Auto/Biographical Practices, Conventions and Silences: Infamy, Infamy
- Liz Stanley
Abstract
Proceeding from remembrance of a friend who has died, ideas about friendship and acquaintanceship are explored, in particular around the conventions and grounded practices of biography. Biographical conventions are strong, but there are subterranean changes in these. At the same time, some of the conventions remain protean and impact on biographical practices. The result is a gap between remembrance of a loved person and biographical accounts - both spoken and written – of what they were like. This is explored around the idea of biographical silences and an unreliable narrator who breaks such silences and is based up a keynote address given at the Auto/Biography Study Group Annual Conference, December 2021.
Keywords
Friendship , Rememberance, Biographical accounts, Silences, Unreliable narrator
Author Biography
Liz Stanley
Liz Stanley is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. She is one of the founding members of the study group and writes extensively on biographical and autobiographical matters.