The Self-identification in postmodern autobiographical fictions

Jueyun Li

Since 1970s and 1980s the postmodern autobiographical fictions have become one of the most popular and controversial constructs to mirror social and personal life that dominates the marketing of self-portraits， personal narratives， memoirs， journals， self-reflective fiction and mock-autobiographies， to name just a few forms. More and more writers and critics witness a surge of cultural interests in fictional self-portrait writings as a result of the rise of identity politics and commemorations. Many immigrant authors have written their novels which largely or partially represent their own autobiographical experiences or bi-cultural legacies， and receive more and more increased attention as a result of the fact that the immigrant novelists such as Naipaul， Rushdie and Ishiguro were successively awarded the prodigious literary prizes. Despite its popularity and prevalence as a genre， autobiographical fiction of these writers has not yet been profoundly researched and studied in the context of contemporary immigrant writers. My aim here is to examine how and why such immigrant writers connect their past and present selves to establish their fictional self-portraits that reflect the post-modern concerns for their identities.

Due to the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Confessions （1782-1789）， autobiography has become a distinct genre and sets a model to recount the narrators introspective life-stories intertwined with personal or collective memories. In spite of its probably reminding readers of St. Augustines Confessions of Sin （c.397-400）， the modern autobiographical narrative becomes a witness confessing his life-story， or some kind of defensive self-portrait about his identity and past experiences. Since the Renaissance， the Western civilization has started its process of secularization which ultimately replaces the close relation of God and mankind with a modern sense of self-definition within this physical world and personal life. Through the patterns of the interior sense the past experience has offered， the autobiographical narrator retains his/her unique identity continuous across time and space. However， the postmodern attitude towards memory is permeated with the pathos of yearning and grievance of failure， devoid of its affirmations and continuation. The narrative finally loses its power of validity to discover or create ones self-hood. Together with its crisis of postmodern personal identity， the issue of postmodern self-knowledge becomes “a plural， shifting organization， patterned around constructive and reparative object relationships， and derived from different interpersonal contexts. In this vision， we are all negotiating a complex， contradictory sense of self， and our experience of the world involves multiple perspectives of unity and fragmentation” （Elliott， 14）. The conventional concept of identity featuring in its completeness， linearity and causality of the self-identity has transformed into new models represented by randomness， uncertainty and contingency. Different from the conventional autobiographies， the texts selected here have in common the employments of first-person narrator as its main character， but void of the identity-contract between its narrator and author. The changed perception of autobiography not just results in the emergent form of metafiction and intertextuality to mirror the topic of the self and its representation in writing whose status becomes divided and decentralized within the postmodern era. The narrators of immigrant writers placate their moral visions and relationships with others subject to cultural and social forces to unfold its own meanings of human life upon which exists the artificiality or constructiveness of autobiographical fiction. Instead of foregrounding a coherent， objective and meaningful narrative， Roland Barthes regards autobiographical narrative as a reflection of self-definition deriving from social life， and underlines its performativity as “a rare verbal form （exclusively found in the first person and in the present）， in which the speech-act has no other content （no other statement） than the act by which it is uttered： something like the ‘I declare of kings or the ‘I sing of the earliest poets” （Barthes， 52）. This kind of narrative enables human beings to interpret their life experiences as self-understanding stories through a perspective of its first-person narrator who is not identical with the author but painted as self-portrayer to narrate， think and ruminate even if there are not any parallels existing between author and narrator themselves.

