Autobiography: An Autopsy. Issue 1 (1st March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Menu, Jean-Christophe; Neaud, Fabrice
• Is Part Of: European comic art. Volume 14:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 41
• Page End: 68
• Publication Date: 2021-03-01
• Subjects: autobiographeme -- autobiography -- calcification -- genre -- proximate autobiography -- quick drawing -- sociobiography; Comic books, strips, etc -- Europe -- Periodicals; Caricatures and cartoons -- Europe -- Periodicals; Wit and humor, Pictorial -- Europe -- Periodicals; 741.594
• DOI: 10.3167/eca.2021.140104
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-3800

Abstract

Abstract: In this email exchange, Jean-Christophe Menu inveighs against the deterioration of comics autobiography into a formulaic 'genre'. Fabrice Neaud maintains that the autobiographical enterprise is necessarily a dangerous undertaking in which a precarious subject comes into being, unlike the 'proximate' autobiography featuring a ready-made persona in search of peer approval. He employs a Darwinist evolutionary metaphor to demonstrate the colonisation of the ecological niche that houses comics autobiography by an 'autobiography-lite' better adapted to the market. He details the criticisms that have been made of his work ('egotistical', or formally over-conservative) and laments the tendency to equate artless scribbles with 'sincerity'. Menu regrets that a distanced and selective portrayal of family life can be read as invasive of privacy, with devastating legal consequences.