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y separately published work icon Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit multi chapter work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2007... 2007 Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, Marjane Satrapi's comics, and 'Baghdad Blogger' Salam Pax's Internet diary are just a few examples of the new face of autobiography in an age of migration, globalization, and terror. But while autobiography and other genres of life writing can help us attend to people whose experiences are frequently unseen and unheard, life narratives can also be easily co-opted into propaganda. In Soft Weapons, Gillian Whitlock explores the dynamism and ubiquity of contemporary life writing about the Middle East and shows how these works have been packaged, promoted, and enlisted in Western controversies. Considering recent autoethnographies of Afghan women, refugee testimony from Middle Eastern war zones, Jean Sasson's bestsellers about the lives of Arab women, Norma Khouri's fraudulent memoir Honor Lost [Forbidden Love], personal accounts by journalists reporting the war in Iraq, Satrapi's Persepolis, Nafisi's book, and Pax's blog, Whitlock explores the contradictions and ambiguities in the rapid commodification of life memoirs. Drawing from the fields of literary and cultural studies, Soft Weapons will be essential reading for scholars of life writing and those interested in the exchange of literary culture between Islam and the West. (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • Chapter Five, 'Tainted Testimony : The Work of Scandal,' is a revised version of Whitlock's article 'Tainted Testimony : The Khouri Affair'. Chapter Six, 'Embedded : Memoir and Correspondents,' includes an extended discussion of John Martinkus' Travels in American Iraq, which Whitlock reads as extending journalism and war reportage into memoir, a form of life writing in which the writer seeks to make himself or herself part of public history.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Chicago, Illinois,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,      :       University of Chicago Press ,       2007 .
      Extent: x, 248p.p.
      Description: illus.
      ISBN: 0226895262 (pbk. : alk. paper), 0226895254 (cloth : alk. paper), 9780226895253 (cloth : alk. paper), 9780226895260 (pbk. : alk. paper)
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Works about this Work

Detention, Displacement and Dissent in Recent Australian Life Writing Michael Jacklin , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 8 no. 4 2011; (p. 375-385) Narratives of persecution, imprisonment, displacement and exile have been a fundamental aspect of Australian literature: from the convict narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to writing by refugees and migrants to Australia following World War II, to the narratives of those displaced by more recent conflicts. This paper will focus on two texts published in Australia in the past few years which deal with experiences of persecution and displacement from Afghanistan. Mahboba's Promise (2005) and The Rugmaker of Mazar-e- Sharif (2008) are texts that have to some extent bypassed the quarantining that Gillian Whitlock has argued works to locate potentially disruptive discourse at a safe distance from mainstream consumption. The publications discussed here demonstrate that refugee narratives can negotiate their way into the public sphere and public consciousness. In this process, however, representations of dissent almost necessarily give way to conciliation and integration as former refugee subjects attempt to realign their lives in terms that will provide the best outcomes for themselves, their families and their communities.
Untitled Sheba Rahim , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Ariel , April vol. 41 no. 2 2010; (p. 159-163)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Untitled Manuela Costantino , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Life Writing , April vol. 7 no. 1 2010; (p. 113-116)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
The Generation of Memoir Dorothy Lane , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Postcolonial Text , vol. 4 no. 3 2008;
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Miniskirt Democracy Roxanne Varzi , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 31 July vol. 30 no. 15 2008; (p. 25-26)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Kohl Eyes Kay Schaffer , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 292 2007; (p. 20-21)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Untitled John Marx , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: Biography , Summer vol. 30 no. 3 2007; (p. 377-379)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Miniskirt Democracy Roxanne Varzi , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 31 July vol. 30 no. 15 2008; (p. 25-26)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
The Generation of Memoir Dorothy Lane , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Postcolonial Text , vol. 4 no. 3 2008;
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Untitled Manuela Costantino , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Life Writing , April vol. 7 no. 1 2010; (p. 113-116)
— Review of Soft Weapons : Autobiography in Transit Gillian Whitlock , 2007 multi chapter work criticism
Detention, Displacement and Dissent in Recent Australian Life Writing Michael Jacklin , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 8 no. 4 2011; (p. 375-385) Narratives of persecution, imprisonment, displacement and exile have been a fundamental aspect of Australian literature: from the convict narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to writing by refugees and migrants to Australia following World War II, to the narratives of those displaced by more recent conflicts. This paper will focus on two texts published in Australia in the past few years which deal with experiences of persecution and displacement from Afghanistan. Mahboba's Promise (2005) and The Rugmaker of Mazar-e- Sharif (2008) are texts that have to some extent bypassed the quarantining that Gillian Whitlock has argued works to locate potentially disruptive discourse at a safe distance from mainstream consumption. The publications discussed here demonstrate that refugee narratives can negotiate their way into the public sphere and public consciousness. In this process, however, representations of dissent almost necessarily give way to conciliation and integration as former refugee subjects attempt to realign their lives in terms that will provide the best outcomes for themselves, their families and their communities.
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Last amended 18 Dec 2008 13:57:01
Subjects:
  • Middle East, Asia,
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