Autotheory as practical pedagogy: Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts

Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (2015) has become the exemplary text in discussions of how contemporary autotheory roots intellectual activity in embodied experience. I argue that it can also be used to demonstrate that autotheory is an inherently pedagogical genre. The pedagogical dimension of The Argonauts is closely related the text’s philosophical account of conceptual activity as something that is bound up with practical concerns. The text’s engagement with the later Wittgenstein evinces a commitment to what William James called ‘the pragmatic method’, a method which shares with queer and feminist theory a commitment to understanding the practical consequences of theory. I elucidate the pedagogical form of The Argonauts through a comparison with Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006). These texts share a self-reflective structure in which an account of the narrator’s encounter with theory offers a model for their reader’s own conception of the relationship between reading and acting.