Fakt, Fiktion und Transparenz

Autobiographical texts establish their reference to reality, this study argues, by drawing and strategically negotiating a rhetorical boundary between autobiographical knowledge and non-knowledge. The self-referential transparency discourses thus produced are systematically examined here from a narratological perspective for the first time, and analyzed in terms of their aesthetic, epistemological, and moral dimensions—including a new theorization of the elusive concept of autofiction. Readings of a spectrum of literary, pop-cultural, and political life writing engage with pressing contemporary issues: (im-)mediacy; the (extra-)ordinary and verisimilitude; authority and authenticity; and plurality between ideology critique and ‘post-truth.’