Not Autobiography

March 2, 2009 by Susan Hansell.

My “writing” is not autobiographical. My “plays” are not autobiographical.  This passage you’re currently reading (if indeed, “you” are), is not autobiographical, and if I were to write a “true” autobiography, I doubt such a “thing” would be autobiographical either. Why not? After all, the “words” are written by a biographical person; the words feature human beings, thus justifiably leading to a mis/interpretation of “me,” or of other people I “know.”  In addition, the words are not written in strictly “scientific” or “just the facts” modalities; so, why not autobiography? Because, beyond the obvious distancing from “real” life that occurs just by virtue of the use of a language employed to “contain” or “convey” life (or to “comment” on the use/s of language/s itself, in, or, “as in” life), there is this bigfat stylization implicit in all language that implies an even greater distance from what that language might merely denote to what it can only connote. Therefore “I” is as much of an icon, or a cipher, or an “other,” or a symbol, or a shape of a signaling signifier, as are any of the other “people” in my, or anyone’s, “words,” or world/s.  And if I ever made any utterance to the contrary, then I (or the I who I was at that time) had not yet come to the realization that, in words, we “represent” something else, again, with every/thing we “do.” Either that, or I wasn’t as oily about weaseling my way “out.”  Word.

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