Roland Barthes por Roland Barthes: entre la autobiografía y la autoficción

Abstract

Interest in examining the autobiography and characterize it as a literary genre has increased in the 20th century. In the first half, Georg Misch and Georges Gusdorf published their foundational works. Towards the 1970s, Georges May, Philippe Lejeune, James Olney, among others, advanced in the classification of the genre. Paradoxically, at the beginning of this century, some authors explored forms of autobiographical writing, just away from the standardized properties, as the “honest” expression, the construction of an identity an essentialist way and the development of individual style. An example of this is Michel Leiris’ L’Âge d’homme, published in 1939. Later, in 1975, Roland Barthes brought out Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, a book that is difficult to classify, as it is neither an autobiographical text, nor a diary. In 1977, Serge Doubrovsky used the term autofiction to refer to his own novel, Fils, and to question the autobiographical genre statute. From then on, some scholars have pondered theoretically this notion, trying to fix characteristics of a possible new gender. The aim of this work is to reflect on aspects that turn Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes into an ambiguous book, hard to categorize, even as autobiography, or as autofiction.