Autobiography (Critical Concepts In Literary And Cultural Studies) (V. 1, V. 2, V. 3 & V)

Autobiography (Critical Concepts In Literary And Cultural Studies) (V. 1, V. 2, V. 3 & V)

The analysis of life-writing as a distinct and specialized project emerged only in the second half of the twentieth century. That it has achieved both academic respectability and critical cachet over the last twenty-five years is the result of a number of trends. Politically 'progressive' tendencies, from the civil rights, workers' educational and second-wave women's movements, to the establishment of sociology, social history and interdisciplinary women's and 'race' studies, have appealed to 'experience', via the production and dissemination of personal testimony, life-narratives, autobiographical manifestos, as the basis for consciousness-raising and as a challenge to dominant accounts of the social world. At the same time, paradoxically, neo-conservative celebrations of individual choice, personal entitlement, consumer power, have reinstated the 'unique' self and its representation at the heart of many late-capitalist cultures. This collection