Lifework: On the Autobiographical Impulse in Contemporary Art, Writing, and Theory - Paperback

by Moran Sheleg (Editor)

Following the critical scepticism surrounding the notion of the 'self' as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists and writers sought to test the apparent problem posed by autobiography as both a traditional genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent emergence of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic and literary production during the late twentieth century and beyond, examining a set of diverse practices that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book's chapters connect a variety of artistic strategies that cut across medium, geography and time, uncovering how the historical marginalisation of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural and political implications in the contemporary moment and how the work of living might still relate to the work of art.

Back Jacket

What does 'lifework' mean? In his 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author', Roland Barthes described Marcel Proust's novel ? la recherche du temps perdu as a form of 'lifework' that changed how autobiography would be written forever. Barthes's words would prove prophetic, as the following decades saw a return to this much-derided genre, albeit through a string of artistic transformations that challenged, interrogated, and reimagined the notion of the 'self'.

Author Biography

Moran Sheleg is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of East Anglia