A busy day of translating and reading Chinese literature for my curriculum ended with anxiety as I broach once again the famous essay "The Autobiographical Pact" by Phillip Lejeune. My theory chops are far too soggy to pick up much from a first inspection, but I will leave this entry as a bookmark to come back to this piece again.
We notice already here what is going to fundamentally oppose biography and autobiography: it is the hierarchichal organization of the relationships of resemblance and identity. In biography, it is resemblance that must ground identity; in autobiography, it is identity that grounds resemblance. Identity is the real starting point of autobiography; resemblance, the impossible horizon of biography.
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