On Autofiction and Autotheory

There is a thin line between autofiction and autotheory, just as there is between biography—or memoir—and autofiction. But a tentative definition is that autofiction is writing in which the author is a character in some form and autotheory is writing that is self-consciously situated between the self (however that is defined) and theory (in whatever way that term is understood). This short essay explores these two forms of writing, especially as they relate to what I call the ‘fiction of the self’. As with the previous essay, different examples are brought in to build a theoretical argument. The seven thematic sections of this essay are as follows: (1) Autowriting and the Self. Here, I introduce these new genres of autowriting (especially in relation to McKenzie Wark’s and Laurent Fournier’s definitions). (2) Marked Bodies and Situated Theory. In which I survey some of the field and attend to the marginal history of some of this writing. (3) Genre and Desire. In which I look to how the self is brought into writing or how the self is already written. (4) Cut-Ups and Fold-Ins. In which I explore some more experimental methods of autowriting. (5) Afterlives, Autoethnographies and Nervous Systems. Where I briefly consider an auto style of writing more generally. (6) Fictioning the Self. In which I make the claim I mentioned above about autofiction staging the fiction of the self in different ways. (7) Mirrors and Prisms. In which I explore autowriting as a kind of optical device. The essay ends with a brief coda in which I write about my own experience teaching an MA seminar on autofiction and autotheory.