Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature [1 ed.] 9781443826167, 9781443825870

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Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature

Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature

Edited by

Scott M. Powers

Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature, Edited by Scott M. Powers This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Scott M. Powers and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2587-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2587-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Scott M. Powers Political Violence and/as Evil: Sartre’s Dirty Hands ................................ 12 Cristian Bratu The Monster Within: Paradoxical Evil and Personal Identity in the Novels of Amélie Nothomb............................................................. 38 Beth W. Gale Writing What Cannot Be Said: Enunciating Evil in Latifa Ben Mansour’s Novels...................................................................................... 54 Bernadette Ginestet-Levine The Po/ethics of the Child Testimony: Denouncing the Evils of Genocide in Monénembo’s The Oldest Orphan ........................................................ 79 Mamadou Wattara Beigbeder’s Evil Personae in Windows on the World: Authorial Ethics and 9/11 ........................................................................................ 109 Marie-Christine Clemente Is Kindly Just Kinky? Irony and Evil in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones ...................................................................................... 136 Nadia Louar Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones: Evil and the Ethical Limits of the Post-modern Narrative .................................................................. 159 Scott M. Powers References ............................................................................................... 203 Contributors............................................................................................. 212 Index........................................................................................................ 214

INTRODUCTION SCOTT M. POWERS

Evil is a primary source of inquiry in contemporary French literature. Despite Nietzsche’s vision that as modern society outgrows its theologically centered belief systems, it would necessarily move beyond speaking in terms of “good” and “evil,” le Mal remains at the center of French literary expression, even among the most secular writers. Whereas the Catholic notion of evil as originating in a tempter or devil no longer compels the vast majority of texts as it once did, writers who confront the most disturbing historical events of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, from total war and state-implemented torture to genocide and terrorism, insist on using the term “evil,” inquiring into its origins, and bearing witness to its devastating effects. Unable to turn their face from the extreme suffering and death that have marked the darkest moments of our time, contemporary writers heed the imperative to give expression to the reality of evil. Whereas in the wake of the Nazi genocide, Adorno was understandably moved to proscribe the writing of poetry as inappropriate, the urgency that underlies the works of many authors to describe evil, and to recount the stories of its victims, suggests that if poetry there must be, above all it should be a “poetry of evil.” The essays included in this volume are devoted to exploring this literature of evil. The subjects of study include literary texts of French expression by French authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Frédéric Beigbeder, Belgian author Amélie Nothomb, Algerian novelist Latifa Ben Mansour, Guinean novelist Tierno Monénembo, and Franco-American writer Jonathan Littell. Such a grouping implies the recognition that literary traditions that we could call “French” increasingly extend beyond the boundaries of the “Hexagon.” This is especially the case in our time of globalization that undermines the integrity of national borders, as French citizens emigrate and others, notably those born in former French colonies, pursue their studies or careers in France. The only exception is Nothomb, who resides in Brussels (some 80 kilometers from the official French border), and whose identity is inextricably linked to the city’s French (speaking) community. It is our belief that a volume such as this one, which considers the treatment of evil

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by a diversified Francophone community, has the advantages of outlining an “international” French perspective, and of allowing us to consider the works of those who were the eye witnesses of various historic tragedies such as the torture and massacres of the Algerian war of independence or the Rwandan genocide. Three categories of questions overarch literary treatments of evil in this volume. The first considers the origins of evil. Is evil the result of human will or is it primarily “subconscious?” How do contemporary writers concerned with human behavior begin to perceive the relationships between the biological, the social, and the psychological? To what extent do other forces such as language, discourse, economic markets, globalization, and the media play in the perpetration of evil? And how does the compelling post-modern/post-structuralist notion of the decentered subject that is more the effect than the cause of events fit within a discussion of right and wrong, if it does at all? Does human agency continue to be an important factor to consider? In responding to these and related questions, contributors draw from the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund and Anna Freud, Carl Jung, and Jacques Lacan, theorists of the post-modern, including Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault, and the philosophical inquiries of Alain Badiou, Susan Neiman, and Hannah Arendt. A second category concerns ways in which evil can be effectively represented in written language. Because many authors treat extreme events that pose challenges to the human imagination, especially when the reader—and in many instances the writer—has not experienced firsthand an atrocity such as torture or the concentration camp, questions concerning the writer’s choice of esthetics are inevitable. Is a writing style that depicts evil in oblique fashion rather than in graphic detail more effective or genuine? Indeed, many of the essays below begin to detail a type of “evil poetics” shared by many authors writing on the extreme, and characterized by a style steeped in ellipsis and irony. To explore questions of representation, one must of course make room for a discussion of the effects of trauma. As a traumatic event is one that often defies language, thereby rendering the articulation of the origin of the trauma in speech or in writing quite challenging if not impossible, could a written testimony on behalf of a victim of state-implemented torture or an act of terrorism be not so much about the act of evil as about its lasting effects on the survivor? Accordingly, the breakdown of language or the incommunicability of an idea, in this case, would indirectly bear witness to the presence of evil. Perhaps we could even begin to redefine evil as that which defies language. In addressing these questions, a related question arises. Does a

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literary text on evil unavoidably also “become” evil? For instance, must writing in some sense become Sadistic or barbaric in its attempt to unfurl the experience of evil? From an ethical standpoint, could a work be considered superior if, seemingly paradoxically, it inflicts a level of pain on the reader? To address these questions, the essays below enlist a number of important theoretical frameworks, including Shoshana Felman’s insight into the genre of testimony, Cathy Caruth’s observations on trauma, Berel Lang’s essays on the Holocaust and the challenges of representation, Gérard Genette’s elaborations on narrative voice, René Girard’s literary model of violence and sacrifice, and Georges Bataille’s understanding of literature as transgressive. And third, what are the ethical stakes and responsibilities that necessarily burden writers of evil? For example, is it appropriate for a writer who has not personally experienced the Shoah to write about the death camps? Is there something fundamentally wrong about fabricating an eye-witness account of real evil? Or should these authors write in a different fashion than do surviving victims? And must one always adopt the perspective of the victim? Several contributors consider the advantages as well as the drawbacks to testimonies that assume the subject position of the perpetrator. In addressing the ethical imperatives facing the writer, contributors respond to compelling assertions made by Theodor Adorno, Paul Celan, Claude Lanzmann, and Robert Jay Lifton among other leading theorists and artists. “Political Violence and/as Evil: Sartre’s Dirty Hands” is featured as the first essay of the volume for good reason. Although Sartre is not a contemporary writer in the sense that he is no longer living, and given that even his most recent works are now several decades old, his philosophical texts and plays address a number of questions of utmost importance to writers and philosophers today. In grappling with the nature and role of political or revolutionary violence, and as a foundational theorist of the relationship between writing and morality in the post-Holocaust era, Sartre paved the way for more contemporary literary treatments of evil. His struggle with the question of violence as a necessary evil in the context of anti-colonialism and Soviet Communism is one that subsequent thinkers have made their own in treating more recent manifestations of violence, such as the Rwandan genocide and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It also foregrounds the discussion of the ethical responsibilities at stake for writers who present various forms of violence in a positive or negative light. Cristian Bratu takes up the important task of clarifying Sartre’s position on violence as a necessary evil and applies it to the writer’s stance

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on Communism during the Cold War years. Bratu’s essay in fact challenges the legacy that Sartre left as a champion of existential freedom and individual liberties by inviting us to revisit the writer’s works in light of a myriad of contradictions within his philosophy on violence, and to consider the negative influence that it has exerted in the ongoing perpetration of violence in human conflict. Through an analysis of Sartre’s play Dirty Hands, passages from his philosophical writings, and statements that he made regarding Communist regimes, Bratu attributes contradictions in Sartre’s thought, in large part, to an ongoing tension between the writer’s intellectual persona as a philosopher and his more pragmatic persona as a revolutionary activist. In philosophically oriented essays, Sartre often suggests that violence is a negative force, pure non-Being, even “evil.” The human agent, in treating the world as a mere obstacle to fulfilling his desires, dehumanizes both the Other and himself. Conversely, in more politically charged writings, Sartre legitimizes violence, sometimes as a necessary evil, sometimes as the very affirmation of human freedom. Violence, he asserts, is the “recuperation of a right.” Influenced by the evils of colonialism, Sartre even suggests that nonviolence can be “evil,” in the sense that it amounts to complicity with the oppressors. Whereas Bratu asserts that Sartre always held an ambivalent attitude toward violence, he also outlines a progression in the philosopher’s thought from his early writings to his last writings of the 1980s toward an increasingly pro-violence stance. Bratu concludes his essay by underscoring the irresponsible nature of Sartre’s writings for they encourage responding to violence with more violence, and by indicating the pitfalls of a philosophy in which the “good” or “evil” nature of violence depends on the historical actor wielding it. Highly influenced by Marxist thought, Sartre often took a non-critical approach to Communist regimes, thereby overlooking the nature and extent of some of the worst crimes of the Cold War years. Bratu suggests in fact that we adopt a more critical view of Sartre with regard to his position on Communism, much as the intellectual community has done concerning Heidegger’s relationship to Nazism. The second essay, “The Monster Within: Paradoxical Evil and Personal Identity in the Novels of Amélie Nothomb,” features the more purely psychological dimension of contemporary literary treatments of evil. Beth Gale explores the central motif in Nothomb’s novels of the confrontation between good and evil characters as more complex than simply one of stark opposites. Rather, as the plots progress, the sinister characters reveal a sympathetic dimension to their personae, whereas the benevolent protagonists begin to exhibit malevolent attributes. In Nothomb’s universe, the lines between good and evil become blurred as seemingly innocent

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victims end up uncannily resembling their victimizers. Gale appropriately situates Nothomb’s fiction within a larger, psychoanalytic inquiry into human behavior by enlisting the theories of Carl Jung on the interconnectedness and essentially human qualities of both good and evil to inform our reading. In undermining the reader’s expectations of the behavior of good and evil characters, Nothomb “demonstrates the fluidity and nonsensical nature of moral absolutes.”1 More importantly, she invites the reader to consider his or her own potential for evil. In one novel in particular, Cosmétique de l’ennemi, the Sadistic figure who verbally torments the protagonist throughout the lengthy dialogue that comprises the text is revealed in the end to be none other than the latter’s alter ego, his monstrous double, or “the enemy within.” Gale argues that the evil characters of each of Nothomb’s novels represent the dark side of the self. She understands the verbal combats between interlocutors that are typical of Nothomb’s works as struggles that the self engages in with its repressed fears or suspicions about itself. Gale further links this assimilation of “the other” and “the self” to the idiosyncratic style of Nothomb’s texts, which constitutes prolonged verbal exchanges throughout the course of which the reader painstakingly tries to keep track of who is speaking. The importance of Gale’s essay lies in its presentation of Nothomb’s fiction as a veritable challenge to the common, dualistic perception of good and evil at the heart of much of both Western and non-Western thought, and in effecting a refreshing recuperation of Jungian theory in illuminating Nothomb’s insights into human nature. The essay “Writing What Cannot Be Said: Enunciating Evil in Ben Mansour’s Novels” introduces us to emerging novelist Latifa Ben Mansour’s fictional works, which have yet to be translated into English despite their great success among readers of French and the literary prizes that they have been awarded. As this study shows, in constructing plots centered on the afflictions of victimized women, Ben Mansour’s novels target the evils of Islamist fanaticism in contemporary Algeria. In giving voice to the female victims of a male-dominated society and whose wounded bodies can be understood as metaphors for the tormented history of an entire nation, Ben Mansour continues the literary project of other female Algerian writers such as Assia Djebar. In her eloquent descriptions of Ben Mansour’s writings, Bernadette Ginestet-Levine reveals that for the novelist, evil is above all that which silences the voice. Through a series of arresting metaphors, recurring motifs, and a complex non-linear model of story-telling, the novels demonstrate that the traumatic dimension of an event lies especially in the victim’s inability to describe it to others. Whereas the victims cannot clearly enunciate their sufferings, the reader

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catches glimpse of the face of evil through a number of narrative strategies that Ginestet-Levine deftly elucidates. The essay brings to light a primary theme in Ben Mansour’s writings of the tension between the incommunicability of evil and the compelling urge to voice one’s trauma. In each novel, the heroines’ grave condition of physical incapacity as a result of a terrorist bomb detonation or mental anguish caused by rape or by the murder of family members leaves them literally speechless. They attempt to speak but can only emit unintelligible sounds. The recurring motif of the victim’s coma-like state of enduring torpor as absence and inner exile serves as the pretext to find a way to give a voice back to these victims so that they can tell their stories. In some instances, evil becomes obliquely transcribed on the page through Ben Mansour’s skillful weaving of the echoes of women’s voices. In the case of one heroine, hospitalized after an intense physical trauma unbeknownst to others, a “veil of suffering” impedes her from full expression or adequately hearing the conversations among women who surround her bedside. Evil is incommunicable, but its presence is nonetheless acutely sensed in Ben Mansour’s depictions of this incommunicability. In another case, before dying the victim leaves a written account of her sufferings that she has instructed to have read aloud at her funeral. But evil is not accessible to the reader as direct inscription. It is only partially witnessed second-hand through a type of mise-en-abyme, a transmuted reading of sorts. The intradiegetic reader at the vigil becomes visibly afflicted with pain and must curtail the reading that she can no longer endure. Others sense the presence of evil only by observing the physiological response that it induces in the funeral reader. And in a third example, a novel whose style of traumatic writing echoes the works of Marguerite Duras, one victim seems to regain her ability to communicate, but only in a love relationship with another who, sharing a similar scarred past, proves capable of intuiting that which continues to elude the reader. In the end, if Ben Mansour’s writings bare testimony to evil in any direct way, it is not in elaborating the original source of trauma. Rather, by recreating the failure of language, it invites the reader to become the first-hand witness to the unrelenting grip of evil around the throats of Algeria’s oppressed women. Mamadou Wattara’s essay draws our attention to another series of tragedies that have culminated in an unimaginable loss of life: the Rwandan genocide. As announced in the title “The Po/ethics of the Child Testimony: Denouncing the Evils of Genocide in Monénembo’s The Oldest Orphan,” Wattara takes as the object of his study the poetics of the child testimony in the service of both depicting and denouncing the

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Rwandan genocide. In order to elucidate a variety of textual strategies that authors effectively employ through their use of the adolescent narrator to uncover “unofficial” truths about genocide and its traumatic effects on survivors, Wattara focuses mainly on Tierno’s novel but he also considers dimensions of the child testimony in Ivorian novelist Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana and Hungarian Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness. Wattara presents these works as good examples of a type of “traumatic realism” that resists the description of the brute reality of events and involves, rather, a “transformation” and a “production” of an object of knowledge. More specifically, the essay regards peculiarities of child language including metathesis, neologisms, and other speech errors not as evidence of the survivor’s naïveté, but rather as an effective means of uncovering the traumatic effects of genocide. What’s more, according to Wattara, they constitute a narrative project of retrodiction that challenges official versions of genocide. The essay also details the rich hybrid nature of childhood testimonies. In his habit of reciting proverbs from the oral tradition, the child witness resurrects through language the memory of his slaughtered community, thereby working to undo the “erasure” that the perpetrators’ genocidal logic aimed to effect. Wattara also analyzes a special case of hybridity with respect to the narrative voice of enunciative indivision. He regards passages in which the victim adopts the perspective of the perpetrator as an effective coping mechanism that allows the victim to regain a sense of agency. Wattara concludes his essay by considering the application of Bataille’s theories on the affinities that “literature and evil” share to the child testimony of genocide—a genre that is transgressive on many levels. By its very nature, the child testimony transgresses the boundaries that society has implicitly imposed on child victims, and it is through this transgression that it must bear the evils that it denounces. Frédéric Beigbeder’s fictional account of the events of 9-11 appears cruelly transgressive, and indeed, it has spawned a number of harsh critiques that have rejected it as an inappropriate and highly insensitive rendition of the terrorist attacks. “Beigbeder’s Evil Personae in Windows on the World: Authorial Ethics and 9/11” considers reasons for which the writer set himself to writing a graphic, often highly exaggerated, and arguably pornographic description of the final minutes in the lives of those who perished inside the restaurant atop the World Trade Center. In her perspicacious analysis, Marie-Christine Clemente applies contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou’s definition of evil as the betrayal of truth as well as the more common consensus of evil as barbaric or sadistic to consider whether the writer himself can be considered evil. In his

