Gandhi’s Autobiographical Construction of Selfhood: The Story of His Experiments with Truth

✍ Scribed by Clara Neary

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 117
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book addresses the topics of autobiography, self-representation and status as a writer in Mahatma Gandhi's autobiographical work The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927, 1929). Gandhi remains an elusive figure, despite the volumes of literature written on him in the seven decades since his assassination. Scholars and biographers alike agree that “no work on his life has portrayed him in totality” (Desai, 2009), and, although “arguably the most popular figure of the first half of the twentieth century” and “one of the most eminent luminaries of our time,” Gandhi the individual remains “as much an enigma as a person of endless fascination” (Murrell, 2008). Yet there has been relatively little scholarly engagement with Gandhi’s autobiography, and published output has largely been concerned with mining the text for its biographical details, with little concern for how Gandhi represents himself. The author addresses this gap in the literature, while also considering Gandhi as a writer. This book provides a close reading of the linguistic structure of the text with particular focus upon Gandhi’s self-representation, drawing on a cognitive stylistic framework for analysing linguistic representations of selfhood (Emmott 2002). It will be of interest to stylisticians, cognitive linguists, discourse analysts, and scholars in related fields such as Indian literature and postcolonial studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
Chapter 1: “In a word, I could not live both after the flesh and the spirit”
Introduction
Analytical Approach
The Book’s Structure
References
Chapter 2: The Story of Gandhi’s “Experiments with Truth”
Introduction
An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1940)
The Translation Process
Critical Reception
References
Chapter 3: Gandhi and the Emergence of Autobiography in India
Introduction
The Emergence of Autobiography in India
References
Chapter 4: Gandhi the Writer
Gandhi the Writer
Attitude to the English Language
References
Chapter 5: Gandhi Writing Gandhi: Autobiographical “Split Selves”
Methodology: Emmott’s “Split Selves” (2002)
Analysis of “Split Selves” in An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1940)
The Complex, Multi-Faceted Self
Emotion and Intellect
Body and Mind
Social Roles
Private and Public Selves
Imaginary Selves
The Ever-changing Self
The Act of Narration
Self and Circumstance
References
Chapter 6: “Life is one indivisible whole”
Conclusion
References
Index