De Moi Research Articles

Contact zones, affects and noeuds de mémoire: Chinese laborers on the Western Front in Martine Laffon’s Souviens-toi de moi

This article argues that Souviens-toi de moi, a novel published in 2014 by French writer Martine Laffon, reclaims the memory of travailleurs chinois on the Western Front during the First World War, at the same time exposing the deliberate agenda of forgetting in both French and Chinese memory cultures. Referring to Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of contact zone and Leela Gandhi’s concept of affective cosmopolitanism, I show how the novel creates an inclusive ethics across race, gender and species, challenging the fixed hierarchies of Western modernity. Synchronously, by applying the multidirectional framework of noeuds de mémoire, the article demonstrates how Laffon constructs war remembrance at the conjunction of anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, feminism and the struggle for animal rights. The novel thus offers a vision of the First World War that radically departs from the French récit national and the Chinese instrumentalization of the laborers’ war memory.

Catastrophe Televised: Accelerated Time, Telescoped Events, Distorted Perceptions

Catastrophe Televised: Accelerated Time, Telescoped Events, Distorted Perceptions

Quelque membre de notre cercle by Danielle Mémoire

Reviewed by: Quelque membre de notre cercle by Danielle Mémoire Warren Motte Mémoire, Danielle. Quelque membre de notre cercle. P.O.L, 2021. ISBN 978-2-8180-5234-1. Pp. 201. The most striking feature of Mémoire’s book is its formal organization. A rhopalic structure is involved here: the text is shaped a bit like a snowball, whose mass increases, then slowly melts. There are seventy-two chapters. The first chapter contains one paragraph, the second contains two, and so forth, until the middle of the book, at which point the chapters begin to decrease until the final one, which once again contains a sole paragraph. The volume’s publisher mentions that Mémoire was inspired by Lyn Hejinian’s My Life (1980)—and indeed the final chapter of Mémoire’s book is composed of a quotation from Hejinian’s book. A life is involved here, too, as a female narrator closely resembling Mémoire herself looks back over the seventy-two years of her life, noting some salient events or impressions from each of those years, in turn. If I hedge a bit on the question of the narrator’s identity, it is because the speaking subject in this text is extremely elusive: “[P]arler de moi (par écrit) ne me plaît pas,” she confesses (164), and that reticence expresses itself in a variety of ways throughout the book. The narrative style is discursive in character, and fragmentary. Like in her other books, Mémoire expresses herself here in a very polished, almost hieratic French. Fully cognizant of that stylistic tendency, she shies away from commenting upon it: “Quant à la très particulière et inintéressante nature de mon combat avec la langue, ce qu’il faudrait, c’est n’en rien dire” (182). Certain themes recur insistently here, as Mémoire exploits the rhetorical power of repetition to her advantage. Some of those themes seem more banal than others—clothing and fashion for instance. Yet even there, Mémoire’s point is more serious than it might appear, involving issues of the presentation of the self. Other themes are more immediately recognizable as weighty ones. Mémoire reflects on the notion of shame on several occasions, both the shame we may feel for ourselves, and the shame we may feel for others. Along the way, she asks a series of intriguing questions, many of which involve literature and its conditions of possibility, its ontology. How can a writer negotiate the gap that yawns between words and things? What is the difference between lying and fiction? What is the status of the lie within a fictional world? How can one usefully compare the ways that real people (Proust, for example) and characters (Marcel) exist? What is the difference between a man of letters and a writer? What does it mean to be a woman of letters? How much attention may one legitimately accord to oneself in asking questions such as those? Whatever hesitation she may feel in that latter regard, this book puts on display a more carefully considered and detailed portrait of the artist than any of Mémoire’s previous works. In its subtle geometries, its intelligence, and its canniness, it invites us to think about a life and a lifework, simultaneously. [End Page 250] Warren Motte University of Colorado Boulder Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Comme des sentinelles by Jean-Philippe Martel

Reviewed by: Comme des sentinelles by Jean-Philippe Martel Walter S. Temple Martel, Jean-Philippe. Comme des sentinelles. Boréal, 2021. ISBN 978-2-764626764. Pp. 178. This poignant text unravels like a journal intime, providing a window into a curiously fascinating existence. Divided into 34 sections, the chapters are each prefaced with a title that speaks to the juxtaposition of emotions that qualify the ensemble of the work. From "Au réveil" to "Those were the good times," the literary voyage reveals the revelations of an unrestrained storyteller. In search of "something else," or perhaps a new perspective, the main character, Vincent Sylvestre, embodies a "crossroads" of past and present. Pointing to the fragility of a veritable existential crisis, the main character turns to alcohol and drugs, further underscoring the immediacy of his predicament. The narration is melancholic, evidenced early on through a discernable vulnerability: "J'ai ouvert les yeux en espérant me réveiller ailleurs, entouré de personnes saines et agréables, mais je me suis seulement senti étourdi" (9). Such sentiment prefaces what unfolds throughout as a sobering account of a multidimensional and highly complex crisis of self, finding root in the narrator's childhood. Readers will become immersed in the trials and tribulations of two unlikely yet parallel characters, Vincent (an intellectual) and Robert (a bandit). The former somehow finds solace in the darkest corners of the "out there" that he so desperately seeks to confront. As we trace the plight of the protagonist, we are perhaps propelled to confront the very question that haunts the writer's imaginary: How do we reconcile the unknown as we reflect on the past? What renders this text highly poetic is the simplicity of a narrative procedure that gives way to pensive observation: "À présent, les gens étaient toujours aussi désolants, mes perspectives d'avenir presque aussi sombres, mais quelque chose avait changé: moi, peut-être?" (30). Here we are reminded of the recurring theme of shifting perspectives. The writer thus manages to invite readers to participate in the lived experiences of characters who become increasingly dénudés. One of the overarching themes of the text is the implied double miroir that may suggest the reader's own fragility. Particularly striking is the main character's desire to escape the reality of a lackluster existence, temporarily veiled by mundane behaviors: "Pour penser à autre chose, j'ai allumé la télé—un geste machinal que je n'avais pas posé depuis longtemps" (37). Critical here is the reference to "autre chose" that resurfaces in surprising yet interconnected ways. Recalling the omnipresent theme of escape (which can be traced from beginning to end), the notion of forgetting one's self unravels as a temporary but prescriptive way of out the darkness that qualifies the protagonist's dilemma. The final chapter, "Un peu de paix," in a way resolves the tension associated with Vincent's unknown: "Une histoire où je ne suis peut-être pas un héros de légende, mais où je dis Je quand il est question de moi" (176). The emphasized Je draws attention to the empowerment of the sentinelle, who redefines his own ethos—on his own terms. [End Page 253] Walter S. Temple Utah Valley University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Traveller in one’s own land: Reverse movements in migritude literature