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relishing of details and invention of plots that could not have happened, is Beigbeder being malicious? Clemente seeks to answer this question through an analysis of the complex and often complicated fabric of the narrative, and the challenges of interpretation that the reader faces. What frustrates our interpretation of the novel is the constant doubling or mirroring of intradiegetic narrators, of which Clemente’s ingenious description itself is a veritable tour de force. Each narrator, as Clemente shows, is a double of the author himself, and accordingly the textual dynamics positions the writer along with his fictitious doubles as a primary object of study. She highlights various ways in addition to the use of fictitious doubles in which Beigbeder the writer frames himself as an object of study, including numerous intertextual references made to the author’s other fictional works. In doing so, as Clemente argues, the Windows on the World text acquires a heightened level of selfconsciousness, which ultimately invites an ironic reading of the account of 9-11. In the end, Clemente encourages us to read Beigbeder’s novel as a demonstration of political and media misuses and abuses of the evils of terrorism. Whereas naïve readings have interpreted the novel to be essentially about the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the essay presents Windows on the World as above all an indictment of our society’s tendency to exploit the suffering of others for entertainment purposes. In the end, it could be said that the Windows on the World text becomes a “necessary evil” in taking up a moral position in order to denounce society’s reckless responses to and irresponsibility toward human tragedy. The use of irony in fictional accounts of human tragedy remains an important topic of discussion in the volume’s final essays, which insist on an ironic reading of Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones. Many reasons justify our dedicating two essays to this work. Having earned two of the most prestigious French literary prizes—the prix Goncourt and the Grand prix du roman de l’Académie Française—The Kindly Ones has to this date arguably been one of the most successful literary publications in French of the twenty-first century. The great controversy that it has stirred among readers and literary critics due in large part to its providing a detailed account of the Shoah through the perspective of a Nazi has made its publication a veritable event. The density of the novel’s narrative style and content, which Louar describes as “a mythic, historic, literary, and linguistic palimpsest,” in addition to its sheer size—approximately nine hundred pages for the Gallimard publication and fourteen hundred pages for its Folio edition—make of it a highly inexhaustible source for scholars who have had little time since its publication in 2006 to begin to consider its depths.2 The two essays of this volume present themselves as among

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the first literary analyses of the novel, many more of which are undoubtedly in the works. But what’s most certain, the topic of evil that such a monumental publication features in providing a fictional Nazi testimony of the most extreme moments of the Jewish genocide makes the important place that we have given to it in this volume on evil in literature of French expression unavoidable. In “Kindly or Kinky? Evil and Irony in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones,” Nadia Louar responds to literary critics who have rejected the novel as voyeuristic, pornographic, and as sheer indulgence for evil, by encouraging an ironic reading of the text. It is in fact Louar’s ironic reading of the novel that permits her to endow it with a justifiable ethical dimension. The Nazi narrator’s self-exculpatory testimony claims that had the readers been in his situation, they would have acted in kind. However, Louar shows that in so many ways The Kindly One text actually frustrates our identification with the supposed protagonist, thereby undermining his argument that we are all potential Nazis. Rather than provide a “universal character” or “human brother” with whom the reader can relate, Littell creates an extreme personage—which Louar labels as “an incestuous closeted homosexual matricide.”3 In her analysis of the novel, Louar underscores the distance that imposes itself between the voice of the implied author—who sides with the victims—and that of the narrator who gradually becomes unmasked as “a criminal falling into the abyss of homicidal perversion.”4 An important segment of the essay brings to light The Kindly Ones’ mythic framework, which helps establish an ironic distance between the Nazi on the one hand and the author and the reader on the other. Louar reminds us that “The Kindly Ones” is a direct reference to Aeschylus’s Oresteia, in which Orestes is pursued by the gods for the murder of his mother. In considering the Nazi narrator as a modern Orestes, we can begin to appreciate the ethical tension that is at stake in the novel and that scholars of Greek tragedy have identified in the conclusion to the Oresteia, which juxtaposes the procedural artifice of the matricide’s exoneration by Athena with his nonetheless undeniable culpability. The importance of Louar’s essay lies in large part in demonstrating how the intertextual references in Littell’s novel encourage us to read the conclusion as one in which the Nazi finally becomes aware of his moral guilt. Louar incisively likens the Nazi’s coming to terms with his guilt in the final passage of the novel to the nature of trauma itself as “delayed recognition.” The novel’s denouement calls on the reader to reconsider the testimony, in retrospect, as the delay of the full recognition of the immoral nature of a traumatic past.

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“Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones: Evil and the Ethical Limits of the Post-modern Narrative” similarly insists on an ironic reading of the novel that recognizes a significant discrepancy between the narrative mode of the Nazi testimony and a larger, textual mode whose oppositions and contradictions in the forms of parody and juxtaposition establish a cognitive distance between the reader and the narrator. In this essay, I identify two levels of post-modernity in The Kindly Ones, the first being a veritable post-modern vision of evil that perceives evil as a very complex phenomenon that cannot be explained by a “master narrative.” Rather, from this perspective, evil originates from countless exterior and subconscious forces that render negligible the factor of human agency. It is this post-modern perspective, I argue, that the Nazi narrator adopts in order to recast his crimes as the unintended consequences of the fatalities of psychological programming, subconscious sexual drives, political and economic forces, and the seductive influences of language and discourse. Whereas such a depiction is valuable in recognizing the complexity of evil, by presenting himself as a type of “decentered” subject stripped of intentionality and traversed by overwhelming forces, the narrator paints a self-serving self-portrait as victim rather than as perpetrator. In the end, evil, from this perspective on individual agency, loses its moral or ethical connotations. One definitive conclusion that the narrator draws from his testimony is that regarding his involvement in the Nazi crimes, he had no choice. Accordingly, evil becomes confused with fate itself. In opposition, a second dimension of post-modernity in the novel, a literary style characterized by irony and resistance to closure or inconclusiveness, undermines the Nazi testimony’s claims to certainty regarding his lack of choice in matters. Accordingly, I look at various ways in which the textual dynamics of Littell’s novel undermines the notion of a coherent thesis, in this case, the Nazi testimony that definitively rules out the factor of human agency. Through the use of instances of juxtaposition in which gross incongruences between events or opinions are placed in close proximity, the textual fabric of the novel creates a cognitive and moral distance between the reader empathetic toward the Jews and an apathetic, egotistical narrator. Moreover, the textual mode takes up the notion of the decentered subject to which the narrator subscribes, but in order to question the underlying premises and reliability of the Nazi testimony. I identify key passages of the text that, through illuminating the deformation and therefore unreliability of traumatic memory, compromise the integrity of the narrator’s testimony and ultimately his thesis. Instances of psychic dissociation, including his inability—or unwillingness—to remember or admit to the reader that he

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killed his mother and step-father serve as an illustration of his denial of involvement in the murder of the Jews. In the end, at the textual level, The Kindly Ones undermines the narrator’s attempts to dismiss his guilt in the Nazi genocide, and warns against the abuse of post-modern thought by failing to adopt a critical account of one’s own involvement in human affairs. If the post-modern possesses an ethical dimension (and I argue that it does), it is its highly self-critical eye, that is to say its sustained level of self-awareness that remains suspect of any claims to conclusiveness or closure.In the conclusion, I consider ways in which the novel seems to recuperate the notions of good and evil as well as of the thinking subject as agent. I interpret key passages of text as effecting a reading of the body that sets itself in stark contrast to the narrator’s often abstract philosophical meanderings. A detailed description of the perpetrator’s instinctual, physiological responses to his acts of killings—the bodily tics and manic behavior that psychologists consider as coping mechanisms— may amount to the very symptoms of evil. But in following Arendt’s thought on thinking as a prophylactic against evil, the novel also suggests that these subconscious reactions are the result of the Nazi subject’s deliberate refusal to think, that is to say, to sensibly confront the evils of the genocide.

Notes 1

See below, p.40. See below, p.153. 3 See below, p.151. 4 See below, p.150. 2

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND/AS EVIL: SARTRE’S DIRTY HANDS CRISTIAN BRATU

In memory of Tony Judt On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world awoke to the poignant realization that the new millennium, far from bringing about the “end of history”1—or at least the end of history as we knew it in the twentieth century—was in fact a mere sequel to an already known tune. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that no other time has been more aware of the damages caused by the evil nature of political violence than the last century.2 Of course, violence had a very long history before the 1900s, but its magnitude greatly increased during the twentieth century as over a hundred million people died in the two world wars, in Cold War-related events, and other forms of armed conflict. Due to the rapid growth of mass communication during the last century, western societies also became increasingly sensitive to the effects of war. Newspapers, radios, and television channels helped inform the public opinion of the effects and side effects of political violence (coups d’état, terror, terrorism and counter-terrorism, firing squads, gas chambers, forced labor camps, napalm and atomic bombs, mass graves, famine, disease, etc.) more extensively and rapidly than at any time prior in human history. However, it is also the case that the same media that evoked the evils of war often helped glorify militarism, national armies, and occasionally violence whenever it suited “national interests” (and not just in legitimate cases of self-defense). The history of the twentieth century—and unfortunately, of our century as well—is thus best understood through the lens of this dangerously ambiguous attitude of the media and public opinion toward political violence. Mass media and public opinion, however, are not the only ones to blame for this ambivalence. The twentieth century would not have been the same without the massive involvement in the life of the polis of what we would nowadays call public intellectuals, such as Bertrand Russell,

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Friedrich von Hayek, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Aron, and Hannah Arendt, to name only a few. Many of these intellectuals did condemn political violence in vehement terms, such as Albert Camus in his play Les Justes (The Just Assassins, 1951)3 and Hannah Arendt in her famous essay On Violence (1970).4 Arendt was perhaps the most vocal intellectual to denounce the revolting consensus of left- and right-wing thinkers that “violence is nothing more than the most flagrant manifestation of power.”5 How could contemporary thinkers, Arendt wondered, merely echo Clausewitz’s saying that war was “the continuation of politics by other means”? Moreover, Arendt argued that political violence had been treated as a less worthy topic of investigation than, say, power and politics. Thus, two main conclusions emerge out of Arendt’s book. The first and obvious conclusion is that violence is a philosophical and political notion that should command more serious intellectual inquiries. The second is that violence should not be treated as a byproduct of politics in as far as the former affects human lives in the most direct manner; in fact, violence is morally reprehensible, if not actually evil.6 Other twentieth-century intellectuals, however, preferred not to bear the “burden of responsibility” and maintained a rather ambiguous attitude with regard to the use of political violence.7 To explore this ambivalence, I will focus in this essay on one of the most seminal figures of France’s twentieth-century intelligentsia: Jean-Paul Sartre.8 I believe that Sartre’s work is most relevant for our discussion in as far as it contains numerous (and interesting) commentaries on some of the most disturbing instances of political violence in the twentieth century—notably the crimes against humanity perpetrated by fascist and communist regimes. In the first part of my essay, I will analyze Sartre’s play Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands). Published in 1948, this is one of Sartre’s earliest works to deal directly with contemporary political violence. Although references to political violence had already appeared in earlier fictional works such as Le Mur (The Wall, 1938), Les Mouches (The Flies, 1943), La Putain respectueuse (The Respectful Prostitute, 1946), Les Jeux sont faits (The Chips Are Down, 1947), and Le Sursis (The Reprieve, 1947), nowhere else can one find a more striking debate on the legitimacy of the use of political violence than in Dirty Hands. However, Sartre continued his reflection on violence after Les Mains sales, which is why in the second part I will weigh Sartre’s thoughts on violence as they appear in some of his later works, interviews, and public statements. Finally, this article will also invite readers to reflect on the intellectual legacy and moral (ir)responsibility of major twentieth-century public intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre.

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Political Violence And/As Evil: Sartre’s Dirty Hands

Dirty Hands: Text, Context, and Interpretations Sartre’s Dirty Hands was performed for the first time in Paris at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris on April 2, 1948.9 Although it has become a fairly well-known play ever since, a discussion of the key episodes of the story is necessary here in order to better understand the pivotal role that political violence plays in Dirty Hands. The plot is set in the last years of World War II (1943-1945) in the fictional Eastern European nation of Illyria which, as some critics conjecture, is based on Hungary.10 In the opening scene, the radio speaker announces that German troops are retreating on all fronts and that the Soviet army is only forty kilometers from the Illyrian border. Illyria is an ally of Fascist Germany but faces the prospect of being invaded by the USSR and incorporated into the Eastern Bloc. However, the German army still has five divisions stationed in Illyria, which puts the leaders of the country in a difficult situation. Should they try to find a modus vivendi with the German occupier or simply await deliverance from what might turn out to be their next occupier? The initial dialogue between two main characters of the play, young communist activists Hugo Barine and Olga Lorame, progressively reveals the sequence of events that has led to the current situation: Hugo was recently released from prison after being convicted for the assassination of Hoederer, the then proletarian party leader. Everything started with Hoederer’s proposal to hold talks with the other Illyrian political groups (the Fascist government and the “Pentagon,” a five-party alliance that grouped together the Liberal and Nationalist résistants). The plan was to create a political coalition that would stand up to the German occupation and govern the country after the imminent Soviet invasion. However, proletarian hardliners such as Louis (another important character of the play) and Hugo strongly opposed any collaboration with non-communist parties. At first, Hugo does not fully understand why Louis was against Hoederer’s proposal but accepts Louis’s judgment nonetheless: “Alors s’il est contre, je suis contre aussi. Pas besoin de savoir de quoi il s’agit” (If he’s against it, then I am, too. I don’t even have to know what the proposal is, Act II, scene 3).11 He simply declares that, “objectively speaking,” Hoederer is a traitor to the communist cause and has to be eliminated, but Hugo does not explain why this murder is absolutely necessary. Initially, Louis suggests that Hugo should merely move in with Hoederer and do surveillance work. Probably in order to prove himself, Hugo insists that he should be the one to assassinate Hoederer. Louis then realizes that the young communist convert is the perfect tool to achieve that purpose and accepts: “Tu iras chez Hoederer et tu lui lâcheras trois balles dans le

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ventre” (You will go to Hoederer and put three bullets into his belly, I, 1). The entire play is therefore built around the nature of political violence: Is it legitimate as a necessary evil, or is it simply evil? Following Louis’s plan, Hugo and his wife move in with Hoederer, who hires the young man as a secretary. Although the purpose of Jessica and Hugo’s stay with Hoederer is quite serious (even morbidly so), there is a certain childish lightness to their dialogues. To Jessica, everything seems to be a game (“Tu joues bien au révolutionnaire,” You’re certainly playing at being a revolutionary, III, 1), while Hugo’s repeated attempts to convince her that the murder plan is anything but a joke are unsuccessful. Their conversation is cut short by Slick and Georges, Hoederer’s bodyguards, who have come to search the newcomers’ room. Hugo is bold enough to refuse but the entire conflict is quickly put out by Hoederer. The room and body searches remain fruitless since Jessica has already hidden the gun (III, 3). Although Hugo becomes Hoederer’s protégé, the young man cannot forgive the party leader for accepting an alliance with the other parties in exchange for half of the seats in the government. Unlike the idealistic Hugo, Hoederer is revealed to be a pragmatic person who knows how to use circumstances to promote the interests of his party. His keen political sense tells him that he can use the approaching Soviet armies as a pretext to give the communists a privileged position in the future government. However, Hugo still does not agree with the idea of a compromise with the other parties, and reaches for his revolver to kill Hoederer. His plan goes amiss only because of an unexpected bomb explosion nearby (IV, 4). Hugo realizes that the bomb was detonated by those who sent him to kill Hoederer, which suggests that the party hardliners do not trust him to fulfill the plan. While intoxicated, Hugo almost gives his plan away during a conversation with Hoederer’s guards, but by pretending to be pregnant, the astute Jessica saves him once again (IV, 6). Olga later informs Hugo and his wife that she was the one who threw the bomb, and tells the young man that the party will consider him a traitor if he does not kill Hoederer (V, 1). Frightened by the prospect of an actual assassination, Jessica attempts to convince Hugo that a plan change would be appropriate. Instead of killing him, Hugo should seek to work with Hoederer. In a poignant dialogue that constitutes one of the key moments of the play, Hoederer explains to Hugo the reasons for his more pragmatic attitude (V, 3). His reluctance to ask for absolute power for the Proletarian Party is motivated by his desire to avoid civil war. In the short term, the Soviet invasion might prevent a civil war, but an occupying army would eventually lose the hearts and minds of the local population—and so

