The individual and the social in Annie Ernaux's autobiographical writing

Abstract

This article examines the ideological and aesthetic peculiarities of autobiographical writing in “La Place” by Annie Ernaux, a well-known contemporary French writer. We argue that Annie Ernaux 's “flat writing” is close to a sociological or ethnographic study and nearly devoid of any autobiographical subjectivity. Autobiographical writing is approached through the concept of symbolic violence, borrowed from the sociologist P. Bourdieu. Ernaux indeed replaces event history, a feature of autobiography, by the study of socio-historical causes of “class distancing” between father and daughter. The analysis of key concepts of the Ernaux's poetics makes it possible, on the one hand, to grasp the appearance of social and cultural alienation and, on the other hand, to achieve a social criticism of reality.

Keywords

• autobiographical writing
• memory
• intimate
• social
• sociological approach
• symbolic violence
• flat writing