«EVERY WRITER CREATES THEIR OWN PRECURSORS»: MARIE DARRIEUSSECQ ON PAULA MODERSOHNBECKER

La narradora francesa Marie Darrieussecq publicó en 2016 una biografía de la pintora alemana Paula Modersohn-Becker, conocida por haber sido la primera mujer en autorretratarse desnuda. El presente artículo introduce este texto en una pugna interpretativa que ha marcado la recepción de la obra de Modersohn-Becker en la crítica feminista desde los años setenta a la actualidad. Contrastando la visión que Darrieussecq ofrece de la artista alemana con la de historiadoras del arte como Linda Nochlin, Roszika Parker o Griselda Pollock, se identifican y analizan aquellas razones que la autora francesa esgrime para presentar a Modersohn Becker como una artista pionera en la construcción de un lenguaje artístico que se articula en femenino. Se despliega además una hipótesis que recorre el artículo: Darrieussecq construye a Paula Modersohn-Becker como un referente transdisciplinar, que más allá de su ámbito de expresión, el plástico, fue capaz de ampliar las fronteras de la autorrepresentación femenina.

Quand Marie Darrieussecq parle de race : réception et posture de l’écrivain blanc

This article reflects upon the remarkable reception of Marie Darrieussecq’s novel Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes in the autumn of 2013. In the first instance, it questions the response of literary critics—surprisingly unanimous in spite of the novel’s treatment of interracial relations and colonial heritage—as well as the author’s posturing until she was awarded the prestigious Médicis prize. While French literary studies continue to be governed by ethnoracial criteria applied to minority authors (“francophone” writers, “beur” or “banlieue” literature, etc.), this article seeks to demonstrate that, during this period marked by extensively reported racist incidents, a certain image of the white writer emerged from the novel’s critical reception as well as Darrieussecq’s own public interventions.

La Mer à l’envers, Marie Darrieussecq (2019)

Review of: La Mer à l’envers, Marie Darrieussecq (2019) Paris: POL Éditeur, 250 pp., ISBN 978-2-81804-806-1, p/bk, €18.50

Révolte contre l’effacement et sur-vie à l’ère de l’hypertechnologie dans Notre vie dans les forêts de Marie Darrieussecq

Through the narrative of Viviane, the narrator of her latest novel, Notre vie dans les forêts, Marie Darrieussecq depicts a chilling dystopic world, whilst triggering a reflexion on cloning and the exponential pervasiveness of new technologies in our lives. This article aims to analyse and put into question the various practices of revolt and resistance given to us by Viviane’s testimonial narrative. Firstly, with the forest as sole alternative space to hypertechnology and hypersurveillance; then, with Viviane’s revolt and her attempt at establishing an alternative figuration ; before concluding with the exploration of her writing as a manipulation of language and practice of poethic resistant creation.

Forms of Freedoms: Marie Darrieussecq, Catherine Malabou, and the Plasticity of Science

This article brings the writing of Marie Darrieussecq into dialogue with the philosophy of Catherine Malabou, exploring how both think the mutability and transformability of the body in relation to recent scientific and technological discovery and innovation. From the metamorphosis of a woman into a sow in Truismes (1996) to the cloning of human life in Notre vie dans les forêts (2017), Darrieussecq’s novels foreground the body as a site of constant change and reinvention. Meanwhile, Malabou’s interdisciplinary elaboration of the concept of ‘plasticity’ between continental thought and the biological sciences reveals all structures and forms of life to be plastic and intrinsically open to change, from the neuroplasticity of the human brain to the epigenetic development of organisms. This article presents both Darrieussecq and Malabou as writers and thinkers of plasticity, exploring how their respective plasticities develop through a relationship to science which is itself changeable and ambiguous. In different but converging ways, both suggest how science discovers and innovates with the plasticity of life, whilst often also controlling and manipulating this same plasticity in the context of late capitalism. More optimistically, this article proposes that Darrieussecq and Malabou also envisage a becoming plastic of the sciences themselves, liberating plasticity as a discourse of freedom as a thinking with science, literature, and philosophy.