Biography, Biographical Essay, Anomalous Forms: Notes on a Research Path

Abstract

In the following text — which originated in a talk at the National University of Rosario in 2022 — I present a set of inquiries that initially gravitate around the question of the traditional form of biography and its assumptions, moving from there to an attempt to characterize the biographical essay, valuing the negotiations and potential reciprocal fertilizations between the essayistic and the biographical. I also introduce issues concerning the poetics of biography, exploring a research path that, over the last ten years, traverses the attempt to define the biographical, to explore hybridizations with the essay, and to explore the anomalous forms of biography. I conclude by presenting what seem to me to be current research horizons, marked by the question of form, as well as by issues related to conceptualizations that contribute to the structuring of biographical narratives, their poetics, and processes.