The Confessions of Annie Ernaux: Autobiography, Truth, and Repetition

Annie Ernaux writes books which she consistently describes as painful to write and shameful to expose to the public.¹ She describes herself as needing to believe that she will accidentally die before the book becomes public in order to bear the mortification of exposure (Se perdre 42), the publication of books which she says will make the regard of the other impossible to her (La honte 132), and which she sees as having shamed her family and even her region of France as well as herself (L'écriture comme un couteau 51).² At the end of Passion simple, Ernaux writes that ending the book causes her anxiety because it means that she will now have to let others judge her actions, making her ashamed: "Continuer," she writes, "c'est aussi repousser l'angoisse de donner ceci à lire aux autres. Tant que j'étais dans la nécessité d'écrire, je ne me souciais pas de cette éventualité. Maintenant que je suis allée au bout de cette nécessité, je regarde les pages écrites avec étonnement et une sorte de honte" (69). ("To continue is also to push back the anxiety of giving this to others to read. So long as I was in the necessity of writing, I did not worry about this eventuality. Now that I am at the end of this necessity, I look at the written pages with surprise and a kind of shame.") The writing of these books is described by Ernaux as "difficult," "dangerous," and "hazardous," as requiring courage to write and to make public,³ and yet is also described as written through an inner compulsion, as though she had no choice but to write and expose them, or lacked the strength to resist. We see, for instance, that she writes of the "nécessité d'écrire," and presumes that it is equally necessary to publish, although she tells us that financially she is not required to (L'écriture comme un couteau 117).

I would therefore like to explore a series of questions in this paper: what power is it that compels Ernaux to write such books (if indeed she has no choice) and, moreover, to present them to the public as autobiographical; and if, on the other hand, she does have a choice to write them, and it is a difficult and dangerous option, causing her shame, why does she choose to? Finally, what can explain the apparent paradox expressed by Ernaux of feeling simultaneously forced to do something, and, suggesting voluntarism, to be taking a great risk in doing it? As shall be seen, Ernaux offers multiple reasons for writing the books that she does, ranging from the psychological to the political, and for the strange combination of resistance and compulsion which they involve.

This exploration is significant not merely or primarily as a study of Annie Ernaux, but more importantly because Ernaux crystalizes or epitomizes the confessional aspect of modern subjectivity, what Foucault has deemed and problematized as the constitution of the modern subject as a "confessing animal." (History of Sexuality 1:59).

I. Why Confess?

In Se perdre, Ernaux writes: "L'écriture n'a été que pour remplir le vide, permettre de dire et de supporter le souvenir de 58, de l'avortement, de l'amour des parents, de tout ce qui a été une histoire de chair et d'amour" (54) ("Writing was only to fill the emptiness, to be able to say and to bear the memory of 58, of the abortion, of parental love, of all that was a story of flesh and love"). Writing is seen as enabling Ernaux to bear memories which might otherwise have been intolerable. Later, she writes, "Je sais trop bien que ce qui me fait écrire est cela, ce manque de réalisation de l'amour...