Looking at questions of testimony, confession, trauma,sexuality, and violence in (semi-) autobiographical works, this book explores the co-construction of personal and collectiveidentities by women writers in the age of self-disclosure and mass media. In a time when literature is accused of being self-centeredand overly narcissistic, women's autofiction in France since the turn of the millennium has been received with controversy because it disrupts readily accepted ideas about personal and national identities, gender and race, and fiction versus autobiography. Through the study of polemical writers Christine Angot, Chloe Delaume, and Nelly Arcan, Mercedes Baillargeon contendsthat, by recounting personal stories of trauma and sexuality, and thus opposing themselves in opposition to social convention, and by refusing to dispel doubtsregarding the fictional or factual nature of their texts, autofiction resists and helps redefine categories of literary genreand gender identity. This book analyzes concurrently the textual and sociopolitical implications that underlie the (de)construction of the autofictional subject, and particularly how these writers constantly redefine themselves through performance andself-fashioning made possible by media and technology. Moreover, this workraises important questions relating to the media's complicated relationship with women writers, especially those who discuss themes of trauma, sexuality,and violence, and who also question the distinction between fact and fiction. Proposing a new understanding of autofiction as a form of litterature engagee, this work contributes to a broader understanding of the French publishing establishment and, of the literary field as a cultural institution, as well asnew insight on shifting notions of identity, the Self and nationalism intoday's ever-changing and multicultural French context.
Mercedes Baillargeon is an assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of twentieth- and twenty-first-century first-person narrative, the intersection between public/private spaces and discourses, and the (de)construction of personal and/or collective identities. She has contributed to several edited volumes, and has published in the journals Quebec Studies, Women in French Studies. She is coediting an upcoming special issue of the journal Contemporary French Civilization on "The Transnationalism of Quebec Cinema and (New) Media" with Karine Bertrand (Queen's University). She is also a coeditor for a collection of essays on third-wave feminism in Quebec, Remous, ressacs et derivations autour de la troisieme vague feministe, published by Editions du Remue-menage in 2011. Her current research explores the question of (post/trans)nationalism in Quebec cinema of the new millennium.
Remerciements Introduction: L'autofiction contemporaine des femmes: scandale, posture et imposture PREMIERE PARTIE: CHRISTINE ANGOT: VICTIME OU MARTYRE? Chapitre un: Autofiction, metafiction et personnage mediatique chez Christine Angot Chapitre deux: Lecture, provocation et scandale dans L'Inceste: dejouer le lecteur Chapitre trois: Quitter la ville: naissance d'une tragedie? DEUXIEME PARTIE: CHLOE DELAUME: LA VICTIME ENFIN BOURREAU Chapitre quatre: L'autofiction experimentale de Chloe Delaume Table des matieres Chapitre cinq: Les Mouflettes d'Atropos: l'individu dans le collectif Chapitre six: Le Cri du sablier: deconstruire les fictions individuelles Chapitre sept: La Vanite des somnambules, ou le rapport au lecteur TROISIEME PARTIE: PARI MANQUE? NELLY ARCAN, LES MEDIAS ET LE DESTIN TRAGIQUE D'UNE ECRIVAINE Chapitre huit: Le pacte auto/metafictionnel chez Nelly Arcan Chapitre neuf: Miroir, narcissisme et projection Chapitre dix: "La honte": postface Conclusion: Engagement, medias et nouveaux medias Bibliographie Index
"A smart, timely, thoroughly researched, and beautifully written book on how three female writers (Angot, Delaume, and Arcan) negotiate reality and fiction, refusing to give in to a mainstream media conversation about them. Baillargeon allows us to grasp, through a careful reading of the writers' works, the politics of self-writing."
