Life Writing After Empire - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0367075733 ISBN 13: 9780367075736

Publisher: Routledge, 2018

Synopsis

A watershed moment of the twentieth century, the end of empire saw upheavals to global power structures and national identities. However, decolonisation profoundly affected individual subjectivities too. Life Writing After Empire examines how people around the globe have made sense of the post-imperial condition through the practice of life writing in its multifarious expressions, from auto/biography through travel writing to oral history and photography. Through interdisciplinary approaches that draw on literature and history alike, the contributors explore how we might approach these genres differently in order to understand how individual life writing reflects broader societal changes. From far-flung corners of the former British Empire, people have turned to life writing to manage painful or nostalgic memories, as well as to think about the past and future of the nation anew through the personal experience. In a range of innovative and insightful contributions, some of the foremost scholars of the field challenge the way we think about narrative, memory and identity after empire. This book was originally published as a special issue of Life Writing.

About this title

About the Author

Astrid Rasch teaches imperial history and postcolonial literature in the English Department at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She recently submitted her Ph.D. thesis ‘Remembering Britishness: Negotiating Identity in End of Empire Autobiography’, which examines the relationship between individual and collective memory after decolonisation in autobiographies from the Caribbean, Australia, and Zimbabwe.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367075733
• ISBN 13: 9780367075736
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156
• Editor: Rasch Astrid