The rumpled bed of autobiography examples

          The procrustean bed of autobiography is now inescapably a rumpled one--much slept in; still warm, if soiled; and haunted by conspicuously absent bodies..

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          SPECIAL ISSUE: Autobiography and Changing Identities

          Editor’s Introduction, ix
          Guest Editors Susanna Egan and Gabriele Helms
          Welcome to the Conference, xxi
          Martha C.

          Piper

          PERFORMING IDENTITIES

          Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
          The Rumpled Bed of Autobiography: Extravagant Lives, Extravagant Questions, 1

          Two recent works, Tracey Emin’s installation “My Bed” and Dave Eggers’s memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, exemplify the provocative self-presentations in diverse media that are “rumpling” the procrustean bed of autobiography and raising intriguing theoretical questions about autobiographical acts.

          Through reading an installation and a memoir side by side as examples of experiments in autobiography at this cultural moment, we want to.

        1. Rumpled, unmade, at this contemporary moment the bed is a generative metaphor for approaching contemporary experiments in self-presentation that mix a grab-bag.
        2. The procrustean bed of autobiography is now inescapably a rumpled one--much slept in; still warm, if soiled; and haunted by conspicuously absent bodies.
        3. THE RUMPLED BED OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY: EXTRAVAGANT LIVES, EXTRAVAGANT QUESTIONS (pp.
        4. Since the s, queer women have held a precarious position in HIV/AIDS discourse, often invisible or positioned in caring roles for others living with HIV.

          5. Are these presentations of “life” embodied materiality, “authentic” citation, or exploitation? Are these violations of norms of gender and class “sincere” self-disclosure or transgressive excess?

          How do such performances both maintain and breach the autobiograp