Autofiction and Self-Portraiture: Jenny Diski and Claude Cahun

Abstract

This chapter argues that the contemporary British writer Jenny Diski and the Modernist French photographer and writer Claude Cahun are both literary self-portraitists, as this term is defined by Michel Beaujour. This is evident in their similar approaches to the themes of masquerade, narcissism, and naming. By reading Diski’s The Dream Mistress and Cahun’s Disavowals in the light of Julia Kristeva’s account of narcissism, as well as theories of autofiction and self-portraiture, the chapter further contends that self-portraiture arises from a distinct conception of the self, and of the psychological origins of artistic creativity. On this basis, it can be contrasted with autofiction, and autofiction and self-portraiture can then be seen to be related to each other as the two poles of contemporary life-writing.