Open Access“I am she who does not speak about herself”: The Impersonal Autobiography
Author(s) -
Valérie Baisnée
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
european journal of life writing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2211-243X
DOI - 10.5463/ejlw.7.206
Subject(s) - biography , subject (documents) , narrative , first person , literature , psychoanalysis , pronoun , history , philosophy , sociology , linguistics , art , psychology , computer science , library science
This article examines how some contemporary autobiographies avoid narratives told from a first person viewpoint. Rejecting a philosophy of the subject that favors the first person pronoun over the other persons in language, Annie Ernaux’s impersonal autobiography The Years (2008) favors a mode of remembering that is collective rather than individual. But the narrator’s memories fall prey to a capitalist production system that denies the body while technology takes over the past, eliminating the subject as the owner of her memories.