The first-person narration is often polyphonic or an ensemble of voices which constitute the narrating persona inspired by the authors creative and fictional motivations. Furthermore， the destruction of deconstructionist representation destroys the mimetic quality of language and placates its textual meaning for recording and representation in the mire of the gap between the signifier and the signified. Regine Hampel argues that postmodern autobiographical fiction shifts its focus upon the often coincidence of its new definition of the self， its intertextuality and meta-fictional process of retelling a story as a result of the emergence of twentieth-century post-structural and psychological theories. （Hampel， 88-89） This perception of autobiography has changed dramatically and gradually regarded itself as a literary genre to reflect the authors interpretation and representation of the self. Among these the textual voices， the most prominent is the narrated “I”， an interior version of self-referential characterization that can privilege a web of external voices stemming from outside society. Furthermore， the writing of postmodern autobiography is regarded not as its representation of his/her factual life， but as a text or sign system existing within the space of different texts. The intertextuality that refers to the already existing characters in human cultures produces the Bakhtinian dialogism， through which heterogeneous discourses of identity are dispersed throughout its fictional autobiography. As an alternative to the conventional self-knowledge， Rushdie presents his characters such as Saleem Sinai and Omar Khayyam with the multiplicity of personal identity under the influence of different， sometimes contradictory， backgrounds through his referential intertextuality for its conjunction of Oriental and Western religion， politics and literature. Another aspect is its meta-fictional approach to the autobiographical writing process that subverts the conventions and methods of presenting ones life through his/her memory and consciousness. Due to its inaccessibility to the past， autobiographers question its validity of his/her narration and reliability of memories， and demonstrate their postmodern perception of the reality around us that is based more upon the interpretation and recollection rather than what has really happened. Thus the autobiographical narrative becomes a thorough reinterpretation which does not allude to “the extra-literary past reality of the author （Olneys ‘bios） or his/her extra-literary present views of this past （Olneys ‘autos）”， but starts to concentrate “on the third element in autobiography， ‘graphe， that is writing and representation” （Hampel， 63）.

The epistemological crisis which derives from the developments of modern science contributes to the distrust of realist novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and demands a new form to reflect the scientific and philosophical concerns.? ?The deconstructionism of self-hood which has its roots in the heart of the Renaissance comes to its heyday as a result of the popularity of post-structuralism and post-modernism， and ultimately destroys the conception of conventional representation and of the self-identity. The fact that autobiographical narrative contains its fictionality and its being double-jointed “autofiction” prefigures the dissolving boundaries of fiction and autobiography. Its key feature is probably best “characterized as their promotion of act-value at the expense of truth-value within the set of parameters considered effective in determining autobiographys generic force” （Jolly， 86）. The contemporary immigrant writings also blend facts and fiction in a hybrid form of life-writing that purposefully blurs the borderlines of autobiography， autobiographical novel and fictional autobiography through taking on board inter-textual and meta-fictional elements. The increasing awareness of fictionality inherent in autobiographical writings suggests an unstable mixture of fabrication and actual experience that “we need the help of fiction to organize life retrospectively， after the fact， prepared to take as provisions and open to revision any figure of emplotment borrowed from fiction or from history” （Ricoeur， 162）. The self-reflexivity of autobiographical act exceeds beyond the representation of ones past life to include the present self and its narrating discourse which constitutes his/her meta-fictional process of retelling the life-story. The autobiographical self-hood can only be accessed by readers through the form of narrative evolving from confessional autobiography or memoirs to making up their own self-portraits， and offers a sense of person-hood which concentrates on the process of narrating and its constructive meaning.

References：

[1]Barthes， Roland. The death of the Author. The Rustle of Language， trans. Richard Howard[M]. Oxford： Basil Blackwell，1986.

[2]Elliott， Anthony. Subject to Ourselves： Social Theory， Psychoanalysis and Postmodernity[M]. Cambridge： Polity Press，1996.

[3]Hampel， Regine. I Write therefore I Am？： Fictional Autobiography and the Idea of Selfhood in the Postmodern Age[J]. Bern; Oxford： Lang，2001.

[4]Jolly， Margaretta. Encyclopedia of life writing： Autobiographical and Biographical Forms[J]. London： Fitzroy Deatborn Pubishers，2001.

[5]Ricoeur， Paul. Oneself as Another， trans[M]. Kathleen Blamey， Chicago： The University of Chicago Press， 1992.

【作者簡介】Jueyun Li， Shandong University of Art & Design.