Life writing now holds a ubiquitous place in contemporary culture rivalling, overlapping and problematising distinctions between the factual records of life history and its fictional counterparts. This special issue responds to the rise and rise of biography, autobiography and memoir in recent decades, a popular explosion which has extended across every segment of a thriving market. Five broad categories frame the issue: the process of recalling and writing the past; the relationship between autobiography and fiction, the ways in which representation negotiates trauma, how to write the autobiography of political movements, and finally the way in which biography as a non theoretical form sets a paradigm for understanding of its own.
Contents Notes on contributors Cora Kaplan and Jenny Bourne Taylor
Editorial Alison Light A Child's Sense of the Past Carolyn Steedman On Not
Writing Biography Margaretta Jolly On Burning, Saving and Stealing Letters
Martin Ryle John Mcgahern: Memory, Autobiography, Fiction, History Claudine
Raynaud 'Flesh and Blood': Autobiographical 'Material' between Fiction and
Non-fiction Griselda Pollock The missing photograph: Charlotte Salomon Life?
Or Theatre? as the Encounter with Maternal Loss Lyndsey Stonebridge Hannah
Arendt's Testimony: Judging in a Lawless World Roger Luckhurst Reflections on
Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking Geoffrey Wall Talk About the
Party: Conversations with the SWP Alan Sinfield Queerstories in Brighton
Lynne Segal Who do you think you are? Feminist Memoir Writing Ray Monk
Biography and Theory Reconsidered: Second Wittgensteinian Thoughts REVIEWS
Gillian Swanson The Archive and the Detail Esther Leslie Art's Labour
BOOKNOTES Jane Mansfield, Jerome Hansen
Contributors: Jerome Hansen, Margaretta Jolly, Esther Leslie, Alison Light, Roger Luckhurst, Jane Mansfield, Ray Monk, Griselda Pollock, Claudine Raynaud, Martin Ryle, Lynne Segal, Alan Sinfield, Carolyn Steedman, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Gillian Swanson, Geoffrey Wall