ABSTRACT Migritude literature focuses predominantly on migration from the global south to the countries of Europe and North America and the everyday life forged in these new contexts. The lived experience of migration, however, often involves travelling back for brief interludes to the places left behind. Three contemporary documentations of going back to the cities of the global south abandoned in favour of the US or Canada – Tout bouge autour de moi (Everything moves around me) by Dany Lafarrière, Matter of Rats by Amitava Kumar, and Every Day Is for the Thief by Teju Cole – elucidate the narrators’ confrontations with the economic disparities that structure life in Port-au-Prince, Lagos, and Patna. Through a comparative reading of these texts of return to India, the Caribbean, and Africa, this article argues that these authors produce “reverse travel narratives”, which reframe conventional writing about travel and turn it into a form that portrays the uneven spaces produced under capitalism.

Tout bouge autour de moi de Dany Laferrière au crible de l’éthique décoloniale de Fritta Caro

Dans le présent article, j’aborde Tout bouge autour de moi, un essai de Dany Laferrière au crible d'une méthodologie éthique proposée par Helena Martín Franco, une artiste colombienne établie au Québec, afin de désarmer le stéréotype du "pays maudit" que le discours occidental a posé sur Haïti. La méthodologie proposée par Martín Franco m'amène au-delà de l'écriture de Dany Laferrière jusqu'aux origines racistes et colonialistes du stéréotype expliqué dans l’œuvre d’un historien haïtien qui fait une brève apparition dans son essai, Michel-Rolph Trouillot. De cette façon, j'amorce une exploration des possibilités épistémologiques et pédagogiques du discours des artistes latino-américains et caribéens établis au Québec en établissant une relation dissonante en celui-ci et les visions stéréotypées de cette région.

La figurante par Pauline Klein

Reviewed by: La figurante par Pauline Klein Alain Ranwez Klein, Pauline. La figurante. Flammarion, 2020. ISBN 978-2-0815-0392-2. Pp. 203. Interestingly, the cover portrays a young woman lying prone halfway on a sofa, feet in the air and face buried in the cushion. She is clearly alive, and her almost comical position only makes the reader wonder what is awaiting this unique individual who seems to have lost all hope and energy. Pauline Klein's fine literary style, however, quickly and vividly introduces the reader to Camille and her youthful struggle for self-discover and identity. The narrative takes us from her adolescence in Paris to her move to New York City where, it is rumored, everything is possible. As it had been presented on French television, it is indeed an expensive city, where 'friends' are not exactly friends. Camille finds an internship in an art gallery, meets and befriends intimately a banker, and copes with life in New York for two years. Camille, however, is uncomfortable with herself. She does not understand the forces that society brings to bear upon her, or the masks it often requires her to wear. Not quite knowing or willing to play the social game, Camille returns to Paris, having wasted her time, having lived marginally, and not having done anything of note. In Paris she once again finds employment in another art gallery, Extra Muros. During this period Camille discovers part of her self-awareness: "Peu à peu, je me résignais à l'idée de devoir vivre avec ce que d'autres pensaient, ce que d'autres voulaient de moi, ce que d'autres dictaient, et surtout, je devrais le faire en silence" (81). Camille encounters an individual who subtly suggests she become a writer. Consequently, Camille begins her literary journey understanding that: "Il y aurait enfin un endroit consacré à mon existence et ce serait le roman" (114). La figurante, however, does not end there. Camille goes on, still at a loss in terms of social identity, meets Elias, allows herself to get involved in an unhappy male-dominant relationship, gets engaged to be married, and still aspires to belong to something. In some ways this is an exasperating novel in that the protagonist never seems to live authentically. She is apathetic even in her lovemaking. This reader kept hoping that something would finally happen and perhaps a catharsis does eventually appear in the final scene. The novel is a well-written reflection on the masks society often forces us to wear. It thereby makes us question the roads we automatically take, at times, without thinking. The reader just has to be patient with the protagonist, [End Page 269] as Klein guides the narrative through its articulation of what many might have experienced in life. Alain Ranwez Metropolitan State University of Denver (CO), emeritus Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy by Jan Fabre

Reviewed by: Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedyby Jan Fabre R. Darren Gobert MOUNT OLYMPUS: TO GLORIFY THE CULT OF TRAGEDY. By Jan Fabre / Troubleyn. Directed by Jan Fabre. NYU Skirball, New York City. 11 10–11, 2018. Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy—a durational work lasting twenty-four uninterrupted hours—premiered in June 2015 in Berlin and was subsequently mounted in over a dozen cities. Its staging in New York City, which started at 6:00 pmon November 10, 2018 and ended a day later, may have been its last. Weeks before the performance, its celebrated director, Jan Fabre, was accused of sexual misconduct by members of his Antwerp-based company, Troubleyn. And so the multiyear success of his most monumental work was arrested. Fabre was not. But no one has programmed the work since the allegations; its next scheduled performance, slated for Barcelona, was cancelled after protests. It would now be difficult to see the show beyond the shadow cast by these alleged violations, and not only because the tragedies on which Mount Olympusstands are filled with the deplorable behavior of lust-ridden men. The allegations include coercing women to pose for sexual photographs, and so the show's graphic scenes and generally jaw-dropping demands of its performers would resonate in disagreeable ways. "Beauty turns ugly without a certain morality," we were warned by Pentheus (Marc Moon Van Overmeir) somewhere in the sixth hour. But Fabre, of course, sides with Dionysus. Mount Olympusillustrated this point again: with its themes of sexual transgression and power, The Bacchaehas been determinative for contemporary understandings of tragedy. Fabre's own would track neatly alongside that of Richard Schechner, for example, who contributed one of four program notes in New York. Euripides' play received a condensed treatment around midnight in Mount Olympus, but in truth it presided throughout, not only in the fleshy Dionysus (Andrew Van Ostade) who dispensed snacks and smacks to the other performers, but also in the performance's structure, which returned several times to the maenadic behavior described in The Bacchae's third episode. It was introduced when a chorus of women (each with her own tree) writhed orgasmically against the muddy roots and sucked wine from the branches, which spilled over and stained their white dresses red. Wine turned to blood as in the cognate Christian ritual; the flayed meat they discovered in their root bulbs was gathered—a reverse sparagmos—and draped on Pentheus's recumbent body as Agave (Anny Czupper), still onstage, delivered a contemporary version of Euripides' famous monologue. Thus, like classical tragedy, Mount Olympuskept its dancing and declamation mostly separate. Its movement sequences, credited to Fabre and the company, revised the etymology of choreography ("dance writing") as they represented writing in dance, enacting in three dimensions either the mythic words of extant Greek texts or the hieroglyphic poses of Grecian pottery. These movement sequences introduced, interrupted, or threw into relief the play's spoken episodes, in which there were almost no exchanges among characters. Instead, calling back to a time before Sophocles to Thespis, Fabre and co-writer Jeroen Olyslaegers distilled the essence of tragic plots into often beautiful monologues—orated variously in Dutch, English, French, German, or Italian—that were staged in tableaux of startling economy and depth. (The show's team of dramaturges includes Hans-Thies Lehmann.) In an onstage bath, Euripides' Alcestis (Annabelle Chambon) prepared her own body for burial as a filthy satyr (Matteo Sedda) gamboled indifferently behind her. "Souviens-toi de moi" (Remember me), she exhorted. Aeschylus's Darius (Van Overmeir again), nude and covered in white paint like a butoh performer, stalked the stage and collected organs, condemning "what we have done in everyone's name." A chain tethered Sophocles' Jocasta (Ivana Jozic) to Oedipus (Pietro Quadrino), genitals to genitals. "I could have closed my legs," she declared. "I did not." It is tragedies such as theirs, engendered by desire, that most fired Fabre's imagination. What tormented his Tantalus (Gustav Koenigs), crawling pathetically on all fours, was the flower-decorated vulvas of three women, with which they lured him before brutally kicking him back. Sexual...

