Annie Ernaux: future prospects and the politics of time

Abstract

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.