Contemporary Feminist Life-Writing
The New Audacity

Contemporary Feminist Life-writing is the first volume to identify and analyse the new audacity of recent feminist writings from life.

Jennifer Cooke (Author)

9781108489911, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 April 2020

234 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'Jennifer Cooke's Contemporary Feminist Life-Writing: The New Audacity is itself an audacious addition to the theoretical literature about life writing, self-narrative, and queer and feminist literary theory.' Kate Drabinski, Biography

Contemporary Feminist Life-Writing is the first volume to identify and analyse the 'new audacity' of recent feminist writings from life. Characterised by boldness in both style and content, willingness to explore difficult and disturbing experiences, the refusal of victimhood, and a lack of respect for traditional genre boundaries, new audacity writing takes risks with its author's and others' reputations, and even, on occasion, with the law. This book offers an examination and critical assessment of new audacity in works by Katherine Angel, Alison Bechdel, Marie Calloway, Virginie Despentes, Tracey Emin, Sheila Heti, Juliet Jacques, Chris Krauss, Jana Leo, Maggie Nelson, Vanessa Place, Paul Preciado, and Kate Zambreno. It analyses how they write about women's self-authorship, trans experiences, struggles with mental illness, sexual violence and rape, and the desire for sexual submission. It engages with recent feminist and gender scholarship, providing discussions of vulnerability, victimhood, authenticity, trauma, and affect.

Acknowledgements
Introduction. The new audacity
1. Autobiography as feminist praxity: new audacity in the writing of rape
2. Ugly audacities in auto/biography: genius, betrayal, and writer's block
3. Stripping off for the first time: recasting vulnerability in the writing of hetero-sex and desire
4. Breaking the binaries: new audacity in the writing of trans lives
5. The dangers of audacity: Vanessa Place's contradictory feminism
Afterword. After audacity?
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]