Le Personnel Est Politique
Médias, Esthétique, Et Politique De L'autofiction Chez Christine Angot, Chloé Delaume, and Nelly Arcan

Mercédès Baillargeon (Author)

9781557538574

Paperback / softback, published 15 April 2019

222 pages
22.6 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.368 kg

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, Chloé Delaume, and Nelly Arcan, Mercédès 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 littérature engagée, 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.

• Remerciements
• Introduction: L'
  autofiction contemporaine des femmes: scandale,
• posture et imposture
• PREMIÈ
  RE PARTIE: CHRISTINE ANGOT: VICTIME OU MARTYRE?
• Chapitre un: Autofiction, mé
  tafiction et personnage mé
  diatique chez Christine Angot
• Chapitre deux: Lecture, provocation et scandale dans L'
  Inceste: dé
  jouer le lecteur
• Chapitre trois: Quitter la ville: naissance d'
  une tragé
  die?
• DEUXIÈ
  ME PARTIE: CHLOÉ
  DELAUME: LA VICTIME ENFIN BOURREAU
• Chapitre quatre: L'
  autofiction expé
  rimentale de Chloé
  Delaume
• Table des matiè
  res
• Chapitre cinq: Les Mouflettes d'
  Atropos: l'
  individu dans le collectif
• Chapitre six: Le Cri du sablier: dé
  construire les fictions individuelles
• Chapitre sept: La Vanité
  des somnambules, ou le rapport au lecteur
• TROISIÈ
  ME PARTIE: PARI MANQUÉ
  ? NELLY ARCAN, LES MÉ
  DIAS ET LE DESTIN TRAGIQUE D'
  UNE É
  CRIVAINE
• Chapitre huit: Le pacte auto/mé
  tafictionnel chez Nelly Arcan
• Chapitre neuf: Miroir, narcissisme et projection
• Chapitre dix: "La honte": postface
• Conclusion: Engagement, mé
  dias et nouveaux mé
  dias Bibliographie
• Index