“Je nous suis dessinées.” Towards a Relational Ecology: Remaking the Political Community in Marie Darrieussecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts

This article contends that Marie Darrieussecq’s novel Notre vie dans les forêts (2017) points to a reconceptualization of the relationship, to a ‘relational ecology.’ Drawing from philosophers Donna J. Haraway’s idea of “becoming-with” “in compost piles” (Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene [2016]) and Isabelle Stengers’ radical practice of the pharmakon and of “paying attention” (In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism [2015]), I read Notre vie as a literary practice of relational ecology: one that attempts to imagine alternative political communities through ontological reworkings of the relationships that constitute the beings of the community.