Territoriality disputes, pollution and abjection in Nathalie Sarraute and Helene Lenoir.(Critical essay)

Despite the number of surveys of contemporary French fiction that have appeared in the last decade or so, (1) the emergence of journal series such as Ecritures contemporaines (2) and the publication of journal special numbers devoted to contemporary fiction, (3) the question of Nathalie Sarraute's literary legacy remains largely uncharted territory. In some respects this is not surprising. Notwithstanding the valiant efforts and intelligent readings of critics such as Sarah Barbour and John Philips, (4) Sarraute does not fit comfortably within the category of ecriture feminine, (5) Moreover, the concept of tropismes that is so central to her work and her extension of its application to include human behaviour have perhaps been perceived as too idiosyncratically sarrautian for it to have been taken up by subsequent generations of writers. Of the very few contemporary writers whose names have figured alongside that of Sarraute, Helene Lenoir is one of the more frequently mentioned. In their reviews of Lenoir's Le Repit and Bourrasque, both Celine Geoffroy and Pierre Lepape cite Sarraute as the principal comparator, (6) while Dominique Viart's very useful survey chapter on the contemporary French literary scene identifies Lenoir, Laurent Mauvignier and Gisele Fournier as the most obvious heirs of Sarraute. (7) Lenoir, in one of her infrequent public statements--a short article entitled "La Litterature contre la betise"--quotes an anecdote told by Sarraute concerning the sense of the title of "disent les imbeciles" (8). However, these references remain very brief and to date there has been no substantial comparative analysis of the work of the two authors.

This article aims to open up a potentially rewarding topic of enquiry through the comparative study of two texts--Sarraute's Vous les entendez? (9) and Lenoir's Bourrasque (10)--which, on detailed analysis, reveal a quite remarkable pattern of thematic and structural correspondences. Here, the application of concepts derived from anthropological and psychoanalytical theory will provide the conceptual framework for the reading of a novel (Bourrasque) that has hitherto received only scant critical attention, and the rereading of another (Vous les entendez?) that has tended to be somewhat eclipsed by the novels that preceded and followed it (Entre la vie et la mort, 1968, and "disent les imbeciles", 1976). Thus, in addition to itemising the main similarities between the fictional situations and forms of the two texts, the first part of the article will also examine the ways in which the apparently trivial quarrels over domestic space and privacy and the minor infractions of codes relating, for example, to hospitality, commensality, aggregation, separation, and the crossing of boundaries between public and personal spaces act as pretexts for the exploration of much more serious territorial battles and taboo violations. The second part will focus more precisely on the presence in both texts of a dynamic centred on the relationship between purity anal pollution, between the act of abjecting and the abject state. This section of the article will take its cue from Ann Jefferson's ground-breaking analysis of difference and the denial of difference in Sarraute's work. Here, in two incisive chapters that draw, albeit briefly, on the theory of Mary Douglas and, rather more fully, on that of Julia Kristeva, Jefferson traces the recurrence, across Sarraute's work, of motifs relating to pollution, contamination and abjection in order to demonstrate Sarraute's "commitment [...] to [...] indistinction" (11) in her depiction of intersubjectivity and to illustrate her conception of the work of art as a means of transcending intersubjective relations through the transformation of difference into sameness. (12) The present study accepts Jefferson's conclusions and will build upon this foundation, but--in addition to extending the models to the study of Lenoir's text--will also argue that the motifs of pollution and abjection are part of a more generalised fascination in Vous les entendez? with ritualised and transgressive behaviour and will explore more fully a number of issues that lie outside the remit of Jefferson's tightly focused and cohesive study of difference and indistinction: notably, the potential usefulness of Douglas's concept of pollution as "matter out of place"; the relevance to Sarraute of Douglas's appreciation of the creative potential of the anomalous; the association that Kristeva establishes between the abject and the female, and the push-pull dynamic of repulsion and attraction that characterises abjection.

The parallels between the two novels are striking. On the surface at least, both texts focus on highly charged familial situations and on domestic and intergenerational territorial conflicts. Nevertheless, if the family is the ostensible focus of the two texts, in neither case do we have firm information about its composition. In Vous les entendez? the household would seem to comprise a father, his children and a pet dog. However, the number of children is never established and their behaviour at different points in the text suggests a range of possible ages from early adolescence to early adulthood. The wife/mother appears only briefly in a scene with a marriage counsellor that may be a memory, but could equally be an imagined encounter (768-771); otherwise, she is absent, and whether this absence is due to divorce, death or a banal outing is never communicated to the reader. The profile of the household in Bourrasque is even sketchier. Although we know that five people live in the house, the relationships between them are never explicitly articulated. The anonymous "il" would seem to be the "head" of the household; Mitz would seem to be his wife or partner, but the evidence to support this interpretation is relatively thin and consists of the references to her domestic responsibilities, to the fact that she does not have her own room and to her occasional unarticulated desire for physical comforting from him; Lina would seem to be their daughter, but once again the reader is left to infer this from the older couple's memories of her at different stages in her development, including infancy (18-19, 139-40). Richard and Paule are clearly a couple, but their connection to the rest of the household is unclear; they would seem to be temporary residents who have overstayed their welcome and effectively assumed the status of permanent house guests. The familiar interaction between Richard, Mitz and "il" suggests relatively intimate family ties; in particular, Richard's behaviour is consistent with that of an older son or a rather intrusive brother of Mitz or "il." Ultimately, however, all these relationships are the product of deduction and conjecture by the reader, based on rather patchy and flimsy textual evidence.

