Re(discovering) the Self: Memory and Narrative in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ Living to Tell the Tale

Abstract

The paper discusses the ways that autobiographies can serve as documentaries of memory of the physical self and of a deeper philosophical signification. The memoir, which is a referential better suited to such narratives, brings out different contours of the self. The multiple ways that the self can be written through the act of remembering becomes of grave important in a day and age of short attention spans and digitized memory drives. Thus, the act of autobiographical telling becomes performative- a selective oeuvre of events and incidents that serve a positioned narrative.