Ghostwriting and the impossibility of auto/biography with Leslie Gardner (University of Essex)
A BSA Auto/Biography Study Group Event
5 February 2025 (1700-1800 GMT)
Online
About the Event
Ghostwriting and the impossibility of auto/biography with Leslie Gardner, University of Essex
Abstract
We all host multiple personalities, experiencing destructive collisions or eruptions of creativity. Many astute writers of auto/biography, and biography accept this universal psychic characteristic, and accommodate its effect on attempts to write about themselves and, as substitute voices, about others. As for one, psychologist Marion Milner explored the multi- perspectives of her Self and published notes, over years, tracking her thoughts, moods, even metaphors, as a form of self-therapy. What made her happy, sad, angry, etc? The first two volumes appeared as 'autobiographies' yet were signed off pseudonymously as ‘Joanne Fields’. In later books, she used her own name. Initially, then, she effectively ghosted herself’. This seems the inverse of Gertrude Stein's 'The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas' : Stein's own life as if by another... again, her own ghostwriter. The conclusion is that straight-up auto/biography is impossible. The Self never fixes down ... sequences are interpretive. Other figures in the monograph I'm working on, Carl Jung, Jean Rhys and Malcolm X, had the same negative reaction to the feasibility of autobiography. All those ‘I’s’ resorted to ghostwriters. Societal constraints impact as well. Although there may be different aims, those constraints figure in ways similar to a ghostwriter's. Standard sequences of narrative have dynamic impact too: conversion stories, revenge narratives, quest stories, etc. … in order to fulfill reader expectation. Is it the case that auto/biography is best conceived of as a ghosted form, no matter who is writing it? In this seminar, I will use ‘The Autobiography of Malcom X’, ghostwritten by Alex Haley, to examine these issues.
Registration
- Auto/biography Study Group Member/BSA Member: FREE
- Non-Member: £10
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