Between De-Facement and Machines of Faciality. On the Violence of Autobiographical Reading (original) (raw)

David Albahari, Bora Ćosić and Dubravka Ugrešić are authors who are internationally well known, especially for their books, which were written in the time of and after the disintegration of former Yugoslavia. There has been a lot of research and a broader reception in the media, both mainly focusing on memory and remembrance, identity and exile writing or the relationship between history, reality and narration. In this discourse, the authors themselves and their first person narrators were widely mixed up and personal data, stories, perspectives, emotions, experiences and opinions were starting points for many readings of the texts (the authors, sometimes, were also taken for their narrators). This kind of reading, which tries to link meaning to a person's face (the author's face) is analyzed as a result of the particularly politicized situation for a writer from former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and later. De Man's aesthetic perspective on autobiography as "de-facement", Lejeune's pragmatic approach to the question whether a text can be regarded as autobiography or not, and Deleuze's and Guattari's thoughts on machines of faciality are the basis of an analysis of autobiographical moments in the novels Snežni čovek and Mamac by David Albahari, Carinska deklaracija and Nulta zemlja by Bora Ćosić and Američki fikcionar, Kultura laži and Muzej bezuvjetne predaje by Dubravka Ugrešić. are authors who are internationally well known, especially for their books, which were written in the time of 220 The wording "quasi-autobiographical" is especially used to describe Ugrešić's writing. Cf. Anne C. Kenneweg: Schreiben über den Kommunismus als gesellschaftliche Aufgabe, (quasi-)autobiografische Sinnsuche und ästhetische Herausforderung: Das Beispiel Dubravka Ugrešić, in: Ulf Brunnbauer/Stefan Troebst (ed.): Zwischen Amnesie und Nostalgie. Die Erinnerung an den Kommunismus in Südosteuropa, Köln/Weimar/ Wien 2007, 273-289. 223 Ernst Jandl: Autobiographie und Literatur mit autobiographischen Zügen, in: Autor in Gesellschaft. Aufsätze und Reden. Poetische Werke 11, ed. by Klaus Siblewski. Munich 1999, 199f. 224 David Albahari: Mamac, Belgrade 2005, 152. 230 Ibid.; own translation. 231 Ibid.; own translation. 232 Schneider: Die erkaltete Herzensschrift, 14; own translation.