You and Me: Autobiographical Uses of Documentary Sources

Contemporary autobiographical texts frequently function as hybrids: the last decades have seen these texts resort massively and often to documents, which are mentioned, quoted and, increasingly frequently, shown. A statistical and thematic analysis allows us to observe the points of contact and modes of coexistence (fusion, tension, friction) between the heterogeneous sources - letters, photographs, newspapers and public archives - writers choose to support their texts. The presence of these documents at the heart of the text, at any rate, puts into question the form autobiography takes, since it tears it away from enunciative solipsism. In some cases, this is done with a polemical intention, in a sort of attack on narcissism; in others, the desire to partake of a kind of integrated autobiography, which tries to define an individual destiny within its family, social, and political context, is at stake.