Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Spitting The Dummy: Collaborative Life Writing And Ventriloquism, Michael Jacklin

Michael Jacklin

This article sets out to 'trace the deployment of the metaphor of ventriloquism in collaborative life writing, highlight the frequency with which it is utilised, and to suggest that its application in critical reading may have outrun its usefulness' (p69). It engages with life writing theorists including G. Thomas Couser and Paul John Eakin, and includes comment on Tim Rowse's reading of the Australian Aboriginal life writing text, I, the Aboriginal.