For celebrities or politicians – any cultural figure for whom publicity is oxygen – outsourcing one’s voice to a ghostwriter is essential. However, all ghostwritten text, from a tweet to a memoir to an election-winning speech, inhabits a complex grey area between fact and fiction, truth and the tricks of the trade.
In this session, Yelin and Greenwood will be tearing apart the politics of ghostwriting. What ghostwritten celebrity memoirs can teach us about the negotiation of fame; what it means when a politician claims to speak from the heart; and what the implications are for all of us when our own inner ghostwriters take over and the narratives we present become increasingly separate from reality.