Resting her Case: “MeToo à la française” – Springora and Others

Abstract

Abstract In January 2020, Vanessa Springora published Consent, an unusual memoir that discloses the elaborated version of a personal story. Springora was 14 years old when she met the 50-year-old Gabriel Matzneff, a well-known French writer. Thirty years later, she decided to take back the agency that she claims was taken from her, with the artilleries of literature. While closely following Springora’s narrative, the paper focuses on the emergence of a new “memoir genre”, which besides presenting a platform for personal redemption, instigated an important shift within the French public opinion regarding the nature of consent, and ignited significant legal reform in this regard. As will be elaborated, Consent and other works in similar spirit appositely demonstrate the power of law to stimulate certain narrative patterns, and the power of stories to influence cultural atmosphere which leads to legal changes.