Podcast: Autofiction from a Cognitive Perspective

Do we read the same text differently if we take it to be fiction, autobiography, or something in between? In this episode of the LCE Podcast, Post Doctoral Research Fellow at UiO, Alexandra Effe, presents her research on autofiction from a cognitive perspective.

Alexandra Effe in the podcast studio.

Alexandra Effe. Photo: Marlene Andresen

Life writing continues to be popular, both judging by the titles sold in bookshops and the books that receive literary awards. With many recent life-writing texts, bookshops arguably have a hard time, if they want to shelve them within distinct categories of fiction and non-fiction. Alexandra Effe, a postdoctoral research fellow at LCE (UiO), investigates how, and to which effects, literary narratives combine fictional and factual modes. Listen to her discussing the concept of autofiction in conversation with Stijn Vervaet. In particular, they talk about how the concept of autofiction allows us to develop new perspectives on life-writing experiments throughout literary history.

Do you think you would read differently depending on whether you take a text to be a short story or a newspaper article? Do you believe that texts can challenge and change what feels true? 

Alexandra’s reading recommendations:

  • Delarivier Manley (1714): The Adventures of Rivella. In Carnell, Rachel, and Ruth Herman, eds. 2005. The Selected Works of Delarivier Manley, 5 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto.
  • Hustvedt, Siri. 2019. Memories of the Future: A Novel. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Learn more about autofiction from a cognitive perspective in Alexandra’s publications:

  • Effe, Alexandra. 2021. "Ben Lerner’s 10:04 and the 'utopian glimmer of [auto]fiction'." Modern Fiction Studies 67.4: 738–757. 
  • Effe, Alexandra, and Alison Gibbons. 2022. "A Cognitive Perspective on Autofictional Writing, Texts, and Reading." In The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms. Ed. Alexandra Effe and Hannie Lawlor, 61–81. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Post-production: Eivind Rutle

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Published July 8, 2022 11:00 AM - Last modified Apr. 17, 2023 12:26 PM