Annie Ernaux Research Articles

Writing Life, Writing Time, Writing the Mother

This article focuses on Ernaux’s later life memories of a twentieth century daughter-mother relationship, rendered in the light of this era’s historical transformations and its tensions between individual freedom and collective "fate," and between pre- and post 1968 conceptions of a fulfilled life. It refers to Ernaux’s most monumental work of self-writing, Les Années (2008) and this book’s links to what she has previously written in remembrance of her mother. The purpose is to investigate how these works seek to come to terms with, not only the loss of a mother, but also the narrator’s own aging. Ernaux exemplifies the adult daughter-senescent mother relationship in ways that are characteristic for her generation of women and suggestive of general historical changes in human relationships in Western societies since 1968. Can Ernaux’s writing provide, in the terms of Kathleen Woodward, “cultural models of older women as a way of generating alternative futures for ourselves”? Or does it fail to reconciliate the stereotypical binary of female aging as either graceful or awful, conveying tabooed aspects of old age that need to be brought to light, and even more urgently so in a socio-cultural context privileging youthfulness, individualism and uncertain human bonds? Keywords: Annie Ernaux, The Years; aging daughter-mother relationship; filiation narratives; auto-socio-biography; memory and time; autonomy and dependency; social exclusion; abjection and purification.

Portrait of the transclasse as a White man: class and race in French contemporary literature

This article examines unacknowledged influence of “ beur literature” (literature produced by second-generation French writers from North African descent) on Hexagonal literature. Whereas at the time of their publication in the 1980s works by authors such as Azouz Begag or Abdellatif Chaouite were dismissed as ethnographic texts largely devoid of artistic value, their autofictional status being invoked as an argument against their literary worth, since the turn of the century, White writers such as Annie Ernaux and Édouard Louis have exemplified and championed the formal significance and political relevance of auto-ethnographies associated with the major new trend of “littérature de terrain” or “littérature d’intervention” in French literature. The article unpacks the changes in critical discourse attendant to the different types of reception afforded texts written by beur authors against those signed by their “French” peers. “Autosociobiographies” enjoy tremendous success when they are published by writers who identify as belonging to the ethnically White majority, thus subtending the dominant ideology of French Republicanism predicated on class matters and “la fracture sociale” to the detriment of the debate around racial and ethnic issues stemming from “la fracture coloniale.”

Punctuated Lives: Abortion, Ellipses, and Parentheses in Annie Ernaux’s L’événement (2000) and Line Papin’s Une vie possible (2022)

Abstract: This article examines the representation of abortion in two autobiographical texts: Annie Ernaux’s L’événement (2000) and Line Papin’s Une vie possible (2022). Analyzing their use of punctuation, particularly parentheses and ellipses, it argues that Papin inherits an aesthetics of hesitation from Ernaux, an aesthetics that allows both writers to make space for others’ experiences of abortion.

„Dostałaś raka tylko po to, aby go opisać”, czyli literacko-fotograficzna narracja o raku piersi w książce Annie Ernaux L’usage de la photo

In her book L’usage de la photo, published in France in 2005, Annie Ernaux creates an inimitable personal narration to describe her experience of living with breast cancer. The book matches photographs of things that belonged to her and her partner as they were scattered all over the place the previous day with passages chronicling of the progress of her illness and the way it invades her daily life. The article argues that the experimental form enabled the author of L’usage de la photo to find a new perspective on her record of the female experience of cancer. The article analyzes both the photo-graphic parts of the narration, which, it seems, foreshadow the nearness of death, and the literary/autobiographical parts, which contain a frank record of living with cancer.

Reading class: Digital evidence about fiction and social class

Recent years have seen the return of social class to popular fiction with the success of international authors like Édouard Louis, Annie Ernaux, Sally Rooney and Douglas Stuart. In Scandinavia, working-class authors have topped bestseller lists since 2022 and have drawn attention in mass media. This study looks at readers of “class fiction” by analyzing data from the digital book platform eReolen. Using data for loan time and geographic municipality, I argue that the popularity of class fiction has been fueled by media attention and gain many of its readers from relatively prosperous areas in Denmark – as opposed to the people represented in the books.

