This year I published an autobiographical book—sorry for the self-reference—where I explore my relationship since I was a child with anxiety and somatization, with machismo, with the fear of not having talent, and with writing as salvation. A friend of many years, who knows all my work, told me, implacably, that he is not interested in “navel literature” and that mine is a book by women for women. I received that criticism with bewilderment but not anger. My friend is in his seventies, he is an accomplished Marxist, an intellectual with many prejudices, and a discussion about this would be very exhausting. I barely tried to explain to her that I’m not just talking about myself but, among other things, about the women of my generation, who in the seventies faced difficulties like getting the pill – which was scarce and also punished our bodies – the illegality of abortion and hidden machismo in the workplace; and above all, freedom ‘versus’ determinism when choosing. Hence Sartre’s epigraph: “The important thing is not what we make of ourselves, but what we make of ourselves with what they made of us.” From the intimate point of view, many writers illuminate worlds broader than their own, such as Natalia Ginzburg, in ‘Family Lexicon’Autobiography in all its forms—memoirs, testimonial stories, biographical essays—was viewed for a long time as a minor, second-class genre, because the intimate was considered a narcissistic exhibition. of the self, incapable of accounting for social reality. Although Saint Augustine and Montaigne already narrated their lives, the appreciation of the autobiographical is very recent, and the boom it is having is due, in my opinion, to a simple reason: in this era in which the self and intimacy are on display. permanent – the ‘selfie’ and Instagram are the most everyday manifestations – every person thinks that their life is original and worthy of being told. In her recent book ‘The Vulnerable’, Sigrid Nunez tells us that a recent survey reveals that close to 80% of Americans say they would like to write their own history. Testimony, driven by journalism, seems to be a necessity today. What my friend refuses to understand is that the intimate can also be political, as Annie Ernaux and Vivian Gornick, among others, claim. Ernaux speaks of the “collective value” of the autobiographical self, and writes: “The intimate remains, and always will be, social, because a pure self, where others, laws, history, were not present, would be inconceivable.” Gornick, for his part, writes: “The theme of autobiography is always the definition of the self, but self-definition is not possible in a vacuum.” From the intimate point of view, many writers illuminate worlds broader than their own: Natalia Ginzburg, in ‘Family Lexicon’, the depths of her family in times of fascism; Emmanuel Carrère, in ‘Yoga’, the crisis of his psychiatric confinement; Boris Izaguirre, in ‘Time of Torments’, what it was like to be a dyslexic child with mannerisms. They and many other authors testify to the transformations of intimacy in modern times, a topic that Anthony Giddens analyzed so well.
#Piedad #Bonnett #collective #intimate
