INTRODUCTION

1
The dissertation focuses on how metaphorical tropes and technicalities construct the
autobiographical narratives or create life in select Indian English autobiographies and
memoirs through a poststructural lens. To examine the varied rhetorical figures or
tropes that problematize the difference between fiction and autobiography will be one
of its major objectives. The thesis will explore the role of other lives as tropes of
relationality. It shall also strive to uncover the literary, poetic and metahistorical
dimension in the autobiographies and memoirs. Besides, the research will critically
analyse the role of imagined place and space in the creation of subjectivities. It
proposes to identify the uncertainty and undecidability of binaries like fact/fiction,
truth/imagination, agentiality/relationality and such others in select self-narratives. The
boundaries of autobiography as a genre in the Indian English context will be put to
question in this thesis. The term “self-narratives” in this thesis refers to both
autobiographies and memoirs. The usage of the umbrella term has been specifically
derived from Uday Kumar’s critical text Writing the First Person: Literature, History,
and Autobiography in Modern Kerala (2016) where he regards a narrative about one’s
own life as a “self-narrative”.
The Enlightenment idea of subjectivity, identity and agentiality has undoubtedly
been decentred by modern interventions. Existentialist, Marxist, psychoanalytic and
poststructuralist theories in the first half of the twentieth century shattered the concept
of the subject as being unified. Self-discovery and self-knowledge of an autonomous
autobiographical self subsequently became contested concepts. In the Enlightenment
age, the Scottish philosopher David Hume theorized that human thought and ethics are
based on experiences and sense perceptions rather than reasons. Hume in A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739) argues that the human self is an illusion and the mind is a
fictional construction. Later, the nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
interrogated the fundamental basis of human existence through his ideas of nihilism in
the works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) and Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future (1886). Nietzsche completely nullified the existence of a
concrete, agential self. As Barresi and Martin note in their essay “History as Prologue:
Western Theories of Self” (2011), “Nietzsche claimed that, rather than unity of
consciousness, we have “only a semblance of Unity” (44). They further say that, to
explain this semblance, rather than a single subject, we could do as well by postulating
“a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought

2
and our consciousness in general” (44). Hume’s and Nietzsche’s ideas of selfhood can
be witnessed in the critical studies on autobiographical subjectivity in twentieth century
too. Again, Judith Butler in “Giving an Account of Oneself” (2001) relates a person’s
self account to a predominant structure of addressing the Others (Butler 37).

In the words of Linda Anderson from Autobiography (1986), “Autobiography

has also been recognized since the late eighteenth century as a distinct literary
genre and, as such, an important testing ground for critical controversies about a range
of ideas including authorship, selfhood, representation and the division between fact
and fiction” (Anderson Introduction). Traditional critics of autobiography like Gusdorf,
Georg Misch, Roy Pascal, Philippe Lejeune perceived the autobiographical subjectivity
to be a form of self-introspection and agentiality. Again, as Sidonie Smith and Watson
rightly point out in Reading Autobiography (2001), “While the Enlightenment or
liberal-humanist notion of selfhood understood the “I” as the universal, transcendent
marker of “man”, radical challenges to the notion of a unified selfhood in the early
decades of the twentieth century eroded certainty in both a coherent ‘self’ and the
‘truth’ of self narrating” (Smith and Watson 123). Hence there was a mixed approach
towards autobiographical subjectivity in the beginning and middle of twentieth century.

The tradition of narrating the self began quite late in India as compared to the
Western counterpart. Ardhakathanaka by Banarasidas is supposed to be the first Indian
autobiography composed in Hindi in 1641. That was followed by many other such
autobiographies, mostly by men as women were open to free education much later. In
the Islamic tradition of course, there were some life narratives like that of Tuzuk-i-
Baburi (1589) by the Mughal king Babur. Indian autobiography has manifold shades
just like the country itself with numerous languages, caste, creed and religions. This
diversity sometimes leads to complexity while studying Indian autobiography. Raj
Kumar in Dalit Personal Narratives (2010) traces how the dominant Hindu
metaphysics and the Hindu social structure placed very little importance on
individuality, leading to the delay in the eruption of Indian autobiographies in the
literary scenario. He also observes how the tradition of biography writing in India is
quite old unlike its autobiographical counterpart.

Though a recent body of writing, Indian English literature now has a

3
distinguished tradition of life writing, especially in the autobiographical mode.
However, not much critical work has been done in the area of Indian English
autobiographies. The origin and development of the practice of writing Indian
autobiographies in English started at quite a later date as compared to the dominant
Western practice, probably because of several pre-existing factors like caste, religion,
gender and other philosophical considerations in the Indian context. The advent of
English in the Indian educational scenario brought in by the British rule contributed a
lot to the production of Indian English autobiographies owing to the development of
individuality in contrast to the supposedly typical Hindu philosophy of the universal
soul. The Indian English autobiographers appropriated the Western style of self-
narration and thus came up with a new body of life writing through a renewed
approach.

The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794) can be considered to be the first Indian
autobiography in English, although it is mostly regarded as a travel writing in the form
of letters. Autobiography of Lutfullah (1857) was probably the first full-length
autobiography in English by an Indian. M.K. Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments
with Truth (1940), Cornelia Sorabji’s India Calling (1934), Jawaharlal Nehru’s An
Autobiography (1936), N.C. Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
(1951), Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton (2012), Kamala Das’ My Story (1977), Dom
Moraes’ My Son’s Father (1968), Khushwant Singh’s Truth, Love and a Little Malice
(2002) are some of the influential mainstream Indian English autobiographies.
Although these writers individually represent different worldviews, socio-culturally
they belong to the same common category which is privileged to have an audience
worldwide. Most of the Indian English autobiographies serve as both personal
narratives and historical or social documents. They delineate a panoramic picture of
contemporary social and political histories which are inevitably intertwined with their
personal lives. Besides, a more recent phenomenon in this domain of self-narratives is
the Dalit autobiography. Such personal narratives have an altogether different
theoretical and social base that challenges the dominant tradition. Those
autobiographies are mostly translated works initially written in regional languages.
Apart from these, twenty-first century India has also witnessed the emergence of some
bestselling sports memoirs. Indian English autobiographies thus encompass different

4
sets of personalities like authors, academicians, politicians, sports persons, journalists,
civil servants and so on.

Indian women got the privilege of education at a later date as compared to

Indian men, which is why upper caste Indian women began writing autobiographies or
memoirs only from late nineteenth century. Most women were doubly marginalized
owing to the patriarchal Indian society. The earliest Indian women’s autobiographies
can be found in Bengali and Marathi languages. Rassundari Devi's two-part
autobiography Amar Jiban (Bengali, 1868 and 1897), Ramabai Ranade’s Amchya
Ayushatil Kahi Athavani (Marathi, 1910), Binodini Dasi’s two-part autobiography i.e.,
Amar Katha (Bengali, 1912), and Amar Abhinetri Jiban (Bengali,1924-25), Lakshmibai
Tilak’s Smriti Chitre (Marathi, 1934-37), are important among the early
autobiographies. Being born in a privileged Parsee family with extreme British
influence, Cornelia Sorabji, India’s first woman barrister wrote her memoirs India
Calling (1934) and India Recalled (1936) in English. Nayantara Sahgal’s Prison and
Chocolate Cake (1954) is a short childhood memoir by her and has been referred to as a
secondary text in this thesis.

