{"title":"« Désirer désobéir » : politique et stylistique d’un vivre autrement chez Annie Ernaux","authors":"Carole Bourne-Taylor","doi":"10.1177/09571558231216932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231216932","url":null,"abstract":"Résumé Chez Annie Ernaux, l’alliage « désirer désobéir » (que j’emprunte à Georges Didi-Huberman) cristallise un engagement motivé par l’indignation et porté par une révolte créatrice – contre les indignités, contre le « désengagement de l’État », contre un déclinisme mortifère. L’opposition d’Ernaux au pouvoir dépasse la simple protestation ; comme chez Camus, qui demeure une de ses inspirations, une énergie du « pour » anime cette posture politique vouée à la recherche de la vérité, à l’exercice de la liberté et à la lutte pour la dignité. Ses prises de position contre toutes les formes d’injustice (politique migratoire française, traitement des Gilets Jaunes par les autorités françaises, réforme des retraites de 2023, etc.) confirment son rôle de protagoniste capitale d’une « repolitisation » anti-capital. Si Jean-Luc Mélenchon symbolise le contre-pouvoir, Ernaux, elle, incarne la puissance du désir : donc toujours à imaginer. Politique et éthique se fondent en une stylistique (qui englobe la justesse expressive) porteuse d’une autre vie.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"700 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139841229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A commitment that ruffles feathers: the attacks against Annie Ernaux's political stances","authors":"Gisèle Sapiro","doi":"10.1177/09571558231219974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231219974","url":null,"abstract":"This article was written in response to the attacks on Annie Ernaux following the announcement by the Swedish Academy of its decision to award her the Nobel Prize in Literature on 6 October 2022. In particular, it discusses the accusation of anti-Zionism, more or less explicitly conflated with antisemitism. Through the analysis of texts signed by Ernaux, the article demonstrates that this accusation is a baseless attempt to discredit the Nobel Prize laureate in public opinion. The article also calls into question other accusations made against the writer during the programme ‘Répliques’ by Alain Finkielkraut, on 26 November 2022, on the France Culture radio station.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"32 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139840461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Annie Ernaux : « engager » la littérature, essai de positionnement théorique","authors":"Maryline Heck","doi":"10.1177/09571558231214394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231214394","url":null,"abstract":"Résumé La volonté de faire une littérature qui soit, en quelque manière, politique est constamment réaffirmée tout au long du parcours d’écrivaine d’Annie Ernaux. En puisant surtout dans ses écrits réflexifs et déclarations lors d’entretiens, on s’attache à proposer un essai de « situation théorique » des discours méta-poétiques de l’autrice touchant à cette question du politique, afin de voir quelles théorisations de l’engagement ils sous-tendent, ou auxquelles ils puisent, et d’en dégager les éventuelles ambivalences ou apories. L’autrice, comme la critique universitaire, a mis l’accent à raison sur l’influence de ses lectures sociologiques et particulièrement bourdieusiennes. On voudrait montrer ici dans quelle mesure « l’engagement » de la littérature tel qu’Ernaux le conçoit semble devoir aussi aux théorisations sartriennes, dont Ernaux ne se revendique pas, mais dont elle paraît retrouver certains des gestes et des conceptions. Il s’agirait ainsi de compliquer un peu l’approche du politique chez Ernaux en interrogeant certains de ses soubassements et impensés.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"172 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139839811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A commitment that ruffles feathers: the attacks against Annie Ernaux's political stances","authors":"Gisèle Sapiro","doi":"10.1177/09571558231219974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231219974","url":null,"abstract":"This article was written in response to the attacks on Annie Ernaux following the announcement by the Swedish Academy of its decision to award her the Nobel Prize in Literature on 6 October 2022. In particular, it discusses the accusation of anti-Zionism, more or less explicitly conflated with antisemitism. Through the analysis of texts signed by Ernaux, the article demonstrates that this accusation is a baseless attempt to discredit the Nobel Prize laureate in public opinion. The article also calls into question other accusations made against the writer during the programme ‘Répliques’ by Alain Finkielkraut, on 26 November 2022, on the France Culture radio station.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"140 45","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139780529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Retour à Oxford avec Annie Ernaux: casting light on class migrant experience","authors":"Lyn Thomas","doi":"10.1177/09571558231214678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231214678","url":null,"abstract":"The documents added to the new edition of Ernaux's Retour à Yvetot (2013, 2022), written during her student years, represent the process and affects of class transition, without the benefits of hindsight, experience, and the readings in sociology, particularly of Bourdieu, that inform her literary texts. I analyse them here both in relation to Ernaux's published works, particularly La Honte and Mémoire de fille and to the letters I wrote at a similar period and phase of my life, as a first-generation student at St Hugh's College, Oxford in the early 70s. At the time, like Annie Duchesne, 1 I had no political or sociological understanding of my experience; reading Ernaux 20 years later in the early 90s was a literary epiphany, illuminating my trajectory from a working-class culture of origin to a middle-class life and career. My engagement with Ernaux over 30 years has also involved a continuous correspondence with the writer, which I draw on here, illustrating the blurred boundaries between intimacy and research discussed by Fraser and Puwar (2008) . This mise en scène of my reading self is placed within the context of the wider communities of class migrant readers of Ernaux: the lay readers studied by myself and Isabelle Charpentier, Ernaux specialists in academe, and the younger writers discussed by Aurélie Adler in this special issue.