This paper offers a small slice of ‘autosociobiography’: autobiographical reflections which situate these impressions in a wider social context (Ernaux, Citation2022, Jaquet, Citation2023, Twellman & Lammers, Citation2023). These particular autosociobiographical reflections are about my experiences of university, and how they have offered both positive and sometimes more problematic forms of community. The first part of the article pursues this by considering the social contexts of my routes taken to university, narratives of social mobility, and the forces shaping higher education (...) over that timeframe in the UK, in that particular geographical and social conjuncture. The second part of the article shifts its attention to the present day and considers the forms of ‘carewashing’ pushed by the contemporary university in the increasingly uncaring, and difficult, UK context of marketized higher education. It ends by considering the ‘micro’ and ‘meso’ forms of community and care which are today often used to attempt to cope with and survive such contexts, as well as the ‘macro’ changes discussed throughout the article that are urgently needed to redress such ‘structural carelessness’. In the process, through these combined lenses, the article aims to consider relationships between care, community and ‘the university’. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel setzt sich mit einem in jüngster Zeit vermehrt zu beobachtenden Narrativ auseinander: der Erzählung von der Herkunft aus einem deklassierten Milieu. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei autosoziobiografische Texte und Filme, die aus der Perspektive einer erworbenen sozialen Distanz den Anspruch verfolgen, individuelle Erfahrungen des Klassenwechsels mit einer Analyse aktueller gesellschaftlicher Problemlagen zu verbinden. Diese Darstellungen werden zum einen hinsichtlich ihrer hybriden Gattungszugehörigkeit und ihres kommunikativen Anspruchs befragt. Zum anderen werden ihre dominierenden Erzählweisen untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass genealogisch-kollektivierende Konstellationen (...) eine wichtige Rolle spielen: Erstens werden Klassenverhältnisse als Generationenverhältnisse narrativiert; zweitens wird ein die einzelne Autosoziobiografie sprengendes Erzählverfahren verwendet, durch das sich ein intertextueller Zusammenhang von aufeinander verweisenden Geschichten des Klassenwechsels konstituiert.The article deals with a narrative that has received increasing attention in recent years: the story of one’s social origin in a disadvantaged milieu. The focus is on autosociobiographical texts and films which, from the perspective of acquired social distance, aim at linking individual experiences of a change of social class with an analysis of current social problems. These representations are analyzed regarding their hybrid genre and their communicative ambitions. Furthermore, dominant narrative styles are examined. It turns out that configurations, which are both genealogical and collectivizing in kind, are of particular importance: First, relationships of class are narrated as generational relationships; Second, a narrative method is employed that transgresses the individual autosociobiography as it establishes intertextual connections among different stories of class change that refer to one another. (shrink)