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Political Violence And/As Evil: Sartre’s Dirty Hands

would the governing party that supports the Soviets. Sooner or later, he argues, the people would revolt. Hugo, however, believes that the party should remain ideologically pure, and that popular revolts can be easily crushed: “Une insurrection, ça se brise. Nous établirons un ordre de fer” (An insurrection can be put down. We shall hold the country in an iron grip). Hoederer is not necessarily opposed to political violence: “Je n’ai pas d’objection de principe contre l’assassinat politique. Ça se pratique dans tous les partis” (In principle, I have no objection to political assassination. All parties do it, IV, 3). But again, for pragmatic reasons, he doubts the efficiency of such methods in the present context. True, negotiating with other parties would imply betraying the hardliners’ ideals and lying to the party’s constituency, but realistically speaking the party did lie in the past, just as everyone else has done: “Mais on a toujours un peu menti. Comme partout ailleurs” (But we have always told lies, just like any other party). Hugo’s ideological purity and insistence on keeping one’s hands clean, Hoederer contends, proves to be merely a bourgeois intellectual obsession. He, on the other hand, is a politician with “dirty hands” (which the play’s title underlines) but an efficient politician nonetheless: Moi j’ai les mains sales. Jusqu’aux coudes. Je les ai plongées dans la merde et dans le sang. Et puis après? Est-ce que tu t’imagines qu’on peut gouverner innocemment? (V, 3) [Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I’ve plunged them in filth and blood. But what do you hope? That we can govern innocently?]

Moreover, Hoederer argues, Hugo’s alleged purity could potentially cost hundreds of thousands of lives if a civil war were to break out in the aftermath of a Soviet invasion. Thus, as the party leader concludes, Hugo prefers the rigidity of his so-called principles to actual human lives: “Un intellectuel ça n’est pas un vrai révolutionnaire; c’est tout juste bon à faire un assassin” (An intellectual is never a real revolutionary; just good enough to make an assassin, V, 3). After this heated debate, Jessica finds Hoederer’s arguments quite convincing but Hugo replies that the leader’s persuasiveness makes him even more dangerous for he could convince other communists too. In the penultimate act of the play, Hoederer almost provokes Hugo to shoot him by suggesting that he is too weak; after all, he is only an intellectual. Hugo admits that he cannot assassinate Hoederer for he has come to like the “Old Man” in spite of their ideological differences. The situation changes radically one scene later, when Hugo witnesses the kiss

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given by Hoederer to Jessica. Both Jessica and Hoederer try to convince the hotheaded young man not to kill his opponent out of mere jealousy, whereas Hugo argues that jealousy is not the reason for his anger: “Laisse donc, Jessica, laisse tomber. Je ne t’en veux pas et je ne suis pas jaloux” (Never mind, Jessica, forget it. I’m not sore at you and I’m not jealous, VI, 4). At the very moment of his death, in which Hugo finally shoots him, Hoederer instructs his bodyguards not to harm the young man; it is entirely his fault for he has slept with Hugo’s wife—a final lie that is meant to protect Hugo from the bodyguards’ wrath. The story has come almost full circle from a narrative standpoint, as in the last act we witness a discussion between Olga and Hugo, which is in fact a continuation of their dialogue from the opening scene. In this act, Hugo continues to claim that it is not pure jealousy that has led him to murder Hoederer. The motive of his crime was rather his disappointment with Hoederer, for when he opened the door and saw the kiss, he was in fact coming to accept Hoederer’s help: “Je venais pour lui dire que j’acceptais son aide” (I was coming to tell him that I would let him help me, VII, 1). But when Olga pressures him to explain whether he killed for political or personal reasons, Hugo maintains a certain ambiguity: Tiens, je peux me dire tout aussi bien, si ça me chante, que j’ai tué par passion politique et que la fureur qui m’a pris, quand j’ai ouvert la porte, n’était que la petite secousse qui m’a facilité l’exécution. (VII, 1) [I could tell myself, if I had a mind to, that I shot him out of political passion and that the rage that came over me was merely the little jolt I needed to make my task easier.]

Eventually, Olga warns Hugo that he is going to be shot but she promises to protect him if he continues to work for the party. Hugo accepts (which would probably imply more assassinations) but Olga also informs him that the political situation has changed. After the invasion, the Soviets asked the communists to negotiate and collaborate with the Regent, which essentially puts the country back to where it was before Hoederer’s assassination. Moreover, Hoederer has been rehabilitated as a party hero due to a recent party policy change. Thus, Hoederer’s assassination was pointless; willingly or not, Hugo was used by the party as a mere tool for a purpose that has become meaningless as well due to the change in the official line of the party. Although Olga tries to save him, in the final scene the distressed and disillusioned Hugo opens the door to the killers who have come to eliminate him.

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Political Violence And/As Evil: Sartre’s Dirty Hands

Violence is omnipresent in this play, as Dorothy McCall rightly points out; there is a revolver in almost every scene, either hidden or aimed at someone.”12 Of course, violence is fictional here but it does have sources in historical reality. Simone de Beauvoir argued that it was the assassination of Leon Trotsky that inspired the topic of the play.13 Trotsky had spent his final years in a fortified house in Mexico, far away from the Soviet Union and especially from Stalin, who was planning to eliminate him. There are indeed certain similarities between Trotsky and Hoederer, as both of them preferred to trust those around them instead of giving in to paranoid suspicion. Moreover, Hoederer’s nickname “le Vieux” also echoes the name given to Trotsky by his guards: the “Old Man.” Finally, Trotsky was assassinated by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish communist and NKVD agent who, like Hugo, introduced himself into his future victim’s house before completing his odious task. Moreover, Mercader resembled Hugo in as far as both men came from bourgeois backgrounds, from which they eventually broke away. Mercader was dedicated to Stalin just as much as Hugo was dedicated to Louis, and just like Hugo was afraid of being “converted” by Hoederer, Mercader was afraid that Trotsky might change political positions.14 At this point, it is legitimate to ask: What can we conclude about Sartre’s position with regard to political violence from our reading of the play? At first glance, it would seem that Sartre viewed violence quite unfavorably, if not as “evil.” To put it in Sartrean terms, Hugo’s story is one of existential contradiction, for he has joined the party in order to liberate other men, but at the same time he is abandoning his own freedom by adopting the official party line in accepting to assassinate Hoederer. He thus allows party politics to dictate his actions, thereby escaping his “radical freedom” and committing an act of “bad faith.” In a 1948 interview for the French newspaper Combat, Sartre summarizes perfectly Hugo’s contradiction: “He realizes that he has killed for nothing, that he has acted against himself, and so he gets himself killed.”15 Sartre’s repudiation of political violence can also be inferred from his repeated claims that he disliked the character Hugo and preferred Hoederer. According to Francis Jeanson, Sartre once made the following statement about the protagonist of the play: Je voulais d’abord qu’un certain nombre de jeunes d’origine bourgeoise qui ont été mes élèves ou mes amis, et qui ont actuellement vingt-cinq ans, puissent retrouver quelque chose d’eux dans les hésitations de Hugo. Hugo n’a jamais été pour moi un personnage sympathique, et je n’ai jamais considéré qu’il eût raison par rapport à Hoederer. […] Mais c’est l’attitude de Hoederer qui seule me paraît saine.16

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[I wanted a certain number of young people of bourgeois background who have been my students or my friends and who are now twenty-five years old to recognize something of themselves in the hesitations of Hugo. Hugo has never been for me a likeable character, and I never thought that he was right and Hoederer was wrong. […] Only Hoederer’s attitude seems to me healthy.]

In the 1964 interview with Paolo Caruso, Sartre also repeats several times his dislike of the young revolutionary: Hugo is in the wrong from start to finish. It is Hoederer who must be in the right.17 I repeat, Hugo is in the wrong, Like any committed intellectual, or any intellectual who is thinking of committing himself to a revolutionary path with the pretext and half-formed wish to preserve his bourgeois “nature,” he is in a situation almost as ambiguous as of the worker priests […]. He is in the wrong right up to the end of the play.18

In this line of interpretation, Hugo is part of a long line of Sartrean characters whose actions are based not on their own reasoning but on external pressures. That is what Sartre would have called an “inauthentic life,” and Hugo is one of these inauthentic characters, along with Olga, Charles, Georges, and Slick. What defines the latter is not their understanding of the existential situation in which they find themselves, but their constant obsession with following orders. For instance, Olga has no qualms about telling Hugo that she would not hesitate to kill him (or let him be killed), should the party expect this of her: “Hugo je ferai ce que le Parti me commandera. Je te jure que je ferai ce qu’il me commandera” (Hugo, I shall do as the party tells me. I swear I shall do whatever they require of me, I, 1). Charles, too, asks Olga to let him do “his job,” which is to kill Hugo: “Laisse-moi faire mon boulot, Olga” (Let me do my job, Olga, I, 2). When Hugo refuses to allow Hoederer’s bodyguards to search his room, Slick replies dismissively: “Te fatigue pas, petite tête, on a des orders” (Don’t knock yourself out. We got our orders, III, 2). True, Hugo is not exactly the likes of George, Slick, or Olga, who never question the orders that they receive, and this is precisely what makes Hugo a richer, fuller character than all the others. The scene in which Hugo refuses to allow George and Slick to perform the room search is only one of his many moments of revolt against the political machinery that rules over his own party. Hugo’s relative individualism sets him apart from the others, who see themselves only as fragments of a larger collectivity, and this is precisely the reason why the other party members

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feel a deep distrust toward him. For them, he is essentially a bourgeois intellectual who refuses to serve the party line without questioning it. Louis, for instance, does not mince his words when describing Hugo: “C’était un petit anarchiste indiscipliné, un intellectuel qui ne pensait qu’à prendre des attitudes, un bourgeois” (He is an undisciplined anarchist, an intellectual who thought only of striking an attractive pose, a bourgeois, Act I, 3). It should be mentioned in passing that although Sartre always argued that he felt much closer to Hoederer than to Hugo, it is impossible not to notice certain similarities between himself and the latter. Like Hugo, Sartre came from a privileged background and ended up on the radical left side of the political spectrum. Sartre felt that he needed to be on the side of the proletariat, yet his intellectual credentials prevented him from becoming an actual proletarian. Later, when Hugo hesitates to carry out the assassination, Louis is quick to call him a traitor, which is probably how Sartre felt too every time he refused to follow the official line of the French Communist Party. Francis Jeanson is right to point out that Hugo’s dilemma was in a way Sartre’s own: Should an intellectual silence his conscience in order to become a mere foot-soldier or a service provider for the Party?19 But whereas there are many similarities between Sartre’s own biography and Hugo, Sartre’s distance from his character is nonetheless evident. In spite of the moments of revolt that prove that Hugo wants to lead an authentic life by remaining faithful to the party as well as to himself, his murder of Hoederer ends up playing into the hands of the communist hardliners.20 By abandoning his “radical freedom,” he allows himself to become a mere tool in the hands of the party—a “useful idiot,” to use Lenin’s words. Thus, at the end of the play, Hugo is not any more “authentic” than Louis, Olga, George, Slick, or Jean Aguerra, the revolutionary dictator from the screenplay L’Engrenage (In the Mesh, 1948).21 In L’Engrenage, the journalist Lucien Drelitsch criticizes Aguerra for not being able to keep his “hands clean,” while the latter constantly justifies his attitude through the force of circumstance. Like Aguerra and Louis, Hugo becomes convinced that it is, as Marxists would put it, a “historical necessity” to resort to revolutionary violence in order to cure the ills of society; and like Lenin, Hugo ends up believing that “one can’t expect to make an omelet without breaking eggs.” In the end, Hugo’s hands have become irremediably dirty—ironically, just like Hoederer’s.22 But is this truly enough to conclude that Sartre was against the use of violence in politics? I would like to argue here that the answer is far from affirmative, as the existential interpretation proffered above suggests.

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Political violence is indeed one of the attributes of Sartrean characters but it also seems that it is not exactly what Sartre is blaming them for. In fact, it is a lack of authenticity, as well as an excess of idealism (in Hugo’s case) or of realpolitik (in Louis and Hoederer’s case) rather than the actual use of violence that the French writer seems to find more reprehensible. Nowhere in his interviews does Sartre mention that it is violence per se that made him dislike Hugo. The focus of Sartre’s condemnation seems to be Hugo’s idealism and his excessive emphasis on ideological purity that eventually led to Hoederer’s and Hugo’s own tragic end. Moreover, although Sartre said repeatedly that he disliked Hugo, there is also evidence proving that his attitude towards the young revolutionary was in fact rather unclear. In an interview for Le Figaro (March 30, 1948), for instance, Sartre claimed that in his opinion, Hugo was neither right nor wrong: As in Sophocles, none of my characters is in the wrong nor in the right. A remark by Saint-Just, “No one governs innocently,” supplied me with the theme of Dirty Hands. This young man has deserted his class for the sake of this ideal, and it is for its sake that he will kill the leader whom he admired but who was more concerned with the end than with the choice of means. And I go on to show that he will lose this right by exercising it. He in turn will have dirty hands.23

To make things even more ambiguous, in the 1964 interview with Caruso in which Sartre admitted that Hugo was in the wrong, he also states that he feels sympathetic toward the character: “I can entirely appreciate Hugo’s sympathy,”24 and “Hugo has my sympathy.”25 Murderer or not, Hugo is for Sartre not really evil; he is just too young, too inexperienced, and his violence can be somehow justified in the end: Hugo is my students, or rather my former students; they are the young men who found it extremely hard between 1945 and 1948 to join the Communists because, with their petty-bourgeois background, they were faced, not with a party that could help them, but with a party that in its dogmatism either made use of their defects and turned them into radicals, extremists, and the like or repulsed them, thus putting them in a quite intolerable position.26

Sartre’s attitude toward Hugo is thus more ambivalent than it seems, and the same could be said about his attitude toward the use of violence. In the 1948 interview for Combat, for instance, Sartre argues that his play is a meditation on “whether a revolutionary may risk jeopardizing his ideals for the sake of efficacy.” Commenting on Hugo, Sartre goes on to ask:

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Political Violence And/As Evil: Sartre’s Dirty Hands

“Has he the right to ‘dirty his hands?’”27 The question is quite obviously open-ended, which implies that Sartre did not necessarily envisage a negative answer. In the 1964 interview, Sartre goes even further by arguing that political violence is in fact sometimes justifiable: In a period of underground resistance—take the case of the Algerian FLN, for example—cases occur in which the physical elimination of an opposition is necessary, because the opposition poses a terrible threat. […] There are things which have to be done which I, personally, consider inevitable.28

Thus, Sartre does not condemn wholeheartedly Hugo’s use of violence nor the use of political violence in general. Although he appears to disapprove of it at times, it never amounts to an utter and unflinching embrace of nonviolence. In fact, as I will show in the following section, the French philosopher’s “curiously ambivalent”29 attitude towards violence is not limited to his early works and can be noticed in his later works as well.

