
Textual and Visual Selves
Photography, Film, and Comic Art in French Autobiography
University of Nebraska Press
Published on 1. December 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-8032-3631-8 (ISBN)
Description
Autobiography in France has taken a decidedly visual turn in recent years: photographs, shown or withheld, become evidence of what was, might have been, or cannot be said; photographers, filmmakers, and cartoonists undertake projects that explore issues of identity. Textual and Visual Selves investigates, from a variety of theoretical perspectives, the ways in which the textual and the visual combine in certain French works to reconfigure ideas-and images-of self-representation.
Surprisingly, what these accounts reveal is that photography or film does not necessarily serve to shore up the referentiality of the autobiographical account: on the contrary, the inclusion of visual material can even increase indeterminacy and ambiguity. Far from offering documentary evidence of an extratextual self coincident with the "I" of the text, these images testify only to absence, loss, evasiveness, and the desire to avoid objectification. However, where Roland Barthes famously saw the photograph as a prefiguration of death, in this volume we see how the textual strategies deployed by these writers and artists result in work that is ultimately life-affirming.
Surprisingly, what these accounts reveal is that photography or film does not necessarily serve to shore up the referentiality of the autobiographical account: on the contrary, the inclusion of visual material can even increase indeterminacy and ambiguity. Far from offering documentary evidence of an extratextual self coincident with the "I" of the text, these images testify only to absence, loss, evasiveness, and the desire to avoid objectification. However, where Roland Barthes famously saw the photograph as a prefiguration of death, in this volume we see how the textual strategies deployed by these writers and artists result in work that is ultimately life-affirming.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
13 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
363 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8032-3631-8 (9780803236318)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Natalie Edwards is an assistant professor of French at Wagner College and coeditor of This Self Which Is Not One: Women's Life Writing in French. Amy L. Hubbell is an associate professor of French at Kansas State University, lecturer in French at the University of Queensland, and the author of A la recherche d'un emploi: Business French in a Communicative Context. Ann Miller is a university fellow at the University of Leicester and the author of Reading Bande Dessinee: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Textual and Visual Selves
Natalie Edwards, Amy L. Hubbell, and Ann Miller
1. Beyond Autobiography
Veronique Montemont
2. Chronicles of Intimacy: Photography in Autobiographical Projects
Shirley Jordan
3. The Absent Body: Photography and Autobiography in Helene Cixous's Photos de racines and Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie's L'Usage de la photo
Natalie Edwards
4. The Photobiographical Today: Signs of an Identity Crisis?
Floriane Place-Verghnes
5. Reclaiming the Void: The Cinematographic Aesthetic of Marguerite Duras's Autobiographical Novels
Erica L. Johnson
6. Illustration Revisited: Phototextual Exchange and Resistance in Sophie Calle's Suite venitienne
Johnnie Gratton
7. Viewing the Past through a "Nostalgeric" Lens: Pied-Noir Photodocumentaries
Amy L. Hubbell
8. Georges Perec, Memory, and Photography
Peter Wagstaff
9. The Self-Portrait in French Cinema: Reflections on Theory and on Agnes Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse
Agnes Calatayud
10. Autobiography in Bande Dessinee
Ann Miller
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Textual and Visual Selves
Natalie Edwards, Amy L. Hubbell, and Ann Miller
1. Beyond Autobiography
Veronique Montemont
2. Chronicles of Intimacy: Photography in Autobiographical Projects
Shirley Jordan
3. The Absent Body: Photography and Autobiography in Helene Cixous's Photos de racines and Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie's L'Usage de la photo
Natalie Edwards
4. The Photobiographical Today: Signs of an Identity Crisis?
Floriane Place-Verghnes
5. Reclaiming the Void: The Cinematographic Aesthetic of Marguerite Duras's Autobiographical Novels
Erica L. Johnson
6. Illustration Revisited: Phototextual Exchange and Resistance in Sophie Calle's Suite venitienne
Johnnie Gratton
7. Viewing the Past through a "Nostalgeric" Lens: Pied-Noir Photodocumentaries
Amy L. Hubbell
8. Georges Perec, Memory, and Photography
Peter Wagstaff
9. The Self-Portrait in French Cinema: Reflections on Theory and on Agnes Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse
Agnes Calatayud
10. Autobiography in Bande Dessinee
Ann Miller
Contributors
Index