Je de miroirs: French and francophone autobiography from split to screened selves.

Abstract

This dissertation examines contemporary autobiographical works in French that confront the dilemma of representing radically fragmented subjectivity. I investigate the strategies by means of which each autobiographer designates and negotiates otherness while narrating his or her life story in words and images. From an analysis of the fragmentation of text and narrative voice in <italic> Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes</italic>, I continue with the split subject portrayed by means of dialogue in Nathalie Sarraute's <italic>Enfance</italic>. I then address Assia Djebar's very different fragmentation of autobiography in <italic>L'amour, la fantasia</italic>. In the second half of the dissertation, I return to Barthes and <italic>La chambre claire</italic>, using the autobiographical in his essay on photography as the starting point for an exploration of the possibilities for autobiographical film. I discuss Cyril Collard's filmic adaptation of his autobiographical novel <italic>Les nulls fauves</italic> as well as two hybrid autobiographical/biographical documentary films, David Achkar's, <italic>Allah Tantou</italic> and <italic>Lumumba: La mart du prophete </italic> by Raoul Peck. Both Barthes and Sarraute reflect upon themselves in their autobiographies in a third-person voice that proves to be metaphoric; I analyzes he or she or vice versa and reunifies the fragmented selves with which each text begins. Collard similarly maintains an ultimately introspective model of autobiography, using a combination of an internal sublime object and Hollywood editing strategies to suture his fragmented identity in his film. I argue that Francophone autobiography and autobiographical film, both extreme examples of autobiography in an actual third-person voice, can provide formal possibilities for resisting the traps and temptations of (re)unified selfhood without abandoning the project of self-representation. Djebar, Achkar, and Peck look outward rather than inward as they write others, rather than internal otherness, into their life stories.