The Sartrean Paradox: Political Violence as Objectionable Yet Justifiable Although the concept of violence is not as prominent in Sartre’s philosophy as notions such as “existence,” “freedom” or “authenticity,” discussions of the legitimacy, uses, and philosophical and political significance of violence appear time and again in his writings and public statements. Already in L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness, 1943), Sartre suggested that conflict is almost a pre-condition for life in human societies: “le conflit est le sens originel de l’être-pour-autrui” (conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others).30 Ronald Santoni convincingly argues that this idea takes its inspiration from the Hegelian dialectic relationship between master and slave; in this world, human beings become human by demanding from the Other to recognize them as such, but this recognition is far from easy and often ends in conflict.31 Similarly, in Sartre’s thought, a human being’s “original fall is the existence of the Other.”32 The Other can see me in a different way than I see myself; the Other can objectify me, and in a sense, deny me the absolute freedom that, according to Sartre, all humans possess by birth. In response to my objectification by the Other, Sartre contends, there are several possible responses: I can counter-objectify the Other, make myself loved (and thus recognized) by it or try to “transcend the Other’s transcendence” through other means, which may include violence. Thus, the relationship with the Other is presented as fundamentally conflictual—and potentially violent—

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from the very early stages of Sartre’s philosophical work. Although the French thinker describes human interrelations from a strictly phenomenological standpoint here, its intrinsic pessimism was instrumental in setting the tone for the analysis of violence in some of his later works. In 1946, Sartre published Matérialisme et révolution (Materialism and Revolution), in which he both attacks a certain type of materialist Marxism and elaborates his views on violence, more specifically revolutionary violence.33 Sartre continues here his reflection on the rapport with the Other and on humans’ innate freedom that he had begun to develop in Being and Nothingness. But in Materialism and Revolution, Sartre also argues that revolutionary action is essentially an affirmation of freedom against the denial of freedom by oppressive forces.34 In revolutions and counterrevolutions, violence becomes both “inevitable” and “justifiable,” since it is physical violence as a response to political and social violence against an oppressed class.35 Thus, according to Sartre, far from being evil, violence becomes the “affirmation of human freedom in and through history.”36 At the same time, however, revolutionary violence should be used with caution and without excess in order to acknowledge the Other (although an “oppressor”) as a human being. Thus, two years before the performance of Dirty Hands, Sartre did not really seem to take issue with the use of violence, which is permissible and “justifiable” in limited amounts if it is in response to “oppression.” Written around 1947-1948 and published posthumously in 1983, the Cahiers pour une morale (Notebooks for an Ethics) contain a lengthy section in which Sartre elaborates on his understanding of violence. He begins this analysis by opposing the concept of violence to force. Force is essentially strength used “en agissant conformément à la nature des choses” (by acting in conformity with the nature of things), whereas violence violates the “internal laws” of the object. As a practical example, force is used when one uncorks a bottle, whereas violence is when one breaks the bottle. In this line of interpretation, violence is the inadequate use of force, “pure nonbeing” and “pure nihilating power”—a negative force through and through. For a violent man, the world is a mere obstacle between himself and his appetite for destruction. Moreover, a violent person necessarily acts in bad faith because he relies on the world to provide him with ever new objects on which he can unleash his destructive impulses. As a result, Sartre seems to suggest here that violence, as a nihilating force, is evil. Thus, Sartre’s denunciation of violence in the Notebooks apparently contradicts what he had written earlier about “justifiable” violence in Materialism and Revolution. Elsewhere in the Notebooks, however, the

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analysis of the concept of violence becomes ambiguous once again. When discussing the relationship between violence and rights, Sartre claims that violence can also be seen as a form of the “recuperation of a right,” which in fact not only legitimizes violence but also implies that every claim to a certain right can breed violence; rights and violence might actually be one and the same thing (“ne font qu’un”).37 But are we then supposed to believe that violence and human rights are synonymous if we consider the case of, say, the right to life, liberty, and security of one’s person? Again, Sartre speaks here from a phenomenological perspective, and indeed, the defense of certain rights did occasionally lead to violent acts, but this conflation of rights and violence is debatable and distressing to say the least. If legitimate rights and violence were “one and the same thing,” humanism and terror would become synonyms as well—with the disastrous consequences that we can imagine. A few years later, in 1952, Sartre and Camus became the protagonists of a bitter debate that was not only a strain on the two thinkers’ friendship but also one of the major intellectual disputes of the century. The SartreCamus argument is relevant for our discussion because the casus belli was none other than the two philosophers’ diverging positions on the legitimacy of political violence. A certain tension between the two writers could be sensed as early as 1949, when Camus had published The Just Assassins (Les Justes),38 a play often regarded as a response to Dirty Hands. As in Sartre’s play, the main plot of The Just Assassins is the planned murder of a politician, the Grand Duke Sergei Romanov of Russia. In The Just Assassins, Kaliayev resembles up to a certain point the Sartrean character Hugo, but when it comes to the actual assassination, whereas Hugo’s attempt to murder Hoederer is thwarted by Olga, the more emotional Kaliayev abandons his plan at the sight of a group of children. Like Hugo, Kaliayev is under constant pressure to prove his allegiance to the revolutionary cause by party hardliners such as Stepan, who seems to be an echo of Louis, Olga, George, and Slick from Sartre’s play. Kaliayev, too, ends up killing the political leader that he had been prodded all along to assassinate. During his imprisonment, Kaliayev is confronted by the chief of police Skuratov and the Grand Duchess. In a touching dialogue between Kaliayev and the latter, the widowed woman emphasizes the fact that her husband was not just a politician but also—and perhaps above all else—a human being. Thus, the Grand Duchess suggests that Kaliayev achieved his political purposes only at the expense of his own humanity. The play ends with Dora, a former lover of Kaliayev’s, vowing to fight against tyranny just like the now dead Kaliayev. Although both Kaliayev and Dora seem to approve of political murders, one can sense Camus’s

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unease with revolutionary violence through a series of remarks made by both characters. When Stepan argues that Kaliayev should have thrown the bomb at the risk of killing the children, Kaliayev responds: “tuer des enfants est contraire à l’honneur. Et, si un jour, moi vivant, la révolution devait se séparer de l’honneur, je m’en détournerais” (killing children is a crime against a man’s honor. And if one day the revolution thinks fit to break with honor, well, I’m through with the revolution).39 Dora, too, says in reply to Annenkov: “Si ma seule solution est la mort, nous ne sommes pas sur la bonne voie” (If death is the only solution, then we have chosen the wrong path),40 which certainly echoed Camus’s dislike of totalitarian regimes and practices. And then, in a very Camusian manner, Dora argues that the only path should be the one that leads to life… and sunlight: “à la vie, au soleil.” The tension between Camus and Sartre further escalated when the former published L’Homme révolté (The Rebel) in 1951.41 Like The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Rebel was an essay on topics dear to Camus such as life, suicide, the absurd, and revolt. Already in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus had argued that revolt was indeed the only thing that gives life its value and makes it less absurd, whereas suicide was a non-solution, an inauthentic form of escapism from the absurdity of life. Camus continues this meditation in The Rebel, where he argues that although revolt is still the defining element of human life, murder should be considered an inauthentic form of revolt along with suicide. This is not to say that Camus was resolutely against the use of violence in politics. A year before the publication of his novel, Camus had pointedly declared that he was not necessarily preaching non-violence. However, violence was for him “inevitable and at the same time unjustifiable”; realistically speaking, violence cannot be completely eradicated but at least it can be delegitimized and restricted as much as possible.42 In spite of Camus’s very nuanced position on violence, his book prompted a fierce response from Sartre and his protégé Francis Jeanson. On February 22, 1952, Camus and Sartre both attended a meeting in support of the Spanish union members sentenced to death by Franco. After the meeting, Sartre warned Camus that the review of his book in Les Temps modernes would not be a favorable one.43 And indeed, Francis Jeanson’s article “Albert Camus ou l’âme révoltée” was the beginning of an intellectual war that did not leave any of the participants unscathed.44 In his review, Jeanson essentially argued that Camus’s notion of rebellion was too metaphysical and not historical enough. Moreover, Jeanson could not possibly approve of Camus’s claim that revolutions were merely perverted rebellions. Polite bourgeois rebellions such as Camus’s, Jeanon

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implied, could not supplant violent revolutionary means to change the lives of, say, a Madagascan tortured by police or a Vietnamese cleansed by napalm.45 Albert Camus replied in August of that same year with a long letter addressed to the editor, Jean-Paul Sartre, thus suggesting that Jeanson was merely Sartre’s ghost writer. In his “Lettre au directeur des Temps modernes;” Camus both denies the accusations of anhistoricism and accuses Jeanson and Sartre of overlooking the crimes committed in the name of socialist revolutions.46 Camus must have been aware of Sartre’s condemnation of Stalin in “Les Communistes et la paix” in an article published in July,47 but he probably wanted to suggest that Sartre’s ambiguous relations with the Communist Party did not make of him a credible and wholehearted critic of communist violence. As Camus argues, Jeanson would want us to rebel against everything except the Communist Party, whose violence Marxists justify in the name of historical necessity.48 Camus also suggested that while he was not the proponent of armchair rebellions, he did not condone revolutions that ended up in uncontrollable violence. Here too, Camus insists on the idea of “mesure” (moderation) when it comes to revolutionary action. Sartre’s response came quickly, in the following issue of Les Temps modernes.49 First of all, Sartre denied vehemently that Jeanson was his henchman; second (almost contradicting his first argument), Sartre develops an idea already mentioned by Jeanson, which is Camus’s refusal of history; third, he argues that Camus’s “ideal revolt” is merely a way of avoiding the main problem of contemporary society, which is the plight of the poor. Nonviolence, Sartre suggests, will bring the people absolutely nothing. Thus, Sartre does not openly praise revolutionary violence but does so indirectly, by condemning Camus’s anti-revolutionary rhetoric—a rhetoric that had made Camus exclaim that Sartre’s “absolute freedom” was in fact a dangerous type of “freedom” that could lead to violence, terror, and war.50 Indeed, it is ironic how in some sense, Sartre played the role of Hugo from his own Dirty Hands by constantly accusing Camus, as Hugo did of Hoederer, for not taking his convictions far enough. Of course, Sartre did not exactly “assassinate” Camus literarily, but the relationship between the two was damaged beyond repair after this incident. Given Sartre’s ambivalent relationship with communism, Camus was certainly justified to distrust Sartre with respect to his condemnation of violence in communist regimes. In June 1953, for instance, Sartre denounced the Rosenberg executions in the United States yet remained curiously silent about the uprising that took place in East Germany that same year. Moreover, his earlier condemnation of Stalin’s excesses did not prevent him from taking a trip to the USSR in 1954 and, upon his return,

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declaring to the French leftist newspaper Libération that “la liberté de critique est totale en URSS” (the freedom to criticize is unrestricted in the USSR, July 15, 1954). Suddenly, all of the atrocities committed against the enemies of the Soviet regime—which were already notorious thanks to the Kravchenko case (1949), and of which Sartre was fully aware51— seemed to matter much less, now that Sartre had decided that communism and the USSR were fundamentally “non-violent.” However, Sartre was forced to admit that he was wrong about this in 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution; the “non-violent” forces of the USSR killed thousands of Hungarians in that tragic month of November. The French thinker was shocked by the brutality of the invasion, and on November 9, 1956, he condemned the USSR in an interview for L’Express. In the interview, Sartre vowed to break all ties with the Soviet writers who did not condemn the invasion and claimed that he was forced to distance himself from the Communist Party. This did not prevent him, however, from attending a cocktail party given by Khrushchev at the Soviet Embassy in Paris just a few months later, then traveling to Cuba to visit Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1960. Sartre continued to articulate in writing his reflections on the idea of violence again. In the first volume of the Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of Dialectical Reason), also published in 1960,52 he analyzed the idea of violence from a slightly different angle than in the Notebook, his previous major philosophical work. In the Critique, Sartre approaches violence from both a phenomenological and an economic angle, arguing that violence is often bred by the material scarcity of our world.53 The Other becomes a competitor in the race to secure decent material conditions for oneself and, as Sartre puts it, evil (or inhumanity) comes to be seen as the fundamental nature of the Other (“la saisie du mal comme structure de l’Autre”).54 Thus arises the desire to suppress evil by suppressing the Other although, Sartre warns, one may dehumanize oneself by wanting to destroy the inhumanity of the Other. But after this apparent delegitimization of violence, Sartre will return to an argument from his previous works, which is that all violence is in fact counterviolence, mere retaliation to the initial violence committed by the Other,55 and even “justified,” “legitimate defense.”56 The justification of violence goes one step further in Sartre’s analysis of what he calls “groups-infusion” or “fused groups,” such as the crowd that stormed the Bastille, or any revolutionary group, for that matter. In order to prevent the dissolution of the group, its members must take an oath that guarantees that they abandon their right to individual freedom and thereby allow the group to punish them if they betray the group. This pledge creates between the

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members of the group a bond of fraternity and “Terror,” as Sartre calls it.57 Thus, Fraternity-Terror gives every group member a “right” of “legitimate” violence over the others.58 Traces of this rather positive view of violence can also be noticed in the second volume of the Critique, written most probably in the late 1950s and published in 1985.59 Here, Sartre claims again that non-violence is often a synonym of complicity, since a nonviolent person is necessarily an accomplice of the oppressor.60 Not only does this contradict Sartre’s earlier condemnations of violence, but it also makes one wonder if Sartre would have considered Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. as accomplices of their oppressors. Although the analysis of violence in the two volumes of the Critique purports to be purely phenomenological, it is difficult for any reader not to realize its (im)moral implications. If all violence is counter-violence, then every violent act can be justified as counter-violence based on highly subjective criteria, thus generating an endless cycle of (counter)violence. Moreover, the elimination of non-violence as a counterweight to the surrounding violence based on the argument that non-violence equates to non-assistance would further enhance the downward spiral of violence. Raymond Aron was certainly right to assert that what is presented in Sartre’s work as a philosophy of “human liberation” has gradually turned into a full-blown “philosophy of violence.”61 I believe it has become clear by now that from the late 1950s on, Sartre was slowly moving away from his initial ambivalent position towards a much more pro-violence stance, and pro-revolutionary violence in particular. It is also obvious that Sartre’s political involvement is the main cause of this ambiguity of the concept of violence in his literary and philosophical works. Sartre the philosopher may have been reluctant to advocate the use of violence in politics, but Sartre the political activist often regards it as a “legitimate” means to alter the course of the world. Thus, Sartre’s incendiary 1961 preface to Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth)62 could hardly come as a surprise. Fanon’s book elaborated on a certain number of Sartrean ideas, such as the notion of legitimate violence as counter-violence (the violence of the colonial governments and the counter-violence of the indigenous peoples), the sense of community that revolutionary violence can create and the idea of liberation through violence among others, and it only seemed to beg a preface from Sartre himself. But in the preface, Sartre did not just limit himself to (rightfully) condemning European colonial regimes in the developing world. In fact, he overemphasized the role that violence could play in the liberation of these countries and argued that only one type of violence (that of the colonists) could be condemned, whereas the violence

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perpetrated by the locals is a mere “consequence” of the former. Here, both Fanon and Sartre resolutely turn their back on the Gandhian view of non-violence and argue that violence should be answered with violence. Moreover, Sartre does not abstain from inciting the colonized to murder Europeans without remorse: En ce premier temps de la révolte, il faut tuer: abattre un Européen c’est faire d’une pierre deux coups, supprimer en même temps un oppresseur et un opprimé: restent un homme mort et un homme libre.63 [For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man.]64

