La jouissance: un roman européen by Florian Zeller (review)

Reviews 287 autre que [lui]”(111), le détachement et le désintérêt de Marie lui sont insupportables: “À son regard, notre histoire s’effondra pour la seconde fois” (126). Ancré autour du motif de la montagne, seul élément stable dans des mondes constitués de “domaines flottants” (113), À la surface de l’été plonge le lecteur dans des “zones d’incertitude et de dépossession radicales”(27) qui forment l’univers des personnages dont la violence est quelque peu atténuée à la fin du texte. University of Cincinnati (OH) Étienne Achille Zeller, Florian. La jouissance: un roman européen. Paris: Gallimard, 2012. ISBN 978-2-07-013841-8. Pp. 160. 16,90 a. Lyotard told us that grand narratives are not supposed to be pertinent to our postmodern setting. However, Zeller narrates a tale for us that is a grand narrative uniting our sexualities and our politics. Yes, it is an ambitious undertaking. His titles set up the parameters for the story. His primary title tells us that sexual pleasure is the theme. The subtitle points to the politics of the European Union. Both are connected through the idea of cohabitation. While cohabitation can describe the sharing of a common household, the same word applies to a common government ruled by different political parties. For Zeller, the tragic flaw common to both is the gradual disappearance of self-sacrifice in these relationships. Nicolas and Pauline are both thirty years old and have been living for two years as a couple in the same household in Paris. Both characters evolve from stereotypes about their genders. His fantasies about being sexually active with multiple women, at once and serially, threaten their monogamous understanding. She, in turn, is driven toward sexual experimentation in ways that do not match the interests of Nicolas and lead her to lie to him about her own sexual infidelity. In between them is Sonia who is promiscuous while doubting that men can ever be truthful and promoting that fidelity is not viable as the basis for a couple’s continuity. The author intervenes by noting the philosophical precedent and propriety of Sartre’s relationship to de Beauvoir as a kind of existential justification of contingent and necessary loves in a couple. Meanwhile, France has many political partners in the European community. Can she be faithful to her contracts without lying about or with her other partners? Various anecdotes suggest that cheating is such a universal political tactic that sacrificing oneself for the other is not a pragmatic political posture. Zeller tells us that fidelity is a Western imaginative invention that has become part of sexual politics. If we remember that Bataille, among others, told us that sacrifice is not necessarily a Christian or a Western invention, we may look at fidelity as perhaps a human ideal that can only be realized by individuals rather than by larger political unities. Zeller offers some hilarious stories from the diplomatic world as subplots subverting the viability of Nicolas and Pauline as a couple. Suddenly, Pauline becomes pregnant and decides to have their child. The triangular family constituted by the birth of Sophie leads the couple to imagine the stakes of the future. All of this speculation has at least two sides as the masculine and feminine are so distinct in this entire narrative as to be incompatible. References to philosophers constitute intellectual shadows following the couple while the political dimensions of child-bearing and raising lead to conjectures about colonization and empire-building as other undercurrents to the expansion of the couple beyond mere sexual attraction. Despite both fatherhood and motherhood offering promises of renewal , only the destructive impulses of the couple and the nation-state sadly remain. Trinity University (TX) Roland A. Champagne 288 FRENCH REVIEW 87.2 ...