Marcel Bénabou

Abstract

Marcel Bénabou is one of the longest-serving members of one of France’s most iconic and enduring literary groups, the Oulipo. Despite his dedicated service to the group’s collaborative activity, little scholarly interest has been shown in Bénabou’s solo literary projects. As a Moroccan francophone Jew, living and working in France (and French) since the 1950s, his playful and experimental autobiographical works demonstrate an attitude towards multilingualism that is characterized by conflict and creativity. This article introduces two of Bénabou’s works that explore his relation to multilingualism, using Derrida’s Le Monolinguisme de l’autre [The Monolingualism of the Other] as a point of comparison. I argue that Bénabou’s multilingualism is at times a source of anxiety, a conflicted tension between different poles of his identity. Nonetheless, it has also bestowed him with a creative freedom that has allowed him to explore different subjectivities, and ultimately to find his place within the Oulipo.