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Lifework

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This collection explores what Roland Barthes termed the ‘autobiographical turn’ in art, literature and critical theory since the mid-1960s. Through a variety of perspectives, it examines the relati...
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  • 20 January 2026
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Following the critical scepticism surrounding the notion of the ‘self’ as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists and writers sought to test the apparent problem posed by autobiography as both a traditional genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent emergence of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic and literary production during the late twentieth century and beyond, examining a set of diverse practices that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book’s chapters connect a variety of artistic strategies that cut across medium, geography and time, uncovering how the historical marginalisation of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural and political implications in the contemporary moment and how the work of living might still relate to the work of art.
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Price: £30.00
Pages: 334
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Publication Date: 20 January 2026
ISBN: 9781526194787
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

ART / History / Contemporary (1945-), History of art, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers, ART / Conceptual, Interdisciplinary studies, Autobiography: arts and entertainment
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'Lifework offers an inspiring intellectual history of the trends flagged by its title... [and] transforms the concept of selfhood into something meaningful once again.'
Burlington Magazine

Introduction: the life of work, the work of life – Moran Sheleg
Part I: Working lives
1 Diaristic diagrams – Margaret Iversen
2 Inarticulations – Susan Morris
3 Valuing life – Alistair Rider
Part II: Enveloping me
4 Folds – Rye Dag Holmboe
5 The perversity of her envelopes, or, Kathy Acker’s sick clothes and kleptomaniac close writing: a reply to sender – Alice Butler
Part III: Autotheory as medium and message
6 At the altar of her divine: on Audre Lorde and Tee Corrine – Teresa Carmody
7 Autotheorising the unself – Marquis Bey
Part IV: Conceptualising the self
8 ‘Sources questionable at best’: Ree Morton’s notebooks and sketchbooks – Abi Shapiro
9 ‘Hey Mom, I made it and I’m OK’: self-help and 1970s conceptual art – Lucy Bradnock
Part V: I remember… remember me
10 A wall for apricots: dedication and loss in Anne Truitt’s minimalism – Miguel de Baca
11 Ode to forgetting – Moran Sheleg
12 A life’s work – Jo Applin
Index