Autofiction and Photography: “The Split of the Mirror”

This chapter explores the relationships between life writing, memory, and photography and suggests that the incidence of photographs (actual or described) in life-writing texts is most prominent in autofictional works which possess generic hybridity and often represent identity itself in hybrid terms. The chapter explores images of seeing and mirroring in autobiographical texts, focusing first on transsexual life-writings (including works by Virginia Woolf, Jan Morris, Jay Prosser, and Susan Faludi), in which photographs play a complex role in negotiating continuity and change within the life-course, old and new identities. The second part of the essay turns to recent life-writing texts, including the work of Annie Ernaux (who, like many other French writers, makes substantial use of photographs) and the film and cultural theorist Annette Kuhn.

Montagem literária em Journal du dehors, de Annie Ernaux / Literary Montage in Annie Ernaux’s Journal du dehors

Resumo: Este artigo tem o objetivo de fazer uma reflexão sobre o livro Journal du dehors, de Annie Ernaux (2012), à luz principalmente de algumas reflexões de Walter Benjamin (1989, 1993, 2019) sobre a montagem literária no volume II das Passagens (Das Passagen-Werk). Comparo o trabalho da autora ao trabalho de uma trapeira e flâneuse do fim do século XX, que vai buscar, em outras formas de mediação, uma nova compreensão do capitalismo e das manifestações da economia na cultura. Ao longo do artigo, tentei realizar uma assemblage de reflexões fragmentárias sobre obras literárias direta ou indiretamente relacionadas ao meu objeto de estudo. Assim, começo o texto apresentando uma reflexão rápida sobre as figuras do trapeiro (chiffonnier) e do flâneur em Baudelaire e, em seguida, passo a Journal du dehors, intercalando a essa análise um breve comentário sobre Nadja, de André Breton (2011), que, além de citada por Ernaux (2012), se aproxima temática e formalmente de Journal du dehors.Palavras-chave: montagem literária; Annie Ernaux; Walter Benjamin.Abstract: This article aims to analyze the book Journal du dehors, by Arnie Ernaux (2012), in light of Walter Benjamin’s (1989, 1993, 2019) reflections on the “literary montage”, as expressed in the second volume of his unfinished work Passages (Das Passagen-Werk). I will attempt to compare Ernaux’s work to that of a “chiffonnière” and “flâneuse” from the XXth century, who goes in search of a new understanding of capitalism and of economy’s manifestation in culture through different ways of mediation. This article takes the form of an “assemblage” of fragmentary reflections on other works of literature that could potentially be associated to Journal du dehors. I begin my text briefly reflecting on how the chiffonnier and the flâneur are presented in Baudelaire’s poetry. I then go on to analyze Journal du dehors, interspersing my analysis with a brief commentary on André Breton’s (2011) Nadja, not only because it is mentioned in Ernaux’s text (2012), but also because its structure and themes can be associated to those of Journal du dehors.Keywords: literary montage; Annie Ernaux; Walter Benjamin.

Mémoire de la mère : force motrice de l’écriture chez A. Ernaux et D. de Vigan

En este artículo estudiaremos dos obras dedicadas a la figura de la madre: Rien ne s'oppose à la nuit (Delphine de Vigan) y Une femme (Annie Ernaux). Se trata de revelar el diferente trabajo de narración autobiográfica que las escritoras realizan en estas dos novelas sobre el duelo por la desaparición materna. Este personaje ocupa un lugar esencial en la decisión de escribir de estas hijas-narradoras quienes cuestionan su propio proceso de escritura debido a las particularidades de la existencia de la mujer que fue su madre. La semilla de la vocación literaria nace de esa relación particular entre ellas y de la voluntad de dejar testimonio escrito de retratos de mujer desde puntos de vista innovadores.

Annie Ernaux et Édouard Louis : Écrire le réel entre bruit(s) et silence

A. Ernaux and É. Louis – writers of the real, between silence and noise In A. Ernaux’s steps, É. Louis writes to account for truth, to bear witness for the real. They experience sounds, noises and silences as particularly meaningful signs of the social classes that they live in. Their original, popular environment is made of constant noise, whether coming from inside the body or the surrounding working-place. Later as they rise socially, they realise that more privileged classes live in a filtered, muffled world. But being loud may also be a move toward freedom, an expression of the lived experience. The theatre stage is a particularly apt media for the telling of É. Louis’s stories as it enables the varied experiences to be heard and felt through their vibrations, and all noises on stage make sense.

Tertium non datur

The books by Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon can be interpreted as testimonies of the struggle for belonging. With their rich descriptions of growing up in poverty, of shame and degradation, they make an important contribution to the analysis of orders of belonging. Educational institutions play a significant role in this. In this way, Ernaux and Eribon shed light on the mechanisms through which belonging is created or denied.