“The Things I Touched Were Living“: Autotopography, memory, and identity in Patti Smith's M Train

Abstract

In 1995, Jennifer A. González coined the concept of “autotopography” to refer to those collections of objects which contain autobiographical information and may therefore become “museums of the self.” This paper analyzes Patti Smith’s M Train as an autotopographical narrative in which the author displays (through text and photography) the many objects that connect her to the past, acting as triggers for her memories and as repositories of identity. This article stresses that looking into the nature of autobiographical objects, and their links to the different ways of remembering, will allow us to further understand how lives are constituted on the page.