Performing Selves in the 21st Century: Introduction

The introduction to the special issue “Performing Selves in the 21st Century” discusses the turbulent changes that both the theory and practice of life writing have undergone in recent decades, as well as the sociocultural and media context of contemporary autobiographical and autofictional storytelling. It also surveys the papers included in this issue, which, in their different ways, expose and analyze the strong inclination of 21st-century self-representation acts towards self-performance and self-invention.