Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions

Abstract

Unbecoming Language by Annabel L. Kim is a detailed study of three French writers: Nathalie Sarraute, Monique Wittig and Anne Garréta. Through extensive and careful analysis of each of these writers’ works and personal backgrounds, Kim traces a direct chain of influence between them. Furthermore, she proposes to consider their works as a common corpus—a coherent theoretical project of anti-difference writing: an innovative project that presents us with ways in which language can become a means of societal and political potential to undo identity. In the first of four chapters, Kim examines Sarraute’s work and proposes a new, surprising rereading of her corpus. Even though Sarraute is most often situated within the categories of New Novel and “woman writer,” Kim argues that both categories rob us of some important aspects of her works and instead offers a political reading of Sarraute’s writing. In her study of Sarraute, Kim pays special attention to Tropismes, in which language becomes a powerful force with the ability to shape reality. For Kim, Sarraute’s tropisms place the reader in an indeterminate space where they can experience language as Sarraute’s anonymous subjectivities, and, through an encounter with unbecoming language, have their own identity erased. In this sense, Kim concludes that Sarraute’s writing is revolutionary.