Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

‘Writing the Self in More-Than-Human Worlds: Niall Williams and Christine Breen’s Memoir: In Kiltumper, a Year in an Irish Garden (Bloomsbury, 2021)’

Résumé

This chapter focuses on Niall Williams and Christine Breen’s memoir of their lives in Kiltumper, in the house and on the land where Christine’s grandfather was born in Co. Clare. Both are writers and gardeners and Niall is also the author of the novel History of the Rain (2014 Man Booker Prize Long List) and This is Happiness (2020), as well as plays performed in Dublin and Galway in the 1990s. In the memoir they wrote together and which tells of the life and work they have been sharing on the farm since 1985, their personal experiences as human beings, as a family, as writers and farmers/gardeners mingle. The aim of this chapter is to question the ways in which the writing of the self is intertwined with the material experience of the more-than-human world around the two writers. The mode of writing the self, which might look as a very intimate affair, actually raises essential questions regarding the politics of ecology and the politics of place, in particular domestic place. It also raises issues about the relationships between human beings and more-than-human worlds. Delving into pioneering theories such as developed in Donna Haraway’s or Baptiste Morizot’s books on more-than-human worlds, this chapter questions the interlacing of the two authors’ voices as they draw their readers attention to their lives on the land they have been staying on for more than three decades, interweaving their narratives with that of the various species they share the land, the water and the air with. The question of creative non-fiction and its link with the subject of life-writing in a context of climate change will also be broached upon.

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Dates et versions

hal-04967866 , version 1 (26-02-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04967866 , version 1

Citer

Marie Mianowski. ‘Writing the Self in More-Than-Human Worlds: Niall Williams and Christine Breen’s Memoir: In Kiltumper, a Year in an Irish Garden (Bloomsbury, 2021)’. “Writing the Self/Writing the English-Speaking Worlds: Life-Writing and Politics”, Cédric Courtois; Claire Dubois, Oct 2023, Lille, France. ⟨hal-04967866⟩

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