Invisible chain: breaking the taboo of abortion in Jeanne Caruchet’s L’Ensemencée (1904), Annie Ernaux’s L’événement (2000) and Audrey Diwan’s L’événement (2021)

ABSTRACT In L’Événement (2000), the author’s retelling of her experience of an illicit abortion in 1964, Annie Ernaux writes of a ‘chaîne invisible où se côtoient des artistes, des écrivaines, des héroïnes de roman’, stating that ‘[s]on histoire est en elles’. There is a timelessness to Ernaux’s abortion narrative, jumping between two temporal spaces: the contemporary narrator’s experience of writing the novel at the turn of the millennium, and that of the young Annie in the 1960s. Twenty-one years after the novel’s publication, Audrey Diwan’s film adaptation of the same name became another link on this chain, further highlighting the relevance of the story of a young woman’s illicit abortion almost 50 years after the decriminalisation of abortion in France. This article extends Ernaux’s ‘chaîne’ further back in time, by adding another female-authored novel: L’Ensemencée (1904), by Jeanne Caruchet. The author explores how these women’s experiences of abortion are presented across these three works, examining the change in attitudes towards abortion, with particular focus on the evolution of female communities, from the Belle Époque, through the turn of the millennium and into the early 2020s.

‘Honesty of that Order Threatens Order’: The Autofiction of Chris Kraus, Annie Ernaux, and Sophie Calle

ABSTRACT This article focuses on three texts that blur the boundaries of form—I Love Dick (1997) by Chris Kraus, Simple Passion (1991) by Annie Ernaux and Suite vénitienne (1983) by Sophie Calle. They can be read as autofiction in both their construction and autobiographical basis. The texts come together through their singular focus on a male other, who on each occasion is a subject without a voice. The article charts the development of the term autofiction to situate the texts, then through close readings draws out how they use the form to universalise the personal and to demonstrate a constructed ‘I’ through writing. The article focuses on the way the texts offer a reconfigured autobiographical relationality between women and men, and in this a disruptive excess. The article proposes that the characteristics of ‘autofiction’ support these achievements.

Thoughts on Place: A Conversation with Annie Ernaux

Thoughts on Place: A Conversation with Annie Ernaux

Porosity and Movement in Life Stories

Fueled by intellectual curiosity, literary discourse oscillates between factual and fictional narratives. Continually nourished by reality and imagination, it reflects a binary rhythm of representativeness and subjectivity. This work analyzes the biographical genre to explore the shift in rhetorical boundaries and representations in self-narratives. It examines various techniques writers use to reclaim the territory of intimate stories and lives. Infusing these narratives with meaning and unity aims to bridge the gap between the individual and the world. Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to feminist writer Annie Ernaux highlights the growing interest in the biographical genre. Ernaux, known for placing intimacy at the heart of her work, brings attention to this genre that often navigates through narratives marked by left-wing and 'politically correct' perspectives. Consequently, the genre emerges as a vital participant in the world's progress, establishing self-literature that withstands the test of time. A cross-study of various life stories — including intimate narratives, extremist views, self-portraits, memoirs, autobiographical novels, autofictions, and travel stories — enables us to understand the porosity and movement within this expansive genre. By presenting and juxtaposing different biographies, writers create a space for interaction, allowing the lives of others to permeate our understanding. Consequently, the biographical genre, serving as a mediating force, and the concept of otherness as mediation are reexamined within the fictional landscape of the human mind.
 
 Received: 10 January 2023 / Accepted: 29 February 2024 / Published: 6 March 2024

Mémoire de fille (dé)rangée: relire Ernaux à la lumière de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir’s influence, particularly through her Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, has been personally and intellectually decisive for Annie Ernaux who just like Beauvoir turned from a both dutiful and disturbed girl into a disturbing author as evidenced by her narrative A Girl’s Story. This article precisely aims at studying how the ‘disturbed’ and ‘disturbing’ paradigms open the way to a reassessment of A Girl’s Story in light of Beauvoir’s Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, and bring so to the fore the organic bond connecting Ernaux to Beauvoir.

Annie Ernaux: politics lived and written

‘Annie Ernaux: Politics lived and written’ starts by outlining the aim and key terms of this special issue of French Cultural Studies dedicated to ‘Annie Ernaux: Writing, Politics’. It then provides an overview of her life, highlighting some of the ways in which the writer, who was born in 1940, experienced or witnessed first-hand the historical events, legal pressures, and socio-political realities of her era. There follows a reminder of the two prevalent concerns that have structured her work, namely ‘le mépris social’ and ‘la domination masculine’, both of which pertain to ‘ le politique’. ‘ La politique’ being also subject to examination in the articles in this issue, the politics of Ernaux – the citizen and the writer – is subsequently surveyed and consideration is given to the author's will to distinguish it from the ‘political action of literary writing’. Finally, this introduction examines the processes of representation and self-positioning that shape the political in Ernaux's prose. A concluding section provides an overview of the nine contributions brought together here.

