Autobiography and Narrative Resilience

Story Telling: Writing the Body to Recall Life in Kanehara Hitomi’s Autofiction and Charlotte Roche’s Wrecked

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.11.38657

Keywords:

Storytelling, Body, Writing, Identity

Abstract

In their way of living obsessions and traumas, the protagonists of Autofiction and Wrecked embody the conscious or unconscious search for a solution: Writing serves as the medium to tell a story as well as a means of re-entry into life. The fragmented narratives presented by Kanehara and Roche disrupt any linear storytelling as they reveal the protagonists’ painful memories. Placing the body at the centre of the analysis, the argumentation focuses on the sexual and textual aspects of the body. Aiming to demonstrate how the use of storytelling in Autofiction and Wrecked symbolises a recalling to life, this article first thematises the function of sexuality and secondly looks to the narrative itself. The body thus helps a process of healing.

Author Biography

Flora Roussel, University of Montreal, Canada

After having studied French, German and Japanese literatures, cultures, and languages, Flora Roussel is currently a Ph.D. Candidate and Lecturer in Comparative and General Literature at the University of Montreal (Canada). She works on questions of performativity and affect from a feminist, decolonial, and queer perspective. She is interested in the relationships among sexuality, subjectivity, identity, and bodies, in particular in four contemporary authors: Akwaeke Emezi, Wendy Delorme, Charlotte Roche, and Kanehara Hitomi. She has participated to various conferences around the world and has published her research both in Canada and abroad (Post-Scriptum, Humanities Bulletin, Études Littéraires Africaines).

Published

2022-04-21

Issue

Vol. 11 (2022): EJLW

Section

Autobiography and Narrative Resilience

Copyright (c) 2022 Flora Roussel

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