ABSTRACT
Autobiography is the writingof one's own life. Autobiographical works are particular entities, created objects, in time and space. Autobiographical texts have no space per se; they have only a differential or juxtapositional relation to other texts (autobiographical and otherwise). Autobiographizing occurs in the zone of this relation. As a topic-for discussion and examination-autobiographizing operates at the limits of non-autobiographical texts. In this sense, aurobiographizing accomplishes the shift from the non-autobiographical to the autobiographical, from what is outside an autobiographical text to what constitutes the autobiographical text per se. Hence, autobiographical textuality as a topos (space, domain, topic) in which autobiographizing occurs is a discursive space. A discursive space is a region of discourse (actual or potential) in which a text defines itself in particular ways, with determinate features and specifiable characteristics. A text establishes these ways, features, and characteristics by calling into question aspects of the text that spill over its limits, that supersede its own qualifications, that exceed its expectations. The juxtaposition of a text with one or more other texts opens up a unique space of textuality that accounts for the text's excesses and superfluities, that motivates readings, interpretations, or critiques which would not have been otherwise accessible. Hence the discursive space of autobiographical textualiry and the effects of the decentered autobiographical self-inscription are disclosed-at least in part and in the instance-by the juxtaposition of Sartre's Les Mots I and Barthes's RolandBarthes '.
