Narcisse dis-joint: la création de moi(s) postmoderne(s) dans le roman contemporain français et francophone

Montalbano, Sylvain J.

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Year:: 2014
Contributor:: Montalbano, Sylvain J (creator); Bensmaia, Reda (Director); Seifert, Lewis (Reader); Wills, David (Reader); Conley, Verana (Reader); Brown University. French Studies (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Postmodern ; self ; Genet; Jean ; Houellebecq; Michel ; Bouraoui; Nina
Extent:: VI, 193 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0XP738T

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Abstract:: My dissertation entitled « Narcisse dis-joint: la création de moi(s) postmoderne(s) dans le roman contemporain français et francophone » builds on those previous discoveries about the interrelation between self-elaboration and new narrative forms. In the dissertation I examine the overlooked relationship between the emergence of new ways of conceiving selfhood in contemporary writing and the elusive paradigm of the ‘postmodern’, which I understand as an epistemic change that has impacted both literary creation and our current thinking. Focusing on the works of Jean Genet, Michel Houellebecq, and Nina Bouraoui, my project reassesses the significance of the postmodern intervention in literature: it shows that those three writers now conceive of the novel more as a joint practice of self-elaboration along with the reader. Moving away from representation and simulacrum, their respective bodies of work develop new protocols of readings, and above all their own literary thinking, which are meant to affect their own self and others. For instance, Houellebecq actually invokes an entire episteme by concentrating different parasitizing discourses and time periods throughout his narrative texts to underline the ‘becoming extinct’ of humanity. Nina Bouraoui also turns dramatically the question of ontological violence into a transmission of affects, resonating from text to text, thereby creating a new relationship to one’s body – and the others’ – now extending in the realm of the virtual through literary means. This wide array of literary, transformative practices of the self suggests a paradoxical shift in the ontological value of literature, at a time when pressing societal issues tend to make literature appear either as ideologically fraught, or worse, as an idle pursuit.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2014)

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Montalbano, Sylvain J., "Narcisse dis-joint: la création de moi(s) postmoderne(s) dans le roman contemporain français et francophone" (2014). French Studies Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0XP738T

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French Studies Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the French Studies department.
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