The Self at Scale: A Workshop on Autofiction

On Monday and Tuesday, 4 and 5 May, 2026, BCB faculty and students, as well as invited scholars and practitioners from literature and the arts convened at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI) Berlin to discuss the contemporary genre of autofiction. The workshop was organized and introduced by BCB faculty members Laura Scuriatti, James Harker and Clio Nicastro.

In the 2010s, in particular with the publishing sensation surrounding the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård's six-volume autobiographical novels under the provocative heading Min Kamp (My Struggle), considerable attention began to be paid in Anglophone criticism to the genre known as "autofiction." This was not a new category. It already had a recognized status in France, and a lesser-known Anglophone lineage as well. By its very nature, autobiographical literature announces new beginnings, denying its own prehistory by emphasizing the daring of confession. Understanding autofiction as a genre is further complicated by the evolution of "autotheory," a form of cultural criticism that draws on autobiography and forms of storytelling which seek to compensate for the destruction or suppression of vital historical record.

The idea of the workshop was to link "auto" forms of writing (modes that reflect back on the one who is writing) with the ICI's current research project on "scale," by considering how the self becomes, through writing, an example of a larger identity (class, gender, race etc.) or type of experience.  Inspired by conversations across courses taught by the three faculty members—Clio Nicastro's "Theories of the Body," Laura Scuriatti's "Forms of Life Writing" and James Harker's "Autofiction" seminars—the workshop hosted scholars and writers from different career stages to facilitate dialogue between a variety of discourses, such as feminist and postcolonial theory, while also investigating the self at the intersection of the private and public spheres.

Contributions in the first part of the conference converged on descriptions of the autotheoretical "I" in relation to a larger communal "we," and covered a wide range of topics and authors, such as: visibility, recognition, and community in Kaoutar Harchi's Comme nous existons; autotheory as a decolonial practice, Black interiority and the limits of the literary "I"; moving-image queer and diasporic practices by River Yuhao Cao and Tuyet Van Huynh as embodied autotheory; collective autotheory in Rosa Yassin Hassan's prison novel Negative; autotheory as a "body genre" of excess and disorder; dreams and the demand for change through art; autofiction, immediacy, and the trans body; self-recognition in Borges's short story "Covered Mirrors."

The second part of the conference grappled with the limitations and challenges of the self through contributions that examined the dissolution of the autotheoretical "I" in Gloria Anzaldúa's writing; climate change and the self at planetary scale; writing about the transformed self in encounter with the animal "other"; the material conditions of the "I" and the "I" as and on the battlefield; the self at a loss and the excess of self in Anne Carson's writing; orality and the challenge to individuality in Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy. 

Amid reflections on the limits and potential of these "auto" forms, workshop contributors and participants debated questions such as: why have "auto" forms become so successful both commercially and in academic circles? Why do works by people of color get classified as "autobiographies" while works of white authors gain the more avant-garde label of "autofiction" or "autotheory"? Are "auto" forms suited to addressing large and urgent questions, such as the climate crisis, considering their focus on single perspectives or individual lives? What are the limits of these forms?

"The Self at Scale" workshop was organized by Bard College Berlin in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI) Berlin. Recordings of the full event can be viewed on the ICI Berlin website.

Post Date: 05-21-2026