AustLit

'For over twenty years, conflicting claims in the construction of identity have been central to the problems of re-defining autobiography. Elizabeth Bruss (1976) referred to autobiography as a literary practice that is in continuous flux. Georges Gusdorf (1980) problematised the relationship between subjective and objective memory in autobiography. Paul Eakin (1992) drew attention to the shifting boundaries between fact and fiction in self-representation. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2001) argued that autobiographical writing assigns both singular and multiple subject positions to the representation of identity. Contemporary experimental poetry inflected by the autobiographical drive actively engages these conflicting issues within the context of autofiction. In this paper, I touch upon the relationships between autobiography and fiction and poetry to explore how different modes of representation raise questions regarding the construction of identity. I will focus on my own work, specifically on the composition of Hush: A Fugue (Hecq 2017), first written as a novel, then as a memoir and, finally as cross-generic text. Because the paper revisits the composition of a work which took over two decades to write, it is written in inductive mode, only arguing its point by allusion and accretion in order to highlight the speculative departures at work in the process. These speculative departures, or fugal alternatives, concern the discrepancy between the reading ‘I’ and the writing ‘I’ on the one hand, and the theorist and ‘the breathing author’ on the other. These alternatives are shown to underscore the active character of identity formation in the writing process and the retrospective nature of (embodied) knowledge.' (Publication abstract)

'Hush: A Fugue is Dominique Hecq’s sixth book of poetry. Her poetry – like her other creative and scholarly work – is informed by the wealth of her personal and intellectual experience, reflecting issues of physical and linguistic dislocation as well as the influence of a psychoanalytic and post-structural literature on loss, grief and subjectivity. This collection clusters explicitly around the theme of loss; in particular, it retraces a very personal narrative of the loss of a child to cot death. Years may have passed, other children arrived and grown – but the shocking ‘white wax’ of the beloved baby’s face remains a potent presence in his mother’s life. Almost twenty-five years later, this powerful and disturbing collection both marks the enduring presence of the lost child and traces the almost unbearable experiences of grief and mourning, finally possible to articulate within the flexibility of the poetic voice.' (Introduction)

'Dominique Hecq’s Hush: A Fugue examines the death of a child from a mother’s perspective and the harrowing aftermath of such an inexplicable event. In this autobiographical work, Hecq finds language for a profound loss, one that almost defies articulation.' (Introduction)