Contested Selves: Life Writing and German Culture: 220 (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

Product Description In recent decades, life writing has exploded in popularity: memoirs that focus on traumatic experiences now constitute the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide. But life writing is not only highly marketable; it also does important emotional, cultural, and political work. It is more available to amateurs and those without the cultural capital or the self\-confidence to embrace more traditional literary forms, and thus gives voice to marginalized populations. Contested Selves investigates various forms of German\-language life writing, including memoirs, interviews, letters, diaries, and graphic novels, shedding light on its democratic potential, on its ability to personalize history and historicize the personal. The contributors ask how the various authors construct and negotiate notions of the self relative to socio political contexts, cultural traditions, genre expectations, and narrative norms. They also investigate the nexus of writing, memory, and experience, including the genre\x27s truth claims vis\-à\-vis the pliability and unreliability of human memories. Finally, they explore ethical questions that arise from intimate life writing and from the representation of \x26#34;vulnerable subjects\x26#34; as well as from the interrelation of material body, embodied self, and narrative. All forms of life writing discussed in this volume are invested in a process of making meaning and in an exchange of experience that allows us to relate our lives to the lives of others. Review The contributions to Contested Selves demonstrate most impressively that there is a strong nexus between life writing and politics. Neither politics nor life writing nor the nexus between the two will vanish any time soon; it is to be hoped that books such as Contested Selves will continue to shed light on them. -- MONATSHEFTE About the Author KATJA HERGES is a physician and holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Davis. ELISABETH KRIMMER is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis. Maureen Burdock is an award-winning artist, writer, and teacher. Aylin Bademsoy is a PhD candidate in the German Department at UC Davis.