Strategies of Representation in Auto/biography : Reconstructing and Remembering

Strategies of Representation in Auto/biography investigates how selves are represented and reconstructed in selected auto/biographical readings from African literary discourse. It examines how such representations confirm, validate, interrogate and pervade conversations with issues of identity, nation and history. In addition to providing an overview of the multidimensionality of auto/biography, the book also introduces readers to various ways of reading and analysing auto/biographical writings and develops specific perspectives on the genre and views inherently expressed through the re-imagined, re-membered and re-constructed self that speaks through the pages of autobiographical scripting. The focus on auto/biographical writings from southern Africa, specifically South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers a fresh reading of the work of significant figures in the political, economic and sociological spheres of these nation states. This collection shows that auto/biography may be more than simply the representation of an individual life, and that the socio-cultural memory of a people is a core aspect influencing individual self-representation.