New Books Network Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan eds., "Autotheories" (MIT Press, 2025)
Mar 6, 2026
Vilashini Cooppan, professor of literature focused on postcolonial and gender theory, and Alex Brostoff, assistant professor working on trans, queer, and comparative literatures, discuss autotheory as a genre-bending practice. They explore its plural, performative forms. Conversations cover editorial choices, citational play, collaboration by correspondence, and autotheory’s political and reading practices.
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Autotheory As A Shattering Hybrid
- Autotheory resists fixed definition and works by indexing operations like hybridization, citationality, and plural selves.
- Vilashini Cooppan emphasizes autotheory as a genre that 'shatters itself' and composes an assemblage of memoir, diary, archive, and psychogeography.
Why The Title Uses Autotheories
- The editors chose the plural Autotheories to stress the field's plurality and methodological divergences rather than a single canon.
- Alex Brostoff explains the volume braids post-structuralism with marginalized frameworks like queer, trans, and women of color thought.
How The Project Started During The Pandemic
- The book began from an ASAP Journal special issue that received three times the usual submissions during the pandemic.
- Alex Brostoff recounts reading Vilashini's essay, experiencing an "autotheory primal scene," then collaborating by Zoom over five years to build the volume.
