POLITICALLIFEWRITING · MASS POLITICAL LIFE WRITING

MASS POLITICAL LIFE WRITING

Autobiography is part of our everyday life: writing and enunciating our self has become such a common practice that we no longer notice.. We watch TV talk shows where people tell their painful life stories, we expose our daily life through posts and pictures on Facebook and other social media and we write and rewrite our curriculum vitae to be up to date on changes in the labour market. Telling the self blends together entertainment, new ways of communication, organisational duties, and so on. This research project offers a different perspective on the contemporary autobiographical culture we live in. It goes back to our recent past to consider the political use of autobiographical practices in the 20th century. It does not focus on the traditional political autobiographies such as memories of great leaders, important statesmen or heralds of revolution and social change. Rather, it takes into account the mass widespread mass political use of the autobiographical form as a tool of self-transformation for communist party members and second-wave feminist militants in Italy after the Second World War. Italian communism inherited the autobiographical duty for militants from Bolsheviks in the 1940s while second-wave feminism discovered the importance of self-enunciation through the experience of consciousness raising groups in 1970s. My work takes into account these two political movements as case studies to examine how autobiography works as a political means of self-transformation and emancipation. How did communists use the autobiographical practice? How did feminists employ this practice? Was there a common autobiographical mechanism both communism and feminism were exploiting to their political aims? What is the difference between communist and feminist self-enunciation? My research project has attempted to answer these questions in order to shed a new light on differences and similarities between old and new left cultures in the 20th century by using autobiography as an innovative way to interpret them. Moreover, the study of these two autobiographical culture focussed on self-enunciation as a way to emancipate individuals – working class members and women – will help us to have a better understanding of the culture we live in with its emphasis on the self and its right to tell and express itself. My investigation is rooted in the European past to comprehend the present – or at least some facets of it – of European culture, by focusing on a transnational phenomenon such as autobiography as a means to build our present political and social identity.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union