Oulibertinage: Play and pudeur in Anne Garréta's Pas un jour

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, women-authored sexual confessions have proliferated. However, these succès de scandale have been paralleled by anxiety regarding self-exposure and a sense that, for women writers, the ‘taboo’ has become something of an obligation. In this article, I will consider how Anne Garréta's autofictional Pas un jour engages critically with the genre of sexual confession and what Garréta sees as the overexposed culture in which it has flourished. In particular, I will pay attention to the text's Oulipian dimensions, arguing that Garréta's construction of the text as an Oulipian game is a means of acquiring critical distance from and also renewing contemporary rituals of seduction. The article will situate Pas un jour within broader trends in contemporary French women's writing and will conclude with a consideration of whether Oulipian methods might provide a resource for women writers who, like Garréta, resist the demand for full disclosure.