ABSTRACT
Reading two “autofictions”, Down There on a Visit (1962) by Christopher Isherwood and A Previous Life (2021) by Edmund White, I argue that queer autobibliography takes a significant turn in these narratives as books are thought of as sites of desire. Through a complex interplay of biographicality and autobiographicality, I examine the importance of queer relationality in Isherwood and White vis-à-vis conceptual frameworks of Adriana Cavarero, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. I study these two texts to propose a unique method of “queer reading”, where one’s story finds completion in reading/listening to others’ accounts. Moving away from a hydraulic model of subjectivity, popularized by the psychoanalytic regime, both texts focus on a surfacial exploration of relational subjectivity whose germination was discussed in the previous chapter.