A commitment that ruffles feathers: the attacks against Annie Ernaux's political stances

This article was written in response to the attacks on Annie Ernaux following the announcement by the Swedish Academy of its decision to award her the Nobel Prize in Literature on 6 October 2022. In particular, it discusses the accusation of anti-Zionism, more or less explicitly conflated with antisemitism. Through the analysis of texts signed by Ernaux, the article demonstrates that this accusation is a baseless attempt to discredit the Nobel Prize laureate in public opinion. The article also calls into question other accusations made against the writer during the programme ‘Répliques’ by Alain Finkielkraut, on 26 November 2022, on the France Culture radio station.

Annie Ernaux: future prospects and the politics of time

This article considers the elaboration of time as part of the formal construction that relates writing and politics in Ernaux's work. Beginning with her claim that ‘Écrire, c’est créer du temps’, particular attention is paid to the role of the future in Ernaux's ‘lived time’, especially the future as anticipated in the past. Her accounts of the past, in both fiction and autobiographical writing, show how unquestioned expectations about the future serve to direct the course of human lives and sustain different forms of injustice. Assumptions about both class and gender underpin future prospects in childhood, education, love, sex, pregnancy and marriage. Finally, writing itself is conceived by Ernaux predominantly in relation to the future.

Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille

It is striking how often the first-person memories in Annie Ernaux's 2016 work of life-writing Mémoire de fille are rendered from a third-person perspective. Visual depictions of the author’s younger self are shown to us as if the older Ernaux who is narrating the story were present at the scene, seeing her former self from the outside. The events recounted include sexual exploitation and public shaming for falling foul of the era's sexual double standards, and, in the aftermath of this, an identity crisis and an eating disorder. How does Ernaux’s complex interplay of empathy and distance with regard to her younger self affect the social and political themes in the work, and the ethical stance of the text towards them? And how is the reader implicated by the perspective through which Ernaux has us view her teenage self of 1958?

Poïétique et politique du littéraire : Annie Ernaux, une écriture « au-dessous de la littérature » ?

In Une femme (1987; A Woman's Story), Annie Ernaux declared that she wished to remain “au-dessous de la littérature” (“below literature”). To what extent is this position, which she has maintained over the last decades, compatible with her consecration as a writer? This article considers the publication of Les Années (2008; The Years) as a turning point followed by the publication of several collaborative and dialogic texts that call into question established literary forms and make visible the process of creation, that is to say the poiesis of the œuvre. By revealing the act of writing, Ernaux contributes to establishing a genealogy of her work, even showing it to have a mythical dimension which is nevertheless tied to socio-political concerns. Exploring the resonance between Ernaux's literary pieces and her paratextual interventions highlights the complex network on which Ernaux's conception of writing, and position towards the idea of literature, are built.

Interrogating double absence in transclasse autobiography: Postcolonial identity in flux in Kaoutar Harchi's Comme nous existons

In 2014, philosopher Chantal Jaquet coined the term transclasse to describe a person who is in the process of changing their social class. In opposition to the perhaps more widely-known expression ‘transfuge de classe’ – popularised by writers such as Annie Ernaux and Édouard Louis – transclasse allows for a comprehension of the necessarily transient nature of social migration, encapsulating a vital element of flux. Importantly, Jaquet's term allows for an understanding that the transclasse is not a rigidly definable identity category, and instead reflects individual experiences of liminality. In this article, I demonstrate the continuing relevance of Jaquet's theorisations by analysing the ways in which Kaoutar Harchi's memoir Comme nous existons explores the unique position of double absence that she occupies as a transclasse who must also navigate her identity as the child of postcolonial immigrants in France, using Abdelmalek Sayad's work La double absence in dialogue with Jaquet and Harchi.

In Darkness We Meet: Annie Ernaux's Account of Care and Dementia.

