Contested Selves: Life Writing and German Culture (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture, Band 220) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1640141057 ISBN 13: 9781640141056

Verlag: Camden House, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

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's 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 "vulnerable subjects" 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. KATJA HERGES is a physician and researcher in Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University of Tübingen. ELISABETH KRIMMER is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Katja Herges, Elisabeth Krimmer

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Camden House
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1640141057
• ISBN 13: 9781640141056
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 324
• Herausgeber: Herges Katja, Krimmer Elisabeth
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland