Introduction:Autotheory Theory Robyn Wiegman (bio) since its publication in 2015, much attention has been given to the genre-bending conventions of Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, a book that experiments with the protocols of traditional autobiography by conjoining descriptions of daily life with philosophical reflection and debates in both art criticism and critical theory. Celebrated on its back cover as writing of a new kind, called "autotheory," The Argonauts introduces readers to its hybridity at the outset, juxtaposing love and anal sex with Wittgenstein and a meditation on the limits of language on its very first page. The book's title is drawn from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, that well-known anti-autobiography crafted by the author whose manifesto, "The Death of the Author," is required reading for students tracing the history of the humanities as it was reshaped by the trans-Atlantic influence of critical theory last century. Whether figured as the "linguistic turn," the "cultural turn," or simply "poststructuralism," the ongoing implications of the broad critique of humanism's epistemological and aesthetic legacies are clearly written into The Argonauts's citational universe, while its personal narrative combines elements of the traditional marriage plot (sex, love, and baby, but not divorce) with the familiar confessional voice of the autobiographer. When read as paradigmatic for the new genre it is said to found, The Argonauts stages autotheory as an encounter between first person narration and theory as an established body of contemporary academic thought. Other experiments in self-narration that now travel under the moniker of autotheory have significantly different aesthetic approaches and theoretical dimensions, making it important to resist the lure to position The Argonauts as the genre's north star. Even Nelson points out that autotheory as the name for a contemporary mode of textual performance was not her invention. "I flat out stole this term from Paul [End Page 1] Preciado's amazing Te...