Le vrai lieu: entretiens avec Michelle Porte par Annie Ernaux (review)

Chalaye’s article explores Kwahulé’s plays, linking their “Eucharistic” motif of corporeal sacrifice with jazz music and the slave trade. Turning to Antillean theatre, Arthéron’s study demonstrates how works by Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, and Vincent Placoly evoke classic tragedy, transforming their central characters into sacrificial Antillean lieux de mémoire. Chapters by Yolande Helm, Yolaine Parisot, and Mylène Dorcé discuss novels and short stories from the Antilles and the Haitian diaspora. In a close reading of Roland Brival’s novel Cœur d’ébène, Helm historically resituates Hegel’s master-slave dialectic (contrasting interestingly with Arthéron’s analysis of Hegel) to underline the tragic and inescapable psychic and social damage engendered by racism in the context of Antillean métissage. Parisot, focusing on works by the Haitian signatories of the 2007 manifesto“Pour une littérature-monde,”argues that certain Francophone writers have strategically sacrificed their “fonction-auteur” (Foucault) in a bid to safeguard a unique place for marginalized literatures (123). Dorcé’s chapter concentrates on the (marginalized) literary production of three Haitian women writers (Marie Chauvet,Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall,and Marie-CélieAgnant) who deploy themes of anger, humor, and migration in their work in order to critique social and political oppression. The volume’s sole chapter on cinema, contributed by Carole Edwards, is a close reading of Raoul Peck’s 2001 film Lumumba. Edwards draws on historical documents to theorize that Peck exposes a veritable “déclinaison de sacrifices”(75,emphasis in the original) around the mythic figure of Patrice Lumumba. By revealing gaps in national memory, Lumumba invites Congolese spectators to redefine their own culture of differences, grounded in“‘l’enracinement, l’appréhension individuelle et collective, l’orientation, le sens et la visée unificatrice’ (Ladrière)”(84). Although this anthology can provide only a “mince aperçu” (9) of a vast subject, it successfully treats a variety of regions and genres. The volume is particularly useful for scholars working on issues of national identity, violence, and memory. By unpacking the concept of sacrifice within Francophone cultural production, the authors collectively demonstrate its wide theoretical and political implications. University of North Carolina, Wilmington Greta Bliss Ernaux, Annie. Le vrai lieu: entretiens avec Michelle Porte. Paris: Gallimard, 2014. ISBN 978-2-07-014596-6. Pp. 113. 13 a. When Michelle Porte approached Ernaux in 2008 with a project to film the author in the different places where she had lived, and especially had come to write, Ernaux accepted at once,“convaincue que le lieu—géographique, social—où l’on naît et celui où l’on vit offrent sur les textes écrits, non pas une explication, mais l’arrière-fond de la réalité où, plus ou moins, ils sont ancrés” (9). Shooting began in 2011 and the resulting documentary was aired two years later on French television. Le vrai lieu is a transcription of the filming sessions, introduced by a brief Avant-propos (9–12), and 198 FRENCH REVIEW 90.1 Reviews 199 “cleaned up” to make it more readable, as Ernaux puts it (11). Organized loosely into ten sections, each captioned with a phrase by the author, and punctuated by questions from the interviewer, the published text conveys something of the spontaneous nature of the original experience, which Ernaux came to see as“une forme de mise en danger semblable à celle que j’attends plus ou moins de l’écriture”(11). Through the ebb and flow of the interviewing process, the touchstone remained“la place réelle et imaginaire de l’écriture dans ma vie”(12), which led her eventually to realize that“elle, l’écriture, est ‘mon vrai lieu’” (12). For those who have followed Ernaux’s work over the years, including her interviews, contributions to journals, and participation in colloquia, the principal topics taken up in this text will be familiar: her image of herself as a “transfuge de classe” (23); the love-hate relationship with her mother, “une mère féministe avant la lettre, mais dont le féminisme s’arrêtait forcément à la liberté sexuelle”(39); Ernaux’s own resistance to being labeled a feminist...