Herein is contained: An acknowledgment of that illusive, illusory and illuminating (some say skittish) expectation which I designate "impossible hope," and its usefulness in rendering the unbearableness of life bearable, the untenable tenable and the unthinkable permissible. An account of the author's physical, intellectual, semiotic, semantic and emotional struggles and those of several of her friends. An examination of the confessional as an inherent aspect of autobiography; yet, not inhibitory of creative, contradictory, farcical and fantastical potentialities. A collection of prose poems of the author's own making which seek to write sound, breath and body into autobiographical narrative. An argument in favour of recognizing the physicality of writing and of thinking vs. the myth of the disembodied scholar. A discussion of the objectification of the female sex and of female desire, and the increasingly ambiguous manner in which those whelped by and weaned from more traditional and conservative feminist theory, interpret these two. A plea for the incorporation of critically subjective autobiography not only into the curriculum, but into the personal praxis of pedagogues. An account of writing as a potential site for reclamation; a process whereby we might better survive the inevitability of loss. An explanation of the author's writing process, particularly as it regards experiential prosepoetry. A further and generally loving tribute to "impossible hope" and the sisyphean nature of living and writing. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Bibliography: pages 135-141. / In this thesis, I approach autobiography in Another Life by exploring the linguistic means Derek Walcott uses to set up subjectivity in the text. In particular, I respond to Emile Benveniste's question: "what does I refer to" by examining the role of the first person pronoun in Another Life. In chapter one, I introduce the problem of "being in the text", attend to comments Walcott has made about the self, review criticism of the poem, raise issues which concern critics of autobiography, outline Benveniste's theory of subjectivity and Philippe Lejeune's observations on the use of the third person in autobiography. A thematic summary of the poem follows in the second chapter. The pronominal structure underlying Walcott's autobiography and the "biography" of a West Indian intelligence is traced in chapter three where I relate Walcott's dual perspective to Benveniste's definitions of discourse and historical narration. In the final chapter, close readings of selected textual extracts demonstrate the complexity of language phenomenalizing the pronoun I in different sequences of the poem. The readings support Benveniste's claim that the I "refers to the act of individual discourse in which it is pronounced" and the post-structuralist notion that the "self" is a linguistic construct. I conclude that Walcott's I assimilates both romantic and post-structuralist properties.

This thesis endeavors to show how Charles Dickens revealed himself and his life in his works.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, June 2016 / The study explores the ways in which the self and other are constructed and represented in a wide range of Zimbabwean political autobiographical narratives from 1972 to 2011. In particular, it focuses on the machinery of autobiography and the various narrative strategies deployed by autobiographers of different races, gender, ethnic origins and political persuasions to construct the self and other. It also considers how these representations of the self and other, combined with the narrative strategies used, bear upon the history and politics of Zimbabwe. The argument is advanced that through strategic and careful deployment of narrative in transforming lives lived to lives told, the selected narratives not only reconstruct the self and other but also narrate the history and politics of the nation. Therefore, the deployment of different narrative strategies, which include the uses of: authentication, patronage of authorship, historical recurrence and narcissistic rage, erasure, palimpsest and collaborative voices, and hauntology has resulted in the emergence of a seemingly minor genre into a competing narrative that is threatening to take over the place of hegemonic grand narratives and histories of Zimbabwe. These have all along been largely nativist and based on racial, ethnic and patriarchal prejudices, especially in the manner in which they narrated the political history of Zimbabwe. The study thus argues that the machinery of autobiographies has been deployed as political weaponry to present bleached images of the self and other. This situates Zimbabwe’s political autobiographies as literary and political projects and archives that narrate the nation through the story of the self and other. / MT2017

Abstract not available

Rooted in his painfully fractured identity as an Arab-speaking Jew in the (then) French colonial Tunisia, Albert Memmi' s novels and essays evolve in a single autobiographical space. The author will explore and remodel this space from different angles in an attempt to resolve a double predicament through his writing, leading to a progressive (re )construction of the self, which we have called "autography". Memmi's double predicament - his shattered identity and his problematic relation to the Other - is revealed in the analysis of his first two novels (or auto fictions ), La Statue de sel and Agar, where an agonising deconstruction of the self first emerges. The autobiographical and chronological plot of these works is subverted in the third novel, Le Scorpion, where the reconstruction of the self through writing is downplayed and the Other is afforded some measure of alterity, while the writing, both symbolic and playful, becomes therapeutic. The fourth novel, Le Désert, pursues the reconstruction, reasserting the North-African roots of the author's triple identity, but hardly at all its Jewishness. In the last novel, Le Pharaon, the second dimension of the predicament - the relation to the Other - stalls and leaves Memmi' s novel writing in an impasse. This is the subject of the first part of this study. No further novels will be written. However, the essays - examined in the second part ¬starting with Portrait du colonisé, will proliferate, progressively asserting Jewish identity with Portrait d'un Juij and La Liberation du Juij. From the conflictive duo, the work evolves towards the pacific triad of the concept of dependence, where the relation to the Other progresses from oppression to mutual exchange. Henceforth, the dependence relationship will characterise the later essays, including Le Racisme. Through the essays, the omnipresent "I" gradually gives way to the humanist "we", enveloping the reader, who coincides with the Other and becomes the centre of the author's concern. This space granted to the Other is consolidated in writing of an increasingly fragmented nature. The discourse becomes sparse, in an apparent deconstruction of the writing, which, paradoxically, far from signalling a drying up, consummates the autographic project. / Thesis (DLitt (French))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Modern European Languages / unrestricted

