Contemporary Women`s Writing in French Study Day Mobility

 Contemporary Women’s Writing in French Study Day Mobility, Process, Dynamic Shifts: Nancy Huston’s Œuvre Saturday 1 November 2014, 10‐6 pm, Rm G34, Senate House Institute of Modern Languages Research School of Advanced Study, University of London Abstracts Panel 1: Mobility, Musicality, Intermediality Marie‐Lise Paoli, Université Bordeaux Montaigne Nancy Huston’s Song and Dance or the Dynamics of intermezzo The Alberta‐born writer who lives in France and writes both in French and English is viewed by some as « a territorial anomaly », “a recalcitrant anglophone”, “a defrocked Albertan,” and praised by others for her virtuosic translingualism, her musicalized fiction and her insightful exploration of exile and world citizenship. As Elizabeth M. Knutson puts it, “the instability and shifting of ground to which Huston alludes are doubtless integral to any writer’s identity; mobility is a metaphor for the movement back and forth between many aspects of the self: unconscious and conscious, emotional and intellectual, dreamlike and writerly.” This paper postulates that intermediality — the crossing of boundaries between the various media Huston refers to and resorts too, literature, music, dance and film, to name but a few — emanates from her “translingual imagination” (to borrow Steven G. Kellman’s phrase) which will be defined with reference to the œuvre conceived as an organic whole, a rhizomatic one in the Deleuzian sense. Analyzing Huston’s creative process in terms of the nomadology of Deleuze and Guattari and Rosi Bradotti’s gendered nomadic theory will lead to an assessment of the heuristic value of intermediality as a dynamic process to account for the distinct way in which Huston stories a supposedly divided self. To link the poietic of Huston, the implied author who lives and writes both between borders — in “intermezzo”— and across them —in transit — with her nomadic artistry, a transdisciplinary approach is needed in order to transcend polarities and take into account the logic of the included middle, which will be traced from Pérégrinations Goldberg to Danse noire. Sara Leek, Université Bordeaux Montaigne ‘Singing through the wilderness’: Subjective Exiles, Nomadic Lines of Flight, and Music in Lignes de faille Exile is a central theme in Nancy Huston’s fictional writing and her novels give voice to a range of experiences of this condition. For some of her protagonists, exile is freely chosen or self‐inflicted; for others it is imposed upon them by circumstances beyond their control. In this paper I consider how theories of nomadism developed by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, can shed light on the expressions of exiled identity within Nancy Huston’s fictional project. Deleuze and Guattari’s work is itself rich with musical metaphors and I argue that Huston’s repeated use of music as a means of structuring her texts, and indeed her own writing practice suggests that she is well aware of the potential of music to facilitate the emergence of new paths, directions and nomadic lines of flight. My analysis focuses primarily on one recent text by Huston, Lignes de faille (2006), which contains a very rich articulation of nomadism, exile and other forms of displacement. I argue that Huston’s portrayal of the character of Kristina – for whom singing is an important pastime, and later in life a career – suggests that nomadism is a particularly rich and personally liberating phase on the spectrum of exile. Nevertheless, this text also makes it clear that following a nomadic line of flight is not entirely unproblematic and that, furthermore, such trajectories are not available to everybody. I consider how Kristina’s daughter Sadie is affected negatively by Kristina’s nomadic journey and is condemned to a state of exile in which no nomadic potential exists. How do fiction and music enable Huston to articulate the ambivalence which characterizes the state of exile and to investigate the limitations of nomadic trajectories? Panel 2: Processes of Decentring: Formal and Subjective Shifts and Turns Diana Holmes, University of Leeds Narrative Grace: Mobility and Connection in Nancy Huston's Fiction The capoeira ‐ at once a martial art, a dance and a game ‐ shapes the architecture of Danse noire (Nancy Huston's latest novel) as well as playing its part in the novel's plot and articulation of themes. Milo, her protagonist, finds in the dance's historically rooted repertoire of moves both the joy of celebrating the