Body and archive in Happening by Annie Ernaux

Abstract

In this article we propose an analysis of the work Happening by the French writer Annie Ernaux. We pay attention to the narrative strategies deployed by the author to bring the experience of abortion into the literary discourse. Ernaux starts from the question of why this practice appears as an ellipsis in literature. From this question, she develops a reflection on the act of writing, and questions herself on how to narrate a traumatic experience. Consequently, the writer's project aims to bring into the literature of the time, a story that circulated as taboo. We start from the hypothesis that Ernaux's voice bursts into the order of the archive by making sense of her own experience lived from the body. We analyze the work from a sociodiscursive perspective, and we focus on the dimensions of the body and the archive.

Keywords

• archivo
• cuerpo
• acontecimiento