Discussing a possible contemporary autobiography

Abstract

The autobiographical narratives are a strong feature of the contemporary Brazilian literature. Under the concept of self writing there are different literary genres such as biographies, autobiographies, autobiographical novels, autofictions, fictional autobiographies, among others. From the reflections of Philippe Lejeune, Alfonso de Toro, Manuel Alberca, Leonor Arfuch and Diana Klinger, this article debates these different concepts in order to discuss what kind of self writing can be made at a time when the inability of totalizing narratives founded on a univocal subject, as well as the possibility of distinguishing between fiction and reality in literature are postulated. The hypothesis put forward in this paper is that autofiction, understood as performance, is a process of building of an Ithat occurs in the act of writing. The author of contemporary self writing does not avoid the floating of sense and has no claim on the representation of a fixed identity in an era of multiple, fragmented and not very rigid identities.