From a death of self to a rebirth of community: Yolande Mukagasana’s ‘Connective’ testimonies in response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda

Abstract Originally a nurse, Yolande Mukagasana became a survivor, author and playwright following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. La Mort ne veut pas de moi (Mukagasana and May 1997) and N’aie pas peur de savoir (Mukagasana and May 1999), her two autobiographical accounts written with Patrick May, articulate a breakdown in her physical, mental and emotional faculties, an inability to distinguish between self and other, and a death of self. Mukagasana gives an oral version of her testimony in Rwanda ’94. In this theatrical production, she conveys unspeakable elements of her experience – including a death of self – in a non-verbal manner, wherein her body language and position acquire their meaning in relation to others onstage. In Les Blessures du silence (Mukagasana and Kazinierakis 2001), Mukagasana’s experiences are also revealed and situated in relation to others through her interviews with ninety survivors and perpetrators in Rwanda. Overall, Mukagasana’s testimonies are interdependent, collaborative and dialogic. She employs other people’s voices and bodies to articulate her own experiences, and often communicates meaning through her position in relation to others. These ‘connective’ testimonies allow Mukagasana to compensate for a death of self and continue narrating even when she cannot speak in the first-person; they also allow her to rebuild social bonds and re-integrate into community.

Jules by Didier Van Cauwelaert

Reviews 281 bientôt “en rugissements de victoire” (180). Pourtant cet antihéros n’a toujours pas d’identité ni de nom; il est reconnu uniquement par son origine nationale.Au fond de lui-même, il se rend compte qu’il est bien pire que le “malheureux mortel, pauvre d’amour et d’argent” (178) qu’il était à Évreux. En Syrie, tout progresse pourtant rapidement. Sa conscience n’a mis que trois jours“à mourir”(178). Peut-on en vouloir à ce misérable? Mérite-t-il la pitié ou l’anathème? À chaque lecteur de décider en son âme et conscience. Auburn University (AL) Samia I. Spencer Van Cauwelaert, Didier. Jules. Paris: Albin Michel, 2015. ISBN 978-222-631483-3. Pp. 275. 19,50 a. Alice Gallien, one of the three protagonists of this novel, will be undergoing a cornea transplant in two days. But, “la réalité sera-t-elle fidèle au rêve éveillé qui l’a reconstruite?” (24). Just prior to her flight from Paris to Nice, accompanied by her seeing-eye Labrador Jules, she has an encounter at the Orly airport with Zibal de Frèges, a macaroon vendor, but really a biochemical engineer and astrophysicist. The restoration of Alice’s sight causes upset to the seven-year relationship between Alice and Jules. Jules is reassigned. Unable to adjust to his new master, he escapes and heads to the airport to find Zibal who freed him from a cage when Alice was first heading off for her surgery.Alice has her own crisis of judgment, reflected in her earlier statement: “j’avais vécu plus de dix ans dans une erreur de jugement donnant une fausse image de moi” (83). Elements of Gertrude of La symphonie pastorale are present here. All three characters have been abandoned, disappointed, and deceived in some way. They belong together. Their trials and tribulations connect, and it is a credit to the author how successful is the dénouement. Colorful secondary characters flesh out the tale, and link the reasons these three ought to act as one. There is Alice’s older, rich, influential lesbian lover, Fred; Zibal’s adoptive frustrated diplomat author mother, Éliane; Zibal’s “sadomaso” neighbor, Coumba; and Jules’s vet and vet psych. Also, Cauwelaert has a wonderful, comfortable way with words, making the novel a page-turner. By slowly revealing how the two human protagonists came to their present conditions, and by alternating their point of view, he assures the reader’s interest in the story. From Paris to Trouville, Jules’s pull on his lead, takes Zibal on a picaresque adventure to reclaim Alice, who no longer needs Jules as guide dog, but as a friend. Alice’s past trauma and Zibal’s social and economic failures make them arrive at the perfect moment in time for each other through Jules:“J’ai confiance en mon destin, à nouveau. C’est moi que le chien a choisi” (149). Zibal’s life is turned around, as is Alice’s. This reader is impressed with both the subject matter and the style of the novel. Effective dialogue, good character development, and simple phraseology make Jules a delightful book. The author’s familiarity with the guide dog’s training, emotions, and reactions is accurate and relevant. Jules, Zibal, and Alice form a trio of need, love, compassion, healing, and joy. Jules is touching, moving, and poignant: highly recommended. Santa Rosa Alliance Française (CA) Davida Brautman Vargas, Fred. Temps glaciaires. Paris: Flammarion, 2015. ISBN 978-2- 0813-6044-0. Pp. 497. 20 a. In the author’s ninth Adamsberg novel, the Commissioner returns, after a hiatus of four years, to investigate a suspicious double suicide in which a mysterious symbol near the bodies catches the detective’s interest. Also back to work on this case is Adamsberg’s unconventional but loveable squadron at the Paris criminal brigade, including Adrien Danglard with his penchant for historical and architectural trivia, Violette Retancourt with her keen instinct and uncanny strength, and Louis Veyrenc, who speaks in rhyming couplets. Adamsberg, the “pelleteur de nuages” (289), is, as ever, more articulate with a sketchbook than with words. His understanding of the...

