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Inaccurate autobiography – the ‘true-invention’ of a life

Pont, Antonia 2011, Inaccurate autobiography – the ‘true-invention’ of a life, Text, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1-1.

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Title Inaccurate autobiography – the ‘true-invention’ of a life
Author(s) Pont, Antonia
Journal name Text
Volume number 15
Issue number 1
Start page 1
End page 1
Publisher Australian Association of Writing Programs
Place of publication Nathan, Qld.
Publication date 2011-04
ISSN 1327-9556
Keyword(s) autobiography
life
death
Aristotle
Kristeva
Arendt
narrative
Derrida
writing
invention
praxis
poiesis
Badiou
ontology
the hinge
self-reflexivity
truth
play
Summary This paper takes the Aristotelian binary of praxis and poiesis and approaches the process of autobiography via its double lens. Drawing on a reading of Hannah Arendt done by Julia Kristeva, it considers the question of whether the activity (that is: praxis) of making-narrative might constitute an activity that is particularly ‘human’. It is framed by the playful and serious challenge offered by Derridean deconstruction to think two things at once, and to practice an inhabiting of binary ultimatums. Given this, it goes on to suggest that making in an autobiographical fashion, rather than involvinganythingprimarily representative or documentary, is more paradoxically akin to the invention of what is most true about that which we are in the habit of calling ‘our life’. Indeed, it can be argued that this praxisinvents that very ‘life’ – the latter being an entity or categorythat logically does not precede thesame writing that purports to describe it, but rather arises with its activity. This self-reflexivity (a manoeuvre that at once describes and invokes the very thing described) coincides with Derrida’s explication of invention’s mechanism.
Language eng
Field of Research 200525 Literary Theory
Socio Economic Objective 970119 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of the Creative Arts and Writing
HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
HERDC collection year 2011
Copyright notice ©2011, Australian Association of Writing Programs
Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30040290

Document type: Journal Article
Collections: School of Communication and Creative Arts
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