Whose life is it anyway? Practice-based research into performed fictional-autobiography and the paradox of fiction

Abstract

This article explores the notion of ‘self’ as it pertains to autobiographical writing, and its repercussions for the fact/fiction dichotomy inherent in autobiographical praxis. The mode of articulation is a discussion of the reception of two one-man plays: Memoires of a Confused Man (2016) and Are Strings Attached? (2017). Both plays are written and performed by this writer. Drawing on philosophical, cognitive and spiritual discourses, I show that ‘selfhood’ is not a transparent and unproblematic proposition. I then re-examine the so-called paradox of fiction. I argue that it is common experience to care about notional entities and suggest that this comes about by way of ‘transfictional disavowal’ and ‘affective metalepsis’. Finally, I offer an exemplary text, read first as ‘fiction’, and then as ‘autobiography’. I then propose a new modality of the ‘paradox of fiction’, which offers a satisfactory reading position of autobiographical writings based on a re-evaluation of ‘selfhood’.