No matter how much one tries to read this sentence in its historical context, it is nonetheless obvious that here, Sartre is inciting murder. In fact, the entire preface is traversed by this desire to legitimize revolutionary violence which, Sartre insists, is fully “justified.” As for non-violence, no matter how efficient it may have been in other cases (which Sartre is obviously not willing to discuss), the French philosopher brushes it aside sarcastically: Ils ont bonne mine, les non-violents. Ni victime, ni bourreau […] Mais si le régime tout entier et jusqu’à nos non-violentes pensées sont conditionnées par une oppression millénaire, votre passivité ne sert qu’à vous ranger du côté des oppresseurs.65 [A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims […]. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors.]66

This position both echoes Sartre’s newfound stance on non-violence from the Critique and anticipates some of the philosopher’s later attitudes and public statements. Sartre seemed to have forgotten about the invasion of Budapest and returned to the “peaceful” USSR several times in the 1960s. In 1968, he condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia, but while in Prague he shocked the audience by claiming that communism was still the only credible ideology in the world. After defending the Israelis in the Six Day War (1967), Sartre switched sides after the Munich massacre (1972) and described terrorism as the “sole weapon” of the “abandoned, betrayed, [and] exiled.” Two years later, Sartre proved that his interest in terrorism had not diminished as he paid a visit to Andreas Baader, the German

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terrorist and leader of the communist paramilitary group Rote Armee Fraktion. Despite Sartre’s flirtation with the idea of violence and even terrorism from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, the ambiguous nature of his ideas on violence does not end here. In his 1980 interviews with Benny Lévy in L’Espoir maintenant (Hope now), Sartre’s position on violence is once again unclear—even contradictory.67 When confronted by Benny Lévy for his highly controversial ideas on revolutionary violence, Sartre seems to be on the defensive, and his answers are often evasive or simply at odds with past and recent statements. For instance, when asked if he still believes that violence can be viewed as the midwife of history, Sartre replies that violence can certainly not draw humanity together. As a matter of fact, violence is “the opposite of fraternity”68—a statement that stands in sharp contrast to what Sartre had written about Fraternity-Terror in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. However, Sartre confesses later that he still approves of violent struggles against colonial regimes or against any other unjust government. Whether one calls it a “necessary evil” or not, Sartre still believes that “the only way to push back colonialism is violence.”69 But it is only the violence of the colonized against the colonizer that can be called just, unlike other types of violence. Pressed again by Benny Lévy to clarify if he believes in the redemptive and liberating qualities of violence, Sartre becomes more equivocal and points in a direction that he had already advocated in earlier works: violence is just a “necessary evil.”70 It remains unclear, however, whether Sartre still believes that Terror and Fraternity can be seen as synonyms as in the Critique, and why violence is really a necessary evil. As the interviews with Benny Lévy were conducted as late as a few weeks before Sartre’s death, the French philosopher has apparently chosen to remain ambivalent on the issue of violence until the very end of his life.

Sartre’s Own Dirty Hands? It is now safe to conclude that Sartre’s position on political violence has been ambiguous from his early works until the last interviews with Benny Lévy. However, this overall ambiguity underwent several phases. In Sartre’s early works and in Dirty Hands in particular, one senses the author’s distaste for some of the evil aspects of political violence. Violence is not condemned in a straightforward manner in Dirty Hands, but we are still a far cry from Sartre’s later political and philosophical texts such as the Critique of Dialectical Reason and the preface to Frantz Fanon’s book, in which revolutionary violence is viewed in a more

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positive light. In these works, it is the bourgeois society, colonial governments, and non-communists—rather than violence—that have come to be seen as evil. Sartre’s approval of revolutionary violence does indeed become less extreme in later texts and interviews such as the “Rome lecture”71 and Hope Now, but this is still not enough to convince us that towards the end of his life, the French philosopher had a final change of heart with regard to the so-called “redemptive” aspects of violence. While I agree with Ronald Santoni that “thinkers are entitled to shifts in their positions” and that Sartre’s approach to violence evolved from an ontological-phenomenological analysis to a more socio-historical one,72 I also believe that Sartre’s shifting positions led to substantial inconsistencies in his thought. First, although violence was not one of the main concepts of the French thinker’s philosophy, Sartre does not always define it with much precision. Sartre believes, for instance, that the violence of the oppressed classes is merely supposed to counter the violence of the bourgeoisie.73 But what type of violence does the bourgeoisie use? Is it physical, political, social, or psychological force (in the Sartrean sense) or is it simply violence? And again, how should the oppressed retaliate: by using force or violence? All of these questions remain unanswered, although Sartre seems to suggest that the bourgeoisie is using social and political violence against the oppressed, and the latter should simply retaliate with political and physical violence. Second, as I suggested earlier, the idea of violence as the claim to a right (whether actual or desired) can be highly problematic in as far as it denies the judicial system its role as guarantor of impartial justice. Moreover, it suggests that liberal democracies fail to provide their citizens with legitimate rights, which in turn “justifies” revolutionary violence. Thus, Sartre forgets (or deliberately ignores) the fact that one of the main purposes of the creation of modern judicial systems was precisely to eliminate violence based on subjective claims to a given right, whereas the existence of free elections in modern democracies allowed the protection of rights if a sufficient number of voters could agree on the legitimacy of those rights. Third, the idea that all violence is counter-violence, or response to a (again, actual or perceived) pre-existing violence is dangerous for it can generate an endless cycle of aggression, all the more so since non-violence (the antidote to the perpetuation of the cycle) is dismissed as passivity or complicity. Fourth, it is obvious by now that part of Sartre’s ambivalence stems from the duality of the perspectives that he adopts when analyzing violence. Once again, readers sense that Sartre the philosopher is

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quintessentially ambivalent about the use of violence (if not opposed to it, as suggest certain passages from Dirty Hands and the Notebooks). Sartre the political activist, however, seems to accept violence more readily as a “positive” force of political and social change, although this leads to obvious contradictions—or fluctuations, I should say—with regard to the role and nature (“good” or “evil”) of violence within his overall system of thought. The main problem with the politicization of violence is that the nature of violence becomes dependent not on its intrinsic characteristics but on the historical actors that make use of it. Thus, violence becomes “legitimate” when used by the “good” social and political actors, and “evil” when used by the others. In this respect, Sartre was obviously inspired by Marx’s teleological philosophy according to which the proletariat was bound to spearhead a revolution that, after a brief period of (most probably violent) dictatorship of the workers, was going to lead eventually to a classless society. In fact, violence is dependent here not only on teleology but also on a highly debatable view of the “good” historical actors whose subjective “right” to violence produced an objective catastrophe. In the Black Book of Communism, Stéphane Courtois estimated that the death toll of communism was nearly one hundred million.74 Although Jean-Paul Sartre died over three decades ago, some of the issues raised by his philosophy are still relevant for our world. As the post9/11 historical context showed, the issue of political violence is still very much a contemporary one. However, as I suggested earlier, Sartre’s terminological ambiguity, logical inconsistency, and moral ambivalence on violence could hardly recommend him as a model for future discussions on this topic. Instead, I believe that Hannah Arendt’s much more nuanced interpretations of notions such as “power,” “strength,” “force,” “authority,” and “violence,” together with her unflinching condemnation of all political violence (both right- and left-wing), would constitute a more commendable point of departure.75 Sartre was indeed one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century. However, just as Martin Heidegger was held responsible for his collaboration with the NSDAP and his occasional anti-Semitic positions, I believe that, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the time is now ripe to adopt a more critical view of Sartre’s work as well. To his credit, Sartre used his status as public intellectual to promote a certain number of laudable causes, but his ambiguity on political violence—especially communist violence—did not help improve the political climate of the late twentieth century. At that time, it was hardly shocking to hear irresponsible politicians such as Mao Zedong claim that “power grows out

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of the barrel of a gun,” but it was without doubt saddening to see public intellectuals hesitate to condemn (or condemn and then forgive) such reckless behavior. During the past century, no one could possibly claim, as Sartre did in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, that revolutionary violence constitutes the “beginning of humanity,”76 without, like the philosopher, dirtying one’s hands. After all, Sartre was not a minor philosopher who could hide his irresponsibility behind his lack of fame. As readers surely remember, Sartre had met many of the communist grandees of his day, from Fidel Castro to Che Guevara and Khrushchev, and had he and other public intellectuals spoken more resolutely against political violence, the number of victims of communist regimes worldwide would have perhaps been lower. True, Sartre did his best to diminish the suffering of those living under regimes that he disliked personally, but the pain inflicted in communist gulags was certainly no less harmful than the pain caused by right-wing and fascist regimes. Unlike Sartre, our century should not think that violence is more acceptable if it has a certain political, social, racial, or religious affiliation—lest we should want history to repeat itself.

Notes 1 See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 2 In this article, the notion of evil is defined as an entity or idea that causes physical or psychological harm while violating moral laws. 3 Albert Camus, Les Justes (Paris: Gallimard, 1950). 4 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970). 5 Arendt, On Violence, 35. 6 See also Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Faber & Faber, 1963). 7 I am borrowing this phrase from Tony Judt’s The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998). Tony Judt’s books have been instrumental in my understanding of the moral responsibility of public intellectuals, and that is why my article is dedicated to his memory. 8 It should be noted that Sartre is quoted by Hannah Arendt in her On Violence as one of the intellectuals who illustrate what she calls a “shift toward violence in the thinking of revolutionaries” (On Violence, 13). The entire first chapter of her book is in fact dedicated to the analysis of revolutionary violence preached by the New Left and thinkers affiliated with it. 9 The play was directed by Simone Berriau and starred André Luguet (Hoederer), François Périer (Hugo), Paula Dehelly (Olga), Marie Olivier (Jessica), and Jean Violette (Louis) in the main roles.

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10 Dorothy McCall, The Theatre of Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 57. 11 All French quotations are from the 1948 edition: Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mains sales. Pièce en sept tableaux (Paris: Seuil, 1948). The English translations are from Three Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. and trans. Lionel Abel (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1949). All future references will utilize Roman numerals to indicate the act in question, and Arabic numbers for the scene. 12 Dorothy McCall, The Theatre of Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 53. 13 Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance (New York: Putnam, 1964), 149. 14 McCall, The Theatre of Jean-Paul Sartre, 55ff. There is also another possible explanation of the historical source of the play, which does not, however, explain the overwhelming climate of violence in the play. This source was provided by an interview that Sartre gave to Paolo Caruso on March 4, 1964, a few weeks before the performance of Dirty Hands at the Teatro Stabile in Turin: “You know that in France there was a case similar to Hoederer’s, the case of Doriot, even though it did not end in murder; Doriot wanted close relations between the French Communist Party and the Social Democrats of the SFIO, and he was expelled from the party for that reason. A year later, to prevent the situation in France from degenerating into fascism and on specific Soviet instructions, the CP [Communist Party] took the road that Doriot had advocated, but without ever admitting that he had been right; and it laid the foundations for the Popular Front” (Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, Sartre on Theater (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 219). 15 Cit. in Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 208 (my italics). 16 Francis Jeanson, Sartre par lui-même (Paris: Seuil, 1955), 48. 17 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 216. 18 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 218. 19 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre par lui-même, 52. 20 Sartre is right to dismiss the passion crime hypothesis for Hugo’s murder, since the reason for his moving in with Hoederer, as well as the implications of his actions are in fact political: “Hugo has been placed in Hoederer’s entourage to kill him; he was to be the instrument for a murder, and the meaning he gave the crime are irrelevant on this level, for Hugo was simply the weapon for the crime; what is more relevant is the meaning given it by the leaders, those who took over the leadership after Hoederer,” (Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 218). This is most probably why Sartre entitled the play Dirty Hands and not, as he had initially planned, Crime passionnel. 21 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Engrenage (Paris: Nagel, 1948). 22 This is why it I believe it is not an accident that Hugo and Hoederer’s names start with the same letter. 23 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 209. See also Sartre’s nearly identical declaration for Combat (March 31, 1948): “A good play should raise problems, not solve them. All the characters in Greek tragedy are in the right and all of them in the wrong: that is why they slaughter each other and why their death achieves a tragic grandeur,” Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 208.

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Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 219-220. Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 220 26 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 220. 27 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 208. 28 Contat and Rybalka, Sartre on Theater, 213. 29 The expression belongs to Ronald E. Santoni, author of Sartre on Violence: Curiously Ambivalent (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). 30 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), 431; Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 364. 31 Santoni, Sartre on Violence, 7-10. 32 Sartre, L’Être et le néant, 263; Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 321. This sentence echoes the famous sentence of Garcin, one of the characters of Huis clos (No Exit), who says at one point that “l’enfer c’est les autres” (Hell is other people). 33 Sartre, “Matérialisme et révolution,” Les Temps Modernes 9 (1946): 1537-1563; 10 (1946): 1-32; “Materialism and Revolution,” Literary and Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. Annette Michelson (New York: Collier Books, 1962). 34 Sartre, Materialism and Revolution, 224. 35 Sartre does not, however, define oppression nor the specific types of oppression that would justify revolutionary violence (are low wages a form of oppression? are nine or ten hours spent in a factory oppression?). 36 Sartre, Materialism and Revolution, 253. 37 Sartre, Cahiers pour une morale, 185; Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, 177. 38 Albert Camus, Les Justes (Paris: Gallimard, 1950); Caligula and Three Other Plays, ed. and trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1958). 39 Camus, Les Justes, 65; Camus, The Just Assassins, 258. 40 Camus, Les Justes, 137; Camus, The Just Assassins, 295-296. 41 Albert Camus, L’Homme révolté (Paris: Gallimard, 1951); The Rebel, ed. and trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Alfred Knopf, Vintage, 1956). 42 Albert Camus, “Première réponse,” Actuelles I: Chroniques, 1944-1948 (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 184. 43 Michel Winock, Le Siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 616. 44 Francis Jeanson, “Albert Camus ou l’âme révoltée,” Les Temps modernes 79 (May 1952): 2070-2090. 45 Jeanson, “Albert Camus ou l’âme révoltée,” 2089-90. 46 Albert Camus, “Lettre au directeur des Temps modernes,” Les Temps modernes 82 (August 1952): 317-333. 47 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Les Communistes et la paix: I,” Les Temps modernes 81 (July 1952): 1-50; see also “Les Communistes et la paix: II,” Les Temps modernes 81 (October-November, 1952): 695-763, and “Les Communistes et la paix: III,” Les Temps modernes 101 (April 1954): 1731-1819. 48 Camus, “Lettre au directeur des Temps modernes,” 331. 49 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Réponse à Albert Camus,” Les Temps modernes 82 (August 1952): 334-353. 25

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Camus, “Lettre au directeur des Temps modernes,” 330. On the Kravchenko case, see Nina Berberova, L’Affaire Kravtchenko: procès intenté par V.A. Kravtchenko aux “Lettres françaises,” 1949-1950 (Arles: Actes Sud, 1993). See also Sartre and Merleau-Ponty’s article, “Les Jours de notre vie,” Les Temps modernes 51 (January 1950): 1153-1168. 52 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, vol. I (Paris: Gallimard, 1960; Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: NLB, 1976). 53 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique I, 204; Critique of Dialectical Reason I, 127. 54 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique I, 208. 55 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique I, 209. 56 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique I, 677. 57 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique I, 448-9 and 689. 58 This seems to echo an idea of Sartre’s from The Communists and Peace, in which the philosopher argued that unlike bourgeois democracies, mass democracies (i.e. Communist regimes) are governed through unanimous decisions. Unanimity, however, often implies the use of violence against opponents because, Sartre argues, “the dissident is a criminal.” 59 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, vol II (Paris: Gallimard, 1985); Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. II, ed. Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, trans. Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 1991). 60 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique II, 39. 61 Raymond Aron, History and the Dialectic of Violence, ed. and trans. Barry Cooper (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976), 160. 62 Frantz Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris: Maspero, 1961); The Wretched of the Earth, ed. and trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1968). 63 Sartre, Preface to Les damnés de la terre, 16. 64 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 22. 65 Fanon, Les damnés de la terre, 18. 66 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 25. 67 Jean-Paul Sartre and Benny Lévy, L’Espoir maintenant: Les Entretiens de 1980 (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1991); Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews, trans. Adrian van den Hoven (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996). 68 Sartre, L’Espoir maintenant, 63-64. 69 Sartre, L’Espoir maintenant, 64. 70 Sartre, L’Espoir maintenant, 66. 71 Robert V. Stone and Elizabeth Bowman, “Dialectical Ethics: A First Look at Sartre’s unpublished 1964 Rome Lecture Notes,” Social Text 13/14 (1986): 195215; “Sartre’s ‘Morality and History’: A First Look at the Notes for the unpublished 1965 Cornell Lectures,” in Sartre Alive, ed. Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven (Detroit: Wayne State University Press): 53-82. 72 Santoni, Sartre on Violence, 82. 73 Here too, the terminology used by Sartre is not very precise since he lumps together the European proletariat and anti-colonization freedom fighters in the 51

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same category of the “oppressed class.” Although this categorization may have been acceptable during the intellectual climate of the post-war years, it should be dismissed as a substandard form of sociological and political analysis. 74 Stéphane Courtois et al, Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997), 8. 75 Once again, I will refer readers to Arendt’s treatise On Violence. 76 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, 453.