Cette thèse examine le statut de la parole vivante dans les pratiques artistiques vidéo. À partir des années 1970, des artistes s’approprient le support vidéographique, se tournent vers ceux qui les entourent, ou parcourent le monde à la rencontre d’autrui, orientant leur caméra vers des visages, à l’écoute d’une parole. Ces vidéos relèvent d'esthétiques diverses mais un certain nombre de caractéristiques se dessinent au fil de l’étude, tissant des liens entre des projets d’apparence très différents. Il s'agit donc de dégager les enjeux qu'elles partagent et d'évaluer la contribution des plasticiens au renouvellement des représentations de parole. Le rapport que ces oeuvres établissent avec les structures narratives classiques du parler sur soi est d'abord envisagé à travers l’analyse des récits contenus dans les vidéos, et des stratégies adoptées par les artistes afin de questionner la construction narrative dans ses mécanismes structurels et formels. Puis, à partir d’un large corpus d’oeuvres, sont examinées les spécificités des protocoles d’enquête et d’entretien qui deviennent les conditions de la pratique artistique. Ces vidéos se caractérisent par une forme de représentation singulière qui révèle un réinvestissement du genre multiséculaire du portrait : un portrait parlant. L’étude d’installations vidéo contemporaines permet enfin d’examiner les rapports qu'entretiennent parole filmée et espace d’exposition / espace de réception d’une parole. Les inserts disséminés dans les pages du volume exposent la pratique artistique et les développements qui ont accompagné ce travail de recherche, instaurant un dialogue permanent entre théorie et pratique / This PhD thesis examines the status of the living word in the video art practices. From the 1970s, the artists use the videographic media, look to those around them, or travel the world meeting others, focusing their camera on faces, listening to a speech. These videos take on such different pertain to various aesthetics but a number of characteristics emerge throughout the study weaving links between projects that seem at first glance quite different. It is thus a question of identifying their common stakes, and evaluating the contribution of the artistes to the renewal of representations of speech. First, the relationship that these works establish with conventional narrative structures of talk about self is considered through the analysis of narratives contained in the videos, and strategies adopted by artists to question the narrative construction in its structural and formal mechanisms. Then, based on a large corpus of pieces, is examined the specificities of investigation and interview protocols that become conditions of artistic practice. These videos are characterized by a form of representation that reveals a singular reinvestment of centuries of portraiture: a speaking portrait. Finally, the study of contemporary video installations allows to examine the relationships between speech, filmed and exhibition space / reception space of a word. The inserts scattered in the pages of the volume expose the artistic practice and the developments that have accompanied this research, in a continuous dialogue between theory and practice

"Fame" is a series of poems in four parts: A., B., C., and &. The first section explores both the concept of autobiography and adoption. The second section concerns itself with biographical poetry as it explores Boar Girl. The third section aims to rethink the confessional poem, and the final section is a playful engagement with music and literature.

No description available.

Autobiography is a slippery genre, if, indeed, it is a genre. To deal with its slipperiness I use action research and qualitative inquiry to create a bricolage, an artist?s book, Tissue. Within the patchwork, stitched-together form of Tissue, digitised text and images (autobiographical stories, poetry, photographs, drawings and paintings) sit in varying relationships to each other. Also, I use poetic language and images to display aspects of the discourse of memory in digitally manipulated text/images where language and image are not illustrative of each other but are interconnected and equal, synergetic, creating new meanings. To simultaneously enhance the handleability of the pages and distance their electronic nature, I use a number of different papers and fabrics as the skins of the images. Using the ideas of Roland Barthes (principally) and others as reference points, in this exegesis Re-picturing my life, I address the ways in which the present is informed by the past; self, identity and the body; the function of memory, and its mediation and articulation in the narration of autobiography; the significance of autobiographical objects and landscapes, and the nature of an autobiographical author. I also explore the effects on myself, as a migrant, of the fragility of identity in the face of major social disruptions such as mutiple migrations, and consider whether the narration of personal experience through autobiography aids in the construction of a new identity that is more grounded in the new surroundings. In this exegesis I argue that, in this process of revisiting the past and reconstructing narrative, text and image in my artist?s book, I have both re-written and re-pictured my life. Yet, while this process of regaining and articulating my lost family information seems to have initiated some bodily changes, and, more importantly, appears to have strengthened and stabilised my sense of self, it has not alleviated my feelings of exile. Indeed, my feelings of exile and the absence of any single identifiable homeland have strengthened.