“Se répandre en paroles”: Notions of Identity in Mme de Bénouville’s Pensées Errantes

Abstract

Imcrtcxts, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2000 C C Se repandre en paroles”: Notions of Identity in Mme de Benouville’s Pensees Errimtes A n t o i n e t t e S o l U n i v e r s i t y o f T e x a s a t A r l i n g t o n Both Montesquieu in Lettrespersanes 2nd Graffigny in Les Lettres d’une periivienne lament the state of French women who are likened to foreigners in their own country. In so doing, these two authors help establish the con¬ vention of gender difference figured as racial or national alterity. Mme de Benouville positions her work between these two writers and picks up where Montesquieu and Graffigny left off by continuing the examination of cultural bias and gender politics in avery peculiar work entitled Pensees errantes, avec les lettres cPun indien.^ Although completely unknown today, the Pensees, published anony¬ mously in 1758, had at least two editions and was read and reviewed rather harshly by Benouville’s peers.2 Eighteenth-century literary reviewer Joseph de La Porte complains that Pensees errantes is full of reflexions qui se trouvent partout, &qu’on ne se soucie plus de trouver nullcpart.J’endisautantderouteslespenseesquisontlaprincipalepartie du Rccucil: &ce livre, tout petit qu’il est, me parait encore trop grand, pour I’utilite dont il peut etre (5:607). [ideas that arc found everywhere, and that one does not look for anywhere anymore. This applies to all reflections in the principle section of this collection: and this book, as small as it is, appears to me still too big for any possible use that it could be.] ThereviewerinLaCorrespondanceLitteraireisofthesamemindasLa Porteand,inonestroke,dismissesitsdetestablesubjectmatteraswellasits singular structure (15 juillet 1758).^ Although the subject matter may beoriginal,theformmaycertainlybeconsideredoutoftheordinary.One wouldbehardpressedtofindamorestrangelyconstructedworkanditis, in fact, less the content than the singularity of its formal aspects that merits critical attention. Benouville challenges the reader to question idees revues through tex¬ tual manipulation of generic properties, which includes gender substitu¬ tions as well as transgressions of traditional genre norms, by building atext out of unstable signifiers and marginalia. By bringing paratextual materials to the fore (preface, annex, footnotes, etc.) and withholding the center around which they are normally arrayed, Benouville turns the margins into aplatform to assert her “authority.” Parodoxically, Benouville reinforces at n o t 1 2 9 I N T E R T E X T S 1 3 0 the same time as she diffuses (se repandre) her subjcctiviw and authority through pronominal play. In addition to displacing the periphery' to the center, the author not only forces the reader to occupy various subject posi¬ tions through the use of unstable pronominal shifters, but he or she must read actively to pull together the many threads of this work to make sense of this text. Benouville plays with structural and narrative convention, test¬ ing the limits of writing to represent the gendered nature of identity'. She specifically targets aspects of liberal and conserv'ative ideologies that prov problematic for women as she attempts to reconcile the nvo. Choosing to label this work Pensees errantes avec qnelqucs lettres dhin indien sets up certain expectations on the part of the reader. The title Pemm identifies it as aparticular marginal sub-genre of the treatise monly wntten in aunified authoritative voice. Pensees, like treatises, are most often associated with moral philosophy, but the difference benveen thetwoformsliesintheoppositionofthefragmentedstructureofpensees tothewelldefinedandorderedargumentationofatreatiseoressay.The singularstmetureofpenseesstagesananti-authoritarianconfrontationbe¬ tween its totality as an independent work and its generic fragmentary' strucmre .4 Benouville’s underscoring of the diffuse nature of these “pensees errantes” or wandering thoughts doubles the reader’s expectation ' tension between unity and plurality.This being said, the reader is surprised or, as in J. de La Porte’s case, disgruntled by this text. The text of 334 pages opens with the legend “Preface qui contient tout.’5Contrarytoexpectation,thisprefaceconstitutes213pagesofthe 334andisthefommfortheauthor’sdirectphilosophicalcommentary well as aproto-feminist critique of social, legal, and educational politics. The remaining pages of the work take the form of ashort monologic epis¬ tolary novel containing fourteen letters from an Indian slave Zurac to his fnendandfellowslavetheMoorZegri.Howeverthelackofapparentcon¬ nection between the preface and the letters, since Benouville makes clear thatthisepistolaryexchangeisnotthetexttowhichtheprefacerefers,only adds to the...