Although autobiography as a concept, a literary genre, and, ultimately, a way of "making sense" of one's own life is a rather heterogeneous phenomenon, it combines in its classical form some key elements that can be defined as specifically autobiographical. With its focus on the first-person self, on the inner soul, and the search for and confession of the truth about oneself, the development of autobiography is directly linked to the development of modern subjectivity. In an attempt to understand autobiography, we will look more closely at the development of subjectivity in some key historical periods and try to outline the changes that have led to an understanding of the human being in the manner of a »confessing animal«. To this end, special attention will be paid to the Enlightenment period and Foucault's conceptualization of Christian confessional practices and their secularization and implementation in a literary and psychoanalytic context. We will question the status of retrospective narration and the problem of the real and the fictional in psychoanalysis and literature. Consequently, some attention will also be paid to the problem of the author as ruler, functionary, and founder of discursivity; at the same time, this will lead us to an understanding of the tension between autobiography as a "genre of disciplinarity" and autobiography as a genre of creative self-construction.
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