Planned topics

This time, Tekstualia concentrates on the subject of autobiography and autobiographical forms functioning in modern culture. Examples include classic autobiography, intimate journal (the controversy aroused by the publishing and distribution of journals and diaries of young writers such as Szczepan Twardoch or W. Gombrowicz’s Kronos), diary, recollection, correspondence, autoportrait (the latter understood, in agreement with Michel Beaujour, as both literary genre and painting category). We would like to reserve special attention to the most contemporary instances of autobiography: in literature (the autobiographies of famous persons and the limits of public honesty), audiovisual works (the videoinstallations of Katarzyna Kozyra, displaying corporeality, the artist’s illness and inspirations drawn from famous works of art, or the multi-faceted treatment of autobiography and autobiographism on the silver screen), graphic novels (i.e. Marjane Satrapi’s famous Persepolis or “socially-conscious” comic books like Rosalind B. Penfold’s Dragonslippers). We will also analyze ghostwriting and the art of writing celebrity autobiographies as well as matters of autocreation and autopromotion present in social media under the guise of so-called selfiemania. We hope that the breadth and scope of this issue will be conducive to outlining the current situation of contemporary autobiography and the reasons behind its growing influence within culture. Additionally, we will attempt to analyze the changes in the borders of honesty in the sphere of art.