body's elasticity and grace, its assertion of the freedom to inhabit surrounding space, and an enriching, ethically charged interplay with other bodies, other selves, in a mimicry of combat that, however, acknowledges rather than seeking to damage the other. Capoeira in this novel works as a nice image, or metonym, of Nancy Huston's narratives, on several levels. First, it encapsulates her characteristic (and unusual) combination of formal self‐awareness with immersive storytelling and ethical themes: the novel foregrounds and invites the reader to enjoy the sustained parallel between the dance and the narrative itself, and at the same time pulls us into the fictional world as in imagination we dance with Milo and encounter other dancing bodies. Huston's novels reference the Flaubertian primacy of experimental form that has dominated modern French literature, whilst emphatically maintaining faith in the mimetic, storytelling dimension of the novel and its ethical mission. Second, the capoeira condenses in a powerful image the wide historical sweep that characterises Huston's more recent fiction, for it is a dance born of the fusion, through slavery, of indigenous Brazilian with African culture. At the same time, vivid focalisation through the subjectivity of a single character represents consistent Huston's integration of History with embodied, personal, singular stories, shaped at once by the 'given' factors of heredity and birth, and by personal agency. Taking the image of the dancer in Danse noire (2013) ‐ and its echoes of the earlier La Virevolte (1994) ‐ as a starting point, this paper will explore the particularity of Nancy Huston's self‐aware celebration of narrative form, particularly of fiction's power to carry us in imagination through space and time, and her constant concern with the ethical function of the novel. Her novels foreground the pleasure of playing with narrative form, and have become increasingly mobile in their reach, but also both thematise and invite the reader to virtually experience a sense of the self as always situated in an ethical relation to others. It is this powerful fusing of pleasure in form and pleasure in imaginary journeys, of the intellectual and the page‐turning, that makes her an unusual case of the popular literary writer. Dynamic mobility combines with focus on the contingency of intimate experience to create her peculiar narrative grace. Alison Rice, University of Notre Dame Deferring the Familial Default: The Transnational Turn in Nancy Huston’s Lignes de faille Nancy Huston’s novel Lignes de faille received the Prix Femina in 2006 and was one of five literary awards mentioned at the outset of a collectively signed document published in March 2007 in Le Monde. Titled “Pour une littérature‐monde en français,” this manifesto claimed to identify nothing less than a revolution in the Parisian literary landscape. This article proclaimed that significant transformations had effectively eliminated the “exclusive pact with the nation” of French‐language literary works, and it lauded the fact that a variety of works composed by writers from diverse locations around the globe now represented “the world.” Nancy Huston’s name figures among those of 44 writers who signed the manifesto and it is no accident that Lignes de faille was one of the works that inspired its composition; this innovative novel marked a new transnational orientation in an oeuvre that was already rich and varied. It is not that Huston’s ten previous novels didn’t feature characters from different national backgrounds, but most of these individuals found themselves in the United States, Canada, or France where these works were set. In contrast, Lignes de faille contains unprecedented travel; it moves to strategic places around the globe in order to tell the tale of a family whose displacements have led to deep‐seated misgivings and heartfelt pains that have been transmitted across national boundaries and generational gaps. Canadian‐born Huston has often evoked the upheaval she experienced at the age of six when her mother left and she subsequently spent time in Germany with her future mother‐in‐law. It is no accident that the four narrators in Lignes de faille are six years old, and that they undergo similar cataclysmic transformations in this especially formative moment of their respective childhoods. For each of these characters, a revelation is accompanied by international travel: Kristina moves from Germany to Canada; Sadie moves from Canada to New York City; Randall leaves