Cultural theory has often been criticized for covert Eurocentric and universalist tendencies. Its concepts and ideas are implicitly applicable to everyone, ironing over any individuality or cultural difference. Postcolonial theory has challenged these limitations of cultural theory, and Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography addresses the central challenge posed by its autobiographical turn. Despite the fact that autobiography is frequently dismissed for its Western, masculine bias, David Huddart argues for its continued relevance as a central explanatory category in understanding postcolonial theory and its relation to subjectivity. Focusing on the influence of post-structuralist theory on postcolonial theory and vice versa, this study suggests that autobiography constitutes a general philosophical resistance to universal concepts and theories. Offering a fresh perspective on familiar critical figures like Edward W. Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, by putting them in the context of readings of the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Alain Badiou, this book relates the theory of autobiography to expressions of new universalisms that, together with postcolonial theory, rethink and extend norms of experience, investigation, and knowledge.

Autobiography, a fully-recognised genre within mainstream literature today, has evolved massively in the last few decades, particularly through colonial and postcolonial texts. By using autobiography as a means of expression, many postcolonial writers were able to describe their experiences in the face of the denial of personal expression for centuries. This book is centred around the recounting and analysis of such a phenomenon. Literary purists often reject autobiography as a fully-fledged literary genre, perceiving it rather as a mere life report or a descriptive diary. The colonial and postcolonial autobiographical texts analysed in this book refute such perceptions, and demonstrate a subtle combination of literary qualities and the recounting of real-life experiences. This book demonstrates that colonial and postcolonial autobiographical texts have established their ‘literarity’. The need for postcolonial authors to express themselves through the ‘I’ and the ‘me’, as subjects and not as objects, is the essence of this book, and confirms that self-affirmation through autobiographical writing is indeed an art form.

At a time when concepts of identity and self-representation are abundant in both literary and cultural studies, Postcolonialsim and Life-Writing, brings together the two increasingly popular and important fields of postcolonial studies and life writing.

Arabic Disclosures presents readers with a comparative analysis of Arabic postcolonial autobiographical writing. In Arabic Disclosures Muhsin J. al-Musawi investigates the genre of autobiography within the modern tradition of Arabic literary writing from the early 1920s to the present. Al-Musawi notes in the introduction that the purpose of this work is not to survey the entirety of autobiographical writing in modern Arabic but rather to apply a rigorously identified set of characteristics and approaches culled from a variety of theoretical studies of the genre to a particular set of autobiographical works in Arabic, selected for their different methodologies, varying historical contexts within which they were conceived and written, and the equally varied lives experienced by the authors involved. The book begins in the larger context of autobiographical space, where the theories of Bourdieu, Bachelard, Bakhtin, and Lefebvre are laid out, and then considers the multiple ways in which a postcolonial awareness of space has impacted the writings of many of the authors whose works are examined. Organized chronologically, al-Musawi begins with the earliest modern example of autobiographical work in Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s book, translated into English as The Stream of Days. Al-Musawi studies some of the major pioneers in the development of modern Arabic thought and literary expression: Jurjī Zaydān, Mīkḫāˀīl Nuˁaymah, Aḥmad Amīn, Salāmah Mūsā, Sayyid Quṭb, and untranslated works by the prominent critic and scholar Ḥammādī Ṣammūd, the novelist ʿĀliah Mamdūḥ, and others. He also examines the autobiographies of a number of women, including Nawāl al-Saʿdāwī and Fadwā Ṭūqān, and fiction writers. The book draws a map of Arab thought and culture in its multiple engagements with other cultures and will be useful for scholars and students of comparative literature, Arabic studies, and Middle Eastern studies, intellectual thought, and history.

The two volumes on Postcolonialism and Autobiography examine the affinity of postcolonial writing to the genre of autobiography. The contributions of specialists from Northern Africa, Europe and the United States focus on two areas in which the interrelation of postcolonialism and autobiography is very prominent and fertile: the Maghreb and the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. The colonial background of these regions provides the stimulus for writers to launch a program for emancipation in an effort to constitute a decolonized subject in autobiographical practice. While the French volume addresses issues of the autobiographical genre in the postcolonial conditions of the Maghreb and the Caribbean with reference to France, the English volume analyzes the autobiographical writings of David Dabydeen (Guyana), Michelle Cliff, Opal Palmer Adisa, George Lamming, Wilson Harris (Jamaica), and Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua) who have maintained their cultural Caribbean origin while living in England or the United States. Critics such as William Boelhower, Leigh Gilmore, Sidonie Smith, and Gayatri Spivak reveal the many layers of different cultures (Indian, African, European, American) that are covered over by the colonial powers. The homeland, exile, the experience of migration and hybridity condition the postcolonial existence of writers and critics. The incorporation of excerpts from the writers' works is meant to show the great variety and riches of a hybrid imagination and to engage in an interactive dialogue with critics.

The first comprehensive guide to the burgeoning field of women's autobiography. Essays from 39 prominent critics and writers explore narratives across the centuries and from around the globe. A list of more than 200 women's autobiographies and a comprehensive bibliography provide invaluable information for scholars, teachers, and readers.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.