FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES
Forthcoming Special Issue on ‘Autothanatographies’
Call for articles
Contributions are sought from scholars working in French,
German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and English Studies for a
Special Issue on the theory and practice of ‘autothanatography’.
Within the context of the socio-cultural treatment of death (cf for
example Baudrillard) the volume will focus more particularly on
the ways in which death informs autobiographical practice. In this
last regard, a recent comment by Jeremy Tambling in his study,
Becoming Posthumous: Life and Death in Literary and
Cultural Studies (Edinburgh UP, 2001) suggests that death,
rather than life, informs our understanding and exploration of self
in the present: ‘[i]t might be better if we started with the
assumption of death working through the living, and not
dissociated, therefore, from our sense of the present’ (p. ix). This
Special Issue will thus explore the intersections between
autobiography and death bringing together a wide-range of
authors and texts from different periods and cultures and in the
context of changing critical, literary and cultural perspectives.
Contributors may seek to address one or more of the following
issues, though the list is not exhaustive: the autobiographical text
as ‘testament’; autobiography as defence against death;
confrontations with mortality; negotiations of trauma (personal
and/or collective); theorists on ‘autothanatography’ (eg. Derrida,
Marin, Blanchot); death and the feminine (cf. E. Bronfen, Over
Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic); writing
endings; alterity in autobiography (death and the Other as
unknowns); existentialist autobiography; the Death drive in
autobiography. It is hoped that a variety of critical approaches will
be represented.
Prospective contributors are invited to send a 300-word abstract
as soon as possible and, at the latest, by 31 January 2004. Articles
chosen for further consideration must be submitted in final form
by the strict deadline of 31 October 2004. Articles should be
around 5 000 words long, including endnotes, and must conform to
the FMLS stylesheet, which is available on request.
Informal enquiries are most welcome. Communications via e-mail
are preferred, to [log in to unmask]; or write to Dr
Susan Bainbrigge, French, University of Edinburgh, 60 George
Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JU, U.K. Articles which do not find a
place in the Special Issue will be considered for inclusion in
general issues of FMLS.
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