Staging the generic self: Céline Sciamma’s autofictional praxis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Céline Sciamma’s uniquely positioned work and public identity present a number of apparent contradictions – especially when considered in the context of French female authorship. After briefly analysing these, this article elaborates its central thesis: that the aporias surrounding Sciamma’s authorship, as manifested primarily in her films and secondarily in parafilmic publications and discourses, may be partially resolved by considering relevant artefacts through the prism of autofiction. Sciamma’s latest film Petite maman can be seen as the fullest expression yet of a self-narrating tendency that close analysis reveals informs her earlier films as well. Finally, the article argues that such a perspective chimes with considering Sciamma’s work as formally queer and thus politically significant in ways that exceed questions of identity politics without merely bowing to Republican universalism.