It was not before the mid-seventies of the twentieth century that the modern
phase of the feminist movement began making its strong influence felt in India. Kamala
Das’ My Story (1977) also got framed during that phase. Amrita Pritam’s Rasidi Tikit
(The Revenue Stamp: An Autobiography, 1977); Durgabai Deshmukh’s Chintamani
and I (1980); Ramadevi Choudhuri’s Jiwan Pathe (Into the Sun:1984); Indira
Goswami’s An Unfinished Autobiography (1990) are some of the important
autobiographies of the late twentieth century written in regional languages. As this
thesis focuses on Indian English self-narratives written originally in English, the works
of Kamala Das and Cornelia Sorabji stand dominant and hence, these two have been
taken as primary sources here alongside male autobiographies. My Story has been
analysed in all the chapters except the chapter on metahistory as Das hardly talks about
history in her autobiography. Again, India Calling has been analysed in all the chapters
except the chapter on psychoanalysis as that theme runs little in the memoir.

The thesis focuses on the autobiographies and memoirs of eight notable Indian
English writers. This study shall focus on throwing new light on the representation of

5
self and history in such select Indian English autobiographies and memoirs. It shall
attempt to theorize the fictive and imaginative nature of self-narratives by rethinking
form and testimony in autobiographical discourses. It will also look forward to
comprehending the poetics of time and space in such memoirs and autobiographies in
order to perceive the imaginative aspect of self-narration in a more comprehending
way.

The vital questions that this research shall raise and address are: Does life
determine self narration or is it the play of tropes that overpower the same? How do the
tropes of relationality and addressivity subvert agentiality in Indian English
autobiographies? To what extent do English language, literature, culture and law frame
the colonial self-fashioning of the writers taken? Is history narration objective or
subjective with ideological moulds and poetic imaginations? How do the tropes of
psychoanalysis and trauma determine the autobiographical imagination? Can a
transformation of the self take place without spatial transformation? Can alternative
realities be imagined in creative spaces?
Relevance of the Primary Texts

The corpus for this research shall be a selection of the major autobiographies from each
decade that flourished between 1930s till 2012.The earliest text taken up here, India
Calling (1934) is a memoir by India’s first woman barrister Cornelia Sorabji. Besides
her path-breaking personal journey in becoming a barrister, this text unfolds her
experience with the Hindu purdahnashins (women who observed complete aloofness
because of Hindu customs) and her ceaseless strivings to advocate for their rights and
freedom in every way. This is also the first English self-narrative by an Indian woman
which makes it very important for this study. Moreover, Sorabji’s pro-British feelings
and her orientalist take on Indian culture, history, society and the then political scenario
render it a fertile critical ground for exploration in this thesis.

The second primary text is An Autobiography (1936) by Jawaharlal Nehru

which was composed during his prison days. He initially wished to title it as In and Out
of Prison. The book is replete with his first-hand experiences during India’s freedom
struggle, his idea of nationalism and his extensive analysis of Gandhian movements and
philosophies. The socio-political canvas of Indian history and the unique prison life

6
portrayal make it important in this research work. Also relevant are Nehru’s approach
and criticisms of English language, life, literature and law that influenced his life as
well as his autobiography extensively.

The next text, Apology for Heroism: A Brief Autobiography of Ideas (1946) is a
philosophical self-narrative by Mulk Raj Anand. This book gives a glimpse of his
perception of a writer’s role in social reform. This text is very vital in grasping his
philosophical bent of mind as an author who always stood for the cause of the
downtrodden. His attitude towards the colonial rule and Indian history is evident from
this memoir.

Besides the above autobiography, yet another memoir by Mulk Raj Anand
Seven Summers (1951) forms an important part of the thesis. The prolific Indian English
writer in this memoir pens down the first seven years of his life which he regards as
“half unconscious and half conscious childhood”. A typical Indian portrayal of life, his
childhood libido and his experiences with nature become significant points of study for
the thesis which aims to interpret tropes of psychoanalysis, relationality and eco-
autobiography among others.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951) is a highly
acclaimed critical text which has elaborate depictions of his ancestral villages giving
the readers a glimpse of Bengal in undivided India. The autobiography traces his
intellectual growth in Calcutta and provides comprehensive information on the history
of India, particularly the Hindu civilization. His idea of decadence manifests an entirely
different perspective on history narration. It is a seminal Indian autobiography in
English that explicitly presents his inclination and expertise towards English language
and literature. Any study in Indian English self narration would be incomplete without
this treatise.

The next primary text My Son’s Father (1968) is a memoir of childhood and
college days towards an intellectual growth as a poet by the prominent Indian English
author Dom Moraes. The first thirty years of his life are covered in this book. The text
voices his emotionally troubled childhood as a result of his neurotic mother. This
particular aspect in the book is very instrumental in understanding his lack of
belongingness in India. The scholarly experiences in Oxford and Cambridge with some

7
great poets and writers like Stephen Spender show his relational self formation as a
poet whereas the narratives on trauma and exile turn this memoir into a very ripe
ground for autobiographical criticism.

Along with Cornelia Sorabji, Kamala Das is the other Indian English woman
writer chosen for this work. My Story (1977) is the English version of the Malayalam
text Ente Katha published in 1973. It is the bold and candid self-portrayal of the
revolutionary Indian English poetess Kamala Das. Though an autobiography, the text is
replete with poetry and fictional depictions which problematize its generic orientation.
My Story manifests Das’ obsessive feminine desire for a true and forever lover besides
sketching her emotional and intellectual journey in becoming a poet in an otherwise
hostile environment. Written in English during an era when it was next to impossible,
this autobiography definitely stands tall and unconventional in the lineage of Indian
English self-narratives.

Apart from Seven Summers and Apology for Heroism, Conversations in

Bloomsbury (1981) is a major read to comprehend Mulk Raj Anand’s strong views on
Indian art, religion, literature, culture and freedom struggle. The memoir is a canvas of
his multiple conversations on numerous topics with the members of the
Bloomsbury group like Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf,
Bonamee Dobree etc during the pre-independence era. The main ideas inside the minds
of Anand and the great English philosophers or writers get manifested through the
interactions in each chapter of the book. Through the conversations Anand constantly
attempts to shatter orientalist myths deep seated within the Bloomsbury members. It is a
major contribution to Indian English life writing which gives many counter narratives
on Indian history and colonialism through Anand’s postcolonial and modernist lens.

