Das Andere erzählen - lebensgeschichtliche Reflexionen in populären Selbstzeugnissen

Abstract

In contemporary autobiographical narratives, the experience of « otherness» seems to be a necessary condition for life-stories. The experiences of shame and exclusion due to class affiliation, sexual orientation or other habitual dispositions are at the centre of these educational stories, whether by Didier Eribon, Édouard Louis, Annie Ernaux or Dirk von Lowtzow. In these texts, the past of being different appears in its entire presence, is permanently present, but at the same time changeable and ungraspable. It is the historical narrative as narrative «work on the self» that makes this permanent visitation of the past visible and turns traumatic experiences into historical experiences of otherness for others as well.