New York City for a substantial stay in Tel Aviv; Sol departs from California for the first time on a trip to Germany. In her 1981 essay titled “La rassurante étrangeté,” Huston takes issue with stable conceptions of identity that are tied to a sense of national belonging and poses the following provocative question: “Pourquoi n’inventerais‐je mes propres racines ?” She asserts in this reflective piece that she has not always identified herself with Jews, but that she has always identified herself thanks to Jews, in relation to the “dispersion” that has characterized this group of people who have attracted her attention since she spent time in New York City as a teenager. She concludes by claiming that she has placed herself in the margins and that this is a place where she is comfortable. In my view, Lignes de faille is a moving novel filled with movement that is located at the margins of France. It is a French‐language literary work that avoids the Parisian “center” denounced in the manifesto “Pour une littérature‐monde en français” and that travels to particular “peripheries” that destabilize the very dichotomy inherent in these terms. Instead of adhering to preconceived categories that determine what is acceptable for “francophone” literary works, Lignes de faille finds fault with the lines that seek to define peoples and countries in stereotypical terms and ultimately sings the songs of multiculturalism and multilingualism in a text that suggests that while national roots may not cling to us, hereditary ones may be deferred, but not denied, in the end. Kate Averis, University of London Institute in Paris <Vieillir, dit‐elle>: Nancy Huston’s Feminist Trajectory and Writing Female Ageing Nancy Huston has demonstrated solid feminist credentials since her arrival in Paris in 1973 and her collaboration with feminist journals, such as Sorcières, Histoires d’elles et les Cahiers du Grif. These early writings paved the way for a consistent engagement with gender identity, subjectivity, femininity, creativity, maternity, language and translingualism throughout her œuvre, which now spans more than four decades. The dynamism that is characteristic of Huston’s literary production is also reflected in the development of the trajectory of feminist thought therein: far from remaining static, Huston’s feminist trajectory traces a process of evolution, as illustrated by her most recent non‐fictional work, Reflets dans un œil d’homme, receiving a mixed reception in France and abroad. This paper focuses on an important, emerging, and overlooked aspect of Huston’s œuvre and feminist trajectory: that of writing female ageing. Through an examination of Huston’s non‐fictional texts that engage with female ageing – Professeurs de désespoir and Passions d’Annie Leclerc, amongst others – as well as a consideration of her novels which offer representations of ageing female protagonists – Instruments des ténèbres, Lignes de faille, Prodige – this paper identifies Huston’s innovative treatment of female ageing in an ambivalent literary and cultural landscape, and situates it in relation to the mobility, processes and dynamic shifts of Huston’s feminist trajectory. Panel 3: Writing Multiplicity, Inscribing Polyphony Jane Elisabeth Wilhelm, Université Paris 3 (Sorbonne nouvelle) Le soi multiple: la figure de Romain Gary pour Nancy Huston Romain Gary aurait eu cent ans cette année et c'est l'occasion de rappeler l'importance pour Nancy Huston de ce « frère », comme elle le qualifie, à l'instar de cet autre « frère en dépression » qu'est Samuel Beckett. L'expression « le soi multiple » de Nancy Huston résume pour nous à la fois la personnalité complexe de Romain Gary, l'écrivain à « l'identité pulvérisée » selon sa formule, ainsi que le processus de l'auto‐traduction, car elle nous dit être « divisée », comme lui, entre le français et l'anglais. La question de l'identité personnelle, liée au langage et au rapport à la langue maternelle, ou de l'identité collective (celle du Canada, par exemple, pour Nancy Huston) s'ouvre alors sur celle des masques et des identités multiples, incarnées de manière emblématique dans la figure de Romain Gary. Le leurre de l'identité que connaissent mieux que les autres les exilés, nous dit‐elle, – « être un, coïncider avec soi‐