Writing on the Fault Line: Haitian Literature and the Earthquake of 2010 by Martin Munro

Writing on the Fault Line: Haitian Literature and the Earthquake of 2010. By Martin Munro. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-78138-146-5. 254 pp. £75.Review by Chantal KenolIn his introduction to Writing on the Fault Line: Haitian Literature and the Earthquake of 2010, Martin Munro states the book's raison d'etre in the form of questions:What are the effects of a catastrophic earthquake on a society, its culture and politics? Which of these effects are temporary, or do they manifest themselves over time? is the relationship between natural disasters and social change? roles do artists, and writers in particular, have in witnessing, bearing testimony to, and gauging the effects of natural disasters? These are the fundamental questions addressed in this book. (2)To explore these questions, Munro examines essays, chronicles, and testimonies written about the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, novels by authors who emerged on the literary horizon after the event, and fiction and poetry published by established authors. He then examines works published after the earthquake that do not specifically mention the event and seem to be untouched by it, providing a more comprehensive and unrestricted overview of Haitian literary production after the 2010 disaster.The first chapter, Post-earthquake Essay, deals with the event most directly by analyzing works whose thematic focus is the writer's personal reflections on the quake itself. In doing so, it addresses most explicitly Munro's important question about the writer's role and responsibility when an event of such magnitude affects the space he or she lives in or comes from. The author considers nonfiction works by Edwidge Danticat (Create Dangerously, 2010), Dany Laferriere (Tout bouge autour de moi, 2011), Rodney Saint-Eloi (Haiti, kenbe la!, 2010), Yanick Lahens (Failles, 2010), and Gary Victor (Collier de debris, 2013). For each one, he is particularly interested in how significant, useful, or relevant the work of writers is perceived to be in such circumstances, both by the writer herself or himself and by her or his readership. In most cases (Danticat, SaintEloi, Laferriere), there is as least one moment when the writers question their right or ability to write about the traumatic event. Their reliability as witnesses and the legitimacy of their voices are mostly assessed by whether or not they experienced the event directly, or whether or not they continue to live in the space where it happened and see firsthand its impact on the lives of thousands of injured, displaced, or otherwise affected people. For example, Munro reports that Danticat wonders if words are capable of describing such suffering and loss. Furthermore, as a diasporic writer, she questions her legitimate right to write about it since she was not present at the time of the event: were not there. . . . You did not live it. You have no right even to speak-for you, for them, for anyone (31, quoting Danticat). Lahens shies away from fiction and seems to feel that only direct testimony and chronicles are able to describe faithfully the incredible impact of the catastrophe on the space and its inhabitants. Munro reports a question she asks as she pulls out from under the rubble the remnants of a fictional romance she was writing before the earthquake: What purpose could a love story serve amidst such suffering and horror? (54, quoting Lahens). Laferriere, who was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, feels pressure from his readers living elsewhere to bring news of the event to them and to supply his interpretation of and thoughts on it.In these nonfiction pieces, the past and the future of Haiti are addressed in varying degrees. For some writers, like Danticat and Laferriere, the earthquake triggers both personal and collective memories. It also awakens a sense of nostalgia for what used to be and what may be permanently lost, such as historical and cultural landmarks. …

Le récit de survivance de Serge Amisi : modalités d’adaptation textuelle et stratégies d’ajustement

Abstract In the narrative of survival, Souvenez-vous de moi, l’enfant de demain (2011), Serge Amisi, former child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1997 to 2011, recounts his story of forced recruitment in Kabila’s rebel troops. A hybrid text that pushes the boundaries between fiction as well as historical and personal truth, this testimony turns out to be a privileged writing space where the social and psychic reconstruction of the narrator can be achieved. In the first part, the article explores Amisi’s singular and powerful writing which blurs the lines between reality and fiction. In the second part, the paper demonstrates how Amisi summons his memory to restore the coping mechanisms which allowed him to adapt to the living conditions around him or to face the barbaric punishments while taking a childlike look at a dehumanizing historical reality.

Mémoires et imaginaires du Maghreb et de la Caraïbe éd. par Samia Kassab-Charfi et Mohamed Bahi

