The Publishing Profile

The Introductory chapter examines the recent resurgence of the author in the Parisian literary landscape, approximately fifty years after critics like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault put into question the centrality—indeed, the very concept—of this figure. Maryse Condé asserts that this is a development with great potential, for it allows the author to express her point of view in ways that she hadn’t felt authorized to do previously. There is also, however, the parallel possibility of according too much significance to the author, an option that becomes problematic when critics and readers concentrate on the identity of writers at the expense of a concern with the content of their work. Women writers from outside France are particularly susceptible to classification that sometimes permits a single trait (birthplace, ethnicity, gender) to determine how their texts are received. The “publishing profile” is a notion that refers in this analysis to the complicated and nuanced images of contemporary authors as they are currently composed. Their involvement in a number of undertakings—ranging from contributions to a book publication’s paratextual apparatus to public appearances such as television interviews and book festivals—means that authors are increasingly engaged in efforts to shape a composite impression of themselves. They thereby take advantage of diverse opportunities to contribute to carving out a profile that is made up of additive attributes that ultimately contradict reductive labels and restore to each author her complexity.