Relational Responses to Trauma in Twenty-First-Century French and Spanish Women's Writing

Relational Responses to Trauma in Twenty-First-Century French and Spanish Women's Writing offers new insight into what it means to write relational lives. It broadens the parameters of existing discussions in terms of geography as well as genre, drawing together two literatures whose prominence in life-writing theory to date could hardly be more different: while French women's writing has long been at the centre of international discussions of autobiography, the relative invisibility of Spanish women's writing remains striking. The dialogue that thus underpins this study, between diverse twenty-first-century case studies and broader approaches to life-writing, shines a light on what is gained from inviting different voices into the discussion. These narrative projects challenge longstanding critical assumptions in autobiography studies and trauma theory about how writers can and should represent the multiple perspectives that are at the heart of intergenerational stories. In exploring the narrative solutions that these texts propose in response to the ethical questions they navigate, this book shows that writing relational lives rests on far more than the mere recounting of a shared history. 'Relating' in these texts, it proposes, is an act embedded in the telling of the story. It is a mode of testifying together to traumatic experience, one that reveals a powerful preoccupation in contemporary women's life-writing practice with making more audible the many voices and versions that go unheard.

Hannie Lawlor, Lecturer in Spanish, University College Dublin

Hannie Lawlor is Lecturer in Spanish at University College Dublin. She holds a PhD from Wolfson College, University of Oxford, where she was supervised by Dr Daniela Omlor and Professor Marie-Chantal Killeen. Her research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first-century Spanish and French women's life-writing and she is co-editor of the volume The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms (Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, 2022), with Dr Alexandra Effe.

Dialogues in Twenty-First-Century Life WritingPart One1. Traumatic Legacies and Narrative Claims: Rewriting Relations in Colombe Schneck's La Réparation (2012) and Juana Salabert's Velódromo de Invierno(2001)1.1. The Matter of Inheritance1.2. Relations, Repairs and Replacement in La Réparation1.3. Missing Fathers and Illegitimate Authors: Velódromo de InviernoDisplaced Subjects and Ventriloquised Voices: Intergenerational Relations and The Ethics of Representation in Dulce Chacón's La voz dormida (2002) and Lydie Salvayre's Pas pleurer (2014) 692.1. Loudspeakers and Mouthpieces: Contrasting Approaches to Telling the Other's Tale2.2. Magnified Stories, Minimised Voices: La voz dormida2.3. Pas pleurer: Speaking in (M)other Tongues2.4. Reciprocal Relations and the Ethics of PostmemoryPart TwoLegacy, Lineage and lignes de fuite: Intergenerational Transmission in Nicole Lapierre's Sauve qui peut la vie (2015) and Gabriela Ybarra's El comensal (2015)3.1. (Dis)Connecting Traumatic Histories3.2. Lines of Flight in Sauve qui peut la vie3.3. Narrative Loops and Impending Returns in El comensal3.4. Images of Intergenerational TransmissionBurials, Exhumations, and Textual Tombs: Addressing the Other in Milena Busquets's También esto pasará (2015) and Sophie Daull's Camille, mon envolée (2015)4.1. The Function of Funerals4.2. Scattered Ashes in También esto pasará4.3. Constructing a Cenotaph: Camille, mon envolée4.4. Burial Shrouds in La Suture (2016)4.5. Ethical Reburials and Alternative ConversationsPart ThreeClashing Family Stories and Inconceivable Conversations: Christine Angot's Un amour impossible (2015) and Cristina Fallarás's Honrarás a tu padre y a tu madre (2018)5.1. Misalliance, Transmission and Incestuous Desire5.2. Illusory Exchanges in Un amour impossible5.3. Dialogues with the Dead: Honrarás a tu padre y a tu madre5.4. Contaminating ConversationsWriting Relational LivesBibliography