Intimate Afterlives of Empire

[Not final] Intimate afterlives of empire is the first comprehensive study of post-imperial autobiography as an important genre of cultural memory. investigate the relationship between individual and cultural memory at the end of empire as voiced through the practice of autobiographical writing. Through close readings of more than a dozen autobiographies and memoirs/Through close readings of almost twenty autobiographies written after the break-up of the British Empire, it examines how individuals engage with the changing narrative landscape brought about by decolonisation/ it examines how changes to cultural narratives about the imperial past manifest themselves in personal life stories. . It argues that individuals navigate the changing narrative landscape of decolonisation by way of personal memory work, repositioning themselves in relation to a contemporary audience. The book conceives of decolonisation as a narrative shift, though not a total break, from the logics of the colonial era. /The narrative changes brought about by decolonisation has previously been studied at the level of collective or national memory. Intimate afterlives of empire is the first book to examine how individuals have responded to this changing narrative landscape. It argues that authors are at once affected by and seek to affect cultural memories of the colonial past. /It argues that authors respond dialogically to shifts in the cultural memories of empire, inserting themselves in a wider narrative. As decolonisation brought changes to the narrative landscape, individual writers ... Studying the dialogues between individual and cultural memory, the book argues that autobiographers are at once influenced by and seek to influence the cultural memory of empire and its legacies (and the authors' own position in both)/ trace the responses to the moment of decolonisation as a narrative eventEach chapter focuses on one trope and one autobiographical sub-genre so that the result is an anatomy of the genre of the end of empire autobiography as a whole.