Nine fine contributions comprise the content of the volume under review, partially based on a 2009 conference titled “Escribir de sí mismo: Historia y autodocumentos en los Andes.” Individual contributions are framed by a discussion of what autobiographies, memoirs, testimonials, and other nontraditional literary forms (journalism, interviews, sociological and anthropological reports) add to our knowledge of social, economic, and political contexts and an individual's thoughts and intentions. These assessments of biographies and autobiographies are based on a rereading of earlier propositions, mainly by John Beverley, Pierre Bourdieu, Barbara Caine, Georg M. Gugelberger, and Philippe Lejeune. The main question asked is how an individual becomes a normative subject of institutions and values in the wake of modernity, in which changing economic conditions also imply changing mindsets. Autobiographies, or “autodocumentos,” become transformative interventions that reveal an author's self-image in relation to others, narrative and discursive models that structure the text, themes and...

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