In the last twenty years, France has witnessed a noticeable, and indeed much noticed, rapid expansion of sexually explicit material that has now been assimilated into mainstream culture. Much has also been said and written about the emphasis on immediate personal fulfillment that characterizes our increasingly individualistic and narcissistic western societies: jouir in all its possible forms is thought to have become the new doxa, and sexual jouissance, again in its many forms, a primary pursuit. This increasing focus on both self and sex is unsurprisingly reflected in literature, and since the publication of Annie Ernaux's Passion Simple in 1991--a text often presented as inaugurating this new trend--a plethora of more or less autobiographical texts appeared in the 1990s that seemed to rival it in sexually explicit content, noticeably written by women. (2) The more enthusiastic critics have welcomed the refreshing new life that these texts have breathed into women's writing and have praised their effort to challenge stereotypes of a female body and sexuality that was traditionally represented and eroticized by men. On the other hand, detractors have denounced this gratuitous and meaningless exhibition of flesh and sex, accusing it of mining a fashionable seam in order to pursue commercial success rather than striving toward literary excellence. A lot of ink was spilled in the 1990s over this controversial literary phenomenon, and just as the dust was starting to settle, out came a book that stunned the literary world and the public at large. La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M. came out in France in 2001 and its as yet unsurpassed explicit representation of female sexuality by a woman predictably became the object of great controversy. It even signaled a literary paradigm shift for some, including Alain Roger who wrote that the book marked rupture radicale dans l'histoire de la litterature feminine, de la sexualite et de l'autobiographie, de sorte qu'on pourrait parler, cum grano salis, d'un 'avant et d'un 'apres C.M.' (3) Some praised what they described as original writing. Pierre Jourde sets it apart from what he sees as the prevailing mediocrity of numerous worthless confessions intimes: [C'est] un des tres rares livres contemporains qui parlent reellement de sexualite, de ce qu'est la pratique sexuelle, les choix sexuels dans une vie, en evitant a la fois l'ecueil du manierisme pornographique et celui de l'idealisation. Jamais de poncifs (si un genre appelle le poncif, c'est bien la confidence sexuelle), jamais de complaisance, mais une exactitude distanciee, pleine d'humour. (4) In Le Monde, Josyane Savigneau offered a more female-oriented viewpoint: [C'est] un livre excellent, tres bien ecrit et absolument siderant. Jamais une femme n'avait pris la parole ainsi pour raconter sa vie sexuelle. Sans se cacher derriere un pseudonyme, sans manifester ni culpabilite ni proselytisme ni gout de la provocation, sans developper une sorte de mystique du sexe, sans reveler des desirs troubles, de soumission ou de domination.>> Other critics, however, strongly attacked what they deemed to be yet a more extreme example of mediocre pornography, a futile case of moral dare. Rather than focusing on the text itself, many concentrated on the question as to why a woman would write and publish such a book. The most interesting aspect of this recurrent question is not the quality of the answers (at best mere speculations about Millet's motives, often said to be purely financial, at worst prurient and misogynistic personal comments about her sexuality), but the ironic parallel with her representation of female sexuality. Many have criticized her for objectifying herself, for indulging in portraying herself as a sexual object, while themselves reducing her to a passive object in their representations of, and discourses about, sexual politics and morality. …