Ethos d’une transfuge intellectuelle : présentation de soi dans L’écriture comme un couteau et Les années d’Annie Ernaux
How can an author call himself an « intellectual », especially when one, such as Annie Ernaux, cumulates both the illegitimacy of a class-passer and a feminine subject? Yet, her vision of writing as a political activity and her positions in the media do assimilate her to the figure of the intellectual. This dissertation thereby aims to provide a definition of the intellectual woman, to which Annie Ernaux’s example contributes significantly. Studying the author interview L’écriture comme un couteau (2003) and her impersonal autobiography Les années (2008), I intend to show how Annie Ernaux displays the ethos of an intellectual and even moves beyond the model, while she embodies the figures of the autobiographer, the ethnologist, the "involved" writer, the class-passer, the head of family, and the aging woman. If she surpasses that model, isn’t it also because she primarily identifies herself as a class-passer? Driven by the class-passer’s sense of guilt and responsibility, Annie Ernaux uses the sensation of being in-between social classes to enable her writing. Therefore, her auto-socio-biographical works become a literary commitment to the dominated. The study of L’écriture comme un couteau will define the conceptual basis of Annie Ernaux’s ethos as an class-passer intellectual, while in Les années, the analysis of the narrative voices « on », « nous » and « elle » will explore how the intimate intricates itself to the social, the subjective experience to the collective memory. In other words, while studying the ethos in Annie Ernaux’s works, this dissertation examines how the author has shaped an image of herself as a legitimate class-passer intellectual within the public sphere of her time.
Annie Ernaux Implication Ethos Class-passer intellectual Commitment Ethos Author interview Autobiography Women's writing French literature