Projections de soi: identités et images en mouvement dans l’autofiction by Élise Hugueny-Léger (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Projections de soi: identités et images en mouvement dans l’autofiction by Élise Hugueny-Léger Laura Dennis Hugueny-Léger, Élise. Projections de soi: identités et images en mouvement dans l’autofiction. PU Lyon, 2022. ISBN 978-2-7297-1379-9. Pp. 324. One might wonder what remains to be said about autofiction, especially when so many authors to whom the label is applied reject it. Is it not, after all, merely another way of describing first-person life-writing, similar to yet somehow distinct from autobiography and memoir? Projections de soi demonstrates that this is but one way of looking at the matter. If autofiction can indeed be seen as its own sous-genre, Élise Hugueny-Léger uses the term subversively both to highlight the scorn often heaped upon it and to contest its classification as a genre en soi. More than that, she pushes the definition beyond this initial understanding: autofiction is alternately a sign of the times, a theoretical stance, a narrative strategy, a media phenomenon, even a way of being and moving in and through the world. All of this is explored using a wide-ranging theoretical apparatus and points of comparison from le Nouveau Roman to crime fiction, from mainstream biopics to little-known experimental films. Included in the study are Serge Doubrovsky, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Annie Ernaux, Christine Angot, Georges Perec, Emmanuel Carrère, Amélie Nothomb, Delphine de Vigan, Chloé Delaume, Laetitia Masson, Sophie Calle, Camille Laurens, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint. The author successfully includes a mix of male and female figures, as well as a wide range of writers, filmmakers, and media personalities. One notes too that some are well-known intellectuals, while others are known primarily in more media-centric spheres, although the reader soon understands that in actual practice, this distinction is not so easily made. Indeed, as the title indicates, this is a study of projection and of image in both a psychosocial sense and in the sense of media production. How are authors and creators presented in the media, particularly television and film? How do they present themselves? How do these media in turn shape them and their creative works? How do various works shape each other? Although the study relies primarily upon sustained textual analysis, a series of stills near the end of the fourth chapter helps illustrate the author’s answers to these questions. Throughout, halls of mirrors and refracted echoes provide apt metaphors not only for the subjects of study, but also for the reader’s experience of the present text. Hugueny-Léger ignores binary oppositions, preferring instead continuums and arguments that bounce among three or more poles. Similarly, she revels in polysemy, playing with layers of meaning in order to expand possibilities for interpretation and understanding. While some readers may wish for a more sustained discussion of social media and streaming services in a study of media-centric identity construction, and not all will make the leap to redefining autofiction as a narrative strategy that can be applied to non-autobiographical works, these are minor objections. Projections de soi is a well-researched, engaging study that introduces readers to new-to-them works and opens productive new veins of inquiry. [End Page 204] Laura Dennis University of the Cumberlands (KY) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French