Both novels are also characterised by marked territorial tension and intergenerational conflict. In Vous les entendez?, the father and his children would seem to have aligned themselves on opposing sides of the culture versus nature divide, the father apparently constantly thwarted in his attempts to pass on his cultural values to his offspring, the children constantly trying to resist his attempts to civilise and educate them. The laughter of the children, which opens the novel, is perceived by the father as a direct attack not just on his cherished statuette and the complimentary remarks of his rather prim guest, but more generally on his own values. Ironically, his attempts to pass on a cultural heritage to his children is in itself a form of invasion (13) and has simply better equipped them for the counter-campaign and invasion of his territory: "exerces par lui comme ils le sont, possedant, offertes par lui, toutes les cartes les plus detaillees, de vraies cartes d'etat-major [...] de ce terrain que maintenant en toute securite ils investissent ... les fins jets de leurs rires glissent dans chaque repli, impregnent chaque recoin" (742). They know the weak spots in his defences, or at least be believes that they do, and this belief engenders a prickliness verging on paranoia; thus be perceives his daughter's suggestion that the statuette might be of Cretan origin as a goad, flaunting the children's intrusion on, indeed command of, his territory: "Sculpture cretoise, meme dit pour le narguer, pour montrer combien il est facile [...] de le battre sur son propre terrain ..." (800).

However, as always in Sarraute, the conflict takes place at the level of the sous-conversation and the tropisme; the boundaries between the territories are highly fluid; the attitudes of the characters are extremely mobile and the "cause" for which the battle is waged is far from clear. The father veers between anger and hostility and a yearning to join his offspring on the other side of the divide and to align himself with "nature." A typical Sarraute character, he is ready, in his perversity, to abandon his territory almost as soon as be finds an ally who might help him defend it and, instead of consolidating his position, he begins to long for "les mots de passe" that would give him access to his children's territory (747-48). Moreover, the opposition between nature and culture is itself thrown into question: the confrontation between the father and children on page 777 and the description of the cartoons scattered across the children's room (785) suggest that the opposition may rather be between high art and popular culture. (14) Here, the father's contempt for the children's popular tastes expresses itself in a declaration intended to demonstrate to them that they have no personal domain, that their "territory" is but an illusion and that, ultimately, he has sole ownership of the entire household space: "Vous entendez: je ne veux pas de ca chez moi [...] En fin de compte, je suis le marre ici, vous etes sous mon toit. Vous savez que je defends. J'interdis ... " (777). However, this opposition is also destabilised by the revelation of the children's appreciation of Duchamp's LHOOQ (812), (15) which suggests rather that what divides the father and his offspring is the manner in which they engage with art: he approaches it with the reverence one would associate with a sacred object; they approach it with a modernist scepticism and an appreciation of self-conscious play and ludic iconoclasm. (16)

In Bourrasque the conflict would initially seem to be confined to the anonymous male head of the household and Lina. The specific cause of the skirmish is never revealed, though the characters spend much of the rest of the text speculating about it and trying to attribute blame. What is clear, however, is that the conflict is, at least in part, territorial in nature and springs from what "il" sees as an attack on his authority; thus, in an unfinished ultimatum that echoes the prohibition issued by the father of Vous les entendez?, he reminds Lina of the status and power that ownership gives him: "Tant que tu mettras tes pieds sous ma table!" (58). The day-to-day dynamics of his relationship with Lina would seem to consist essentially of a battle of wills in which he seeks to impose his authority and control over her and in which her energies are devoted in large part to finding ways of defying him and eluding that control. Despite his denials, there is evidence that he has attempted to extend his sphere of control beyond the house through surveillance of Lina's movements and encounters, and his troubled fantasies about the solicitousness of another older man towards her (he imagines Fred Mansard sitting at her bedside) are based as much on fears that his place will be usurped as on anxieties about Fred's sexual interest in the young woman (66-67). Lina's recourse to Sutterlin and her commitment of her thoughts/fantasies to her scrupulously maintained carnets is obviously a means of securing a private space, though inconsistencies in her behaviour (occasionally, she deliberately leaves one of the carnets in a public place; some of her writing sessions take place in the garden) suggest both a desire to attract attention and a readiness to encroach on the territories of others (65, 66).

However, it gradually becomes apparent that this conflict is simply the focal point around which other territorial battles are played out. The dynamics of the relationships within and between the two ...