même ? » – peut dès lors aussi signifier s'inventer autre dans le fait de raconter des histoires, dans l'identité usurpée, voire même dans l'imposture. Pourquoi devient‐on écrivain? Serait‐ce pour incarner ces identités multiples dans des personnages romanesques? Jane Koustas, Brock University Polyphony, Voice‐Over, Ms‐Understood: Les Variations Goldberg to Danse noire From her earliest novel Les Variations Goldberg to her most recent Danse noire, Nancy Huston’s literary voice has remained distinctly polyphonic. Lilianne, and her thirty or so friends in Les Variations Goldberg, Paul Schwarz in Danse noire and numerous other narrators/characters position themselves between the reader and the story as they recount the narrative from the outside looking in as if in a voice over. A similar effect is produced when characters, including first person narrators, interact with their double, such as in Infrarouge when Rena Greenblatt converses with Subra, an obvious inversion of Arbus, resulting in a doubling that recalls dialogism. In both cases, the reader experiences the narrative via a polyphonic filter that requires that s/he “combine” the different versions such as in Les Variations Goldberg or, like the narrator, engage with the other/double such as in Infrarouge. The act of speaking through or for another has also led Huston to assume a male voice such as in her performance piece ‘Le Mâle Entendu’ or in Danse noire. This paper suggests that these examples of polyphony and doubling, including the assumption of the male voice, are also related to Huston’s self‐translations in which the author/translator reconciles her English and French self. Panel 4: Femininity, Maternal Subjectivity, Creativity Marie‐Noëlle Huet, Université du Québec à Montréal Configurations de la « romamancière » : Nancy Huston et la maternité Les questions d’identité, de corps, de désir, de création et de maternité sont au cœur de l’œuvre prolifique de Nancy Huston. Depuis Mosaïque de la pornographie (1982), elle réfléchit à la dichotomisation de l’image des femmes : d’un côté « la maternité non érotique » (la maman), de l’autre, « l’érotisme non maternel » (la putain)1. Le « dilemme de la romamancière2 », selon lequel une mère doit être présente et dévouée envers ses enfants tandis qu’une romancière ne doit pas hésiter à tuer ses personnages, sa progéniture fictionnelle, pour les besoins de l’histoire, concerne une autre dichotomie, celle opposant la création et la procréation. Au‐delà du partage des tâches et de l’aménagement temporel et matériel de la vie de mère et d’écrivaine, c’est la question éthique qui sous‐tend le dilemme qui intéresse Huston. Comment être à la fois mère, femme et romancière, mais aussi de façon plus large, mère, sujet désirant et créatrice? Dans le cadre de cette communication, il s’agira de traiter de la réflexion de l’auteure sur la maternité et la création à travers son œuvre essayistique tout en donnant des exemples tirés de son œuvre romanesque. Eglė Kačkutė, Vilnius University Mothering in the Stepmother Tongue The powerful emotional link between language and the self puts motherhood and the language of mothering in a special relationship that is essential to mother's subjectivity. Fictional narratives of mothering in a foreign environment allow for some classification of mothers according to their linguistic preferences in relation to their children. They fall into the following types: silent mother, multilingual, and trans‐lingual mother. Both the silent and the trans‐lingual mother are associated with a refusal of a language, an identity and/or a certain past which is in turn related with either personal and/or collective trauma. The trans‐lingual mother, most poignantly featured in Nancy Huston's writing, is the mother who mothers in a language of the host country, the so called "step mother tongue". Trans‐lingual mothering as portrayed in Huston's work is associated with mimicry, interpreting a desired (thus, according to A. Pavlenko, embodied) and deliberately acquired identity as a woman and mother. Drawing on recent feminist theories of maternal subjectivity, psycho‐linguistic research and literary analysis, this paper explores ways in which maternal identities of textual mothers featured in Huston's autobiographical (Lettres parisiennes, Nord perdu, Désirs et réalités) and fictional works (Prodige) are shaped by that linguistic choice and the cultural as well as personal implications that it carries within it. 1
Nancy Huston, « Préface à la nouvelle édition », Mosaïque de la pornographie, Paris, Payot & Rivages, coll. « Petite bibliothèque Payot », 2007[1982], p. 18. 2
Nancy Huston, « Le dilemme de la romamancière », Désirs et réalités. Textes choisis 1978‐1994, Paris/Montréal, Actes Sud/Leméac, coll. « Babel », 1995, p. 123‐144.