The Book of Change.

Autofictional Strategies and Recursive Structures in Sheila Heti’s Motherhood

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between autofictional strategies and recursive structures in Sheila Heti’s Motherhood (2018), focusing on the narrative construction of a fluid self. Moving beyond traditional biographical linearity, Heti employs “spatial” narrative techniques (Mitchell, 1980) to reveal the process through which the artistic agency can reassemble a maternal lineage burdened by societal expectations. The article demonstrates that the recursive structures Heti employs organize diverse discursive systems —specifically the I Ching, photography, and biblical parables— to unmake the stable, compliant “I” of traditional autobiography. A close reading of the text’s central motif, the knife, discloses the fact its recursive occurrence converges to bind the narrator’s personal struggle to the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust. Finally, drawing on Isabelle Grell’s (2018) concept of the “unmade I” and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture” (1996) the article illustrates that Heti reconfigures the patriarchal construct of “woman-as-mother” into a site of perpetual transformation.