Masquerading at Risk: (Auto)Biographical Mimesis and the French Avant-Garde
Cambridge University Press eBooks January 31, 2026 DOI: 10.1017/9781009670180.003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Leiris and Artaud, through Leiris's 'la tauromachie' and Artaud's Heliogabalus, establish the masquerader as a recurring figure in life-writing who generates a potentially infinite chain of mimeses, and proposes 'chain comparison' as a critical method for reading such risky masquerade. |
Abstract
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). Leiris equates autobiography with ‘la tauromachie’ (‘bullfighting’), positing it as a deadly contest between the self as subject and self as object of writing. This notion is repeated and transformed by malleable bodies exemplified by the notorious Roman emperor Heliogabalus in Artaud’s hagiographical text Héliogabale (1934), who demonstrates the plasticity – namely, the capacity for transformation – of masquerade. Read together, Leiris and Artaud establish the masquerader as a recurrent figure in life-writing that generates a potentially infinite chain of mimeses. Through the figure of the masquerader as risk-taker and role-player, which also extends into Chapter 3, this chapter proposes the critical method of chain comparison.