The complexities surrounding aging, dementia, and care are timely issues that transcend beyond institutional boundaries, evincing a critical debate on later life across disciplines. The aim of this study is to offer fresh insights into the intricate paradigms of living and growing older with dementia. The study focuses on the Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux's memoirI Remain in Darkness(1999), which provides a candid account of her mother's journey through dementia from its onset to the gradual decline. This article employs the theoretical frameworks of literary gerontology, illness narratives and life writing to address the challenges of aging, dementia and care that are represented in Ernaux's memoir. It also addresses societal attitudes and stigma associated with aging and dementia by exploring the embarrassment that individuals and families experience when confronted with the deteriorating mental health of their loved ones. Ernaux's memoir explores the nuances of dementia and caregiving within both the familial and institutional context, and sheds light on the complex relationship between a mother and a daughter. Through the act of witnessing, Ernaux embarks on a path of healing, which allows her to confront her past wounds and better navigate the challenges that lie ahead. However, Ernaux's confessional memoir also troubles the ethics of life writing and identity issues, and seems to perpetuate the pathologizing medical gaze through the exposure of her mother's vulnerability and intimacy in the face of dementia and care. Ernaux's account of her mother's dementia and aging is both a confessional piece of writing and a narrative therapy, which reveals the challenges of aging, illness, and unresolved family tensions. Her work illuminates the interconnectedness between the past, present, and future, and shows that illness narratives can act as a catalyst for transformative change, identity formation, and self-reflection. The article addresses the intricacies of old age, showcasing how life writing and humanities-based inquiry can bring to the fore key aspects of the latest stages in life, which are often unvoiced because they represent the most unpleasant and feared aspects of aging in contemporary society.

Identity Construction and Speech Acts in Ernaux’s The Years: A Corpus-based Feminist Stylistic Analysis

The present study explores the construction of the female identity in The Years, in comparison with the original French text Les Années, which is one of the novels written by the French author; Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2022. The study also investigates the relationship between identity construction in the selected novel and the occurrences and frequencies of the different types of speech acts used by the protagonist. As a result, it highlights how the structure of the utterances said by the female protagonist and the types of speech acts with an illocutionary force contributes to the comprehensive portrayal of the female character.The qualitative and quantitative textual analysis employs a triangulation of a number of analytical tools and theoretical frameworks, such as feminist stylistics, pragmatics, and social psychology, with a corpus-based approach. The underlying theories used in the present study are the Speech Act Theory (1962,1979), the Positioning Theory (1990) integrating with Mills’ (1995) framework of feminist stylistics. Findings demonstrate that two types of speech acts are frequently used and distributed in the selected novel; that is, expressive and directive in order to highlight the fact that the narrator intends to express her directions, compliments, and complaints about events and actions. Different positions are assigned to both the narrator and the protagonist in order to manifest the different identities constructed.

Élise Hugueny-Léger, Projections de soi. Identités et images en mouvement dans l'autofiction

Playing on the double meaning of the word projection, this book explores the multiple relationships between the French literary genre of autofiction and the moving image. Élise Hugueny-Léger, a researcher of contemporary French literature and a specialist of the work of Annie Ernaux, departs from the idea that autofictional writing is a form of psychological projection, wherein a self-image is being cast onto the page. In a more literal sense, the word projection refers to the cinematic technique of showing moving images on a screen. Several francophone authors known for their autofiction have also been involved in audiovisual productions, but earlier criticism has largely limited itself to studying their literary output. By addressing this rich and complex subject matter, Hugueny-Léger makes a valuable and original contribution to the field of francophone life-writing studies.

Il/legitimate? Annie Ernaux’s contentious path to the Nobel Prize

ABSTRACT This article analyses the mass media reception of Annie Ernaux’s 2022 Nobel Prize, particularly the criticisms in the French press. After the award announcement, Ernaux was at once celebrated for her feminist writing and vilified for her socio-ethnographic approach and political engagements. French journalists and critics have deemed her Nobel illegitimate, calling into question the Swedish Academy’s choice. The article probes the concept of ‘il/legitimacy’ by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture and by reading Ernaux’s award within three contexts: the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature; mass media evaluations of her works’ aesthetic value; and literary debates about the impact of authors’ politics on their candidacy to the Nobel. I argue that the legitimacy of Ernaux’s Nobel Prize is the result of a process of cultural negotiation involving authors, texts, and individual as well as institutional agents. Becoming a Nobel laureate is a lengthy process that needs to be examined in the light of all these factors.