Kassab-Charfi, Samia, et Mohamed Bahi, éd. Mémoires et imaginaires du Maghreb et de la Caraïbe. Paris: Champion, 2013. ISBN 978-2-7453-2531-0. Pp. 327. 75 a. With its evocation of multiple artistic currents flowing between the Caribbean and the Maghreb, this essay collection offers new insights into the nature of the Francophone world. As the editors remark, their project was undertaken in the wake of celebrations honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Frantz Fanon, the Antillean psychiatrist and writer who became the Francophone voice of Algerian independence. Dedicated to the memories of Fanon and Édouard Glissant, the collection is beautifully prefaced by authors from both cultures, a roster that includes Algerian Boualem Sansal and Martinicans Patrick Chamoiseau and Monchoachi. At the tomb of Aimé Césaire in Martinique,Tunisian Abdelwahab Meddeb finds references to the Maghreb, and particularly to a uniquely Moroccan countryside depicted in the work of Mohammed Khair-Eddine. A poem by Guadeloupean Ernest Pepin,“À tous les reconduits,” is dedicated to all the would-be immigrants on the seas of the world. Editors Kassab-Charfi (Tunisia) and Bahi (Morocco) present their collection as an attempt to open a new critical complexity, with contributors including scholars from both regions under discussion, as well as from France, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The book’s first section features essays on the “figures tutélaires,” originators of a cultural and identitary rhizome that extends beyond their own geographical region. Fittingly, the section begins with Fanon, and the phrase engraved on the memorial plaque in his native Martinique—“Ô mon corps, fais de moi toujours un homme qui interroge!”(33)—becomes the starting point for an exploration of his work by Jean Khalfa. Thomas Demulder finds points of contact between Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939) and Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma (1956), each of which played a leading role in developing “une langue scriptuaire propre: identitaire” (59).Adel Habbassi analyzes the inspiration found in the work of Césaire by Moroccan poet Mohammed Khair-Eddine at the moment of Maghrebian independence, while Catherine Delpech traces the similar trajectories of Martinican Édouard Glissant and Algerian KatebYacine as they intersected in Paris after World War II. The book’s second section traces different types of exchange, some nonliterary, between the Antilles and the Maghreb, such as the historical migration of the sugar trade from Morocco to the Antilles. The third section,“Histoire et mémoire,” looks at writing from each culture in a non-comparative perspective, and a fourth section, “Sémiotique,” opens the collection to the plastic arts. Kassab-Charfi concludes the volume by bringing together fascinating representations of human forms in works by island artists Ernest Breleur from Martinique and Tahar M’Guedmini from Djerba (Tunisia). The only regrettable omission from this collection is that of women writers, but this is probably an unintended result of the submission process rather than editorial policy, since one of the editors has herself published extensively on women writers of the Maghreb. Because of its comparative approach, the book offers new perspectives on well-known 260 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 261 works while bringing younger figures to our attention, contributing interesting specifics to the amorphous reality of francophonie. Dartmouth College (NH) Mary Jean Green Loichot, Valérie. The Tropics Bite Back: Culinary Coups in Caribbean Literature. Minneapolis: UP of Minnesota, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8166-7984-3. Pp. 304. $25. Ever since Columbus’s misapprehension of Cariba, the Carib Indians’s name for themselves, as cannibal, the West has associated the Caribbean region with this tabooed violence and with “its tamed counterpart, the Caribbean itself—its land, people, and language—all reduced to delectable objects” (vii). Drawing her title, in part, from Maryse Condé’s call to resist this ontological othering of Caribbean people by“biting back,” Loichot analyzes their relationship to food as material sustenance, cultural production, and metaphor (x). Her project is informed by the multivalent meaning of the“coups”of the title. She examines culinary coups that operate as a“strike or blow” circumscribing the Caribbean subject past and present and, conversely, ones that resist the identity prescribed by...

A New Pastoralism?: Nature and Community in Lyonel Trouillot’s La Belle amour humaine

A New Pastoralism?Nature and Community in Lyonel Trouillot’s La Belle amour humaine Martin Munro For many Haitian authors, the earthquake of 2010 shook not just the physical space of Haiti but also its cultural and social foundations—indeed, everything. This idea is suggested, for example, in the title of Dany Laferrière’s first postdisaster book, Tout bouge autour de moi (Everything moves around me).1 The image the title evokes is of the author standing at the center of a still shifting world, shaken and alone. One gets the sense that he wants to resist being redirected, thrown off the singular literary and intellectual path that he has carefully shaped for himself for over a quarter of a century. He says that he had decided when sleeping out on the tennis court at the Hotel Karibe not to let the earthquake “shake up” his agenda.2 Now is not the time for tears, he says, but to “continue on our path.” He does not accept the idea of a “year zero” for the Haitian people or that the collective memory can be easily erased.3 The earthquake is part of the historical journey that stretches back to Africa. Nothing could change that journey, he says; “we continue.”4 The vocabulary and imagery he uses suggest a continued forward movement; one must continue to walk down these paths, without standing still or looking back. This contrasts to some degree with Edwidge Danticat’s idea of a radical break with the past and of the post-earthquake period as a new epoch in Haitian history. In Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, Danticat writes that there was to be no turning back from the moment of the earthquake, no comforting recollections of familiar places. These memories now belonged to a previous Haiti that “no longer exists, the Haiti of before the earthquake.”5 Reading Laferrière’s 2009 chronicle of return to Haiti, L’Énigme du retour, she finds it to be already like a “historical novel.” The cultural and creative stakes have also been radically changed for Danticat, as in post-earthquake Haiti the practices of reading and writing “will never be the same.” Everything has changed, including artists like herself, who find that their muse has been “irreparably altered.”6 [End Page 20] Many of the earliest post-earthquake works of Haitian writing were chronicles. For example, Laferrière’s Tout bouge autour de moi and Rodney Saint-Éloi’s Haïti, kenbe la! were attempts to record the authors’ thoughts and observations in the largely neutral style of the chronicler. There is analysis and they do offer reflections on broader issues, but formally these works remain in great part standard chronicles, recording events in a largely chronological manner; in this sense they remain faithful to the event itself. Fidelity to the truth seemed to be a primary motivation for many authors. One was left to wonder, however, what the role of fiction might be in the post-earthquake period. Does the drive for truth and the need to bear witness necessarily exclude fiction and render it a sign of vanity, a luxury almost?7 Fiction in a sense was a victim of the earthquake. One wondered at the time how long it must itself stay buried under the rubble and, when it was finally pulled free from the ruins, what condition it would be in. Would it have retained its force and vitality, or would it have to start anew, its memory either erased or forever traumatized by the event? What was the point of writing fiction after January 12, 2010? This article begins to address these questions through close analysis of Lyonel Trouillot’s first post-earthquake novel, La Belle amour humaine. This book suggests that the author agrees with Laferrière’s idea that the Haitian writer must not be diverted from his or her literary path, and that the earthquake itself does not—must not—become the primary point of reference for Haitian literature. To do so, the work implies, would be to fall into a trap, whereby the creative freedom of the author is limited and forever circumscribed by the events...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany: The Salutary Science

