This paper presents a book project,Becoming Postcolonial, which studies memoirs written after the dissolution of the British Empire to understand how people have narrated their lives and selves in the wake of dramatic transformations in public discourse. Just as decolonization challenged the prevailing political and social order, so too its effects were felt at the most intimate level, profoundly influencing how individuals made sense of their own past. Becoming Postcolonial examines negotiations of identity at the end of the British Empire through autobiographical writing from contexts as diverse as Australia, Zimbabwe and the British Caribbean. Through close readings and comparisons of 16 memoirs, the book explores how writers, public intellectuals and politicians positioned themselves in a new narrative context, providing original insight into the emotional and narrative implications of decolonization. In writing their lives, former colonial citizens emerged into postcolonial subjectivity.
In this paper, I want to argue three levels of the same case: firstly, that it makes sense to use autobiography as a source for studying memory; secondly, that autobiography is a useful source for studying the relationship between individual and collective memory; and thirdly, that we can use the genre to examine how that dialogic relationship of memory is played out in a post-imperial context.
As I will demonstrate, public figures have used the practice of life writing to write themselves into a new postcolonial reality and position themselves as postcolonial subjects. By 'post(-)colonial', I refer both to the point in time that comes after colonialism as well as a way of reading that deconstructs colonial discourse, a stance that challenges the verities of colonial mindsets. In memoirs written after the end of empire, people's lives become texts that can be reinterpreted through a postcolonial lens. Making sense of postcoloniality does not necessarily imply acceptance of changing imperatives and priorities; Becoming postcolonial also directs its attention to nostalgia and lamentation of the end of empire.
My examination takes its point of departure in memory studies and conceives of the narrative construction of subjectivity as a dialogue between the individual and the collective. I consider an extended moment after empire in which autobiographers make themselves postcolonial through the telling of their life stories. With an eye to their audiences, they strategically mobilize their own memories to intervene in shared narratives about the past and about themselves. As I will argue, it is in the process of writing their lives in the light of political and societal change that these authors position themselves as postcolonial subjects.
