
- 2 Postcolonial fictions of slavery
- 3 Postcolonialism and travel writing
- 4 Missionary writing and postcolonialism
- 5 Postcolonial auto/biography
- 6 Orality and the genres of African postcolonial writing
- 7 Canadian literatures and the postcolonial
- 8 Postcolonialism and Caribbean literature
- 9 Postcolonialism and Arab literature
- 10 Postcolonialism and postcolonial writing in Latin America
- 11 Postcolonial writing in South Africa
- 12 Postcolonial literature in Southeast Asia
- 13 Postcolonial South Asian poetry
- 14 Postcolonial writing in India
- 15 Postcolonial writing in Australia and New Zealand
- 16 Indigenous writing in Canada, Australia and New Zealand
- 17 Postcolonial writing in Ireland
- 18 Postcolonial writing in Britain
- 19 Postcolonial writing in France
- 20 Postcolonial writing in Germany
- References
Summary
Introduction
The connections between autobiography and the postcolonial are profound. Postcolonial studies has brought political concerns to bear on literary texts, showing not only how such texts respond to structures of power and privilege, but also how they may play a part in creating or contesting such structures. In parallel, autobiography studies takes as its object a series of texts that cannot simply be addressed in formalist terms, that insist on their referentiality even as they form new subjectivities, both individual and collective, for writers and readers. Parallel battles over terminology, indeed, indicate intersecting disciplinary tensions. As Ato Quayson’s introduction illustrates, debates over the inclusion of the hyphen in ‘post(-)colonial’ arise from discussions over whether the term marks a temporal or an epistemological rupture. Auto/biography studies, similarly, has recently made greater use of the terms ‘auto/biography’ and ‘life writing’ as concepts more inclusive than Philippe Lejeune’s definition of autobiography as ‘a retrospective prose narrative produced by a real person concerning his [sic] own existence, focusing on his individual life, in particular on the development of his personality’, widening attention to a variety of forms in different social and cultural contexts. At the same time, others have insisted on the specificity of ‘autobiography’ as a particular modern genre promoting individual subjectification, and constituting a site of struggle over redefined individual and communal identities in modern society.
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- The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature , pp. 107 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012
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