Botanizing played a major role in Rousseau's life, second only to music, and perhaps not even second, during the last fifteen years of his life. Although he was not much interested when Mme de Warens pursued the subject with her steward-lover Claude Anet, he became smitten with botany during his exile in Môtiers in the 1760s, under the guidance of Neuchâtel friends such as d'Ivernois, Gagnebin, and Du Peyrou. It was Du Peyrou whom he startled by exclaiming, ‘Ah voilà de la pervenche’ (Confessions, vi), recalling his first glimpse of that flower during the halcyon days at Les Charmettes. In England he continued to collect plants and to press them in beautiful herbiers, some of which survive, and during his final decade in Paris he made frequent botanizing excursions in the countryside with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. It was a way to know nature intimately without any intention to exploit that knowledge, and an opportunity for congenial companionship. ‘Errer nonchalamment dans les bois et dans la campagne,’ he says in the Confessions (xii), ‘prendre machinalement çà et là, tantôt une fleur, tantôt un rameau; brouter mon foin presque au hasard, observer mille et mille fois les mêmes choses, et toujours avec le même intérêt parce que je les oubliois toujours, était de quoi passer l’éternité sans pouvoir m'ennuyer un moment.' In addition to collecting plants, Rousseau acquired numerous botanical treatises, pondered the subject deeply, and wrote about it at length. Yet this important aspect of his life and thought has been largely neglected. That gap is now splendidly repaired in this learned and comprehensive study by Alexandra Cook, who previously translated Rousseau's botanical writings for the University Press of New England edition of the Works (2000). Her subtitle, The Salutary Science, points to Rousseau's conviction that studying plants in their natural setting was even more valuable for the soul than for the body (ever since his time in Annecy, he had been sceptical of the medicinal use of herbs). ‘Si l’étude des plantes me purge l'âme,' he declared, ‘c'est assez pour moi, je ne veux point d'autre pharmacie’ (Fragments de botanique). Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany is engagingly written and convincingly grounded in eighteenth-century scientific and cultural thought, and has no evident axe to grind, except for an entirely justified corrective to occasional claims that the reason Rousseau admired Linnaeus (which he did, but not exclusively) was that the sexual system of classification supposedly confirmed a reactionary view of gender relations. For a man who was persecuted and increasingly paranoid, botany represented above all, as Cook says, ‘a quest for freedom’ (p. 25). It was in that context that Rousseau wrote from Môtiers to Malesherbes, in a letter of 11 November 1764: ‘Il ne me vient jamais une idée vertueuse et utile que je ne voye à côté de moi la potence ou l’échafaut: avec un Linaeus dans la poche et du foin dans la tête j'espère qu'on ne me pendra pas.'

<em>Le piège d’Issoudun</em>: Motherhood in Crisis

J'ai vecu des moments tres noirs avec mes propres enfants, non cause d'eux mais de moi, que j'ai vecu des moments tres, tres, tres difficiles, tres epuisants d'etre rendu un bout de dire-de me dire moi-meme-y quelqu'un qui pourra m'enlever des gens? [I lived very dark moments with my own children, not because of them but because of me. I had very, very, very difficult, exhausting times, even to the point of saying-to myself-can someone take these people off my hands?] (Micheline Lanctot, Le mythe de la bonne mere)2Few audiences mistake fairy-tale films for documentaries. Yet as in any other fictional form, such movies seek some level of verisimilitude. Quebec actor/ writer/director Micheline Lanctot's 2003 Le piege d'Issoudun (The Issoudun Exit/Trap; English title Juniper henceforth Issoudun) addresses realistic topic: the inchoate desperation of an early twenty-first-century privileged woman.3 In exploring her character Esther's nameless and ultimately unidentified problems,4 Lanctot juxtaposes play based on the Grimm version of tale type ATU 720, The Juniper Tree, with neorealist story evoking the same narrative, set in suburban Montreal, Canada.5 Lanctot's rendition of the narrative addresses the complexities of culturally tabooed subject-child murder by mothers, ma- ternal filicide6-without offering pat psychological or sociological explanations. Viewer online reviews, among other reactions, show audiences disturbed by the absence of overt justification for Esther's actions. Responding to what I see as misreading of the film's realist elements as unmotivated or merely horrific, I argue that the neorealist story, illuminated by the fairy-tale play, benefits from an understanding of feminist analysis of maternal filicide. Given Lanctot's other reflections on mothering, especially her 2006 documentary Le mythe de la bonne mere (The myth of the good mother, henceforth Le mythe), I contend that Issoudun offers serious intervention on the social issues it addresses. I focus on explaining the film's realist elements via the fairy-tale play, noting their intersections. Other perspectives would shed further light on the film-indeed, it merits such consider- ation-including using the realistic narrative to illuminate the tale-type, but such work must await another essay. I also warn those who have not seen the film that I disclose crucial plot elements including the ending. Spoiler alert!Issoudun's doubled narratives, and its totality, are versions of tale-type ATU 720. Each traditional fairy tale's telling, regardless of its medium and including film, forms copy of which there is no original. As Donald Haase argues, sin- gle-authored written texts offer poor models for understanding traditional fairy tales. Every version, snapshot in time and space, simultaneously refers to its predecessors (see, e.g., Sale). As adaptations, repetition without replication (Hutcheon 7), fairy-tale films (see Zipes; Greenhill and Matrix; Bacchilega) offer acknowledged transposition of recognizable other work or works. . . . A creative and an interpretive act of appropriation/salvaging (Hutcheon 7; see also Sanders). Linda Hutcheon calls adaptation a derivation that is not derivative-a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing (9). Fairy-tale films, like Issoudun, sometimes transpose traditional narrative into quotidian present-day world; many draw bleak picture with no conventional happy ending. Both live action (see, e.g., Kohm and Greenhill) and animated (see, e.g., Greenhill and Kohm) fairy-tale films can demonstrate brutal realism-as does Issoudun.7Another feature-length film, American Nietzchka Keene's 1990 Juniper also draws on ATU 720. (Much background information here comes from my collaborative article on it [Greenhill and Brydon].) Zipes locates films about ATU 720 with Hansel and Gretel, Tom Thumb, The Pied Piper, and Donkeyskin, as addressing abusing and abandoning children (193-223). …

The Scent Trail of "Une Charogne"

