Sunell Lombard

Fiction, Friction and Fracture: Autobiographic Novels As a Site for Changing Discourses Around Subjectivity, Truth and Identity-formation Sunell Lombard

The concept of the self or subject and the issues surrounding it is more relevant now than ever since society?s perceptions about selfhood are in the process of changing. Autobiography is an important site for the critical discussion of issues surrounding the subject, like truth, identity formation and agency, since it is one of the most revealing spaces in which these altering perceptions manifest. As can be deduced from the title of my thesis, FICTION, FRICTION AND FRACTURE: Autobiographic Novels as a Site For Changing Discourses Around Subjectivity, Truth and Identity-Formation, I explore what autobiographic novels disclose about notions like truth, self-representation and identity formation that emerge from an investigation of the subject. Poststructuralism and feminism have been instrumental in destabilizing the notion of a unified subject as well as any concept that makes universal claims. Throughout this thesis I will be applying poststructuralist and feminist theories around subjectivity to my work as well as the work of a selection of autobiographic novelists, like Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware.