Beyond Self-Exploration: Elaborating a Rhetorical Approach to Autofiction through Meena Kandasamy's When I Hit You

ABSTRACT: The emergent field of autofiction studies faces two interrelated issues: a restriction on interpretation imposed by the thematic conception of autofiction as self-exploration, and a lack of systematic interpretive approaches specific to the genre. I suggest that the rhetorical approach to fictionality provides conceptual resources to address these issues. Inspired by Siddharth Srikanth's work, I propose a revised conception of autofiction as narratives in which the author achieves their purposes by deploying both fictionality and nonfictionality extensively without making either resource the dominant one for the narrative as a whole . On this basis, I develop a rhetorical approach to autofiction, characterized by a two-way dynamic between general and specific questions, that guides our exploration of how the author defies any stable hierarchical relation between fictionality and nonfictionality in a given work, and for what purposes. Designed to combine thematic flexibility with methodological rigor, this approach helps elucidate how autofictions transgress generic borders while also paying attention to how each work sets and fulfills its own communicative agenda. I then apply this approach to Meena Kandasamy's When I Hit You (2017), showing how the author combines extensive use of fictionality and nonfictionality to expose, critique, and transcend the impossible conditions for female narration of domestic violence in a misogynistic environment.