Thammasat University students are cordially invited to download a free Open Access book at this link that should be useful for readers interested in comparative literature, history, identity studies, and postcolonialism

The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms was edited by Alexandra Effe and Marie Lindskov Hansen and may be downloaded at this link.

The TU Library collection included other writing on literature and identity. 

As the publisher’s descriptive webpage notes,

This open access book offers innovative and wide-ranging responses to the continuously flourishing literary phenomenon of autofiction. The book shows the insights that are gained in the shift from the genre descriptor to the adjective, and from a broad application of “the autofictional” as a theoretical lens and aesthetic strategy. In three sections on “Approaches,” “Affordances,” and “Forms,” the volume proposes new theoretical approaches for the study of autofiction and the autofictional, offers fresh perspectives on many of the prominent authors in the discussion, draws them into a dialogue with autofictional practice from across the globe, and brings into view texts, forms, and media that have not traditionally been considered for their autofictional dimensions. The book, in sum, expands the parameters of research on autofiction to date to allow new voices and viewpoints to emerge.

In literary criticism, autofiction is a form of fictionalized autobiography.

Autofiction combines autobiography and fiction. Authors may describe their lives in the third person, changing significant details and characters while using fictional plots and imagined with real life characters.

The principle of changing the historical record is to arrive closer at the genuine self.

Unlike autobiographical novels, autofiction features a first-person narrative by a hero who shares the same name as the author.

Sometimes there is disagreement about the definition of autofiction, but it is generally seen as emphasizing the author’s work as a writer, and the creation of the book itself is usually mentioned as part of the narrative.

Among noteworthy authors of autofiction, most of whom are represented in the Thammasat University Library collection: Ayad Akhtar, Vassilis Alexakis, Sherman Alexie, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Christine Angot, Hannah Baer, James Baldwin, Megan Boyle, Aldo Busi, Emmanuel Carrère, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Durga Chew-Bose, J. M. Coetzee, Barbara Comyns, Cyrus Dunham, Guillaume Dustan, Annie Ernaux, Hervé Guibert, Elizabeth Hardwick, Christopher Isherwood, James Joyce, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Tao Lin, Édouard Louis, Curzio Malaparte, Henry Miller, Catherine Millet, Amélie Nothomb, Emmelie Prophète, Marcel Proust, Olivia Rosenthal, Philip Roth, and Ocean Vuong.

There have been extensive academic studies on autofiction, such as a conference in 2019, Autofiction – Theory, Practices, Cultures – A Comparative Perspective held at Wolfson College, the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom.

As the conference website observed that the term autofiction

has entered the theoretical vocabulary of literary studies as a way of describing the interplay between autobiography and fiction. Seen through the prism of 20th century literary theory, autofiction participates in the critical dialogue about authorship and identity and about the referentiality and truth value of autobiography. While the conjunction of factual and fictional modes in autobiographical writing has a long history, in recent decades authors have increasingly integrated self-reflexive commentary on the partly fictionalised constitution of the autobiographical self into their work. This has created new possibilities and conditions in artistic practice: the author seems to navigate freely as an orchestrating authority, making at times conflicting claims to factuality and fictionality in the text itself, and in paratextual commentary or performance.

There is no critical consensus regarding the term autofiction. Some see it as describing any novel with autobiographical elements, others apply more restrictive definitions. This conference seeks to bring together different theoretical approaches to autofiction, to explore the validity of the concept and to think about how different definitions and traditions influence our reading of works at the intersection of fiction and autobiography. The discussion thus far has been taking place mainly in Francophone, German, Scandinavian, and Anglophone theory and with reference to case studies from these contexts. In this conference we intend to consider these traditions in comparison and crucially to broaden the discussion to other languages and geo-political areas. We are particularly interested in exploring how autofictional texts negotiate and challenge concepts of gender, race, and cultural and national identity. In comparing different theoretical approaches and drawing on new case studies, we hope that the discussion arising in this conference will also generate a closer engagement with the term ‘autofiction’ itself, reflecting on different definitions, potential alternatives and its usefulness as a theoretical concept.

Speakers addressed such topics as Who is Afraid of Autofiction? Of Strange Loops and Real Effects; What’s Fictional in Autofiction?; Avatars as the Raison d’Être of Autofiction; Autofiction as Subject-Formation: Opting for a Restrictive Approach; Autofiction as Literary Strategy; Autofiction as a Reading Strategy: “dissolving margins” of Fictionality in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet; The Functioning of Autofictional Strategies; Playing Hide and Seek with the Author. Demarcating the Roman à Clef from Autofiction; Affordances of Autofiction as Term and Strategy; Fact, Fiction, and (Non-)Transparency: The Question of Self-Referentiality in Autofiction; From Private Quest to Public Commemoration: Autofiction, Postcolonial Writing and the Politics of Memory; Autofiction in Historical Perspective; Autofictional Modes in Contemporary Scandinavian Literature; Self Designs in Autofiction; Autofiction and Autobiographical Comics: A Narratological Perspective; Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais: Self-Representation and the ‘Power of Imagination’; The Author as a Fictional Character; Autofictional Modes in Francophone Literature; Living and Writing against Norms? Women, Autofiction and Self-Transformation; The Personal is Political: Autofiction in French And/As Engagement; The Diary as Radicalisation of French Autofiction; Autofictional Modes in Contemporary South African Art and Literature; Scriptural and Visual Autofiction: A Way of Representing and Understanding the Self; On the Subversive Strategy of Blending Voices and Languages. Samples from Danish, Swedish and German Literature; The Veil of Reality in Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle; Autofiction, Authorship, and Identity; Autofiction and Authorial Identity: A Comparative Analysis; Autofiction: A Francophone Female Aesthetic of Exile?; Autofiction and Literary Autobiography; Images of the Self in Barthes, Duras, Guibert and Ernaux; Autofictional Modes in Contemporary Anglo-American Literature; Autographic Inscriptions: Assertions of Authorship in the Contemporary Anglo-American Novel; Rethinking the Real: Autofiction and Critical Discourse in Spain and Argentina; Archival Autofiction in Post-Dictatorship Argentina; Archive Fever and the Return of the Real in Autofiction. Rethinking Recent Life Narration Produced in Spain; Autofiction and Postmemory in Argentina: Notes on First-Person Documentary Film; Autofictional Modes in Contemporary Egyptian Literature; Autofictional Modes in Japanese, Indian, and Iranian Literature; The Mode of Self-Reading: Japanese Female Writers and the (Re)invention of Autofiction; Autofictional Modes in Contemporary German Literature; Writing the Self In the Face of Its Disappearance. Autofictions in the 1970s; Some Versions of the Autobiographical: Autofiction, Autobiografiction, Autofabrication, and Heteronymity.

One keynote speaker, Professor Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, who teaches modern German literature at the University of Münster, Germany, stated:

‘Autofiction’ is a contested concept. The lecture does not intend to present a new or any normative definition of autofiction. It rather highlights shifting aspects of the autofictional and how they correlate: The first emphasis will be on the real-life effect of autofiction. The paradox of two conflicting pacts, the autobiographical and the fictional pact, will be a further issue. Thirdly, the lecture looks at the role of fantasy in autofictional texts. And, last, but not least, it suggests that autofiction be considered as an implied dimension of autobiography. Literary examples will go along with the theoretical reflection. On the whole, the lecture argues for a performative understanding of autofiction.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)