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139839937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reimagining postcolonial identities: The Blancs-Matignon of Guadeloupe","authors":"M. Ramakrishnan","doi":"10.1177/09571558241231180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558241231180","url":null,"abstract":"Mariette Monpierre's and Michel Reinette’s 2022 documentary, Les Derniers Blancs Matignon de Guadeloupe, and Estelle-Sarah Bulle’s 2018 novel, Là, où les chien aboient par la queue emblematize the complexities involved in reimagining postcolonial identities in Guadeloupe, especially that of the Blancs-Matignon. They are a mostly White, endogamous, and isolated group who have had a discreet existence in the thickly forested inland region of Grands-Fonds du Moule since the late 1600s. Through an analysis of the documentary and parts of the novel, the article explores historical, cultural, and linguistic convergences between the Blancs-Matignon and the majority Black and mixed-race population of Guadeloupe. The identity politics of weaving the narratives of the Blancs-Matignon into the matrix of Guadeloupe's contemporary society will also be examined.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"57 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139779895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Annie Ernaux : « engager » la littérature, essai de positionnement théorique","authors":"Maryline Heck","doi":"10.1177/09571558231214394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231214394","url":null,"abstract":"Résumé La volonté de faire une littérature qui soit, en quelque manière, politique est constamment réaffirmée tout au long du parcours d’écrivaine d’Annie Ernaux. En puisant surtout dans ses écrits réflexifs et déclarations lors d’entretiens, on s’attache à proposer un essai de « situation théorique » des discours méta-poétiques de l’autrice touchant à cette question du politique, afin de voir quelles théorisations de l’engagement ils sous-tendent, ou auxquelles ils puisent, et d’en dégager les éventuelles ambivalences ou apories. L’autrice, comme la critique universitaire, a mis l’accent à raison sur l’influence de ses lectures sociologiques et particulièrement bourdieusiennes. On voudrait montrer ici dans quelle mesure « l’engagement » de la littérature tel qu’Ernaux le conçoit semble devoir aussi aux théorisations sartriennes, dont Ernaux ne se revendique pas, mais dont elle paraît retrouver certains des gestes et des conceptions. Il s’agirait ainsi de compliquer un peu l’approche du politique chez Ernaux en interrogeant certains de ses soubassements et impensés.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"10 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139780036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interrogating double absence in transclasse autobiography: Postcolonial identity in flux in Kaoutar Harchi's Comme nous existons","authors":"Maddison Sumner","doi":"10.1177/09571558231224663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231224663","url":null,"abstract":"In 2014, philosopher Chantal Jaquet coined the term transclasse to describe a person who is in the process of changing their social class. In opposition to the perhaps more widely-known expression ‘transfuge de classe’ – popularised by writers such as Annie Ernaux and Édouard Louis – transclasse allows for a comprehension of the necessarily transient nature of social migration, encapsulating a vital element of flux. Importantly, Jaquet's term allows for an understanding that the transclasse is not a rigidly definable identity category, and instead reflects individual experiences of liminality. In this article, I demonstrate the continuing relevance of Jaquet's theorisations by analysing the ways in which Kaoutar Harchi's memoir Comme nous existons explores the unique position of double absence that she occupies as a transclasse who must also navigate her identity as the child of postcolonial immigrants in France, using Abdelmalek Sayad's work La double absence in dialogue with Jaquet and Harchi.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"21 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139382790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jacques Brel's Ne me quitte pas in English: On putting the record straight… and queering it?","authors":"Terry J. Bradford","doi":"10.1177/09571558231220034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231220034","url":null,"abstract":"This article is part of a wider project investigating the theory and practice of song translation and performance. It derives – specifically – from my own desire to attempt to translate Ne me quitte pas into English. (See: Appendix.) It is designed as an investigation into the tenacious misconception that certain English-language versions of Brel's songs are translations thereof. Using Peter Low's typology, many of these versions can more accurately be described as adaptations or as replacement texts. One objective of this comparative study is to draw attention to the need – in theory – to distinguish between translation and adaptation. This work also calls for more precision in attributing authorship to the lyrics or texts sung by different performers. Examination of eight English-language versions of Ne me quitte pas – an exceptional corpus made up of texts sung by Rod McKuen, Scott Walker, Marc Almond (×2), Momus, Arnold Johnston, Des de Moor and The Black Veils – seeks to illustrate and discuss the history of approaches to rendering this song in English. That is one sense in which this article aims to put the record straight. This aim might also hint at the idea of respecting (high) ‘fidelity’ to the original. However, whether translation, adaptation or replacement text, any Target Text – even if assessed by criteria provided by Song Translation Theory – can only ever be interpreted subjectively. Thus, imagining a single way of putting a record straight is futile. Comparison of versions of Ne me quitte pas can, however, illustrate how different strategies and priorities can ‘succeed’ differently. Understanding the potential for ‘queering’ Ne me quitte pas was a by-product of research and close reading of the texts themselves. As this appears to pertain significantly in a handful of versions in the Anglophone world – but not, seemingly, in Turkish versions – this article seeks also to open up the ‘queering’ (or not) of Brel, in particular, as an avenue of future inquiry.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"89 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139176150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Phenomenology and its phantoms: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Leiris","authors":"Carrie Noland","doi":"10.1177/09571558231209918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231209918","url":null,"abstract":"My essay focuses on the figure of the phantom in the work of phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the ethnographer Michel Leiris. I study their evocation of gestures as a site of communication and argue that within the colonial situation all communication—including the gestural—is ghosted by histories and cultural understandings that remain opaque.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"12 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139253000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}