INGESTION AND PERFORMATIVITY: A STUDY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN’S MEMOIRS

Abstract

Invoking Mandel’s concepts of autobiographical consciousness and self-consciousness and Smith’s performativity and practice, this study explores the process of ingestion of content in subjects’ memories and their articulation in south Asian women’s memoirs. Azar Nafisi’s and Malala Yousafzai’s memoirs demonstrate the role of female performative subjects in marginalized communities. Mary Evans’ “Autobiography as a Research Method” has been used to study the role of autobiographical self-consciousness to establish performativity of the subject. The perfomativist role of subjecthood is imbued with resistance in fundamentalist societies. Malala abrogates Pashtun Islamic fundamentalism while Nafisi exposes post-revolutionary Iranian suppressive laws and repudiates religious patriarchy. Autobiographical consciousness consists of painful memories and self-consciousness performs its role to articulate them as a daring venture. This research contextualizes the author’s role of autobiographical consciousness as content and self-consciousness as agent (subject) in the texts demonstrating sleight of hand.