Textual and visual selves: Photography, film and comic art in French autobiography

Textual and visual selves: Photography, film and comic art in French autobiography. Edited by Natalie Edwards, Amy L. Hubbell and Ann Miller Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Title Textual and visual selves: Photography, film and comic art in French autobiography
Place of Publication Lincoln, Nebraska
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
Publication year 2011
Sub-type Edited books
ISBN 9780803236318; 080323631X
Editor Natalie Edwards
Amy L. Hubbell
Ann Miller
Total pages 288
Collection year 2012
Formatted Abstract/Summary Autobiography in France has taken a decidedly visual turn in recent years: photographs, shown or withheld, become evidence of what was, might have been, or cannot be said; photographers, filmmakers, and cartoonists undertake projects that explore issues of identity. Textual and Visual Selves investigates, from a variety of theoretical perspectives, the ways in which the textual and the visual combine in certain French works to reconfigure ideas—and images—of self-representation.

Surprisingly, what these accounts reveal is that photography or film does not necessarily serve to shore up the referentiality of the autobiographical account: on the contrary, the inclusion of visual material can even increase indeterminacy and ambiguity. Far from offering documentary evidence of an extratextual self coincident with the “I” of the text, these images testify only to absence, loss, evasiveness, and the desire to avoid objectification. However, where Roland Barthes famously saw the photograph as a prefiguration of death, in this volume we see how the textual strategies deployed by these writers and artists result in work that is ultimately life-affirming. [Publisher's website]
Q-Index Code A3
Q-Index Status Confirmed Code
Institutional Status UQ

 
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Created: Tue, 01 Nov 2011, 16:26:21 EST by Meredith Downes on behalf of School of Languages and Comp Cultural Studies