Anna Poletti

Coaxing an intimate public: Life narrative in digital storytelling

This article considers the practice of digital storytelling in light of contemporary theories of autobiography and affect. Using the concept of coaxed life narrative developed by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, I analyse the role of digital storytelling in diversifying the voices in the public sphere. Drawing on Berlants theory of the intimate public, I argue that given its formal restrictions and thematic preoccupations, digital storytelling produces texts focused on affective connection with the audience, contributing to the prevalence of intimacy and affect in the construction of contemporary citizenship. I conclude by considering the capacity of digital storytelling to articulate the relationships between personal experiences of structural social and political inequalities, given its narrative emphasis on closure, affect and universality.

Intimate Economies: PostSecret and the Affect of Confession

This article argues that the scale and success of the PostSecret project evidences the continuing influence of confession in contemporary autobiography. It analyzes the importance of materiality as a signifier of authenticity in a participatory media project that functions as an intimate public by coaxing life writing texts and detaching them from their authorial subjects.

Self-Publishing in the Global and Local: Situating Life Writing in Zines

This paper will examine zines and zine culture as a unique medium of life writing. Using Australian zines as the primary focus, I will analyze two narrative strategies common to zine writing, and present zines as one of the few sites where life writing by young people is performed and circulated.

Auto/Assemblage: Reading the Zine

This article investigates the zine as a compelling example of autographics, theorizing the dynamics of self-representation in these handmade texts. Reading the intersection of text, layout, and production as a complex site of self-representation, the materiality of the zine form is examined as a meta-critical refl ection on the form of the book and the potential of the photocopier as a means of production.

Building reading resilience : re-thinking reading for the literary studies classroom

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the concept of ‘reading resilience’: students’ ability to read and interpret complex and demanding literary texts by drawing on advanced, engaged, critical reading skills. Reading resilience is a means for rethinking the place and pedagogies of close reading in the contemporary literary studies classroom. Our research was across four Australian universities and the first study of its kind in the Australian context. We trialled three working strategies to support students to become consistent and skilled readers, and to equip teachers with methods for coaching reading: ‘setting the scene’ for reading, surveying students on their reading experiences and habits, and rewarding reading within assessment. We argue that the nature and pedagogy of close reading has not been interrogated as much as it should be and that the building of reading resilience is less about modelling or outlining best practice for close reading (as has traditionally been thought) and more about deploying contextual, student-centred teaching and learning strategies around reading. The goal is to encourage students to develop a broad suite of skills and knowledge around reading that will equip them long term (for the university and beyond). We measured the effectiveness of our strategies through seeking formal and informal student feedback, and through students’ demonstration of skills and knowledge within assessment.

The affects of not reading: Hating characters, being bored, feeling stupid

This article brings recent debates in literary studies regarding the practice of close reading into conversation with Derek Attridge’s idea of ‘readerly hospitality’ (2004) to diagnose the problem of students in undergraduate literary studies programme not completing set reading. We argue that the method of close reading depends on encouraging students to foster positive affective responses towards difficulty – semiotic, emotional and intellectual. Drawing on trials of teaching methods in literary studies’ classrooms in four universities in Australia, we suggest that introducing students to the concept of ‘readerly hospitality’ – rather than assuming an appreciation of difficulty – can better prepare students for the encounters they will have in set literary texts and strengthen the effectiveness of classroom teaching.

Reading for Excess: Relational Autobiography, Affect and Popular Culture in Tarnation

In this article I will examine a limit point in current methods of reading in autobiography studies, using Jonathan Caouettes 2003 autobiographical film Tarnation as a case study. Reading a powerful and deeply ambiguous key scene from the film, I investigate the limits of a narrative-based approach to multi-modal auto/biographical texts. Drawing on contemporary documentary studies, affect and autobiography theory, I propose that the rise of autobiographical acts which use multiple media presents autobiography scholars with the opportunity to diversify our methods of reading to include attention to the communication and representation of the historical, social and semiotic conditions of identity and selfhood which exceed narrative representation. I examine Caouettes use of collage to bring together home-made footage and footage from popular culture as telling a relational narrative: the story of the video camera, and the opportunities it provides to make film and television texts in the home as a technology of the self which influenced Jonathans development as deeply as his familial relations.

Periperformative Life Narrative: Queer Collages

This essay reconsiders the importance of performativity to scholarship on life writing by exploring the potential of Eve Sedgwick’s concept of the periperformative utterance for reading queer life narratives. Taking the documentary Tarnation (2003) as an example, I argue that a range of life narrative practices can be understood as periperformative: texts that both narrate an individual life and critically interrogate the textual conditions under which lives are narrated. I suggest that a key element of periperformative life narrative is a critique of the importance of using a unique voice that speaks from and about the lived experience of the subject. The essay identifies the use of ventriloquism and collage as important characteristics for undertaking this critique.

DystopiAbramović: Marina Abramović: In Residence: Sydney 2015

ABSTRACT “DystopiAbramović” responds to a performance initiated by Marina Abramović using bodies of the public in silent performance. We trace the haunting of that performance by forms of collective embodiment that characterize Australias political reality: carceral immigration policies, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Australia as a refuge for Jews fleeing Europe, and late capitalism.

What's Next? Mediation

Historically, autojbiography studies has had sporadic contact with media studies. This is because the question of the aesthetic, psychological, social, and political formations of life narrative have largely been treated within the context of literary studies (see Smith and Watson, Reading 193–211; Rak, “Are”). Yet the need for closer attention to how mediation and media institutions contribute to the practice of autobiography is increasingly felt in the field. The inclusion of a new chapter acknowledging that mediation can no longer be ignored in the study of life writing was an important update to the first edition of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s Reading Autobiography: A Guide to Interpreting Life Narratives. Julie Rak’s recent work has also argued that the field must analyze the role of media industries (Boom!) and mediation (“Life”). Perhaps it is unsurprising that the study of autobiography and media has not meaningfully intersected sooner. Early media studies was driven to theorize and account for two characteristics of media: concentrations of power and the reach of mass (broadcast) media, and the material realities of media production. The recent changes in media production, circulation, and reception brought about by networked and digital media forces the intersection of autojbiography and media studies. Contemporary media studies must come to terms with the central role of life narrative in media practices, and this has resulted in increased attention to identity and sociality (Couldry; Papacharissi), the shift from broadcast to participatory media cultures (Jenkins et al.), and the changing conditions of media production, such as the rise of “produsers” (Bruns). Existing concepts and approaches in autojbiography studies can usefully contribute to how media studies accounts for the increasing importance of autobiography in the contemporary media environment. However, to make this contribution meaningful and lasting, autojbiography studies must advance accounts of how life narrative and mediation intersect. In Keywords, Raymond Williams suggests that mediation has had three distinct, yet murky, uses in English. The first is to refer to the political process of negotiation, often led by an intermediary (204–05). The second refers to a