25.2.lambert-hurley.pdf (920.31 kB)
Life / history / archive: identifying autobiographical writing by Muslim women in South Asia
journal contribution
posted on 2013-05-15, 12:43 authored by Siobhan Lambert-HurleyFor historians, the debates surrounding autobiography have focused on the question of reliability: can it be
considered an appropriate historical source only when verified by ‘real’ material from ‘real’ archives? Scholars
from other disciplines have been more interested in defining autobiography as a genre by asking if it can be
distinguished from other literary forms. Far from hypothetical, these questions about where to draw the line are
pertinent to the historian in the field faced with the very real problem of identifying materials. The problem
seems compounded when the historian’s subject is Muslim women in South Asia, a group often characterised as
silent and secluded and thus presumed not to write autobiography at all. As part of the task of ‘defining the
genre’, this paper considers the range of possibilities to be included under the labels of personal narratives, life
histories or, ultimately, autobiographical writing – from autobiographical biographies and biographical
autobiographies to travelogues, reformist literature, novels, devotionalism, letters, diaries, interviews and
ghosted narratives. It raises questions about the nature of archives and the distinctiveness of women’s writing as
these relate to nomenclature, structure, chronology, language, voice and regional specificity.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Citation
LAMBERT-HURLEY, S., 2013. Life / history / archive: identifying autobiographical writing by Muslim women in South Asia. Journal of Women's History, 25 (2), pp. 61-84.Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press © Journal of Women's HistoryVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publication date
2013Notes
This article was published in the Journal of Women's History [Johns Hopkins University Press © Journal of Women's History] at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v025/25.2.lambert-hurley.pdfISSN
1042-7961eISSN
1527-2036Publisher version
Language
- en