Thy Hand, Great Anarch! (1987) is yet another vital primary text which is a
sequel to Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s first self-narrative Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian. This becomes a very pertinent book to perceive Chaudhuri’s creation of an
altogether different notion of nation, history and his take on the then Indian socio-
political or religious affairs. It covers the Indian political scenario from 1920s till
independence. The writer’s pro-British attitude appears more prominently in this
autobiography as compared to the earlier one. The book also details Chaudhuri’s

8
journey of different careers in India finally ending up as a writer. Moreover, it holds
some of the stark criticisms of political personalities too like that of Subhash Chandra
Bose besides extensive appraisals of some other great literary figures like Rabindranath
Tagore. A study of Indian English autobiographies would remain incomplete without
analysing this extremely substantial text.

The second memoir by Dom Moraes after My Son’s Father, Never at Home
(1992) is a more mature and deeper text on Moraes’ travels all over the world and his
exilic experiences in India. True to the title of the book, it upholds his constant attempt
to feel at home in India and abroad, only to feel more uprooted in many ways. Moraes’
problematic identity construction, English self-fashioning and diasporic self offer
strong grounds for considering this text as an indispensable part of this thesis.

The last but one primary text, Truth, Love and a Little Malice (2002) portrays a
panoramic view of the celebrated Indian English writer Khushwant Singh’s
commentary on India’s partition, communal conflicts, Sikh religion, history and a
picture of the political rule by the Gandhi family seen from close quarters. His libido
centric self bound for multiple women of varied age groups too occupy a considerable
part of the autobiography. In addition, Singh’s journey as a lawyer and then as a writer,
journalist and columnist find expression through this narrative.
The last primary text Joseph Anton (2012) is a unique memoir written in third
person narrative by Salman Rushdie who here retells his difficult experiences during
his fatwa. His extreme perceptions on history, terrorism, religion and literature get
expressed through this narrative. The text is in fact a kind of vindication of his
innocence regarding the fatwa. It traces the growth of his writerly self and he also
devotes pages to justify his intentions behind the composition of The Satanic Verses
(1988). The blurring of fact and fiction is the trickiest part in the memoir which makes
it very fertile for critical interpretation. Joseph Anton is a perfect example of
postmodern memoir writing in contemporary India.

Review of Literature

The literature review is basically divided into three broad categories: i) Overall Studies
on Indian Autobiographies ii) Studies on the Selected Indian English autobiographers
and iii) Critical Works on Autobiographical theory.

9
 The following section details the literature which deals with overall studies on
Indian autobiographies.

Telling Lives in India (2004) by David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn serves as a
significant contribution to a new perspective on Indian life histories from biographies,
autobiographies, diaries to oral stories. Through the essays in this book, Arnold tries to
support as well as counter the viewpoint that the typical Indian self is culture specific
and collective in nature. Arnold considers the prison narratives of Gandhi, Nehru in the
twentieth century as the most individualistic and introspective expression of the self. It
opens up new ways of thinking and writing about India. As Arnold concludes in his
book, a study of the Bengali autobiography of Sibnath Sastri by Kaviraj in “The
Invention of Private Life: A Reading of Sibnath Sastri’s Autobiography” and the
reticent poetic self of Mahadevi Varma by Orsini in the essay “The Reticent
Autobiographer Mahadevi Varma’s Writings” represent the emergence of a modern,
authorial selfhood. This book undoubtedly forms a significant part of the review of
literature for this particular research work I have undertaken. Besides gaining insight
from Arnold, this thesis shall also critique many of his views as it aims to
challenge the autonomous, introspective nature of autobiographical selves in Indian
English self-narratives.

Dalit personal Narratives (2011) is a significant contribution to the study of

Indian autobiographies. Raj Kumar in this work traces the beginning and growth of
Indian autobiographies, both in English and the translated ones. He analyses how
factors like caste, culture, religion, gender play significant roles in shaping the same.
Besides, he draws a comparison of the nuances in the writing style of both the
upper caste and the lower caste writers. It then deals at length with the life narratives
from the subaltern class—that of the Dalits. Kumar analyses both male and female
Dalit writers from different perspectives thereby discovering the typically political
nature of such narratives. It traces how Dalit autobiographies serve as tools of
resistance by illuminating the cause of identity crisis and terrible marginality, thus
enlightening one on this recent development in the sphere of Indian autobiographies.

The book The Indian Autobiographies in English (2013) forms a major part of a
thesis by R. C. P. Sinha. Here he makes a general survey and analysis of Indian

10
autobiographies written in English. Sinha gives considerable credit to British education
and the literary renaissance brought in by them for the development of such self-
narratives. Initially he traces the growth of autobiographies through ancient and
medieval India since the Vedas. He then classifies the autobiographies according to
“mission” or “calling” of individual authors owing to the difficulty of classifying the
same by motive. Sinha however attributes the future of Indian English autobiography to
the future of English education in India. The relevance of this book lies in the fact that
it serves as an existing body of knowledge on Indian English autobiography and thus
shall serve as an indispensable part of the review of literature for my research.

Uday Kumar in the work Writing the First Person: Literature, History, and
Autobiography in Modern Kerala (2016) critically examines the emergence, growth
and history of autobiographical writings in Kerala owing to several socio-political and
religious changes in the twentieth century. Although all the sections of this book are not
directly relevant for my study, yet the theoretical framework and the analytical
perspective Kumar uses for interpreting the self-narratives of Kerala suffice as
important points of reference. Self-narrative reveals only the truth of deception
according to him. Kumar identifies how the development of self-narratives began
against the backdrop of Protestant Christian missionary activity, thereby testifying to
experiences of religious conversion. He discovers how factors like physical body and
caste play a significant role in determining individual identity and articulating self
relation. He draws upon the theories of Butler and Cavarero which provide further
insight to a study of self-narratives. Kumar’s survey of self-narratives in Kerala thus
serves as a role model to contemplate the bigger Indian picture as well from similar
historical and conceptual lens.

The next section of literature review takes into consideration works on the
individual writers undertaken for this thesis.

Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi's Political

Discourse (1989) by Bhikhu Parekh studies the numerous facets of Gandhi’s life and
personality vis-à-vis his autobiography. He seeks to contemplate Gandhi’s position
between tradition and modernity through the latter’s preoccupation with Hinduism, non-
violence, sex, politics and untouchability. Besides focusing on the Indianization of

11
autobiography in general, Parekh critically analyses the contesting discourses on
Gandhian ideals in particular, which makes it of pertinent relevance for this
dissertation.

