Grief Narratology In The Digital Age: Writing The Self In Academic Spaces

This paper examines some of the prescriptive writing practices associated with both grief narratives and academic writing and how those constraints work to constrain and contain stories and writing genres that run counter to dominant, heteronormative paradigms. This process of exclusion and transgression is interpreted through the critical lens of Foucault’s heterotopias. The advent of digital spaces has led to a proliferation of modes for the delivery of content, which has precipitated a questioning of traditional academic writing. Self-writing genres, such as memoirs or autobiographies, which are not historically associated with academic discourse, are transgressing discourse boundaries through hybridized forms, most notably, the autocritography or autoethnography. Self-writing provides voices and narratives that have been relegated to heterotopian spaces with a mechanism for subverting traditional discourse practices and spaces. This paper alternates between the use of formal academic prose and informal, reflective personal grief narrative to demonstrate one means for how these dominant discourse practices can be challenged in academic spaces. The role of the personal grief narrative as a mechanism for disrupting traditional discourse forms has further implications for stories of groups that have been historically marginalized such members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, and minorities.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2023

Author dc:creator

• South, Sarah Weddle

• autocritography;Foucault;grief;hetertopia;life-writing;narratology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://encompass.eku.edu/etd/790

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:encompass.eku.edu:etd-1788