On the Silence of the Smith in Martine Sonnet’s Atelier 62

Abstract

Martine Sonnet’s Atelier 62 is built on the silence of the author’s father, a proletarianized artisan who never talked about his experience as a smith at Renault in Billancourt. This study aims to present possible interpretations of the silence of the smith by analysing how work is represented in the text and its impact on human life. First, it will demonstrate that the different kinds of work are articulated in the text on two opposite symbolic poles, one linked to silence, to the non-transmitted; and the other linked to speech, to the sharing of experience, to transmission. Then, it will discuss what would be underlying this opposition, by suggesting that the silence of the smith can be explained, on the one hand, by the physical and psychological traumas suffered in his process of proletarianization; and, on the other hand, by his separation from the sphere of social (re)production, imposed by this same process. The interpretation of the social phenomena portrayed in the text will be supported by the contributions of Marxist, eco-feminist, and care ethic theorists who all converge in the criticism of the capitalist logic and its search for economic growth despite human life.