Who Speaks in Memory?
Who Speaks in Memory?

Self-Reference, Life-Story, and the Autobiography-Game in Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory

Summary/Abstract: As best evidence of our narrative identity language-games, autobiographies unveil the illusive power of language in purporting a unitary self. Drawing upon Ludwig Wittgenstein's no-reference view of "I" and studying its use as a necessary formal tie in autobiographical memory, it is contended that a sense of self through time is constituted in narrative and being narrated in memories. It is argued that Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory illustrates the lack of reference of the first-person pronoun in autobiographical memory, its formal and inventive emergence, and its diversity in narrative compositions. As the title hints, the self does not speak in memory; it is spoken in autobiographical language-games of composition.

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