Autofiction vs Autobiography

Phillippe Gasparini,Sakshi Tandon & S.B.Nayak
pages: 4 – 14
published online: 22 july 2013

ABSTRACT
Every definition of autofiction includes a critique of autobiography. Early on, Serge Doubrovsky Justified his neologism by the need to surpass the Rousseauist model whose pragmatic specificity had been recently highlighted by Philippe Lejeune. Dubbed asobsolete, sonorous and illusionistic, “classical” autobiography was disqualified by the discovery of the unconscious. The time has come for the subject to take notes of its fictionality. Alain RobbeGrillet, Raymond Federman and Philippe, Forest pursued this process in order to distinguish their memorial writing from the single eyewitness account and Vincent Colonna claimed that autofiction cut its affiliation with autobiography. This policy of suspicion has some Involvement in ongoing self-critical vigilance exemplified by Doubrovsky. Conversely, it rekindles the debate on the function of literature by opening it to readers, journalists,judges,historians and sociologists. The challenge is not only the legitimacy of autofictional writing, but also its ability to hold a discourse on contemporary society.

Keywords: Autobiography, Autofiction, Self, Identity