THE MONSTER WITHIN: PARADOXICAL EVIL AND PERSONAL IDENTITY IN THE NOVELS OF AMÉLIE NOTHOMB BETH W. GALE

Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb has become something of a cult figure, in France and elsewhere in the Francophone and non-Francophone world. Her many quirks and obsessions, in life and in literature, have been documented endlessly: rotten fruit, discarded vegetables, chocolate, anorexia, farfetched hats, a dramatic use of cosmetics, to name but a few. There is also the fact of her astonishing literary output. She has published a well-received novel every year or so since 1992, yet claims to have written several times the number published, novels that are safely hidden away, legally protected, and that will likely never reach readers.1 Nothomb is a subject of much curiosity and speculation, despite her many international public appearances and relatively warm relationship with her readers. Indeed, some early reviews of Nothomb’s work concluded that a young woman simply could not have written her works because the narrative voice was clearly that of a mature man. This fascination with Nothomb as a person and as a writer persists, despite her familiar and long-term presence on the literary scene. This essay considers Nothomb in terms of the paradoxical theme of evil that permeates many of her texts. Nothomb occupies a place in the context of ongoing inquiry in literature and psychology about the nature of good and evil, and the relationship between the two. Carl Jung, for example, explored this theme in many of his writings in which he muses about the interconnectedness of good and evil, and the paradoxes related to their confrontation. He acknowledges that good and evil are dependent upon a precise set of conditions specific to a situation: I see very clearly: this is evil, but the paradox is just that for this particular person in this particular situation at this particular stage of development it may be good. Contrariwise, good at the wrong moment in the wrong place

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may be the worst thing possible. If it were not like this everything would be so simple—too simple.2

Jung clearly acknowledges the presence of evil in human lives: "Evil is terribly real, for each and every individual."3 For him, the confrontation between good and evil is a complex one, where the outcome is far from easy to determine: People speak sometimes of “overcoming” evil. But have we the power to overcome it? It should be remembered, first, that “good” and “evil” are only our judgments in a given situation, or, to put it differently, that certain “principles” have taken possession of our judgment. Secondly, it is often impossible to speak of overcoming evil, because at such times we are in a “closed” situation, in an aporia, where whatever we choose is not good.4

In many ways, Nothomb is a clear literary disciple of Jungian thought regarding the relative nature of the relationship between good and evil. Indeed, many of her novels reveal a familiarity with psychoanalytic theory, as will become clear in our ensuing discussion. Many critics have noted the contradictory nature of Nothomb’s literary universe. Mark Lee refers to “le style contradictoirement ironique et simple qui caractérise son oeuvre” (the contradictorily ironic and simple style that characterizes her works).5 In addition to this “contradictory” writing style, Nothomb uses the confrontation of contradictory elements as a central motif of her work. As Isabelle Constant has observed, Nothomb donne une représentation sous-jacente de la réalité, une représentation du sublime au sens kantien (Lyotard 10), c’est à dire une émotion qui apporte à la fois souffrance et plaisir. Son esthétique ressort de la confrontation du beau et du laid.6 [Nothomb gives an underling representation of reality, a representation of the sublime in a Kantian sense, that is to say an emotion that brings suffering and pleasure at the same time. Her esthetic springs from the confrontation of the beautiful and of the ugly.]

For the purposes of this essay, we will focus on another form of the conflict that Constant sees as crucial to Nothomb’s esthetic: that of good and evil. Stéphane Spoiden writes that Nothomb’s work contains “an unprecedented blend of cruelty, monstrosity and cynicism with the most sarcastic sense of humor.”7 Cruel, monstrous, cynical: Spoiden’s observation clearly points to the presence of evil in the works. Yet evil must have its opposite; Constant’s observation of the esthetic confrontation of the

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beautiful and the ugly appears, in the novels that I have chosen to examine, as a confrontation between good and evil. In many of her novels, Nothomb sets up a central conflict between a seemingly innocent, “good” character, and a pernicious, “evil” character. So begins an ostensibly straightforward confrontation between characters that, at first, appear to represent evil or resistance to it. The young journalist in Hygiène de l’assassin (Hygiene of the Assassin, 1992) engages in a duel of wits with the mysterious hermit writer who slowly divulges his heinous secret. The aging narrator of Les Catilinaires (The Stranger Next Door, 1995) tries to protect his wife’s and his tranquil retirement from the maddening intrusions of his boorish neighbor. The altruistic nurse in Mercure (1998) plots the downfall of the diabolical Capitaine Longcours, who has kidnapped an innocent victim. In Stupeur et tremblements (Fear and Trembling, 1999), the young and well-meaning narrator Amélie is repeatedly humiliated at the hands of her supervisors, especially the beautiful but competitive and cold Fubuki. The protagonist of Cosmétique de l’ennemi (Artifice of the Enemy, 2001) is plagued by a bothersome and relentless fellow passenger in an airport. The loner student in Antéchrista (Antichrista, 2003) falls prey to her beautiful and seductive but manipulative and sadistic classmate. This central confrontation between good and evil may evoke for Nothomb’s readers other literary forms such as the gothic novel, where the hero grapples with dark and dangerous enemies, or indeed the fairy tale, where benevolent or malevolent beings may help or hinder the hero on his way toward his ultimate goal. In Nothomb’s alternative literary universe, however, characters are not static, as they tend to be in fairy tales. In fact, in Nothomb’s works, “good” characters appear to become corrupted by the evil that they confront, whereas “bad” characters may reveal themselves to be sympathetic. The novels invite us to rethink our moral judgments and to identify with characters that we initially assume, wrongly, to be unlike us. Désirée Pries writes of Nothomb’s literary world as a “problematic utopia,” a space beyond binary oppositions.8 I would agree that Nothomb’s literary universe is indeed such a space, particularly with regard to good and evil. By demonstrating how characters begin as opponents and finish with an intimate understanding of the other, each finding some of the other in him or herself, Nothomb demonstrates the fluidity and nonsensical nature of moral absolutes and the futility of moral condemnation. Fabienne Ardus explores the notion of unfixed identity, rejecting permanent categorizations, in works by Nothomb and other Francophone Belgian writers. The lines between self and other are fluid, she claims, and the Other is internalized and assimilated.9 This paradigm applies to the novels

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considered here: in them, evil is ultimately revealed to be not foreign, not “other,” but rather an intimate part of the self that must be assimilated. Nothomb’s talent for slowly revealing the evil behind the good and vice-versa is such that our sympathies may shift as we read her texts, leaving us uncertain of where they should lie. The novels play with Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, in the sense of a microcosmically political confrontation, as she states in one interview, “dans le rapport à l’autre, […] le dominant, le dominé, comment on instaure un dialogue, comment ne pas s’entretuer” (in the relationship to the other, […] the dominator, the dominated, how dialogue is introduced, how not to kill each other).10 Indeed, in the central confrontation that takes place, a process of identification occurs between "good" and "bad" individuals, and the clear boundaries between good and evil become blurred. Hygiene of the Assassin, for example, portrays a duel of wits between a mysterious hermit writer and a young female journalist, the sole candidate of a series of potential interviewers capable of withstanding his intellectual cruelty. The beginning of the novel is reminiscent of the fairy tale’s trope of the impossible task, which the hero can, of course, accomplish. Yet the young journalist has no otherworldly help in confronting the monstrous recluse; she relies solely on her wits to carry her through their verbal duel. Through the elaborate dancing repartee that dominates the novel, each character develops a grudging respect for the other. Ultimately, the young journalist discovers the writer’s ghastly “secret monstrueux” (monstrous secret), that he is a killer.11 His reason for killing his beloved cousin Léopoldine, her failure to retard adolescence indefinitely, is not without importance in the context of our discussion. Prétextat Tach’s goal is to remain forever young through “hygiene,” to preserve indefinitely the innocence of youth. When his cousin has her first period, a harbinger of the corruption of adulthood, he must end her life as a form of protection, so that she will remain forever young and never become contaminated by aging. He associates killing with the job of writing: “Ecrivain, assassin: deux aspects d’un même métier,” he says (Writer, assassin: two aspects of the same trade).12 As he recounts the tale of the murder, and his reasons for considering it the ultimate act of love, his interlocutor becomes increasingly disturbed and agitated by his tale. The writer professes his love to his interlocutor, announces that she is becoming him and predicts that she will kill him. Though Nina rejects his theories, she ultimately does as predicted, joining him in what he considers the voluptuous pleasure of assassination by killing him herself. The close relationship between the two characters is underscored by a comment that the writer makes earlier in the text: “personne ne connaît mieux un individu que son assassin” (no

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one knows an individual better than his assassin).13 By killing him, then, and by enjoying the act (Je dois avouer que vous aviez raison: la strangulation est un office très agréable” (I must admit that you were right: strangulation is a very pleasant service), the journalist shows a level of intimacy that belies the simplistic good/evil schematic.14 Nina’s identification with Prétextat blurs the lines between guilt and innocence. Prétextat gets what he wants, to die as his beloved died, at the hands of his “avatar.”15 Nina, meanwhile, has joined her nemesis in his most horrific of pleasures, becoming, in some sense, the monster that she has attempted to tame. In The Stranger Next Door, the narrator, Emile, engages in a conflict with his mysterious, boorish neighbor, whose infuriating, unwelcome visits try Emile’s patience beyond all reason. Emile comments on the visits’ corrosive effect on Emile’s life and on Emile himself. He likens M. Bernardin, not to evil itself, but to an empty space occupied by a “gaz maléfique” (malefic gas): “il était en train de me détruire” (he was in the process of destroying me.”16 During the course of the novel, Emile angrily confronts his “adversaire” (adversary) but when M. Bernardin no longer visits, he is unable to enjoy his absence because the constant possibility of another visit disrupts his tranquility.17 Emile saves M. Bernardin’s life during a suicide attempt but later sees his intervention as monstrous, when he understands the life M. Bernardin is living and why he wished to escape it. Later, he slowly comes to understand his unpleasant tormentor or “tortionnaire” (torturer)18 and wishes to help him in a way that shocks Emile: “Etais-je devenu un nouveau docteur Jekyll?” (Was I a new Dr. Jekyll?).19 This reference to a divided self shows the conflict within Emile, born of the confrontation and identification with the terrifying, maddening other. Indeed, as Emile says to his neighbor, “personne n’est la victime de personne, sinon de soi-même” (No one is the victim of anyone but himself) suggesting that the torture that Emile experiences because of his annoying neighbor is, in fact, of his own making.20 After the suicide attempt, when Emile calls M. Bernardin a “monstre,” Emile’s wife tells him, “‘C’est toi, le monstre!’” (“You’re the monster!”).21 The shifting concept of the monstrous reveals much about Emile’s search to understand himself in relation to his neighbor. Emile ultimately suffocates his neighbor because he believes that it is a kind and generous act, an “acte de compassion” (act of mercy) that relieves M. Bernardin of the burden of his life.22 Luc Fraisse observes in his article on Proustian influence on contemporary novelists that M. Bernardin is a “personnage a priori haïssable, tout compte fait pitoyable, que l’on tuera donc pour finir par pitié” (a character presupposed to be

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detestable, on the whole pitiable, that is ultimately killed out of pity).23 The once hateful neighbor has thus become worthy of pity, and even of a mercy killing that delivers him from his miserable existence. After the neighbor’s death, the details of which Emile hides from his wife, Emile’s wife inconceivably becomes the “best friend” of the neighbor’s almost subhuman wife. In response to these incomprehensible events, Emile’s final line: “Je ne sais plus rien de moi” (I no longer know anything about myself) reveals the ultimate unraveling of personal identity.24 Stéphane Spoiden has pointed out what he calls the “ubiquitous question of identity” in The Stranger Next Door.25 Indeed, the act of identifying with the horrifying other (for both Emile and his wife), of coming to see murder as a generous kindness (for Emile), has caused not only the loss of the couple’s romantic idyll, but a loss of personal identity as well. The idyll, based on the couple’s loving solitude, is lost when Mme. Bernardin becomes a permanent element of their lives; Emile is no longer secure in his values or his relationship, which causes him to suffer from a loss of his sense of self. Françoise, the ostensibly altruistic nurse of Mercure, spends the better part of the narrative trying to foil the evil Captain Loncours’s plans and to destroy his sadistic idyll, an island fortress where he holds young orphan Hazel captive, both literally and figuratively. Françoise slowly reveals herself to be a competitor and eventual replacement for Loncours as Hazel’s protector and/or controller. As in The Stranger Next Door, the process is slow, and the reader questions neither Françoise’s motivations nor her basic goodness until late in the novel, just as the Captain’s malevolence is questioned. The theme of monstrosity appears in various forms in the novel: Hazel’s supposed monstrous appearance, the Captain’s monstrous literal and figurative imprisonment of his two beloveds, and Françoise’s decision to embrace the Captain’s role in the second of two possible endings to the novel. Like Prétextat in Hygiene of the Assassin, the Captain believes that his crime, the kidnapping and complex subterfuge that keeps Hazel prisoner, is justified as a sublime act of love. He explains, “Vous n’avez aucune idée de ce qu’est l’amour: c’est une maladie qui rend mauvais. Dès que l’on aime vraiment quelqu’un, on ne peut s’empêcher de lui nuire, même et surtout si l’on veut le rendre heureux” (You have no idea of what love is: it is an illness that makes one bad. When one truly loves someone, one cannot help but harm him or her, even and especially if one wishes to make him or her happy).26 In one of the novel’s two endings offered by the author (who explains that she could not choose between them), Loncours calls Françoise “le serpent qui parle à mon Eve” (the serpent who speaks to my Eve), figuring himself as Hazel’s

