Biofictional Histories Mutations And Forms

Biofiction, defined as literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, first became popular in the 1930s, but over the last forty years it has become a dominant literary form. Prominent writers such as J.M. Coetzee, Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Julia Alvarez, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, and Michael Cunningham have authored spectacular biographical novels which have won some of the world’s most prestigious awards for fiction. However, in spite of the prominence of these authors, works, and awards, there has been considerable confusion about the nature of biofiction. This collection of process pieces and academic essays from authors and scholars of biofiction defines the nature of the aesthetic form, clarifies why it has come into being, specifies what it is uniquely capable of signifying, illustrates how it pictures the historical and critiques the political, and suggests potential directions for future studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

Highlighting neo-Victorian biofiction’s crucial role in reimagining and augmenting the historical archive, this volume explores the complex ethical consequences of a creative movement of historiographic revisionism, combining biography and fiction in a dialectic tension of empathy and voyeuristic spectacle.

This book explores the contradictions of biography. It charts shifting approaches to the writing and reading of biographies, from post-hagiographical attitudes of the Enlightenment, heroic biographies of Romanticism and irreverent modernist portraits through to contemporary experiments in politically committed and hybrid forms of life writing. The book shows how biographical texts in fact destabilise the models of historical visibility, cultural prominence and narrative coherence that the genre itself seems to uphold. Addressing the fraught relationships between genre and gender, private and public, image and text, life and narrative that play out in the modern biographical tradition, Metabiography suggests new possibilities for reading, writing and thinking about this enduringly popular genre.

This innovative book reconceptualises Roman poetry and its reception through the lens of fictional biography ('biofiction').

Shortlisted for the AATSEEL 2022 Award for Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume (AATSEEL is The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages) Theory in the "Post" Era brings together the work and perspectives of a group of Romanian theorists who discuss the morphings of contemporary theory in what the editors call the “post” era. Since the Cold War's end and especially in the third millennium, theorists have been exploring the aftermath - and sometimes just the “after” - of whole paradigms, the crisis or “passing” of anthropocentrism, the twilight of an entire ontological and cultural “condition,” as well as the corresponding rise of an antagonist model, of an “anti,” “meta,” or “neo” alternative, with examples ranging from “posthumanism” and “post-postmodernism” to “post-aesthetics,” “postanalog” interpretation or “digicriticism,” “post-presentism,” “post-memory,” “post-“ or “neo-critique,” and so forth. It is no coincidence, the contributors to this volume argue, that this “post” moment is also a time when theory is practiced as a world genre. If theory has always been a “worlded” enterprise, a quintessentially communal, cross-cultural and international project, this is truer at present than ever. Perhaps more than other humanist constituencies, today's theorists work and belong in a theory commons that is transnational if still uneven economically, politically, and otherwise. Theory in the "Post" Era reports the results of Romanian theory experiments that join efforts made in other places to foster a theory for the “post” age.

Biofiction: An Introduction provides readers with the history, origins, evolution, and legitimization of biofiction, suggesting potential lines of inquiry, exploring criticisms of the literary form, and modeling the process of analyzing and interpreting individual texts. Written for undergraduate and graduate students, this volume combines comprehensive coverage of the core foundations of biofiction with contemporary and lively debates within the subject. The volume aims to confront and illuminate the following questions: • When did biofiction come into being? • What forces gave birth to it? • How does it uniquely function and signify? • Why has it become such a dominant aesthetic form in recent years? This introduction will give readers a framework for evaluating specific biofictions from writers as varied as Friedrich Nietzsche, George Moore, Zora Neale Hurston, William Styron, Angela Carter, Joyce Carol Oates, and Colm Tóibín, thus enabling readers to assess the value and impact of individual works on the culture at large. Spanning nineteenth-century origins to contemporary debates and adaptations, this book not only equips the reader with a firm grounding in the fundamentals of biofiction but also provides a valuable guide to the uncanny power of the biographical novel to transform cultural attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs.

Scientists, scholars, and artists consider the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences. Popular culture in this “biological century” seems to feed on proliferating fears, anxieties, and hopes around the life sciences at a time when such basic concepts as scientific truth, race and gender identity, and the human itself are destabilized in the public eye. Tactical Biopolitics suggests that the political challenges at the intersection of life, science, and art are best addressed through a combination of artistic intervention, critical theorizing, and reflective practices. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, contributions to this volume focus on the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences and explore the possibility of public participation in scientific discourse, drawing on research and practice in art, biology, critical theory, anthropology, and cultural studies. After framing the subject in terms of both biology and art, Tactical Biopolitics discusses such topics as race and genetics (with contributions from leading biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins); feminist bioscience; the politics of scientific expertise; bioart and the public sphere (with an essay by artist Claire Pentecost); activism and public health (with an essay by Treatment Action Group co-founder Mark Harrington); biosecurity after 9/11 (with essays by artists' collective Critical Art Ensemble and anthropologist Paul Rabinow); and human-animal interaction (with a framing essay by cultural theorist Donna Haraway). Contributors Gaymon Bennett, Larry Carbone, Karen Cardozo, Gary Cass, Beatriz da Costa, Oron Catts, Gabriella Coleman, Critical Art Ensemble, Gwen D'Arcangelis, Troy Duster, Donna Haraway, Mark Harrington, Jens Hauser, Kathy High, Fatimah Jackson, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan King, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Rachel Mayeri, Sherie McDonald, Claire Pentecost, Kavita Philip, Paul Rabinow, Banu Subramanian, subRosa, Abha Sur, Samir Sur, Jacqueline Stevens, Eugene Thacker, Paul Vanouse, Ionat Zurr