Autobiographie des objets by François Bon (review)

The title of François Bon’s Autobiographie des objets (2012) is fairly misleading. At first glance, the work appears to recount either the author’s personal story by way of objects, which would imply an uncharacteristic turn towards the self, or the evolution of objects themselves, which would divest it of any organic quality whatsoever. Both hypotheses seem somewhat aberrant in terms of Bon’s previous works, however multifaceted they have proven to be, and, indeed, the text turns out to be neither. Rather, Autobiographie des objets productively plays on the line dividing the two, taking shape as a reading of the past through sixty-four “objects”: things, people, places, activities, even units of measurement and abstract ideas. Yet each section’s focus cannot be reduced to the object that serves as its title, which operates only as a point of entry into the historical and autobiographical material embedded therein. Grouping particular memories under object titles, then, has much less to do with the object per se, than with its broader contextualization–that is, the web of meaning into which it is inscribed.

The section entitled “Baïonnette,” for example, incorporates images from history books, family discussions of war, present day experiences of war, literature that depicts war, and, finally, the actual bayonet with which a young François came into contact. The section thus interrogates less the bayonet itself than the wider perception of warfare embodied in the term “baïonnette.” Like the bayonet, each section title ultimately acts as a nodal point within a given nucleus of meaning. As nuclei, these sections take shape via a montage of fragments, each of which constitute as many “grand[s] tiroir[s] à souvenirs dépareillés” (211). Rather than proceeding in a linear fashion, they muddle together past and present experiences, while also blurring the line of distinction separating the collective from the individual. This destabilization is made apparent in both content, via the side-by-side evocation of shared social phenomena and individual memory, and form, particularly through the use of pronouns. Indeed, the collective nous and on often appear when the first person singular or even the third person plural would be expected. Evoking the “vitrine du coiffeur Barré,” for example, Bon seems to speak in the name of a generation: “la musique était notre rêve” (137, emphasis added). Yet, in other instances, the on is clearly one from which he is excluded: “[o]n avait pour les enfants en bas âge une assiette déjà en plastique” (146). On more rare occasions, he seems to directly interpolate either the reader or his own memory: “toute votre enfance vous aurez-vous même vécu avec ce panonceau accroché en dedans de votre tête” (154, emphasis added); “[c]ontinuons les maisons. Entrons dans celle de Damvix” (167).

Yet, despite these temporal and enunciative vacillations and this fragmentary format, the work does remain stable. For the nuclei of meaning that each section presents can only be constituted as such retrospectively—that is, by means of the act of recollection. It is thus by means of authorial voice, which erupts via intermittent remarks positioning present-day writer vis-à-vis text, that the otherwise impenetrable meandering becomes anchored, more readily traceable. Hence the presence of slightly jarring expressions such as “[e]ncore la semaine dernière” (135) or “[d]ans la relation que j’ai avec l’ordinateur sur lequel je frappe ce texte” (145). This commentated recollection, in turn, lends the work a clear beginning and end, for “tous [les objets] n’ont pas, de par la mémoire qu’ils portent, la même capacité à ouvrir cette trappe sombre qu’ils recouvrent” (82). It clarifies the text’s almost imperceptible progression from the first object owned to the final “armoire aux livres” as the steady movement from a regime of mechanics—the family trade—to that of literature. Thus Bon’s decision to not extend his inventory beyond his career change from factory supervisor to author: “que ce...