Title Information
Title
Narcisse dis-joint: la création de moi(s) postmoderne(s) dans le roman contemporain français et francophone
Name: Personal
Name Part
Montalbano, Sylvain J
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Origin Information
Copyright Date
2014
Physical Description
Extent
VI, 193 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note
Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2014)
Name: Personal
Name Part
Bensmaia, Reda
Role
Role Term: Text
Director
Name: Personal
Name Part
Seifert, Lewis
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Wills, David
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Conley, Verana
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. French Studies
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Genre (aat)
theses
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.
Subject
Topic
Postmodern ; self ; Genet
Subject
Topic
Jean ; Houellebecq
Subject
Topic
Michel ; Bouraoui
Subject
Topic
Nina
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20141006
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
fre
Language Term: Text
French
Identifier: DOI
10.7301/Z0XP738T
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
Collection is open for research.
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations