Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille

<p>It is striking how often the first-person memories in Annie Ernaux's 2016 work of life-writing&nbsp;<em>M&eacute;moire de fille</em>&nbsp;are rendered from a third-person perspective. Visual depictions of the author&rsquo;s younger self are shown to us as if...

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Main Author: Kemp, S
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2024
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author Kemp, S
author_facet Kemp, S
author_sort Kemp, S
collection OXFORD
description <p>It is striking how often the first-person memories in Annie Ernaux's 2016 work of life-writing&nbsp;<em>M&eacute;moire de fille</em>&nbsp;are rendered from a third-person perspective. Visual depictions of the author&rsquo;s younger self are shown to us as if the older Ernaux who is narrating the story were present at the scene, seeing her former self from the outside. The events recounted include sexual exploitation and public shaming for falling foul of the era's sexual double standards, and, in the aftermath of this, an identity crisis and an eating disorder. How does Ernaux&rsquo;s complex interplay of empathy and distance with regard to her younger self affect the social and political themes in the work, and the ethical stance of the text towards them? And how is the reader implicated by the perspective through which Ernaux has us view her teenage self of 1958?</p>
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spelling oxford-uuid:1dd38056-11c6-49b4-9442-8d213402fdfb2024-04-02T08:46:26ZPerspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de filleJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:1dd38056-11c6-49b4-9442-8d213402fdfbEnglishSymplectic ElementsSAGE Publications2024Kemp, S<p>It is striking how often the first-person memories in Annie Ernaux's 2016 work of life-writing&nbsp;<em>M&eacute;moire de fille</em>&nbsp;are rendered from a third-person perspective. Visual depictions of the author&rsquo;s younger self are shown to us as if the older Ernaux who is narrating the story were present at the scene, seeing her former self from the outside. The events recounted include sexual exploitation and public shaming for falling foul of the era's sexual double standards, and, in the aftermath of this, an identity crisis and an eating disorder. How does Ernaux&rsquo;s complex interplay of empathy and distance with regard to her younger self affect the social and political themes in the work, and the ethical stance of the text towards them? And how is the reader implicated by the perspective through which Ernaux has us view her teenage self of 1958?</p>
spellingShingle Kemp, S
Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille
title Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille
title_full Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille
title_fullStr Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille
title_full_unstemmed Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille
title_short Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille
title_sort perspective and sexual politics in memoire de fille
work_keys_str_mv AT kemps perspectiveandsexualpoliticsinmemoiredefille