The Digital Remediation and the Fade Out of the Self in Annie Ernaux's Photojournal
Abstract
The aim of the paper is the analysis of the Photojournal, an autobiographical photo-text dispositiv that Annie Ernaux composes as a preface to the volume of her works, Écrire la vie (Gallimard, 2011). The biographical section of the volume becomes an autobiographical premise, where the author combines 70 photos and 100 passages from her journals to explain the reasons of her writing. The pictures illustrate the material reality and the diaries express the subjective reality: two conditions that allowed the writing of the author's works.
The analysis of the phototextual composition highlighted two depth effects: the palimpsest and the collage. Through the layers overlapping of the documents reproduced, Ernaux translates into the space of the pages, the time of the autobiographical narration (as well as in the prose of Les Années, 2008).
The digital remediation of the diaries allows to Ernaux to reconstruct a continuously evolving self, a nomadic being always shifting from a passage another. Through the computer screen Ernaux not only is reflected in her past, but she finds a “Display of One's Own”, which continue the research on the impersonal form of autobiographical narration and the fade out of the self.
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References
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