Die Subjektivität des Biographen [1981]

Hildesheimer, Wolfgang; Fetz, Bernhard; Hemecker, Wilhelm

doi:10.1515/9783110237634.285

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“…Likewise, total extensiveness of a life in biographies is unattainable due to the biographer's incomplete access to the protagonist's every moment and experience. Moreover, biographies can hardly be impartial and objective; biographers inscribe themselves aesthetically and (un)intentionally into the narrative, depending on their stance towards the protagonist and his or her accomplishments: "There is no such thing as biographical objectivity" ( [84], p. 290), as Wolfgang Hildesheimer, author of the biography Mozart (1977), put it. Biographers, Hildesheimer acknowledges, invest themselves in the lives and the stories they tell-even if they pledge not to do so.…”

Section: Literary Autozoographies And/as Meta-autobiographical Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Literary Autozoographies: Contextualizing Species Life in German Animal Autobiography

Middelhoff

2017

Humanities

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What does it mean to take animal autobiography seriously and how can we account for the representation of life-narrating animals? The article investigates animal autobiographies as 'literary autozoographies', drawing attention to both the generic contexts and the epistemological premises of these texts. Adopting a double-bind approach stemming from autobiographical research as well as cultural animal studies, the article focuses on early nineteenth-century equine autozoographies from the German-speaking tradition. These texts are discussed exemplarily in relation to the parameters of fictional autobiographies, before they are contextualized with historical discourses regarding horses in natural history and so-called 'horse-science'. Due to the fact that the poetics and aesthetics of the genre are modeled on the templates of factual autobiographies, the article argues that literary autozoographies can be read as fictional autobiographies as well as meta-auto/biographical discourse undermining autobiographical conventions. Furthermore, it shows that literary autozoography and zoology share a common historical and ideological epistemology accounting for the representation of animals in both fields. Literary autozoographies thus participate in the negotiation and production of species-specific knowledge. Reading Life of the Mecklenburg Mare Amante (1804), Life of a Job Horse (1807) and Life of a Worn-Out Hack (1819) alongside equine-centric discourses around 1800, the article demonstrates in what ways these texts can be regarded as part of a regime of knowledge attributing emotions and cognitive capacities to horses, while simultaneously arguing for humane treatment on the basis of interspecies homologies.

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Section: Literary Autozoographies And/as Meta-autobiographical Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Literary Autozoographies: Contextualizing Species Life in German Animal Autobiography

Middelhoff

2017

Humanities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Die Subjektivität des Biographen [1981]

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Literary Autozoographies: Contextualizing Species Life in German Animal Autobiography

Literary Autozoographies: Contextualizing Species Life in German Animal Autobiography

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