Edited by Swapan Dasgupta, Nirad C. Chaudhuri: the First Hundred Years

(1997) is a collection of scholarly essays on the life and works of N.C. Chaudhuri. The
essays uphold the numerous dimensions of Chaudhuri’s personality and his take on
Indian history. Those give the readers a glimpse of how he was a mix of English
traditionalism and Bengali conservatism. In the very “Introduction” to the book,
Swapan Dasgupta makes some critical observations on the nature of history,
nationalism in Autobiography of an Unknown Indian and Thy Hand, Great Anarch! The
essay “The World’s Last Englishman” by Ian Jack draws on Chaudhuri’s obsession and
advocacy for Western culture, music and the utter influence of his books on the
Western publishers. Meenakshi Mukherjee in “We say Desh” identifies the paradoxes
and ambivalences in Chaudhuri’s language and writings which led to his contradictory
perspectives. Again, in the essay “N.C. Chaudhuri: Scholar and Iconoclast” K. Natwar
Singh critiques Chaudhuri’s dark vision of life, history, society especially in A Passage
to England (1959). A comparison between Naipaul and Chaudhuri is chalked by
Keki N. Daruwalla in “The Wounded Continent, Nirad Babu and Naipaul”. Especially
significant for the chapter on metahistory has been the essay “Mejokaka” by Krishna
Bose where she comments that it would be inappropriate to call Chaudhuri a historian
due to a serious lack of archival research. She also attempts to decipher his
misinterpretations of Subhash Chandra Bose and the INA soldiers. Srabani Basu’s “An
Austen Afternoon” reveals Jane Austen’s influence on Chaudhuri. In “A Scholar
Extraordinary” Khushwant Singh justifies Chaudhuri’s pro-Indian narration in his first
autobiography, his defense of Hinduism and Indianness as opposed to the orientalist
presuppositions where the East was largely misinterpreted by the Western world in art,
literature and cultural studies.

Moreover, some scholarly journals have also been reviewed to negotiate the
various interpretations on the works of the selected writers. The article “Nehru as a
Writer” (1990) by Vinay Lal discusses the overwhelming presence of Gandhi in
Nehru’s life as well as literature. It also deals with Nehru’s historical imagination and
simple prose style in three of his greatest works including his autobiography. Again,

12
Balkrishna Gokhale in “Nehru and History” (1978) traces the nature of history
narration by Nehru in his autobiography. He calls Nehru a romantic historian because
of his fascination for “man”. He further interprets the twofold evolution of Indian
history as per Nehru through an amalgamation of the West and the East. This essay is
very vital in gauging history narration by Nehru and is relevant for the chapter on
metahistorical self narration by Indian English autobiographers.

Geetanjali Gangoli in the essay “One of a Kind: A Review of Sorabji’s India

Calling” (2002) talks about Sorabji’s complicated history narration and the
marginalization of the same by the historians. According to the author, Sorabji’s
descriptions concentrate on the recreation of the orientalist ‘other’. The presence of
class distinction through an absence of Indian working-class women in Sorabji’s
memoir has also been identified by Gangoli besides a dissection of Sorabji’s attitude of
patronizing charity. All such insights and interpretations greatly inform this thesis as a
relevant piece of literature.

Antoinette Burton’s critical chapter “Tourism in the Archives: Colonial

Modernity and Zenana in Cornelia Sorabji’s Memoirs” from the text Dwelling in the
Archive (2003) is very important for this dissertation. It theorizes Sorabji’s idea of
modernity for upper caste Indian women in the backdrop of colonialism. The author
highlights how Sorabji had become an authority and guiding light for them
and considered herself as a zenana (a part of a house for seclusion of Hindu
purdahnashins) expert with an omnipotent take on that. Burton also talks at length
about Sorabji’s antinationalist traits and the controversies surrounding her besides
throwing light on her family, life and career. According to her, “Sorabji turned the
zenana into a museum” and tried to act as its “authoritative tour guide” (69). Taking
instances from India Calling, Burton unveils Sorabji’s story telling skills. She recounts
how the zenana archived in Sorabji’s reports bear imprints of her self-interest besides
her political and professional interests. Burton also infers how Sorabji imagined the
Hindu women in their setting through her ideological stance and rhetorical maneuvers
in India Calling. The secluded zenana setting was turned into a tourist site by her.
Towards the end of the chapter Burton also deciphers the patronizing nature of
narratives on purdahnashins in India Recalled (1936). Moreover, she draws how
Sorabji scripted herself in terms of the “others” in the face of colonialism and

13
modernity.

The essay “Imagined individuals: National Autobiography and Post Colonial

Self-fashioning” (2003) by Philip Holden brings up the role of autobiographies in
creating a social imaginary. Taking the instances of Nehru, Nkrumah and Sukarno, he
emphasizes how an individual’s life is unfolded in the process of a nation’s self-
discovery and independence. According to him, through a social imaginary, the nation
and the individual become one entity with the postcolonial state attaining autonomy.
Also remarkable is his inference that the social imaginary in the autobiographies of
these writers is gendered. Moreover, Holden asserts that there is a celebration of heroic
masculinity among these writers as reflected in their approach towards their nations and
towards their female partners. He observes that in An Autobiography, Nehru’s
realization of the nation is paralleled with that of his relationship with his wife Kamala
(4). Holden remarks that Kamala stands as “a representative for Nehru of a paradox
central to An Autobiography”. (5) The essay thus functions as an important body of
knowledge on Nehru’s self-narrative.

In “A Nice Man to know: Interview with Khushwant Singh” (2006), Sheela

Reddy and Ira Pandey make an extensive survey on the life and writing practices of
Singh in this article. Singh’s opinions on partition, Sikh riots, Gandhism find place in
this essay. He relates how he too was targeted for criticizing Indira Gandhi’s Blue Star
Operation. He felt existential crisis in India during the 1984 Sikh riot. His support for
the Muslims and their culture also get expressed in the interview. Besides, the
reason behind Singh’s inclination towards writing in English finds expression in this
essay. As related by him, he drew the sense of malice from Aldous Huxley. A picture
of Singh’s worldview in this essay greatly informs the study on his autobiography.

A Postcolonial Critique of N. C. Chaudhuri’s Writings (2010) is yet another

critical work on Chaudhuri’s texts. It is an elaborate thesis on some critical postcolonial
aspects in his non-fictional works like that of contrapuntal readings, ambivalence,
hybridity and mimicry by Tamal Guha. Guha’s theorization of how colonial thoughts
get developed through colonial language has been of specific importance for the
chapter on English self-fashioning in this thesis. The interpretations of Chaudhuri’s
ambivalent attitude towards culture, war and so on inform the study of hybridity and

14
colonial mimicry. Guha calls Chaudhuri an atypical comprador by problematizing his
approach to decadence in his writings.

The book Salman Rushdie (2010) by Andrew Teverson offers a critical study of
the social, cultural, biographical, intellectual and philosophical contexts from which
Salman Rushdie’s writings emerge. He also justifies from a postcolonial viewpoint
Rushdie’s attempt to write back to the empire and decolonize the mind through a
predominant use of the English language as the medium of writing. Moreover,
Teverson argues on the intertextual, dialogical and postmodern nature of Rushdie’s
creations. This critical research on Rushdie shall thus help in understanding the latter’s
memoir as well which is equally replete with all the issues taken up by Teverson.

