Autobiography: Between Colonialism and Postcolonialism

自传：殖民主义与后殖民主义之间

• 批准号: AH/F00172X/1
• 负责人: Bart Moore-Gilbert
• 金额: $ 3.06万
• 依托单位: Goldsmiths University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF00172X%2F1
• 关键词: Autobiography; Between; Colonialism; Postcolonialism

My research investigates the ways in which autobiography and kindred genres are inflected by issues of colonialism and postcolonialism. The first part of the text considers how some of the canonical figures of western autobiography - Augustine, Montaigne, Rousseau and Roland Barthes - each use the non-western Self as a means to constitute themselves as both individual autobiographical subjects and representatives of their cultures. I will demonstrate that although western ways of understanding the Self - and modes of writing it -change radically between classical, Early Modern, Enlightenment and Postmodern times, an engagement with the non-western Self remains a constant in the historical evolution of the genre. No-one has yet noticed or investigated this striking fact, which offers me the opportunity to rethink autobiography in potentially radical ways.The second part of the text focusses on colonial autobiography, using the example of South Africa. Here the emphasis will be on the ways in which colonial conceptions of Self are in part constructed out of a differential engagement with (ideas of) the non-Western Self, which ranges from outright disavowal to a tentative recognition of commonalities with colonised Subjects. As empire comes to an end, I will demonstrate, so the boundaries between the colonial Self and its colonised Others are progressively eroded.In the third and longest part of the text, I will attempt to define what is specific to postcolonial life-writing and what distinguishes it from both metropolitan and colonial autobiography. After defining in detail what I mean by both 'postcolonial' and 'life-writing' (and why I prefer the latter term to 'autobiography' in this context), I will explore five key areas of investigation. 1. how conceptions of what Smith and Watson call the 'ideological I' vary within postcolonial life-writing and how they at times distinguish it from its western equivalents. I will argue that where postcolonial life-writing does seek to constitute the kind of 'sovereign self' so often celebrated in western autobiography, this often has a political aim, rather than liberal-individualist, agenda. The 'unified self' is thus part of the reclamation of a humanity denied to colonised subjects under colonialism.2. the ways in which postcolonial life-writing uses local or non-western narrative forms as a means of Self-expression. Thus one might consider the way that Indian writers draw on traditional texts like the 'Gitas' to structure their life-writings, or the way that Isabel Allende draws on the central American tradition of muralism to construct a narrative which is more organised round spatial principles than the temporal linearity favoured in western autobiography.3. the attempt in postcolonial life-writing to make the 'autobiographical' text representative not just of individual Selves, but of whole communities, even nations. Thus in (proto)nationalist examples of life-writing, the emergence of the individual Self often functions as an allegory of the emergence of the nation-to-be to which the writer putatively belongs. Moreover, the sub-genre often seeks to stress the collective nature of its production.4. the ways in which postcolonial life-writing functions counter-discursively by its widespread engagement with a number of genres which are traditionally seen as distinct from autobiography in the West. In particular, I will explore the role of historiography 'from below', 'counter-ethnography' and travel-writing as constituent parts of the genre. I will also explore the roles of fiction within the genre.5. in canonical western autobiography, the body is often approached in a dehistoricised way, paying no attention to ethnicity as an embodied fact of identity. By contrast, the 'raced' body is a central subject of postcolonial life-writing by virtue of the facts of colonial history, which made the body (and bodily) labour of the colonised a prime concern.

我的研究调查了自传和同类类型如何受到殖民主义和后殖民主义问题的影响。文本的第一部分探讨了西方自传的一些经典人物——奥古斯丁、蒙田、卢梭和罗兰·巴特——如何利用非西方的自我作为手段，将自己塑造为个人自传主体和文化代表。我将证明，尽管西方理解自我的方式——以及书写自我的模式——在古典时期、早期现代、启蒙运动和后现代时期之间发生了根本性的变化，但在这一流派的历史演变中，与非西方自我的接触仍然是不变的。还没有人注意到或调查过这一惊人的事实，这为我提供了以潜在激进的方式重新思考自传的机会。本文的第二部分以南非为例，重点关注殖民自传。这里的重点将放在殖民自我概念部分是通过与非西方自我（的想法）的差异性接触而构建的方式上，其范围从彻底否认到对与殖民主体的共性的尝试性承认。我将证明，随着帝国的终结，殖民地的自我与其被殖民的他者之间的界限逐渐被侵蚀。 在本文的第三部分也是最长的部分中，我将尝试定义后殖民生活写作的特有之处以及它与大都市和殖民地自传的区别。在详细定义了“后殖民”和“生活写作”的含义（以及为什么在这种情况下我更喜欢后一个术语而不是“自传”）之后，我将探讨五个关键的研究领域。 1. 史密斯和沃森所称的“意识形态的我”的概念在后殖民生活写作中有何不同，以及他们有时如何将其与西方同类作品区分开来。我认为，后殖民生活写作确实试图构建西方自传中经常颂扬的那种“主权自我”，但它往往具有政治目的，而不是自由个人主义的议程。因此，“统一的自我”是殖民主义下被殖民主体所否认的人性的恢复的一部分。2．后殖民生活写作使用当地或非西方叙事形式作为自我表达手段的方式。因此，人们可能会考虑印度作家如何利用《梵歌》等传统文本来构建他们的生活写作，或者伊莎贝尔·阿连德如何利用中美洲的壁画传统来构建一种叙事，这种叙事比西方自传所青睐的时间线性性更有条理地围绕空间原则进行。3。后殖民生活写作试图使“自传”文本不仅代表个人的自我，而且代表整个社区，甚至国家。因此，在（原始）民族主义的生活写作例子中，个人自我的出现常常是对作家假定所属的未来民族的出现的寓言。此外，该子流派常常试图强调其作品的集体性质。4。后殖民生活写作通过广泛参与传统上被视为与西方自传截然不同的多种体裁而发挥反话语功能。特别是，我将探讨“自下而上”的史学、“反民族志”和游记写作作为这一流派的组成部分的作用。我还将探讨小说在这一类型中的作用。5。在经典的西方自传中，身体常常以一种非历史化的方式来看待，不关注种族作为身份的具体体现。相比之下，由于殖民历史事实，“种族”身体成为后殖民生活书写的中心主题，这使得被殖民者的身体（和身体）劳动成为首要关注点。