Author: alphabex

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Post-ing Lives
Gillian Whitlock, v

This special issue of Biography may seem exotic. It engages with a series of concepts that are unusual in studies of life narrative: beginning with zoegraphy and ending with the anthropocene. It turns to scenes of auto/biographical expression that may seem bizarre: animalographies, bioart, narratives of chronic pain, autobiogeography. It embraces creatures, critters, produsers, and avatars. Its critical canon is not traditionally associated with studies of life narrative: Bruno Latour, Deleuze and Guattari, Cary Wolfe, Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Jane Bennett, Neil Badmington, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben. The critical issues, concepts, and contexts we engage with in this issue, however, are anything but exotic. To the contrary: what it means to be human is a question that is fundamental to autobiographical narrative, and embedded in the history of autobiography in western modernity. Around posthumanism an assemblage of work is emerging that is important for critical work on life narrative now, and the essays in this special issue suggest why this is so.
Continue reading “Biography, vol. 35, no. 1 (2012): (Post)Human Lives”

EDITORS’ NOTE

ARTICLES

“My Eyes Ended Up At My Fingertips”: Antoine, Autobiographical Documentary, and the Cinematic Depiction of a Blind Child Subject
Isabel Pedersen and Kristen Aspevig, 639

Antoine, an independent film by Canadian Laura Bari, gives voice to a blind, five-year-old boy, Antoine Houang, who narrates his life with stories, memories, and imaginative compositions. We argue that because of its basis in collaboration, Antoine extends the genre of autobiographical documentary. It is an autobiography by Houang, but it is also a documentary by Bari. The film uses tactics of each genre to construct a portrait of a blind subject that is enabling rather than constraining. Ultimately, Antoine affords both Houang and Bari the opportunity to create a film that pushes the boundaries of these genres to portray the life of a differently-abled subject who might have been barred from such a practice.

Continue reading “Biography, vol. 34, no. 4 (2011)”

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Introductory Notes: Performing Queer Lives
Francesca T. Royster, v

How are life writing and queer theory at odds with what we’ve come to expect in autobiographical narratives? The essays in this collection intervene in the traditional project of autobiography by taking as their subject the process of queered meaning making. Continue reading “Biography, vol. 34, no. 3 (2011)”