The limits of postcolonial autobiography and the empowering capacity of life-writing for the postcolonial subject

Abstract

Autobiography and life-writing are two opposite forms to represent the self: while the former is inextricably bound to assumptions of coherent subjectivity, wholeness of sight and universal validity, the latter leaves room for doubt and contradiction and gives voice to the fragmented, inconsistent self. Therefore, whereas autobiography still bears the intrinsic ideology of its making and represents the ‘mainstream’ subject, life-writing proves to be a more suitable means for those who are not inscribed in this ‘narrative’, that is, the postmodern, the postcolonial, and the female subject. Starting with some foundational examples of autobiography, the present study confronts where the attempts to assimilate this genre to give expression to the postcolonial self have failed, in that they have appropriated the Master’s tools without dismantling the Master’s house, and where life-writing has managed to convey one’s self in a disinterested way, free from the anxiety to ‘representativeness’ that characterizes the traditional autobiographer.