Living as writing as living: queer praxis in Constance Debré’s autofictions

Abstract

ABSTRACT In both her life and her writing, Constance Debré challenges the conventional norms of gender, class and identity. In her 2018 work, Play boy, Debré intertwines her personal and literary coming out as a lesbian, marking a radical departure from the life she had been living until that point. In her subsequent works, Love Me Tender (2020) and Nom (2022), Debré further rejects traditional roles related to family, career and motherhood. This article examines Debré’s engagement with queer praxis as an author, interpreting this trilogy as a counter-narrative that resists dominant cultural scripts, particularly those tied to heteronormativity and bourgeois values. By foregrounding her rejection of societal norms, Debré constructs a narrative of autonomy that challenges fixed identities and advocates for an ambiguous freedom found in solitude. Through her ongoing life-writing project, Debré crafts an antinormative self-portrait and offers an alternative vision of individual experience living within and against societal structures. This approach provides a critical lens for examining the role queer praxis plays in life writing, situating Debré within broader discussions of resistance in contemporary French autofiction as she disrupts gendered, sexual and class-based expectations.