Loraine DAY, Writing Shame and Desire. The Work of Annie Ernaux, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, Peter Lang (Modern French Identities), 2007, 315 p.
ISBN 978-3-03910-275-4
RÉSUMÉ
The mature narrator of Annie Ernaux's La Honte (1997) identifiesher father's assault on her mother, in June 1952, as the founding eventin her awareness of self and social place, a bedrock memory thatrepresents the one remaining link between the child she was and thewoman she has become. As an adolescent, the protagonist is sexuallyrepressed and socially humiliated, incapable of communicating hershame. As a mature woman, the narrator gives a frank account of thechildhood mortification that is stamped into her psyche, and (in theconcluding lines of the text) flags a later discovery that providesanother locus for a sense of identity and continuity: orgasmic sexualpleasure.
This study combines psycho-social and literaryperspectives to investigate the interdependency of shame and desire inErnaux's writing, arguing that shame implies desire and desirevulnerability to shame, and that the interplay between the twogenerates the energy for personal growth and creative endeavour. Thebook examines how Ernaux's claim that her 'autosociobiographical'writing is a transpersonal activity that lays bare the mechanisms ofsocial domination relates to her investment in writing not only as ameans to explore lived experience, but also as an elemental expressionof desire.
TABLE DES MATIÈRES
The auto-socio-biographical writing of Annie Ernaux - Interdependency of shame and desire - Life-writing - Symbolic challenge to oppression rooted in class and gender - Theoretical perspective that combines psycho-social and literary approaches - Women's writing in contemporary France.
À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR
Loraine Day is a Senior Lecturer in French at the University ofSouthampton, where she teaches courses in contemporary writing andcultural and gender studies. She has published many articles and amonograph (co-authored with Tony Jones) on the writing of Annie Ernaux.She has a strong interest in psychoanalysis, and is currently workingon the role of affect in the processes of teaching and learning.