“This book belongs to”: Trauma, (Bio)Degradation, and the Law in Visual and Narrative Diaries

Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002), Nan Goldin’s photo diary The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986), and Tracey Emin’s intimate art installations My Bed (1998) and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995) complicate the genres of life writing and confessional art. These artistic narratives both degrade and are responsible to “truth” as a means of bearing witness to trauma.