Adrian Piper
Anne Truitt
Audre Lorde
autobiography
autotheory
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contemporary art
Emily Dickinson
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feminist studies
Howardena Pindell
Ida Applebroog
Kathy Acker
life-writing
literary theory
Louise Bourgeois
Marcel Proust
psychoanalytic theory
queer studies
Ree Morton
Roland Barthes
Tee Corrine
Product details
- ISBN 9781526194787
- Weight: 723g
- Dimensions: 170 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Following the critical scepticism surrounding the notion of the ‘self’ as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists and writers sought to test the apparent problem posed by autobiography as both a traditional genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent emergence of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic and literary production during the late twentieth century and beyond, examining a set of diverse practices that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book’s chapters connect a variety of artistic strategies that cut across medium, geography and time, uncovering how the historical marginalisation of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural and political implications in the contemporary moment and how the work of living might still relate to the work of art.
Moran Sheleg is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of East Anglia
