At the Boundaries of Autobiography and Fiction. On Autofiction and its Dynamics between Individualization and Politicization

Abstract

This article approaches autofiction as a hybrid genre whose specific dynamics emerge from the interplay between factual and fictional discourse. It argues that autofiction should not primarily be understood as a mode of authentic self-representation but as a genuinely political genre. First, the article examines the hybridity of autofiction, drawing on the distinction between the autobiographical and the fictional pact. Because autofiction simultaneously refers to the empirical author and constructs a fictional storyworld, its propositions are double-coded and generate a productive uncertainty concerning their relation to reality. Second, the article explores the resulting dynamics of expansion and limitation. Autofiction expands the boundaries of both autobiography and fiction by combining their respective communicative possibilities, while simultaneously limiting autobiographical claims to authenticity and fictional autonomy. This tension challenges categorical genre distinctions and suggests a scalar model of self-narration based on varying degrees of fictionalization and referentiality. Third, the article argues that these generic dynamics have constitutive political implications. By suspending the autobiographical privilege of authenticity, autofiction transforms individual experience into a potential bearer of supra-individual relevance. It thereby mediates between subjectivity and collectivity, individualization and politicization. Contemporary autofictional narratives, particularly those engaging with identity politics, enact this dynamic by translating individual experience into collectively legible forms of experiential knowledge and thereby rendering marginalized experiences socially and politically visible.