Masquerading at Risk: (Auto)Biographical Mimesis and the French Avant-Garde
Cambridge University Press eBooks January 31, 2026 Xiaofan Amy Li
Focusing on (auto)biographical modes of life-writing and how they engage with risky masquerade, Chapter 2 examines writings of avant-garde French writers Michel Leiris and Antonin Artaud, both dissident French Surrealists who took enormous interest and personal risks in exploring all forms of alterity. The chapter starts with Leiris’s writing on spirit possession in L’Afrique fantôme (1934)....