'Affaires de famille': The Family in Contemporary French Culture and Theory by Marie-Claire Barnet, Edward Welch

Abstract

MLR, 105.1, 2010 257 'Affaires de famille: The Family inContemporary French Culture and Theory. Ed. byMarie-Claire Barnet and Edward Welch. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2007. 347 pp. ?47.50. ISBN 978-90-420-2170-9. Developed from a conference of the same titleheld atDurham University in spring 2004, this edited book tackles the rich and topical subject of the family and its representations in literature (9 chapters), film (5), visual arts (2), psychoanalytical theory (1), and social practice (one chapter on alternative schooling). Both Marie Claire Barnet's introduction and many of the chapters establish convincingly the extent of contemporary concern, inFrance as elsewhere, with the rapidly changing structure of the family and the implications of this for social stability and human happiness. Elisabeth Roudinesco's La Famille en desordre (Paris: Fayard, 2002) is, symptomatically, themost quoted work in the book; the chapters on (mainly contemporary) literaryworks demonstrate the pervasive presence of family as a 'declencheur de memoires et d'ecriture' (introduction, p. 16), particularly perhaps in thework ofwomen writers, who are the focus of eight out of the nine literary chapters. The question of how to form,manage, or survive a family unit, so com mon a theme in international popular culture (Supernanny, Wife-Swap, etc.) ishere shown to figurewidely too in contemporary French filmand artworks. The dominant representation of family appears at firstto tend towards the dark, the grim, theviolently conflictual: families inmany of these chapters are shown to be dangerous to the interests of the individual, despite the halo of nostalgia and longing that also attaches to the family ideal. In theworld ofMarie Ndiaye (elo quently analysed by bothMichael Sheringham and Shirley-Anne Jordan) the family achieves its cohesion through a defensive solidarity against the different 'Other and the cruel exclusion of a sacrificial victim, often the heroine/narrator. Though well defended (byNathalie Morello and implicitly by Jordan) against the charge ofmerely writing narcissistic 'misery lit', Lorette Nobecourt also depicts family relations in terms of surveillance, brutality, and painful resistance; the individual's need to fighther or his way out of stiflingpreassigned family roles is also there in the chapters on Garat, Lambrich, gay autobiographers, and the film-maker Coline Serreau. Phil Powrie's compelling overview of the theme in contemporary cinema shows the traditional family dissected, ridiculed, or treated as irrelevant across a range of genres. However, Powrie makes a distinction between dystopian representations of the patriarchal family and more positive, even Utopian, imaginings of new, looser kinds of'tribe', often homo-social, as Fiona Handyside's chapter on 'Girls on Film' also suggests. Family as a durable, cross-generational community thatprovides the individual with a sense of belonging, whether or not this is based on blood ties, is also portrayed as productive ofwell-being. Carrie Tarr demonstrates how 'Bern' films tend to undercut the bleak stereotype of oppressively patriarchal Muslim families with warmer, more complex narratives, albeit ones that rarely end with the prospect of new generations born into amulticultural France. Through her study of shame in Ernaux's work, Loraine Day employs the useful notion of the 'good 258 Reviews enough' family, and shows how contemporary fictions play an important role in processing changes in family structure that have largely been beneficial, at least forwomen. In Nigel Saint's study Pascal Convert's art is shown to represent, in movingly graphic and tactile form, the family's vital intermediary role between the personal and the collective. Almost inevitably in a large and diverse edited book, a few chapters seem slightly marginal to the central question, and some compellingly interesting themes (e.g. the specifically French relationship between Republican values and family) tantalizingly appear but are never developed. Overall, though, this is a valuable book on a subject that is of lived as well as academic concern to most of us, and one thatprovides many fine thematic studies of particular genres, artists, and individual works. University of Leeds Diana Holmes Friends and Enemies: The Scribal Politics of Post/Colonial Literature. By Chris Bongie. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2008. xv+412 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-1-84631-142-0. Chris Bongie's openly polemical volume isby turns profound in its insights,meti culous...