1st Edition

Missing Persons The Impossibility of Auto/Biography

By Mary Evans Copyright 1999
    172 Pages
    by Routledge

    172 Pages
    by Routledge

    Auto/biography is currently one of the most popular literary genres, widely supposed to illuminate the study of the individual and his or her personal circumstances. Missing Persons suggests that auto/biography is, in fact, based on fictions, both about the person and about what it is possible to know about any one individual.

    Organised into chapters which consider particular kinds of auto/biographical writing, such as work on the British Royal Family and auto/biographies of twentieth-century men, this book demonstrates the absences and evasions - indeed the `missing persons - of auto/biography. Mary Evans' book will provide invaluable reading for students of womens studies, sociology and cultural studies courses.

    1 The possibilities of auto/biography 2 Lies, all lies: auto/biography as fiction 3 Imperatives of deference 4 Boys’ tales 5 Looking for daddy 6 The imagined self: the impossibility of auto/biography

    Biography

    Mary Evans is Professor of Women’s Studies and Head of the Department of Sociology, University of Kent at Canterbury.