| Popis: |
This chapter creates a theoretical frame using genre, performance, and rhetorical theories to examine autobiographical texts, providing an overview of the concept of identity in feminist and gender studies. Examining theories of self-representation and the body of such auto/biography theorists as Leigh Gilmore, Sidonie Smith, Barbara Smith, and Johnnie Stover, the chapter establishes a theoretical basis for exploring the rhetorical strategies of autobiography. Since this project seeks to extend the significant relationship between rhetoric and critical autobiography studies and to situate this study in both, the chapter explicitly addresses the rhetorical strategies involved in identity construction and the ways that fragments of identity become a recognizable narrative. Finally, using Anne Carson’s response to the fragmented poetry of Sappho and Eve Ewing’s layered archival approach to historical events, the chapter highlights the ways that identity construction through genre becomes recognizable, even if the form is experimental or “fragmented.” Using feminist rhetorical methodologies (Royster and Kirsch, Rawson), this chapter highlights the ways that writers challenge traditional form and suggests the multiple ways that form and content become political acts not only about identity but also about genre. |