In 2007 joined the catalogue of provocative eaux de parfum launched by Etat Libre d'Orange. Self-proclaimed enfants terribles of the industry, the fragrance team takes concept perfumery to new heights, linking each scent to an edgy name (e.g., Delicious Closet Queen; Eloge du traitre; Secretions magnifiques), bolstered by illustrated brochures, revealing the combination of earnestness and humor that have become the company's trademark. In response to the barrage of celebrity perfumes on the market, Etat Libre d'Orange offers alternative alternatives: no Britney Spears; no David Beckham; no J Lo. Instead, the avant garde perfumista may select from Tom of Finland, Rossy de Palma, or the Tilda Swinton perfume, enigmatically called, Like This. Add to the list a shocking name that draws upon the infamy and celebrity of the reluctant Prince of Carrion, poet Charles Baudelaire. In a letter to friend and photographer Nadar (14 May 1859) chides, apparently with irony: Il m'est penible de passer pour le Prince des Charognes. Tu n'as sans doute pas lu une foule de choses de moi, qui ne sont que musc et que roses (CI 174). (1) That year Nadar had created Baudelaire a la (2) a charcoal and gouache caricature of the writer as a bobble-headed, gloved dandy, arms raised in a gesture of mincing awe, his ambiguous gaze (diabolical? appreciative?) directed toward a rotting animal upon which he appears to have nearly stumbled. Without that gaze it would take a moment to find the charogne, so large is the poet's head, so indecipherable, and therefore distracting, the turn of his lip. (3) In the lower left-hand corner of the picture lies the animal carcass, legs in the air, its belly covered in a dense swarm of black blotches--buzzing flies, or wafting fumes, or both--rising up, blending with the dried leaves of spindly shrubs, then metamorphosing into vertical marks. These gradually rejoin to form letters. Death gives birth to life and words, with the figure of the poet positioned between the carrion-etched FLEURS DU looming over his right shoulder, and MAL under his left hand. These textual flowers frame the portrait of the Prince of Carrion, simultaneously discovering and orchestrating a synesthetic landscape of decaying flora and fauna; refiguring beauty; representing invisible odor in visible words; turning stench into poetry. Almost one hundred and fifty years later, in a provocative gesture of olfactory adaptation, Etat Libre d'Orange translates this poetic stench into perfume. The sample package of features a rose with a drop of red blood at the center--perhaps a nod to Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, a recognition of the poem's decomposed metaphorical flower, or a reminder of the theme of death, beauty, and the printed page. According to Etienne de Swardt, the company's founder, c'est une histoire de peau d'ins-piration BAUDELAIRIENNE, une dualite malsaine avec le poeme et sa pestilence (2009). Call this dialogical translation, olfactory adaptation, edgy marketing, voluntary synesthesia, or shock perfumery--a question inevitably emerges: how, if at all, does the fragrance correspond to the poem Une Charogne? The perfumer might have opted to compose a literal, scratch-and-sniff translation (perfume that makes its wearer smell like carrion). Or instead, scent notes might have been selected to illustrate textual aspects of Une Charogne, its rhythm, its structure, the emotions it evokes, other odors suggested by its words, or a scented rendition of the poem's mood, tone, subject, themes, or ideas. Any discussion of eau de parfum in relation to Baudelaire's Une Charogne relates as much to language and reading, as to olfaction, and it reveals the difficulty of communicating about smell in words. This is because, like other forms of aesthetic adaptation, the translation of poetry to fragrance, or fragrance to poetry, entails a process of interpretation: How do we identify or define the scent trail in texts? …

Ondes de choc: nouveaux essais sur l’avant-garde by Henri Béhar

humans have but little purchase on reality, from Robbe-Grillet’s perspective. An author, consequently, can no longer pretend to reproduce some pre-existing reality and, as a result, Robbe-Grillet ended up admitting: “[J]e n’ai jamais parlé d’autre chose que de moi” (4), thus contradicting effectively the earlier talk of objectivity and death of the author that marked the beginnings of the New Novel. In retrospective, as some of the participants observe, the themes for which the New Novel became known help us place it in a broader, postmodern cultural context. Nevertheless, while Robbe-Grillet may well have become a national monument, as he said, his literary and filmic endeavors have not been free from controversy. As the editors note, “comment prétendre ignorer le divorce, chez Robbe-Grillet, entre éthique et sexualité?” (39). Robbe-Grillet’s well known predilection for sadistic fantasies can certainly be found unsettling and was only underlined by his last novel, Le roman sentimental—a gallery of pornographic vignettes detailing the torture and sexual abuse of young girls. It has received a mostly negative press in France: one notable critic bemoaned “les infortunes du pornographe” (483). Arguably, the reception of the novel probably reveals the obsolescence of this sort of provocation. As Shawn Duriez suggests, considering that we live “à une époque marquée par la revalorisation de la lisibilité, qui abandonne les prétentions de rupture et de renouvellement esthétiques de la dernière avant-garde,” a number of Robbe-Grillet’s novels have clearly lost their appeal (480). On the other hand, academics, to whom Robbe-Grillet owed much of his early success—as he himself recognized—still find there is much to be elucidated in an oeuvre that once fascinated many of us in this country and that is still found intriguing by a number of colleagues around the globe. Ohio State University Karlis Racevskis BÉHAR, HENRI. Ondes de choc: nouveaux essais sur l’avant-garde. Paris: L’Âge d’homme, 2010. ISBN 978-2-8251-4100-7. Pp. 343. 28 a. Béhar adds to his already extensive bibliography a new volume with essays on Dadaism, Surrealism, and on several writers within the margins of these movements. In a style that is highly personal, Béhar manages to create a context for the avant-garde in France by discussing, on one side, its relationship with literary traditions and, on the other side, the complex contacts and exchanges amongst various avant-garde groups. The title, a metaphor borrowed from geology, compares the avant-garde to an earthquake that propagated from its epicenter with consecutive shock waves through space—implying its international spread— and through time—assuring its persistent effect on today’s culture. Along with the title, the preface sets the tone for the whole book: Béhar follows Tristan Tzara’s conviction that the avant-garde is a unified phenomenon “d’un seul tenant” (7), while he identifies three features that may define the avant-garde in general: the spirit of ‘breaking’ with traditional norms—which leads him to invent the term ‘littérupture’—the creation of a community, and an aspiration to politics. Béhar emphasizes that his knowledge of the avant-garde stems equally from his life-long scholarly interest in the topic and from his personal acquaintance and experience with writers and artists. The analysis thus follows these two lines, bringing forward archival material and discussing literary works, as well as doubling as a personal itinerary of the author and his career. 562 FRENCH REVIEW 86.3 The essays are divided into three groups. The first group, titled “La bombe Dada,” contains six essays, which consider well-known and some lesser-known aspects of Dadaism. The movement is seen within the avant-garde’s historical continuity—its connection with Futurism is discussed in the first essay, “Tristan Tzara, fourrier du futurisme”—and within the cultural context of its time—by raising the issue of the ambivalent relationship between Dadaism and psychoanalysis in “Dada est un microbe vierge.” The political and the international dimensions of the movement, both modeled on anarchism, have a central position in Béhar’s consideration of Dadaism. In the...

