La puissante écriture intertextuelle de Marie Darrieussecq dans Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes

Abstract

In 2010 Marie Darrieussecq published Rapport de Police, Accusations de plagiat et autres modes de surveillance de la fiction as a response to the accusations of plagiarism brought against her by Camille Laurens and Marie NDiaye. In this essay she claims her right to an openly intertextual writing. Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes belongs to this type of writing: Darrieussecq draws strong images from other texts to renew and extend them. In particular, she reworks certain topoi, such as love at first sight, heterosexual passion, and White-Black relations. Her main intertexts are Passion simple by Annie Ernaux, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Apocalypse Now, the film that Francis Ford Coppola made from it. She also uses several texts by Marguerite Duras, as well as songs, proverbs, key sentences, and anecdotes. She thus explores many clichés, including those relating to two legendary places, Hollywood and Africa. This rich intertextuality could have led to the dilution of her own voice if she had not also anchored her text in her own experience, by including the discreet presence of an auctorial I, and by ensuring through a large epitext that the autobiographical comparisons with its protagonist Solange are known as well as the fact that her text was also born from personal research on Africa and Hollywood. With Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes, Darrieussecq has written a powerful and personal text despite, or rather thanks to, its vast intertextuality.