Devindra Kohli’s elaborate “Introduction” to Kamala Das’ Selected Poems

(2014) lends significant insights on her poetry as well as prose. Kohli mentions how
Kamala Das tried to diminish all division between poetry and ordinary speech. He also
observes how Das claimed her postcolonial space and national space in multilingual
India by asserting her freedom to write in English and how through her use of English
she also subverted the traditional male paradigm (Kohli xxi). He points out the paradox
of how Das considered her poems to be a real portraiture of her life rather than her
prose. According to him My Story owes much to Das’ poetic instinct. Genre-crossing is
very much evident in her autobiography which often reads like her search for a poetic
form. Kohli’s essay thus raises some very vital issues relevant for this thesis, especially
in the study of English self-fashioning. Also notable in this respect is the article “Of
Masks and Memoirs: An Interview with Kamala Das” (1993) by P. Raveendran where
Das talks about an imaginary world and split personality of a writer. The essay is thus
of special relevance for the chapter on psychoanalysis.

Coming to works on prison narratives, Great Books Written in Prison: Essays

on Classic Works from Plato to Martin Luther King, Jr. (2015) by J. Ward Regan
examines critical works written behind the bars by great personalities who changed the
course of history. Thoreau, Gandhi, Nehru, Thomas Paine, Plato, Bertrand Russell,
Hitler, Martin Luther King, Jr. are some of the writers discussed here. Essays like
“Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India: The Writing of History, Fighting for Freedom
in Ahmandnager Jail” by Tilottoma Tharoor become relevant points of references for

15
this thesis.

The third and last section of the review of literature includes some critical works
on autobiographical theory.

Design and Truth in Autobiography (1960) by Roy Pascal attempts to

analyse the frame of truth in self-narratives. Beginning with a definition and history of
autobiography, Pascal studies the design that shapes truth in the same. Of special
importance are chapters like “The Elusiveness of Truth” and “The Structure of Truth in
Autobiography” which show how the autobiographer both discovers and creates a
deeper design transcending historical and factual truth. In the former, he emphasizes on
how the autobiographer has the right to elude certain historical happenings, depending
on the situation. He also mentions of underwriting and overwriting in an autobiography
which serve to determine its truthfulness. In “Man in the truth of Nature” Pascal
stresses on the necessity of the representation of the “whole man” in modern
autobiographies so that the weakening relationship between the personal and social
beings gets strengthened. Towards the end he tries to identify what sort of self-
knowledge the autobiographer seeks. Pascal’s findings on the nature of personal and
historical truth in self-narratives shall be of particular importance in the context of
historical representation in this research.

Jean Starobinski in the essay “The Style of Autobiography” (1971) deals with
the different kinds of styles that can be found under the big umbrella of autobiography.
By style he refers to the mode of an individual’s act of making his past the subject
matter of writing. He points out how style sometimes becomes an obstacle in the path
of realistic self narration. He also throws light on discourse-history in autobiography
and highlights the problematics of addressivity as in case of Augustine’s Confessions
which summons God but is again indirectly addressed to the readers. He comprehends
the presence of a pronominal constancy as one of the vital characteristics of an
autobiography whereby the present reflection and the multiplicity of past states co-
exist. The essay is thus an important point of reference for the chapter on relational,
referential autobiographical self in this thesis.

Metaphors of Self (1972) by James Olney explores how the desire to create
determines the nature and form of autobiography. He lays emphasis on creative impulse

16
and vitality and man’s desire for order as the driving force behind self narration.
According to him, the self is always “becoming” until death—a oneness, integrity
and harmony holds together the self’s multiplicity and transformations (6). It is a very
structuralist take on autobiographical theory and criticism. As Olney writes in the
section “A Theory of Autobiography”, “In the most intense instress relationship, we
share our form and our life with the perceived objects: we become, in our creative act,
all the objects we behold, and, more importantly, the order of those objects” (33). He
infers that the lonely subjective consciousness gives itself order through metaphors:
“The self expresses itself by the metaphors it creates and projects, and we know it by
those metaphors; but it did not exist as it now does and as it now is before creating its
metaphors” (Olney 34). For him, poetry, imagination, metaphors, creativity give
meaning to autobiography. He traces this autobiographical impulse in Montaigne, Jung,
George Fox, Darwin, Newman, Mills, and Eliot.
The Ear of the Other (1982) edited by Christie V. McDonald is a collection of
Derrida’s lectures and discussions on autobiography and translation. The first section of
this book entitled “Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the
Proper Name” is of particular significance as Derrida here undertakes a
deconstructionist reading of Nietzsche’s autobiography Ecce Homo (1908). Derrida
here strives to discover how the very proper name or autograph in an autobiography
deconstructs itself. He argues that the readings of Nietzsche’s text are not finished, as
no text can be reduced to a single meaning. Derrida lays stress on the ear of the receiver
or the reader who could perceive Nietzsche’s text only after his death—Nietzsche’s life
and proper name being indebted to others. The second section called “Roundtable on
Autobiography” covers Derrida’s meetings with different scholars who critique on the
nature and boundaries of autobiography as a genre. This work is therefore of great
theoretical significance for this particular dissertation as it embodies Derrida’s
poststructural approach to autobiography.

In the essay “Autobiography, Ideology and Genre Theory” (1983) Robert Elbaz
makes a strong argument that autobiography can only be a fiction owing to its linguistic
uncertainty and a lack of proper completion. He shows how a self-narrative develops
otherness and a receptive, group consciousness that leads to a kind of ideological
arrangement. He refers to speech-act theory which, according to him, adds a new

17
dimension to autobiography. Elbaz interrogates whether truth is discovered or created
within a social whole. According to him, as language is predominantly charged with the
voice of the other, so there exists no difference between autobiography and fiction. He
brings in Louis A. Renza’s arguments in “The Veto of Imagination: A Theory of
Autobiography” (1997) and attempts to offer a counter to the same. He asserts that
every realistic discourse is but a metaphoric reality and that genre is only an ideological
grid. The article therefore stands relevant as it interrogates autobiography as a non-
fictional genre similar to this thesis which attempts to problematize dichotomies of fact-
fiction and metaphorical dimension in Indian English self-narratives.

The Changing Nature of Self: A Critical Study of Autobiographical Discourses

(1987) by Robert Elbaz basically assumes that selfhood in autobiography is historically
and culturally determined. He attempts to show how the discourse of modernism in
autobiography has its origin from within the medieval configuration. He aims to argue
that through the process of meditation by linguistic reality and suspension,
autobiography can only be a fiction. Considering Augustine’s Confessions for instance,
Elbaz concludes how biographical data and historical truth get converted to figurative
language and a metaphysical treatise. As a result, Elbaz’s theoretical and analytical
framework for this book has a great relevance for any study on autobiography as it
explicates the concepts of ideology and genre theory.

The critical volume Technologies of the Self (1988) has its source in a seminar
with Michel Foucault and also includes some of the revised presentations by members
of the seminar edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton.
Foucault in his six seminar presentations comprehends the ways of historical self-
formation from the early Greeks to the Christian age through an examination of
classical texts. By “technologies of the self” Foucault means the history of how an
individual acts upon himself—the ways of individual domination. This book is thus of
considerable theoretical significance for this dissertation as it would contribute in
critically studying the nature of self-creation and self-fashioning in the self-narratives
through a poststructuralist lens.

Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (2001) by

Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith is an important and helpful guide for interpreting self-

18
narratives. Very lucidly and systematically it traces the components of autobiography
and the history of autobiography criticism from Gusdorf to Olney to Derrida. Besides,
it elaborates the necessary paradigms for critiquing autobiographical narratives through
the “tool kit”. This text is especially remarkable for this dissertation as it helps to
perceive the evolution of autobiographical criticism in a very comprehensive manner.

Edited by Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh, Narrative and Identity: Studies
in Autobiography, Self and Culture (2001) predominantly deals with the process of
autobiographical identity construction—the way we construct our selves as cultural
beings. The varied essays here show that the focus on narrative proves to be supremely
productive for the exploration of autobiographical memory and identity. Jerome
Bruner, for instance, in the essay “Self-Making and World Making” challenges the
perception that autobiographical writing is about an essential self. He stresses on the
role of the interpretations of the “others” in self-making and the intersubjective nature
of the self. Many of the essays in this book shall therefore be of vital importance to
understand the dialogical, relational and existential nature of the self in Indian English
autobiographies.

Postcolonial Life-writing: Culture, Politics and Self-Representation (2009) by

Bart-Moore Gilbert delineates the nature of the self in postcolonial life-writings as
cultural or racial constructs. Through a parallel study of postcolonial theory and
autobiographical narratives, Gilbert identifies the postcolonial self to be of four kinds—
relational, embodied, located and centred-decentred. Gilbert’s corpus engulfs a variety
of life writings like Indian, Egyptian, African and Canadian. He also tries to identify the
political self-representation and the non-western narrative resources in postcolonial life
writing, be it in the case of Soyinka or Gandhi or Saadawi. Gilbert’s book is of
considerable relevance for this research as Indian English autobiography is also a
typically postcolonial phenomenon.

Linda Anderson’s Autobiography (2010) provides an overview of the changing

practice of autobiographical criticism in the West. She theorizes the idea of self-
realization, self-representation, authorship in the context of autobiographies and
memoirs since Augustine’s time till the poststructural era. Drawing from the early
historians of the self, Anderson strives to comprehend autobiographical subjectivity in

19
terms of the modern theories of Freud, Barthes and Derrida. In the section called “Other
Subjects”, she problematizes the issue of gender and autobiography. Besides,
Autobiography throws light on hybridity and homelessness as the problematic areas of
postcolonial subjectivity. Anderson ends her book with an analysis of memoirs, diaries
and the role of trauma and testimony in shaping the same. This book serves as a perfect
introduction to the study of self-narratives. It also lays bare the possible yardsticks
required for a poststructural interpretation of memoirs and autobiographies which can
form an important reference point for this research.
In The Oxford Handbook of the Self (2011) Shaun Gallagher brings together
essays centring the changing perspectives on selfhood--personal identity, subjectivity,
mind-body dualism etc. over the centuries in different areas of research or philosophy.
The essays by a diversity of writers rethink the concept of selfhood from cognitive,
poststructuralist, postmodern, feminist, Buddhist, socio-cultural, psychological and
neuro-scientific points of view. Of particular relevance are essays like “The Narrative
Self” by Marya Schechtman, “The Social Construction of Self” by Kenneth J. Gergen,
“The Dialogical Self: A Process of Positioning in Space and Time” by Hubert J. M.
Hermans and so on. All these essays throw light on the social construction of self—its
agentiality and its relational nature. All these concepts and theories will serve as
important yardsticks for interpreting and arguing the nature of self and subjectivity in
self-narratives chosen for this dissertation, being especially relevant to my chapters
concerning the relational self and self-fashioning in Indian English autobiographies.

The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography (2014) by Maria DiBattista, Emily

O. Wittman offers a panoramic overview of the development and kinds of Western
autobiographies as a genre. Along with an instructive introduction, this book consists of
sixteen significant essays arranged chronologically. Those explore the varied styles,
forms and motives of life writings. Towards the end, this book throws light on the
modern trends of experimentation with the autobiographical subject. True to its title,
this book serves as a perfect companion in perceiving the nature of autobiographical
narratives in the West.

Edited by Eveline Kilian and Hope Wolf, Life Writing and Space (2016)
explores the spatial dimensions of life writing. It is a significant work elaborating,
through a number of essays the role of space in the construction of selves and identities

20
in life writing. The very introduction of the book offers a comprehensive theoretical
base on space that runs throughout the chapters that follow. It begins with the
proposition that life writing and space are interconnected and that how we narrate
ourselves depends on how we locate or relocate our identities in space or in terms of
certain places. As Kilian and Wolf write in the Introduction: “...mobility initiates a
dynamic of (re) creation and decreation of the self, one that is explored in several of
the following chapters and that is intimately linked to the ideological forces inherent in
spaces as well as places and the subject’s ability to engage with, and resist, them” (4).
The physical, material journey often corresponds to an inward, metaphorical journey of
the self. Many essays throw light on how space is experienced and imagined, which is
of particular relevance in this thesis as it wishes to analyse how space is imagined in
autobiographies. Foucault’s “heterotopia”, Lefebvre’s notion of the social production of
space, Edward Soja’s concept of “third space”, Gaston Bachelard’s “poetics of space”
form the theoretical pillars used to grab the mutual constitution of space and
subjectivity in Life Writing and Space. The reference to David Harvey in
comprehending imagined spaces is also very noteworthy: “For Harvey, lived space is
dominated by the ‘imagination’ and linked to the production of alternative spaces in the
form of ‘utopian plans’, ‘imaginary landscapes’ or ‘spaces of desire’” (Klein and Wolf
5). Some chapters take up the concept of “heterotopias” “to explore what happens when
versions of the self are projected into remembered or fictionalized representations of
physical spaces” (5). The book interprets how life writing is shaped by spaces like
margins, temporary homes, gardens etc. and also how life writing might lead to the
ways in which those spaces are imagined. “It shows how the concepts of subjectivity
draw on spatial ideas and metaphors, and how the grounding or uprooting of the self is
understood in terms of place” (Klein and Wolf 7). This thesis also plans to explore the
same to examine how lives are imagined differently through life writing. Imaginary
spaces/places are relevant to Rushdie’s, Anand’s self-narratives whereas spaces of
desire can be found evident in the memoirs of Kamala Das and Dom Moraes.

