The autobiographical provocation: Witold Gombrowicz's Diary as a transformative text

buir.contributor.authorJust, Daniel
dc.citation.epage632en_US
dc.citation.issueNumber3en_US
dc.citation.spage610en_US
dc.citation.volumeNumber113en_US
dc.contributor.authorJust, Danielen_US
dc.date.accessioned2019-02-21T16:09:25Z
dc.date.available2019-02-21T16:09:25Z
dc.date.issued2018en_US
dc.departmentDepartment of Political Science and Public Administrationen_US
dc.description.abstractAn author's name on autobiographical texts has a different status from its pre-sence on works of fiction because we tend to regard the former as more firmly bound with reference, with more essential ties to the author and real events. According to Paul de Man, we endow writers of autobiographical genres with ontological identity that gives their texts contractual authority, rather than representational and cognitive identity rooted in tropes, as in fictional texts: we perceive these genres as speech acts that substantiate the author's con-tractual claim, and read them as verification of the validity of the contract and authenticity of the author's signature on it.De Man questions the belief that life inevitably produces autobiography, and asks whether writing about oneself is not 'in fact governed by the technical demands of self-portraiture and thus determined, in all its aspects, by the resources of [one's] medium?'He argues that autobiographical genres offer neither a reliable body of know-ledge to readers nor a definitive means of self-presentation to writers, as they cannot eliminate fictionality and provide closure and totalization.Unable to escape the tropological language of substitutions that haunts all literary texts, these genres cannot make language and what it names coincide.
dc.description.provenanceMade available in DSpace on 2019-02-21T16:09:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bilkent-research-paper.pdf: 222869 bytes, checksum: 842af2b9bd649e7f548593affdbafbb3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018en
dc.identifier.doi10.5699/modelangrevi.113.3.0610
dc.identifier.issn0026-7937
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11693/50460
dc.language.isoEnglish
dc.publisherModern Humanities Research Association
dc.relation.isversionofhttps://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.113.3.0610
dc.source.titleModern Language Reviewen_US
dc.titleThe autobiographical provocation: Witold Gombrowicz's Diary as a transformative texten_US
dc.typeReviewen_US

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