The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrire

reviews his first encounter with it at the age of nineteen through his response, twenty-five years later, as a mature poet and master technician. This concentration on the physical and psychological circumstances of the moment, which may be indebted to the type of prayer called “composition of place” in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, informs much of the book. The attention to detail allows Hass to fix on moments, like those in Chekhov “when you catch him in the act of being a great writer .” Or to explain a good deal about Czesław Miłosz in terms of his origin in Polish-controlled Lithuania. Or the context in which Howl was received. One surprising result is that the more one knows, or thinks one knows, about the subject, the more one can learn from Hass, who writes: “One of the gifts people who teach can give to students is a sense of complexity, because desire tends to simplify what it sees.” This is from the final essay, on the controversial cutting down of a grove of trees on the Berkeley campus, which opens layers upon layers of complexity— biographical, biological, horticultural , political, geological—and laments less the disappearance of the trees than the opportunities to discuss the multilayered issues surrounding the event. Throughout the book, single sentences offer moments of illumination , as in his view that the western “was always a sort of American Protestant morality tale, a Pilgrim’s Progress, made out of simple virtues and simple tests,” or that Catholics “are tellers of stories and enumerators of lists . . . rather than readers of Scripture.” Anyone familiar with either subject will not only recognize the accuracy of the statements but should be able to use them to develop one’s own arguments. Sometimes the eloquence, confidence , and brief insights serve to gloss over structural problems in longer essays, like those on Louis Zukovsky, families and prisons, and the epistles of John. Each contains much of value, but the organizational principle is not always clear. Even less clear are the photographs used to illustrate Hass’s essays on photographers of the American West. His prose is quite lucid, but Ecco Press has used the cheapest possible method of reproduction , including black-and-white renderings of color photographs, so that the reader/viewer must take Hass’s judgments with a good deal of faith. Still, Hass is a consistently illuminating guide and a masterful reader of poems, photographs, and situations. Robert Murray Davis University of Oklahoma Dany Laferrière. The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake. David Homel, tr. Vancouver, B.C. Arsenal Pulp Press. 2013. isbn 9781551524986 Like many Haitian writers and artists , the novelist Dany Laferrière has been living abroad for many years— in his case, since 1976, mostly in Quebec. He was visiting Haiti when a massive earthquake struck the country on January 12, 2010, leaving three hundred thousand dead and over a million homeless. Originally published in French as Tout bouge autour de moi (2010), this book is his firsthand account of the disaster and its aftermath. Most of his texts have been partly autobiographical in nature, and this impressionistic, fragmented chronicle is no exception. With the world literally and figuratively moving around him (Laferrière often chooses provocative titles), he is led to explore his role as a writer— and, no doubt, his survivor guilt—on 74 World Literature Today Reflections and Retrospectives: African Literature Today 30 Ernest N. Emenyonu, ed. James Curry Guest editor Chimalum Nwankwo gathers a wealth of engaging articles about the most influential and accomplished African writers of the twentieth century in this latest issue of African Literature Today. The contributors wrangle with the fundamental question: “How does the artist or writer help the human condition positively?” Prajwal Parajuly The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories Quercus Wrapped in a stunning book jacket, this short-story anthology describes the turbulent, dramatic, and evocative experiences of a people unified by their culture but set apart by diaspora. Featuring a variety of settings and characters, Prajwal Parajuly paints a vividly colorful and sensual portrayal of Nepalese society. Nota Bene a grander and more tragic scale than he...

Rousseau's Knees

Rousseau's Knees Peggy Kamuf It may seem a little perverse to address the topic "Rousseau and emotion" through what seems, at least on its most evident surface, such an unemotional text as Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire. In its 100 Pléiade pages the word "émotion" occurs but three times. Indeed, this text is the record of a willed flight from emotion, which is all but banished from the ambling thoughts strung together in the reveries. The experience the text aims to record is the "sentiment de l'existence depouillé de toute autre affection."1 Emotion is associated with agitated movement and random reactions of a kind the writer-walker wants to avoid. But precisely because the work is in flight from emotional agitation, it keeps emotion's image in its rearview mirror, so to speak. Looked at from this angle, one may see how a certain idea of emotion is being repeatedly defined by this text. We can begin to discern that image by looking at the three occurrences of émotion. The first is from the Fourth Promenade, when Rousseau is recalling how a friend almost knocked the young Jean-Jacques's brains out: Je ne vis de ma vie une agitation pareille à celle de ce pauvre garçon voyant mon sang ruisseler dans mes cheveux. Il crut m'avoir tué. Il se précipite sur moi, m'embrasse, me serre étroitement en fondant en larmes et poussant des cris perçans. Je l'embrassois aussi de toute ma force en pleurant comme lui dans une émotion confuse qui n'étoit pas sans quelque douceur. (OC 1:1037, emphasis added) Despite the gruesomeness of the accident, this is a sweet memory, associated with the uncertain emotion "qui n'étoit pas sans quelque douceur." It is sweet to recall how the poor perpetrator manifested sincere affection toward me, Jean-Jacques. At the thought I might be dead, he almost went mad. In its next occurrence, émotion is likewise associated with a child's spontaneous show of affection toward Jean-Jacques, now a lonely old man: Je marchois distrait et rêvant sans regarder autour de moi quand tout à coup je me sentis saisir les genoux. Je regarde et je vois un petit enfant de cinq ou six ans qui serroit mes genoux de toute sa force en me regardant d'un air si familier et si caressant que mes entrailles s'émurent. [...] [J]e suis repassé plusieurs fois par Clignancourt dans l'espérance d'y revoir cet enfant, mais je n'ai plus revu ni lui ni le pere, et il ne m'est plus resté de cette rencontre qu'un souvenir assez vif, mêlé toujours de douceur et de tristesse, comme toutes les émotions qui pénetrent encor quelque-fois jusqu'à mon cœur. (OC 1:1089-90, emphasis added) [End Page 132] Like the preceding anecdote, this one recounts a chance event as the occasion for émotion. Both are sweet memories insofar as the other's affection for the subject was made manifest by unmistakable signs: actions, gestures, and bodily eruptions like cries or tears. They also share a particular trajectory, which is most apparent in the scene between the old man and the child. The dreamy walker has been startled out of his reverie by the shock of an outside force, the child's impulsive embrace. Seeing the benevolent face of the boy, he is moved, "mes entrailles s'émurent." The movement of émouvoir draws the subject out of himself into a social space where he becomes an object for others. There he is seized by the knees, by the genoux, that is, also by the jenous, where the singular I and the plural we gap into each other and leave a trace of inappropriable otherness. Later on, we'll come back to this recollection so as to read there a scene of Rousseau seized by writing in his body. The space of the je-nous is always potentially the danger zone for the walker-writer, the agitated zone of plural passions he has fled. In the encounter with the child, this dangerous move is compensated by the face "me regardant d'un...