Parodying girlhood trauma in Louise Bourgeois’s writings

Abstract

Abstract Critics have become increasingly cognisant of the limitations of interpreting Louise Bourgeois’s artworks through the lens of autobiographical and psychoanalytic narratives, preferring a focus on their form. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the function of these narratives in her œuvre altogether, for a study of the archival material reveals a different use of narrativity that is explicitly parodic. Demonstrating how Bourgeois’s diverse writings reframe confession as an aesthetic genre, this essay draws attention to the literary and cultural influences that shape her construction of girlhood trauma. The mechanism of parody is illustrated by Bourgeois’s photo essay ‘Child Abuse: A Project by Louise Bourgeois’ (1982), in which the artist identifies with the confusing world of childhood in the face of adult sexuality, whilst also deftly staging this identification and thus politicizing the narratives in play. Applying this focus on parody to a study of the archive writings brings their striking intertextuality to the fore. Notable references include Honoré de Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse (1954), novels that each centre on the subject position of a daughter with whom Bourgeois self-reflexively identifies. By parodying these canonical stories of French literature, Bourgeois both inhabits the identity of victim and stands outside of it: ‘Little orphan Annie’, she mockingly describes herself. Bourgeois’s writings thereby indicate how the parodic mode may help to establish distance from a traumatic past by giving form to undetermined affect. Equally, the emerging archive attests to the centrality of writing in Bourgeois’s creative process, as a means of developing ideas that would become prime material for her art.