Abstract
This chapter investigates the pattern and profile of Danièle Sallenave’s interventions in the public arena as well as representing an investigation of women-centred themes in a selection of her fictional writings. These writings or ‘cultural interventions’ complement more conventional action in the public arena and so this chapter considers a variety of narrative modes which explore specific themes pertaining to women, sexuality and gender relationships and puts them in conversation with work by more well-known writers such as Marguerite Duras and Annie Ernaux. Beginning with a brief overview of Sallenave’s main interventions in controversial debates and her links with Ernaux and Duras, this chapter then explores the ambiguities of the novel and its role in the intellectual’s panoply of tools.
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Notes
‘Should we bemoan the fact or rejoice in it? Is it a good thing or bad? I do not know. The main criticism that can be levelled at the “committed intellectual” is, to my mind, that they give themselves the task of thinking through the emancipation of other people.’ Danièle Sallenave, La vie éclaircie: réponses à Madeleine Gobeil (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), p. 163 (original emphasis).
Danièle Sallenave, Carnets de route en Palestine occupée (Paris: Stock, 1998).
Danièle Sallenave, Le Monde, 13 January 1999, p. 24.
See Elaine R. Thomas, ‘Keeping Identity at a Distance: Explaining France’s New Legal Restrictions on the Islamic Headscarf’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29 (2006), 237–259.
See Julien Benda, La trahison des clercs (Paris: Grasset, 1977 [1927]).
Danièle Sallenave, Les Portes de Gubbio (Paris: Hachette, 1980).
See Bruno Thibault, Danièle Sallenave et le don des morts (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 105–111.
‘It just so happens that there are a lot of women characters. That’s because I think all these constrained women, and their vitality which is hampered, experience a specific obstacle, an obstacle to their destiny. It is this frustrated strength and energy which interests me.’ Danièle Sallenave, A quoi sert la littérature (Paris: Textuel, 1997), p. 115.
Gill Rye, ‘Danièle Sallenave et le don des morts by Bruno Thibault’, French Studies, 59.4 (2005), 574–557 (p. 574).
For more on Ernaux’s work specifically see Lyn Thomas, Annie Ernaux: An Introduction to the Writer and her Audience (Oxford: Berg, 1999).
Annie Ernaux, Les armoires vides (Paris: Gallimard, 1974).
Annie Ernaux, Ce qu’ils disent ou rien (Paris: Gallimard, 1977).
Annie Ernaux, La femme gelée (Paris: Gallimard, 1981f).
See Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973).
Danièle Sallenave, Castor de guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2008).
See Colette Hall, ‘De la femme rompue à la femme gelée: Le deuxième sexe revue et corrigée’ Thirty Voices in the Feminine ed. by Michael Bishop (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 6–13.
Annie Ernaux, Les années (Paris: Gallimard, 2008).
See Danièle Sallenave, Nous on n’aime pas lire (Paris: Gallimard, 2009).
Elizabeth Fallaize, French Women’s Writing: Recent Fiction (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), p. 23.
‘In literature, I prefer writers who make me feel that their literary approach is actually some kind of action in the world, as in a witness account (Christa Wolf, Ferdinando Camon) or as a way of questioning the real.’ Annie Ernaux, ‘Réponses à quelques questions’ in La Quinzaine littéraire, 532, 16–31 May 1989.
See Marguerite Duras, Cahiers de la guerre: et autres textes ed. by Sophie Bogaert and Olivier Corpet (Paris: Gallimard, 2008 [POL: IMEC, 2006]).
‘Declaration on the right to insubordination in the Algerian War.’ See Michel Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Seuil, 1997), p. 540.
See Renate Günther, 1999, ‘Outside: The Fifth Republic in the Writing of Marguerite Duras’ in 40 Years of the Fifth Republic: Action, Dialogues and Discourses ed. by Maggie Allison and Owen N. Heathcote (Oxford and Berne: Peter Lang, 1999), pp. 163–175 (p. 164).
Leslie Hill, Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 27.
Marguerite Duras, L’Amant (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
Marguerite Duras, Un barrage contre le Pacifique (Paris: Gallimard, 1950).
Danièle Sallenave, D’Amour (Paris: Gallimard, 2002).
The man is not thought of as a character, but rather as the very machinery of the action, he affects the lives of others in life just as he affects the novel’s development. Little by little, the mistress, lover, wife exposes the real nature of this involvement. The man is at the centre of the story, as much as he is the true subject. Sylvie Camet, ‘Passion et soumission dans les œuvres de Danièle Sallenave: les exemples de Viol, La Vie fantôme’ in Danièle Sallenave: Visages d’une œuvre ed. by Jacques Le Marinel (Angers: Presses universitaires d’Angers, 2000), pp. 141–159 (p. 146).
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© 2013 Imogen Long
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Long, I. (2013). La mise en question du réel: Danièle Sallenave. In: Women Intellectuals in Post-68 France. French Politics, Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318770_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318770_4
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