Performing autobiography 1st ed.

Author

• Powell, Katrina M.

Additional Author(s)

-

Publisher

Cham, Switzerland : Springer International Publishing, 2021

Language

English

ISBN

9783030645984

Series

Subject(s)

• AUTOBIOGRAPHY
• NARRATION (RHETORIC)

Notes

. .

Abstract

Performing Autobiography: Narrating a Life as Activism analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed in five authors’ auto/biographical texts, examining their representations of identities and the public implications of writing individual identity. Exploring the ways race, class, culture, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality might affect the form(s) in which writers choose to write (e.g., memoir, fictional autobiography, poetry), Performing Autobiography questions how autobiographers challenge notions of genre, truth, and representation. This builds on the argument that constructing identity is a performance, one that can simultaneously use and subvert traditional notions of rhetoric and genre. By examining the auto/biographical texts of Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Johnson, and Shirley Geok-lin Lim together, the book theorizes self-representation and genres as rhetorical performances, and therefore their texts can be seen as “performative auto/biography”—transgressive archives where readers are asked to consider their own identities and act accordingly. In doing so, this book contributes to growing theories in feminist rhetorics and auto/biography studies, arguing that these performative genres advocate for life narratives as political and social activism.

Physical Dimension

Number of Page(s)

1 online resource (xii, 209 p.)

Dimension

-

Other Desc.

ill.

Summary / Review / Table of Content

Chapter 1: Introduction: Intersections of Genre, Gender, Performance, and Rhetoric --
Chapter 2: Theorizing Rhetorics of Identity to Create Rhetorical Performativity as an Analytic --
Chapter 3: Zora Neale Hurstons Craft and a Griots Refusal to Conform --
Chapter 4: Audre Lordes Intellectual Body: Scripting an Embodied Activism --
Chapter 5: Self-Representation, Genre, and Performativity: Dorothy Allisons Performances Across Genres --
Chapter 6: Joyce Johnsons Alternative Beat Narrative: Women Outside the Fram --
Chapter 7: Shirley Geok-lin Lims Embodied Memories: Academic Autobiography, Genre, and Mentorship --
Chapter 8: Performative Auto/biography as Transgressive Archives.

Exemplar(s)

#	Accession No.	Call Number	Location	Status
1.	00889/21	809.93592 Pow P	Online !	Available