For Madmen Only? The Authentic Memoir's Destabilization of Identity
Abstract
The memoir has been called creative nonfiction which positions it somewhere in
between fiction and nonfiction. This paper considers the memoir’s capacity to approach
authenticity and the challenges this presents for those writing about mental illness. This
paper also clarifies the idiosyncrasies of the genre of memoir, particularly how it stands
out against other genres such as the novel and autobiography, and how this generates
certain expectations in the readers of memoir. Research is used that investigates the
complexity of the genre of memoir as well as the concept of authenticity to make an
argument for how authors might approach authenticity in their memoir writing. It is
shown that memoir is a genre that allows for an emphasis on subjectivity and creativity
rather than historical fact. Authenticity is shown to be a polemical concept, which, in the
case of memoir, is directed against the author’s previous identity. Marion Milner’s
autobiographical writing method is used as an example for writing authentic memoir.
This thesis argues that the authentic memoir may be used to create a new identity of its
own and therefore relies on an author’s relinquishing of previous identity, and that
through this process of identity destabilization the activity of writing memoir approaches
an authenticity of its own. This suggests a contradiction between the writing of an
authentic memoir and the common approach of mental illness memoir writers. The
apparent ambiguousness regarding the genre of memoir calls for further investigation of
what may properly be called memoir.