SHELEG, Moran
Lifework. On the autobiographical impulse in contemporary art, writing, and theory

Following the critical scepticism surrounding the notion of the “self” as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists and writers sought to test the apparent problem posed by autobiography as both a traditional genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent emergence of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic and literary production during the late twentieth century and beyond, examining a set of diverse practices that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book’s chapters connect a variety of artistic strategies that cut across medium, geography and time, uncovering how the historical marginalisation of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural and political implications in the contemporary moment and how the work of living might still relate to the work of art. [publishers’ note]

!! Contents !!

Introduction: the life of work, the work of life - Moran Sheleg

Part I: Working lives
1 Diaristic diagrams - Margaret Iversen
2 Inarticulations - Susan Morris
3 Valuing life - Alistair Rider

Part II: Enveloping me
4 Folds - Rye Dag Holmboe
5 The perversity of her envelopes, or, Kathy Acker's sick clothes and kleptomaniac close writing: a reply to sender - Alice Butler

Part III: Autotheory as medium and message
6 At the altar of her divine: on Audre Lorde and Tee Corrine - Teresa Carmody
7 Autotheorising the unself - Marquis Bey

Part IV: Conceptualising the self
8 'Sources questionable at best': Ree Morton's notebooks and sketchbooks - Abi Shapiro
9 'Hey Mom, I made it and I'm OK': self-help and 1970s conceptual art - Lucy Bradnock

Part V: I remember. remember me
10 A wall for apricots: dedication and loss in Anne Truitt's minimalism - Miguel de Baca
11 Ode to forgetting - Moran Sheleg
12 A life's work - Jo Applin

Published by Manchester University Press, 2026
Essays / Art Theory