The rumpled bed of autobiography meaning

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.

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