The book is divided into four sections, investigating different aspects of the
spatial dimension of life writing. The section “Relocating and Reimagining the Self”
analyses how relocation leads to reimagining of the self and how space becomes a way
of limiting the passing of time. The chapter “Multiple Occupancy: Residency and

21
Retrospection in Trollope’s Orley Farm and An Autobiography” by Matthew Ingleby
shows how nostalgia shares an integral connection with spatiality. In the context of
relocation, nostalgia becomes an important theme in this work–nostalgia for
irreplaceably lost cities or houses. With Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia
(2001) as the main theoretical base, the chapter interprets how the retrospective
yearning for a home that no longer exists creates an imagined space which either
challenges the progression of time or functions as a means for authors to overcome
their pasts. In a similar line, the next chapter “Lost Cities and Found Lives: The
‘Geographical Emotions’ of Bryher and Walter Benjamin” points out the role played by
remembered spaces in the creation of our identities. Both Bryher and Benjamin’s
memoirs encircling Berlin explicate how changes are registered in the autobiographical
self through geographical locations stored as unchanging in our memories. As Andrew
Thacker observes about The Heart to Artemis (1962), “In writing about her inner self,
Bryher is recalling the exterior space of her ‘lost city’, a city whose cultural geography
in the late 1920s was partly responsible for how she ‘found’, we might say, her own
self” (44). Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood (2006) challenges the idea of linear
unfolding of time in life writing. His narrative is characterized by spatial distance as he
strives to forget the city through his writing. Such “geographical emotions” can be
found in the autobiographies of N C Chaudhuri, Moraes and Salman Rushdie which
this thesis intends to explore. Many perspectives on space and life writing used in this
thesis (Chapter 5) have been drawn from this text by Kilian and Wolf and hence it is of
great importance here.

An essay of crucial importance to this thesis, “Autobiography and

Psychoanalysis” by Laura Marcus forms a part of her book Autobiography: A Very
Short Introduction (2018). In this essay she emphasizes on the importance of
psychoanalysis while interpreting life narratives. She studies the role of the unconscious
mind and dreams in the autobiographies of Rousseau, Augustine, Wordsworth and De
Quincey. She also discusses dream as a form of autobiography. Then she goes on to
throw light on the recent rise in memoir writing as a refuge from traumatic experiences.
Drawing from Sigmund Freud’s ideas of the constructed nature of memories in “Screen
Memories”, Marcus reveals how Freud analysed the childhood self and sibling rivalry
in his autobiography. All such insights shall be a major review to the third chapter in

22
this thesis on psychoanalysis and the Indian English autobiographies.

Overall Theoretical Framework

The poststructural theorist Jacques Derrida makes some extreme observations on how
the autobiographical genre deconstructs itself in the edited volume The Ear of the Other
(1982). The most pertinent essay of the volume is titled “Otobiographies: The Teaching
of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name”. Derrida here makes a deconstructive
reading of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (1908). According to Derrida, the “I” in
autobiography actually does not exist as it is all about the past life that cannot be
obtained at the present. He draws some extreme conclusions, like, one cannot call one’s
autobiography to be one’s own and cannot sign on it as the author until one is dead. An
autobiography can only be complete after one’s death, according to him. Such radical
interpretations of autobiography by Derrida paved the way for further future
poststructural readings of self-narratives. Likewise, the existing fissures in the binary
oppositions like fact/fiction, truth/imagination, etc. will be interpreted in the primary
Indian English texts chosen here. As a mode of literary criticism, deconstruction refers
to a kind of reading that aims to shatter the supposed coherence or watertight
boundaries created by language. According to the prominent deconstructionist J. Hillis
Miller, deconstruction brings about the play of contradictory and undecidable meanings
in any literary text. As he explains in Theory Now and Then (1991):

The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands
by showing that the text has already annihilated the ground, knowingly or
unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text but a
demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. (Miller 126)

Paul de Man is one of the most important critics who used deconstruction to interpret
literary texts. He applies Derrida’s deconstruction to the reading of autobiographies in
his influential treatise The Rhetoric of Romanticism (1983) where he offers his
poststructuralist take on allegory, rhetoric and autobiography. In his critical essay
“Autobiography as De-facement” (1979) de Man argues how the autobiographical
project determines the author’s life, rather than the other way round. By the
autobiographical project he means a tropological structure that overpowers the textual
system of the autobiography. As he writes:

23
 The interest of autobiography, then, is not that it reveals reliable self-knowledge-
it does not-but that it demonstrates in a striking way the impossibility of closure
and of totalization (that is the impossibility of coming into being) of all textual
systems made up of tropological substitutions. (de Man 922)

He calls autobiography a figure of reading that occurs in every text. Autobiography,

according to him, cannot help being inclusive of certain metaphorical tropes like that of
prosopopoeia. “Prosopopoeia is the trope of autobiography, by which one's name, as in
the Milton poem, is made as intelligible and memorable as a face” (de Man 926).

According to de Man, all reading is rhetorical or tropological, autobiography

being no exception. Figurative language or tropes become very important when it
comes to deconstruction. Jonathan Culler in The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature,
Deconstruction (1981) observes, “... the figurative is the name we give to effects of
language that exceed, deform, or deviate from the code ...” (233). Tropes refer to a
figurative use of words as opposed to the usual literal use. Figurative language or tropes
tend to make meaning undecidable and arbitrary by multiplying the possibility of
significations. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (2015) defines “trope” as:

A figure of speech, especially one that uses words in senses beyond their literal
meanings. The major figures that are agreed upon as being tropes are metaphor,
simile, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, personification, and hyperbole; litotes
and periphrasis are also sometimes called tropes. The figurative sense of a word
is sometimes called its tropological sense, tropology being the study of tropes.
(459)

According to de Man, it is “the technical demands of self-portraiture” (920) that

determine the life that is created. He elaborates his point through an analysis of
Wordsworth’s Essays upon Epitaphs. He claims that autobiographical discourse is a
discourse of self- restoration. He interprets autobiography as both the cause and mask
of disfiguration of the mind. Paul de Man thus throws considerable light on the tropes
which help to identify the blurred differences between fiction and autobiography. “For
de Man, rhetoric is not a distinct object suitable for literary analysis but is the figurative
dimension of language which implies the persistent threat of misreading” (18), writes
Martin McQuillan in his critical work Paul de Man (2001). In this thesis, relationality,

24
colonial self-fashioning, psychoanalysis, metahistory and spatiality will be explained as
tropes and then the tropological structure will be analysed in the five chapters that
follow through an incorporation of a variety of theoretical tools in order to make a de
Manian reading of the select primary texts.

Catering to the demand and structure of the thesis, different sets of theories have
been employed in each chapter in order to make the analysis relevant and critical. In
order to justify the master argument of Paul de Man, theories on relationality,
postcolonialism, metahistory, psychoanalysis and spatiality have informed the five
chapters respectively.

Paul John Eakin’s theoretical formulation on the relational nature of self in

Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography (1992) and How Our Lives Become
Stories: Making Selves (1999) throw light on the referential narrative in
autobiographies. He observes how the characteristics in an autobiography relate to a
world of reference they represent through which the autobiographical self gets
constructed. The chapter “Relational Selves, Relational Lives: Autobiography and the
Myth of Autonomy” in How Our Lives Become Stories puts the identity of the first
person narrative into question.

Eakin’s theorization of the dynamic of recognition by the “Other” is pretty

similar to Judith Butler’s model of addressivity and responsibility as propounded in her
book Giving an Account of Oneself (2003). Drawing from Adriana Cavarero,
Butler establishes the importance of the Other’s recognition in giving an account of
oneself, thus bringing out the idea of addressivity in self-narratives. She shows how the
possibility of narrating the self in autobiography by oneself is fractured and
deconstructed due to the structure of addressivity.

Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism is also equally vital in comprehending

the relational nature of the self, for relationality and dialogism are inevitably
interconnected. Although Bakhtin applied and discovered his idea of dialogism mainly
in novels, Indian English autobiographies too provide a fertile ground for
comprehending dialogism through the relational self, as shall be analysed in the first
chapter. To quote Bakhtin from The Dialogic Imagination, “Understanding and
response are dialectically merged and mutually condition each other: one is impossible

25
without the other” (282). He insists that the intention of the speaker is overpowered by
the intention of many other voices. Besides Eakin, Butler and Bakhtin, Emanuel
Levinas’ concept of “face of the other” will also be vital to interpreting the role of
ethical responsibility as a metaphor in moulding the autobiographical self.

Three schools of thought seem prominent while analyzing the different facets of
English self-fashioning and colonial identity formation. The first among these is that of
the theorists like Edward Said and Gauri Vishwanathan who perceived colonialism and
English literature as ideological weapons used by the British for imperial expansion.
The second school includes theorists like Leela Gandhi, Homi Bhabha and even Salman
Rushdie who reflected on the hybrid, ambivalent nature of English influence and the
significance of appropriation. The third school comprises the Marxist critics like Aijaz
Ahmed and Tabish Khair who viewed English influence, language and literature in
India as a mark of alienation. Meenakshi Mukherjee also falls into the third category to
a large extent as she defies any possibility of hybridity in the context of Indian English
writers staying abroad.

Both Freudian and Lacanian modes of psychoanalysis stand integral in

understanding the nature of Indian English autobiographies and memoirs. Among many
of his seminal works, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and The Ego and the Id (1923) provide
insights to some of his core ideas. His dictum of dreams as fulfillment of the wishes in
the unconscious plays a vital role in understanding the psychoanalytic construction
of the self. Notable works like Ecrits (1966), The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI (1973) contain Lacan’s
formulation of the mirror stage, discourse of the “Other”, “desire of the Other”,
alienation and “lack” which stand particularly pertinent for contemplating the
subjectivity of the autobiographers from a psychoanalytic viewpoint.

When it comes to the analysis of history narrated by the select Indian English
writers, Hayden White’s propositions on metahistory in Metahistory: The Historical
Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (1973) stand relevant. In the treatise, White
theorizes important modes of emplotment, modes of argumentative explanation and
modes of ideological implication in history narration following his analysis of some

26
great historians like Ranke and Tocqueville among others. His new historical
proposition will be used as the framework to discover the imaginative and tropological
nature of history narration.

In the exploration of spatiality in the select texts, Gaston Bachelard’s

theorization of home and imagination in Poetics of Space (1957) and Michel Foucault’s
ideas of heterotopias in “Of Other Spaces” (1986) stand relevant. Also, changes are
often made in the self by means of geographical locations kept as unchanging in our
memories. Peter Perreten’s theory of eco-autobiography in “Eco-Autobiography:
Portrait of Place/Self-Portrait” (2014) is vital in this context as he talks of a symbiotic
relationship between the natural setting and the self.

So, within a poststructural lens, combined tools of Bakhtinian theory,

psychoanalysis, metahistory, postcolonial theory and space theories will be employed
to analyse the variety of tropes employed by the Indian English self narrators in
constructing their identity through a close reading of the texts.

Chapter Plan

Apart from the “Introduction” and the “Conclusion”, this thesis is divided into five
chapters.
Chapter 1 entitled “The Relational Self: Other lives as tropes of Imagined
Subjectivity” aims to bring out the relational nature of Indian English autobiographies.
The chapter will interrogate the agentiality of the autobiographical self with Judith
Butler’s account in “Giving an account of Oneself” (2001), Paul John Eakin’s
theorizations on the relational self, Bakhtin’s ideas of dialogism and Levinas’ concept
of “face of the other” as the main theoretical framework. The inevitable technical
demands of the other lives that function as polyphonic voices to deconstruct the
monologic self perception will mainly be studied here. The role of the tropes of
referentiality and addressivity in creating the imagined subjectivity is its major
hypothesis.

Chapter 2 entitled “The Rhetoric of English Self-fashioning” attempts to study

the presence of English language, colonial literature and law as tropes or metaphors in
the Indian English self-narratives leading to the postcolonial as well as poststructural

27
subjectivity. Concepts by varied postcolonial theorists like Edward Said, Gauri
Vishwanathan, Aijaz Ahmed, Leela Gandhi, Homi Bhabha, Tabish Khair and
Meenakshi Mukherjee will be used to understand the ambivalent nature of colonial
influence on the autobiographical selves. Hybrid, ambivalent self-fashioning will be
informed by Bhabha’s theorizations of hybridity while the elements of “Babu fiction”
will be analysed through the lens of Tabish Khair and Aijaz Ahmed respectively. Gauri
Viswanathan’s take on law as a colonial tool will help in understanding this trope.

Chapter 3 entitled “Metahistory: Negotiating the Imaginative Self in History

Narration” proposes to problematize the nature of history narration by the Indian
English self narrators. It strives to question the supposed objective history portrayals by
using Hayden White’s tools of metahistory. The chapter will try to bring out the
subjective, literary and imaginative nature of history narration by interpreting the
modes of emplotment, the historical arguments and the ideological implications replete
in them. Understanding the tropological and metaphorical use of history to comprehend
the de-facing of the autobiographical self one step further is the main aim of this
chapter.

Chapter 4 entitled “Inner Worlds: Psychoanalysis and Autobiographical

Subjectivity” aims to interpret the role of the psychoanalytic tropes of libido, dreams,
death instinct and trauma in metaphorizing the autobiographical subjectivity. The
theoretical notions of Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth and Jacques Lacan will be
relevant for this chapter. Freud’s dictum on libido, dreams and death instinct, Lacan’s
theories on “objet petit a”, mirror stage and split personality and Caruth’s formulations
on trauma and subjectivity will help in the understanding of the fragmented, illusory
nature of the autobiographical self.

Chapter 5 entitled “The Rhetoric of Spatiality and Temporality in Self-

narration” seeks to identify the function of space and place as metaphorical tropes in the
autobiographical imagination in Indian English writers. The spacing of the self in a
poetic manner through ecological emotions, images of houses or cities will be
interpreted here to comprehend the construction of subjectivity. Gaston Bachelard’s
idea of the home and imagination in Poetics of Space (1957), Aijaz Ahmed’s
theorization of “the rhetoric of exile”, Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces” (1957), and Peter

28
Perreten’s formulation of eco-autobiography in “Eco-Autobiography: Portrait of
Place/Self-Portrait” (2014) will serve as the major tools of analysis for this chapter.
Mention must also be made of Kilian and Wolf’s Life Writing and Space (2016) which
will be a very relevant point of reference for this particular chapterization.

The Introduction will be followed by the first chapter of the thesis on relational
self and imagined subjectivity.

29