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innocent and ideal partner and Françoise as the satanic representative come to destroy their Eden.27 Indeed, Françoise ends up not as a liberator, but as a new captor, for the unfortunate Hazel, whose reluctance to struggle against her captor and professed love for him can be linked to Stockholm syndrome, a term for the psychological phenomenon by which hostages express positive feelings toward their captors. Nevertheless, Hazel’s degree of complicity and motivations are never quite clear. In the novel’s second of two possible endings offered by the author, the “evil” character has in fact perished, but Hazel is nonetheless still a prisoner, bound by the whims of a different captor who has not only understood the motivation behind the Captain’s idyllic island of imprisoned beauty, but also come to rule over it herself. When Françoise confesses the truth to Hazel, at the end of their lives, and asks her, “Nierez-vous que je suis un monstre?” (Will you deny that I am a monster?), Hazel replies, “Certainement pas. Mais peut-il arriver mieux à une belle jeune fille que de tomber sur un monstre?” (Certainly not. But what better thing can befall a beautiful young girl than to come across a monster?).28 Nothomb effectively blurs the boundaries between good and evil, creating a character whose monstrous motivations are embraced by a seemingly benevolent character, a plot twist that has the effect of humanizing evil and problematizing goodness. Fear and Trembling introduces the readers to the young protagonist Amélie (the novel is based on Nothomb’s own experiences in Japan), the only westerner in a Japanese firm that Mark Lee calls “une enterprise incompréhensiblement machiavélique” (an incomprehensibly Machiavellian firm).29 Here, the contrast between the good, innocent character and the evil around her is most directly represented. Amélie suffers constant humiliation at the hands of her mostly male superiors, but especially at the hands of the beautiful female employee Fubuki, whom she admires and wishes to resemble. Fubuki eventually becomes Amélie’s “tortionnaire”30 (torturer) after a scene in which Fubuki is publicly humiliated by a male superior, a “monstre sadique” (sadistic monster)31, an attack that Amélie likens to a sexual assault.32 Afterward, Amélie inadvertently humiliates her colleague by witnessing Fubuki’s tears in the women’s restroom, where she has gone to offer support. Fubuki interprets Amélie’s gesture of naïve compassion as a cruel act of vengeance for her constant humiliation of Amélie. Indeed, in this almost caricatural company, superior status seems to require humiliating those of lesser importance. After her “gaffe,” Amélie is forced to work in the bathrooms, a task that exaggerates to the extreme her inferior status at the company.33 Amélie manages to find a sense of freedom from her suffering through

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compassion for and identification with Fubuki; she even amuses herself by exaggerating her abject submission and admitting her inferior intellect for her torturer’s pleasure: "Je m’amusais beaucoup: ‘C’est l’infériorité du cerveau occidental par rapport au cerveau nippon.’ Enchantée de ma docilité face à ses désirs, Fubuki trouva une repartie" (I was enjoying myself immensely: ‘the Western brain is inferior to the Japanese brain.’ Fubuki seemed both delighted by and prepared for this).34 The novel ends with a note of congratulations from Fubuki to Amélie, written in Japanese, after the publication of Amélie’s first novel. In the context of Amélie’s elaborate performance of submission earlier in the text, and of Fubuki’s sacrifice of personal life for profession, this gratifying acknowledgment takes on additional meaning. The lines between superiority and inferiority are blurred, but also those between good and evil. Amélie is humiliated but also worthy of praise; Fubuki is monstrous but capable of a generous act of tribute. The identification between the two characters reveals something of Amélie’s search for her identity, for her place in the world. In Antichrista, the young narrator, the aptly named Blanche, becomes obsessed with the beautiful and seductive Christa, but soon learns of her new friend’s capacity for evil. Christa resembles the vampires of gothic novels in her combination of attraction and danger. She seems straightforwardly evil, in contrast to Blanche’s innocent victim. As Blanche observes, “elle jouit de faire le mal et elle m’a choisie pour victime. Je ne lui apporte que du bien, elle ne m’apporte que du mal. (…) Antéchrista, (…) tu es le mal” (she enjoys giving pain and she has chosen me as her victim. I bring her nothing but good, and she brings me only evil. [...] Antichrista, […] you are evil).35 Blanche’s renaming of Christa through a play on the Christian notion of the Antichrist reveals the extent of her condemnation of Christa’s nature. Nothomb’s choices of names here are direct and clear in their significance: Christa’s town, Malmedy (mal me dit) (evil speaks to me)36 underscores the negative associations of the character from “ce bled dont le nom disait du mal” (this little backwater with evil in its name,”37 “ce lieu relié au mal” (this place with its evil connotations,)38 “la ville du mal” (the town of evil), while her surname, Bildung, suggests the new sort of education that she provides for the naïve, studious Blanche. 39 The opposition between good and evil here is stated explicitly, at least from Blanche’s point of view. When Christa accelerates her attacks on the family, Blanche reflects: “si elle nous a choisis pour cible, c’est parce que, dans ce monde médiocre, nous sommes encore ce qui ressemble le moins au mal” (If she chose us as a target it’s because, in this mediocre world, we are still as unlike her as it’s possible to be).40 Earlier in the novel,

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Blanche has tried to understand Christa and to put her cruel behaviors in context: “Christa n’est pas le diable. Elle a ses bons et mauvais côtés” (Christa isn’t the devil. She has her good sides and her bad sides).41 When Blanche reads a quote from Georges Bernanos stating that “La médiocrité, c’est l’indifférence au bien et au mal” (Mediocrity is indifference to good and evil),42 she decides to end her longstanding position of passivity with Christa and to take action against her enemy: “Je sus que je ne pourrais pas rester indifférente à un mal aussi grotesque” (I knew I could never remain indifferent to such evil).43 The confrontation consists of a scene of public humiliation in which Blanche gains the upper hand against Christa in front of an amphitheatre of classmates by kissing her instead of hitting her. Humiliating her to the point in which Christa disappears, Blanche refers to her “triomphe érasant” (crushing victory) and to her “pauvre victime effondrée qui mordait la poussière” (poor, shattered victim who had bitten the dust).44 Here, it would seem that Blanche has won a sort of victory, yet the vocabulary merely underscores her identification with Christa. In opposing her enemy through active humiliation, she has come, in a sense, to resemble her. In the final scene, this identification is further revealed when Blanche, alone during the summer, gazes at herself in the mirror and sees, to her horror, her body begin to perform Christa’s breastenhancing calisthenics, taught during an earlier scene of humiliating comparison between their bodies: “Ainsi, sa volonté fut faite, et non la mienne” (So her will was done, not mine).45 The ending reveals that the “evil” party, shamed, humiliated and ostensibly chased away, at least physically, ultimately occupies the dominant role and claims her victim in another way, through what Mark Lee calls a “psychological occupation.”46 This identification is such that Blanche sees her tormentor, her “enemy inside,” in her own body; she has internalized the critical gaze of Sartre’s infernal other.47 It is in Artifice of the Enemy, however, that this identification between combatants is most explicitly figured. During a forced conversation between two apparent strangers at an airport, the reluctant party, Jérôme, comes to realize that his annoying neighbor, who refuses to leave him alone and insists on engaging him in conversation, is none other than his wife’s rapist and murderer. In the course of an extended exchange (the same dialogical structure that Nothomb employed in Hygiene of the Assassin) filled with painful revelations, the suffering Jérôme slowly comes to suspect that his torturer does not actually exist, or rather, exists only within himself. It is an embodiment of his own psyche that has been plaguing him so. As Mark Lee writes in his review of the novel, “Au cours de cette conversation imposée on comprend que, selon le cosmétique

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nothombien, l’ennemi ne viendrait pas du dehors mais du dedans” (In the course of this imposed conversation one understands that according to the Nothombian cosmetic, the enemy comes not from the outside but from within).48 The enemy here is a part of the self, long repressed, that insists on returning and being recognized: “Je suis la partie de toi que tu t’efforces d’ignorer” (I am the part of you that you endeavor to ignore),49 Jérôme’s interlocutor explains. “Tu as l’ennemi intérieur le plus encombrant du monde: moi” (You have the most cumbersome inner enemy in the world: me).50 The Jekyll/Hyde theme of The Stranger Next Door returns here, as the enemy inside explains to Jérôme: “Tu es beaucoup moins bien que Docteur Jekyll, et par conséquent tu contiens un monstre beaucoup moins admirable que (…) Hyde” (You are far less good than Doctor Jekyll, and consequently you contain a monster far less admirable than (…) Hyde).51 For good measure, the diabolical torturer also references Rimbaud’s “je est un autre” (I is another).52 All of this means, of course, that the seemingly innocent Jérôme is in fact his wife’s murderer, and is the monster, or has in himself the “partie diabolique” (diabolical part) from which he is trying to escape.53 He killed his wife, according to his tormentor, because she saw the monster in him.54 “Chacun tue ce qu’il aime" (Everyone kills what he loves), his diabolical partner explains, recalling the similar opinions on love and violence of Prétextat Tach in Hygiene of the Assassin and of Captain Omer Longcours in Mercure.55 Ultimately, the confrontation between the two characters comes to a head when Jérôme’s evil other insists that he must be killed to be silenced: “Si tu ne me tues pas, tu passes le restant de tes jours dans une prison mille fois plus abominable: ton cerveau, où tu ne cesseras de te demander, jusqu’à la torture, si tu es l’assassin de ta femme” (If you don’t kill me, you spend the rest of your days in a prison a thousand times more abominable: your brain, where you will never cease to wonder, to the point of torture, whether you are your wife’s murderer).56 When threatened with spending the rest of his days in the “prison” of his own mind, with the “torture” of wondering whether or not he killed his wife, Jérôme shatters his enemy’s head against the wall and leaves. The reader then discovers, in a short passage resembling a news report, what the other passengers witnessed: a man smashing his own head in an apparent suicide. Jérôme’s repeated cry of “Libre! Libre! Libre” (Free! Free! Free!) during the act suggests that he is freeing himself from the torture of guilt, from the harassment of his inner enemy, at the cost of his own life.57 Mark Lee rightly observes that just as Textor Texel is the “double monstrueux de Jérôme Angust” (Jérôme Angust’s monstrous double) who calls his

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alter ego into question, the short "news report" version of the narrative that brings the novel to a close dramatically alters the reader’s comprehension of the tale.58 This confrontation ends in total identification with the evil other, which leads to the necessary destruction of both self and other. In the paradoxical literary universe of Nothomb, evil is a ubiquitous presence, but always mitigated, turned inside out so that its motivations and moral structures are exposed, or tempered by passion, insecurity, or fear. The innocent characters confront their evil others, then slowly begin to identify with them, revealing the humanity of evil, as well as the evil in themselves. This weaving of evil with its opposite gives the novels their fascinating complexity and richness. In a February 2009 conversation with Nothomb at the French Library in Boston, one admirer commented that her books, though fascinating, contain passages of difficult-to-stomach cruelty and violence. Nothomb replied simply that such violence is real and something that we all think about, even if we do not like to admit such distasteful thoughts. Her novels certainly suggest that the capacity for evil lurks within all of us, that certain circumstances can drive us all to violence. For Nothomb, love and violence strike a delicate balance. As she mentioned in a 2007 television interview, “l’amour est une ruse de notre inconscient pour ne pas assassiner autrui” (Love is a trick of our unconscious so as not to kill others).59 Perhaps then, the violence and evil manifested in her novels can be seen as various forms of love, albeit in highly rarified and morally relativist form. To be sure, characters in Artifice of the Enemy, Mercure, and Hygiene of the Assassin explicitly state this link between love and violence. The relationships in Nothomb’s novels are often ambiguous ones: hatred and fascination, fear and attraction, devotion and loathing, victimization and domination often meet in one relationship. Carl Jung reinforces this relationship between good, evil, and love in his "Answer to Job": "all manner of good as well as evil can still break through in us, particularly in regard to love."60 Love, then, can inspire great good and great evil, as Nothomb repeatedly demonstrates in her complex portrayals of human relationships. As we have mentioned, Nothomb’s universe bears a distinct resemblance to that of the gothic novel, peopled with horrifying seductive vampires, or the fairy tale, with all its psychological layers of meaning. Indeed, the confrontation in these novels can be likened to what Janet Letts calls, in her review of The Stranger Next Door, an “épreuve initiatique” (trial of initiation) commonly found in fairy tales. Letts suggests that perhaps magical intervention alone could explain Bernardin’s decision to marry his monstrous wife, and that Bernardin calls Emile’s very identity into

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question through the aforementioned “trial of initiation” as though in a fairy tale world.61 The confrontation between the characters in these novels can be read as just such a trial of initiation, where the central character confronts various evil characters on his path toward selfunderstanding. In his landmark book The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Bruno Bettelheim discusses the ways in which the characters in fairy tales can be seen as various parts of the individual psyche. In Bettelheim’s Freudian vision, the conflict between individual characters in the tales reflects conflict within the self, and a happy resolution to the tale represents the balancing of conflicting forces within the self. Bettelheim remarks that “Evil is not without its attractions,” but states that for the child to process the struggles between characters in the tales, the characters must be either good or bad; no ambivalence is allowed, at least until the child’s personality is more firmly established.62 In this sense, Nothomb’s novels reveal themselves to be fruitful material for Freudian and/or Jungian psychoanalytic examination, as an exploration of the individual psyche through conflicting and ambivalent aspects of the self. Nowhere is this more clearly depicted than in Artifice of the Enemy, where the internal conflict is literally revealed as such. Yet the other novels can also be read as the central character’s struggle for personal identity in the face of destructive outside forces, represented by the “evil” characters that they confront. Mark Lee has rightly underlined the similar struggle against the invading other in The Stranger Next Door, Artifice of the Enemy, and Antichrista. He writes of a recurring “occupation psychologique” (psychological occupation) by an “ennemi intérieur” (internal enemy).63 This concept of a fight against an internal enemy can be extended to other novels. In this sense, the Yamimoto company against which Amélie struggles for autonomy can be seen as an internalized superego, an oppressive moral structure dictating her every move. Fubuki can be read as a Jungian shadow figure against which Amélie must struggle for autonomy, or at least for dignity. Françoise begins by opposing the malevolent Captain, but ultimately usurps his throne, so to speak, and adopts his less palatable attributes. Each of Nothomb’s central characters is forced to confront a frightening or repulsive other who represents his or her internalized and repressed fears or suspicions about him or herself. Yet Nothomb works deftly with ambiguity, and her characters are not the flat portrayals of fairy tales; they shift and reveal (or discover) different aspects of themselves throughout the novel in which they appear. This deepening of character is related, in these novels, to the construction and defense of personal identity.

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In her article on Belgian Francophone writers, Cynthia Skenazi places Nothomb among many Belgian writers whose works deal with the theme of questioning identity. Maybe the only refuge for these writers, Skenazi suggests, is utopia, a fantastic realm based on nostalgia.64 Her comments help us to understand the surreal landscape that Nothomb paints in her novels. Seeking to construct or to defend their personal identity, Nothomb’s protagonists move through a less-than-real world where they confront various beings which, much like fairy-tale characters, lack dimension and seem to represent specific aspects of whole selves. The adventures that these main characters undertake and their ultimate confrontation of an evil enemy is clearly linked to the challenges facing fairy tale heroes and heroines as they struggle to secure their heart’s desire: a kingdom, a partner, a fortune. This rising to the challenge represents the hero’s process of maturation and the balancing of the conflicting forces within himself. By extension, like the young listener to fairy tales, the reader of Nothomb’s tales undergoes a parallel trial of initiation, exploring a psychologically complex alternate universe where uncomfortable truths about the world and about human nature are revealed. Nothomb clearly belongs to a tradition of psychoanalytical inquiry into the nature of good and evil that began with Freud and continues in contemporary literature. Carl Jung makes some interesting observations about the dialogue between therapist and patient that illuminate our considerations here. He writes: As soon as the dialogue between two people touches on something fundamental, essential, and numinous, and a certain rapport is felt, it gives rise to a phenomenon which Lévy-Bruhl fittingly called participation mystique. It is an unconscious identity in which two individual psychic spheres interpenetrate to such a degree that it is impossible to say what belongs to whom.65

This is fascinating in the context of Nothomb’s oft-repeated dialogical structure, where the reader often loses track of which interlocutor is speaking. Nothomb’s very narrative style, then, encourages us to confuse or to conflate two seemingly opposing characters, blurring them together so that, as Jung writes, "it is impossible to say what belongs to whom." Just as the characters are learning to identify with their opposite, so too are we as readers internalizing the intimate connection between, as well as the blurring of the distinction between, good and evil, and learning not to cling to comfortable moral absolutes. This process is therapeutic, in a Jungian sense, both for the characters involved in the dialogue and for the

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reader. Nothomb’s complex, paradoxical characters are disarmingly and alarmingly familiar, and we have much to learn from their experiences with confronting, recognizing, understanding, identifying with, and assimilating the monster within.

