A Philosophy of Autobiography: Body & Text

New in Paperback

'Aakash Singh Rathore repeatedly evokes the fragile, niggling core of the body upon which rests many a lofty thought. Chapter after chapter, story after story, the author needles, unsettles, and satisfies the reader.'

Navtej Johar, somatic practitioner, scholar and urban activist based in India

'In this wide-ranging and engrossing study, Aakash Singh Rathore examines the way life-writing configures the flesh and transmutes the morphology of spirit. Rathore not only offers refreshing new readings of multicultural and multinational autobiographical texts, but also a new understanding of human subjectivity and
"me-ness".'

Makarand R. Paranjape, Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India

'Through a first-person reading of diverse autobiographies, Rathore posits the genre’s inherent dependence on the potency of the flesh as the central means of experiencing life’s truths, reminiscent of Yogic-Tantric practices.'

Rashmi Poddar, Director, Jnanapravaha Mumbai, India

A Philosophy of Autobiography
Body & Text

Contents

Introduction
1. The Crucified: Friedrich Nietzsche's Ecce Homo
2. The Mahatma: M.K. Gandhi's The Story of My Experiments with Truth
3. The Untouchable: B.R. Ambedkar’s Waiting for a Visa
4. The Nigger: Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
5. The Boxer: Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast
6. The Survivor: Elie Wiesel's Night
7. The Dalit: Daya Pawar's Baluta
8. The Poet: Kamala Das' My Story
9. The Samurai: Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel
10. The Fake: Andy Warhol's The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
11. The Mouse: Art Spiegelman's MAUS
12. The Daughter: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis
Epilogue

This book offers intimate readings of a diverse range of global autobiographical literature with an emphasis on the (re)presentation of the physical body.

The twelve texts presented here include philosophical autobiography (Nietzsche), autobiographies of self-experimentation (Gandhi and Mishima), literary autobiography (Hemingway, Das) as well as other genres of autobiography, including the graphic novel (Spiegelman, Satrapi), as also documentations of tragedy and injustice and subsequent spiritual overcoming (Ambedkar, Pawar, Angelou, Wiesel).

A Philosophy of Autobiography delves into how the authors deal with the flesh through their autobiographical writing and in what way they embody the essential relationship between flesh, spirit and word.

The book analyses Ecce Homo, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Waiting for a Visa, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, A Moveable Feast, Night, Baluta, My Story, Sun and Steel, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, MAUS and Persepolis.

Book Features and Excerpts

Book Review

Book Discussion
2 Apr 2019, Kitab Khana Bookstore, Fort, Mumbai

Book Discussion - Meet the Author
23 August 2019, South Asian University, New Delhi

Book Reviews

Shadowland of Our Selves

Outlook

Review by R. Krishnaswamy

'Through the many authors’ autobiographical accounts that Rathore handles, he has given a powerful counter-narrative to our entrenched narratives regarding what constitutes our lives and its values. A central lesson of his work is that we need to break away from the usual rut of our commensensical belief that somehow there is a life of the mind that can be divorced from our many bodily affectivities. He makes the even more strong claim that not only must we account for the different experiences we have had in our lives when we recount our lives, but that the human body and its parsed and unparsed behavioural potentialities is ultimately the site of any possibility of having a meaningful life at all. This claim is much more interesting, because it is more radical than the argument that we should give discursive space not only to our thoughts but also to how we have acted and been acted upon.'