Autotheory

Selected writing from my essay for Bodies of Difference. I have decided to include this as an example of the theoretical framework behind my film, because it is reflected in the film itself. Winter in a Big City is a work of autotheory, in the sense that film is language too. The imagery is a narrative, the spoken word is a narrative, the relationship between both is also a narrative. It is based on my experiences in the waking world, in dreamstates, in my body, in a collective body (as a member of my family and as part of my friend group).

Is it a camera or a stage you’re looking at? What’s the difference anyway? Aren’t human brains a bit like cameras? Who says people are watching in the first place? Can you even answer these questions if you’re just reading lines? Is that all there is to it? How much of you is in the performance? Cause surely you can never completely remove yourself. Unless you forget your entire existence, and maybe even that wouldn’t guarantee it, because what about instinct? Would muscle memory exist as a factor?  

https://bdydfrnc.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/who-am-i-identity-in-the-pharmacopornagraphic-era/

““Autotheory” is a term coined by Stacey Young in her book Changing the Wor(l)d, describing a type of writing that combines autobiography with social criticism. She argues that this type of writing sets itself apart by placing personal experience within political contexts, which are seen as fluid and multiple. It challenges standard academic writing and “investigate(s) the ways in which what gets encoded as “personal experience” is always constructed through these multiple and shifting contexts.”[1] This puts into question our notions of public vs private, political vs personal, leading us to wonder if these distinctions exist in the first place.

Writing autotheory is a method of using the body’s experience to develop knowledge. Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era falls into this category. I would even consider works of literature such as the diaries of Anais Nin, Sarah Kane’s play 4.48 Psychosis and Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in Highschool works of autotheory, in the sense that these authors touch on universal truths through the subjective/fictional…

All theories are hypothetical. Nothing written by humans is ever fact. Everything is constantly changing. Our brains cannot even begin to understand what’s going on. Why do we convince ourselves otherwise? Fictions can feel more true than objective histories, and isn’t that something in itself? Reading theory is a confirmation of what I know on a biological/intuitive/experiential level. Experience is understanding, and it is far too complex to be reduced to language. For these reasons, I use autotheory to come to an understanding. Autotheory pushes the boundaries of language through playing with meaning, and reflects the complexities of human experience through its form. Our personal experiences are fiction rooted in a subjective reality, infused with fantasy through memory, imagination, dreams. We all have our truths, our views, our beliefs. It’s not about finding an answer to my questions, it’s about narrowing them down, the process of exploring and uncovering, fusing my experiences with those of the artists and authors I resonate with…

…it seems we can come to an understanding of the self through our relationships with others. We each take on social roles which sometimes conflict. Roles assigned to women are especially complex, because they are subjects of contradictory desires. Mother and daughter (adult and child), lover and mistress. Who’s calling who what, and why? Some roles are allowed, others are stigmatised. All are forced to exist in one space through a series of performances. Woman – the other – the all. There’s the world behind my eyes, inside, and there’s the world the world can see. [4]

… What motivates all of this? A desire to be more than just a body, which is ultimately mortal. The who am I lies in the brain – my experiences, which are simplified into memories, which are replayed and rewritten by me. Our habits. It happens in the body, in how I feel, how I perform.

Inside of me, there are several selves, in different ways. In terms of time, we live from day to day, and even over the course of one day, the idea of the self shifts as the night falls. What does it mean to be asleep? Am I still myself?

A life inside the world of my mind
something beyond the prescribed
laws of nature and existence.

…The one thing that unifies my various experiences is the site of performance – my body. All points converge in this space. I am not myself without my ancestry, my family, the family I have built here, on a practical level. Every second is a point of influence, what sticks isn’t even a choice, it just happens. We don’t need to understand to be.”

 

Sources:

[1] P14 of Young, Stacey. Changing the Wor(l)d

[2] P13 of Preciado, Paul B. Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

[4] Irigaray, Luce. The Looking Glass, from the Other Side. “This Sex Which Is Not One”.

 

Additional texts:

The Diary of Anais Nin, vols 1 and 3, by Anais Nin

4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane’s

Blood and Guts in Highschool by Kathy Acker

Between the East and the West by Luce Irigaray