Notes 1

Mark Lee, “Entretien avec Amélie Nothomb,” The French Review 77.3 (Feb. 2004). 567. 2 Murray Stein, Jung on Evil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 86. 3 Stein, Jung on Evil, 91. 4 Stein, Jung on Evil, 92 5 All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Mark Lee, “Review of Métaphysique des tubes,” The French Review 75.5 (Apr. 2002). 1006. 6 Isabelle Constant, Isabelle. “Construction hypertextuelle: Attentat d’Amélie Nothomb,” The French Review 76. 5 (Apr. 2003). 934. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained: Corrrespondence, 1982-1985 (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 10. 7 Stéphanie Spoiden, “The Treachery of Art: This is Not Belgium,” Symploke 5.1 (1997). 148. 8 Désirée Pries, De/Re-Essentializing the Feminine: Subversion and Utopia in the Works of Amélie Nothomb (Ph.D. Dissertation Abstract, Indiana University, 2004). 9 Fabienne Eliane Ardus, The Discourse of Alterity in Contemporary Frenchspeaking Belgium. Claire Lejeune, Caroline Lamarche, Nicole Malinconi and Amelie Nothomb (Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1999). 10 Lee, “Entretien avec Amélie Nothomb,” 567. 11 Amélie Nothomb, Hygiène de l’assassin (Paris : Albin Michel, 1992), 182. 12 Ibid., 142. 13 Ibid., 139. 14 Ibid., 222. 15 Ibid., 216. 16 Amélie Nothomb, Les Catilinaires (Paris: Albin Michel, 1992), 84. Amélie Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, trans. Carol Volk (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), 84 17 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 100; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 98. 18 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 29; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 24. 19 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 138; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 137. 20 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 109; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 107. 21 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 111; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 109. 22 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 149-50; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 149-50. 23 Luc Fraisse, “Proust en devenir,” L’Esprit créateur 46-4 (2006). 2-3. 24 Nothomb, Les Catilinaires, 151; Nothomb, The Stranger Next Door, 152. 25 Spoiden, “The Treachery of Art: This is Not Belgium,” 148.

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Amélie Nothomb, Mercure (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998), 77. Ibid., 179. 28 Ibid.,189. 29 Lee, “Review of Métaphysique des tubes,” 1007. 30 Amélie Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 168. The English translation is mine. 31 Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements, 117. Amélie Nothomb, Fear and Trembling, trans. Adriana Hunter (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2001), 83-4. 32 Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements, 120. 33 Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements, 124. The English translation of this word is mine. 34 Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements, 169; Nothomb, Fear and Trembling, 119. 35 Amélie Nothomb, Antéchrista, (Paris: Albin Michel, 2003), 70. Amélie Nothomb, Antichrista, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 47. 36 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 117; Nothomb, Antichrista, 81. 37 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 118; Nothomb, Antichrista, 83. 38 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 120; Nothomb, Antichrista, 84. 39 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 122; Nothomb, Antichrista, 86. 40 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 138; Nothomb, Antichrista, 98. 41 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 71; Nothomb, Antichrista, 48. 42 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 144; Nothomb, Antichrista, 102. 43 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 145; Nothomb, Antichrista, 102. 44 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 146; Nothomb, Antichrista, 103. 45 Nothomb, Antéchrista, 151; Nothomb, Antichrista, 107. 46 Mark Lee, “Review of Antéchrista,” The French Review 78.1 (Oct. 2004). 201. 47 Sartre’s play Huis clos contains the well-known line "L’Enfer, c’est les autres." 48 Amélie Nothomb, Cosmétique de l’ennemi, (Paris : Albin Michel, 2001), 156. 49 Amélie Nothomb, Cosmétique de l’ennemi, 97. 50 Ibid., 98. 51 Ibid., 102. 52 Ibid., 104. 53 Ibid., 110. 54 Ibid., 113. 55 Ibid., 111. 56 Ibid., 118. 57 Ibid., 120. 58 Ibid., 156-57. 59 “Interview” (Les livres de la 8, September 26, 2007) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8khfv_amelie-nothomb-aux-livres-de-la8_creation (July 30, 2010). 60 Stein, Jung on Evil, 167. 61 Janet T. Letts, “Review of The Stranger Next Door,” The French Review 70.4 (Mar. 1997). 620. 27

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Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 9. 63 Lee, “Review of Antéchrista,” 201. 64 Cynthia Skenazi, “Romans et nouvelles belges de langue francaise (19851995),” The French Review 69.6 (1996). 913. (913). 65 Stein, Jung on Evil, 115.

WRITING WHAT CANNOT BE SAID: ENUNCIATING EVIL IN LATIFA BEN MANSOUR’S NOVELS BERNADETTE GINESTET-LEVINE

Il n’y a pas de mots pour qualifier l’inqualifiable! L’obscène ne se dit pas, ne se décrit pas, ne se parle pas.1 [There are no words to describe the indescribable! One does not describe the obscene, describe it, or speak it.]

For Algerian novelist Latifa Ben Mansour, absolute evil is what destroys not only the body and the soul, but also memory. The fact that the memory of a traumatic event cannot be adequately communicated to others constitutes part of the trauma itself. The destruction of memory causes permanent damage to the victims’ sense of identity; what makes this worse is the victims’ inability to utter their deep scream. Furthermore, when words are spoken, they can never adequately express the evil and suffering. Yet for Ben Mansour, the scream must be heard in order to give us a glimpse of evil. Writers are the ones who must bear witness, because fiction can reveal hidden aspects of victims’ experience through the unfolding of a narrative plot and the effective use of carefully chosen images. Each of Ben Mansour’s main protagonists is physically and morally destroyed. What’s more, they lack the means to tell their own destruction. Her fiction permits readers to approach—although not fully understand— this huge and total devastation of everything that makes someone human, including the ability to communicate and share. She shows us that fiction can create links between what happened to the victims and the reader’s imagination. For Ben Mansour, fiction can allow us only a glimpse at evil. In Beloved, Toni Morrison explains concerning slavery that “to render [enslavement] as personal experiment, language must get out of the way.”2

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For Ben Mansour, evil must be narrated through fiction. One could say that she also feels compelled to accomplish the paradoxical task of conveying in writing the cry that cannot be uttered. And like Morrison, she must also convey, through narration, the additional torture that is the victims’ aphasia. Absolute evil defies the most conventional ways of communicating. It forces writers to use stories as representations, meant to help both victims and readers to confront trauma. Born in 1950, Ben Mansour returns again and again through writing to her place of origin, Tlemcen, Algeria. She emphasizes traditional values such as welcoming foreigners and openness to women’s songs—values that the cruelty of religious fanaticism threatens with annihilation. Her novels, along with her essays, are pleas against violence and fear. An academic and a linguist herself, with a doctorate in Linguistics, she was forced to flee her country after having received numerous death threats. She now teaches in Paris where she continues her fight against the distortion of Islam by Islamists and against totalitarianism. She also fights passionately against the denial of women and the lack of recognition of women as the bedrock of the oral tradition that constitutes the roots of North-African culture. It was feminist Germaine Tillon, a survivor of the Nazi camps, heroin of the French Resistance, and intercessor in the struggle for the emancipation of the Algerian people who, in 2002, gave her the insignia of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The invocation that closes her second novel, The Prayer of Fear synthesizes Ben Mansour’s double combat for the sacredness of life against barbarous violence, and for the recognition of women: Par le serment de nos femmes, se battant mieux que les hommes, Tu revivras, Algérie. Par le serment de nos femmes, C’est sur ta terre que grandiront nos enfants. WA AHRAM ANSA! Par le serment des femmes, Et lorsqu’elles jurent, elles tiennent De tes cendres, tu renaîtras, Algérie.3 [By the oath of our women, fighting better than men, You will live again, Algeria.

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Writing What Cannot Be Said By the oath of our women, It is on your ground that our children will grow. WA AHRAM ANSA! By the oath of women, And when they pledge, they hold their pledge Out of your ashes, you will rise again, Algeria.]4

Ben Mansour’s novels, which rapidly go out of print, have been republished several times, and have received high praise from literary critics. This is especially the case with The Prayer of Fear, which was awarded the Beur FM Méditerrannée prize. Her novels have been translated into German and Italian but, regrettably, not yet into English. This article will explore the (d)enunciation of evil in Latifa Ben Mansour’s novels. Each of her novels describes the historical situation of a given period, and follows a chronological progression that the author herself has known and experienced. Her first work, Le Chant du lys et du basilic (The Song of the Lily and the Basil, 1990), features the period of the War of Independence; the second, La Prière de la peur (The Prayer of Fear, 1997), the rise of fanaticism and of religious fundamentalism after independence; and the third, L’Année de l’éclipse (The Year of the Eclipse, 2001), the daily horrors of the civil war that arose from the recent wave of Islamism. Since Ben Mansour’s novels have not yet been translated into English, I will briefly recount the plot of each to familiarize readers with her fiction. However, I will limit myself to summarizing passages of the plots related to the (d)enunciation of evil. It should be noted, nonetheless, that there are several recurring subplots that overlap with one another, and that treat issues of emigration, and of alienation and isolation in one’s own culture, which I will not discuss here. Ben Mansour’s focus on the violence of these three periods in Algerian history contrasts with the tolerance of Moslem culture at the time of Al Andalusia (14th century C.E.), which she frequently references. In her novels, present and past constantly overlap, and sometimes telescope. Traditions and multiple secular myths are woven into the text in the form of songs, prayers, proverbs, and tales recounted by numerous narrators, as well as flashbacks to each character’s childhood and youth. Most of her characters are female. The narratives seem to follow the thread of time and history in an attempt to understand how the recent perversion of Islam by fanatics has been able to emerge from such a heritage of tolerance, that is to say, how violence has permeated and perverted the traditional way of

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life. In her writing, Ben Mansour has remained faithful to the more tolerant version of Sufi Islam that she inherited from her family. Through her characters, she pleads passionately against the obscurantism of a fanaticism leading to horrors of an apocalyptic nature. Her characters fight for their lives and for their voices to be heard. But how can these voices ever be recognized under a totalitarian yoke that prohibits men and women from expressing dissent? Furthermore, in contemporary Algeria women are increasingly treated like immature children. Under these conditions, how can they utter the screams that society shoves back down their throats, all this, supposedly, in the name of what Ben Mansour insists is a distorted vision of Islam?

Evil, Trauma, and the Coma in The Song of the Lily and the Basil In The Song of the Lily and the Basil, Ben Mansour uses the subterfuge of the post-traumatic torpor of a 15-year-old teenager in order to explore the relationship between trauma and language. While frequenting a neighborhood, the reason for which is not revealed until the novel’s conclusion, Meriem is hit by a speeding truck. As her body is projected several feet, her head suffers a concussion as she lands on the sidewalk. In the hospital room where she lies in a coma, her entourage murmurs and speaks in turn about her, but also about their fears, their memories, and current events, without being aware of the young patient’s receptivity. The girl cannot move. She can hear through a kind of fog, but cannot be heard by them, nor can she truly understand the flow of conversation. She surfs on dialogues all the while daydreaming. She unravels for herself, and thus for the reader, that which she vaguely grasps in the cacophony of voices around her bed. Her own emotions, reactions, and especially her painful memories of the years under French rule and the Algerian war are woven into this polylogue, and that, in her torpor, flow like some kind of anarchic brook. The novel relates the War of Independence. The narrative of this period is the product of the parallel expressions of personal tragedy and national history. The composition of Meriem’s entourage changes constantly as family members and friends of various generations, localities, and social milieus mix daily with Meriem’s monologues. The text weaves each character’s voice on the weft of the heroin’s short life story. Intertexts, intertemporality, interlocalizations overlap, almost ad libitum: the text is the result of this weaving of voices, rarely connecting, leaving gaps that nobody can fill. The metaphor of the coma, and more precisely the gradual

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coming out of the coma, serves as a pretext for the author’s task of giving expression to the muted, hidden, numb voice of the young Meriem attempting to understand both her individual life and that of her people. She tries to decipher what, due to the dim light in the hospital room, she herself cannot clearly see, to untangle conversations perceived like a dotted line, and to reconstitute “the puzzle” of her life, that is to say the war that she has lived as a powerless child: “Elle savait que viendraient le jour et l’heure où tout se remettrait en ordre, comme un puzzle dont les éléments seraient reconstitutés morceau par morceau” (She knew that the time would come when everything would be put back in order, like a puzzle whose image would be reconstituted piece by piece).5 The torpor in which she is engulfed constitutes a powerful metaphor for absence and inner exile. The guests around her bed feed her daydreams and her daze. They act as a chorus in Greek tragedies, chanting a narrative that is not fully understood until the end of the play. Each chapter starts at the hospital. The first begins with the description of the unusually snowy weather for March; everybody has something to say about it. Snow is the center of conversations. It gives the landscape an air of timelessness and transitory beauty, an appearance of purity often associated with memories of childhood and games. But snow also blankets the asperities and edges of anything that might be seen through the window panes. It disorientates. Accordingly, Meriem is thus not the only one to be, in a sudden way, plunged in whiteness—the whiteness of the hospital bed sheets for her, the whiteness of the falling and accumulating snow for the others. In her attempt to understand what she was doing at the time of the accident, the surrounding whiteness prevents her from “seeing”: Elle essaya de concentrer son esprit pour tenter de se rappeler les circonstances de l’accident. Elle ne se souvenait plus pourquoi elle s’était trouvée à Aswi. Un voile blanc recouvrait sa mémoire, il fallait qu’il se déchire. Il fallait qu’elle se souvienne. Pourquoi était-elle près de Derb Messoufa? Elle avait beau creuser sa mémoire; il y avait ce voile, blanc comme les murs de l’hôpital, comme le drap qui la recouvrait, comme la gaze qui enveloppait sa tête, comme le linceul qui emprisonnait le corps de quarante années de son père, comme les flocons de neige qui s’abattaient sur Tlemcen. [She tried to concentrate so as to remember the circumstances of the accident. She no longer remembered why she was in Aswi. A white veil covered her memory, it must be torn. She must remember. Why was she near Derb Messoufa? It was useless for her to search her memory; there was this veil, white like the rooms of the hospital, like the sheets that

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covered her, like the gauze that wrapped her head, like the shroud that imprisoned the body of her forty-year-old father, like the snowflakes that were blanketing Tlemcen.]6

Like Meriem, everyone is trapped in a fog that prevents from truly knowing where one actually is. The reader is not surprised that under these circumstances, for many of the characters the collective memory of the War of Independence, the subject of the novel, has disappeared under a “silence feutré” (felted silence).7 Caught in the whiteness of snow or, for Meriem, in the whiteness of bed sheets, each character, including Meriem, tries to understand the reasons for her traffic accident, quite as unforeseeable as snow falling in March. What was she doing there when it happened? Nobody seems to have the answer.8 At first, Meriem’s physical state improves as the narrative progresses, chapter after chapter. Passing through the labyrinths of memory, she also slowly descends “aux enfers du passé” (into the hells of the past), the past of those who surround her hospital bed, but also the painful past of Algeria, under which everyone simply believed that they had been able to draw a final line.9 Meriem understands quite well that “si l’on repousse des souvenirs, ils vous pourchassent toute la vie” (if one repressed memories, they will pursue you throughout your life).10 She awakes from her coma and settles into a deep torpor as early as in the first chapter. Even though “elle ne peut pas bouger” (she cannot move), her mother’s tears and cries suddenly force her to let out a “un hurlement libérateur” (liberating howl). However, the “Où suis-je” (Where am I) that she tries to speak is “inaudible.”11 Meriem gradually begins to sense a suffering that is different from her own physical pain when she discovers the hypocrisy of adults in the conversations that she overhears. As she attempts to speak aloud, “les syllables et les mots se bousculaient, mais aucun son ne sortait de sa bouche” (the syllables and words were ready to flow out, but not a single sound would leave her throat).12 Pain cannot be articulated; evil cannot be translated into words. Later in the narrative, she “smiles” (sourit) at the idea of a paradise that would resemble Derb Messoufa, the suburb of her “enfance joyeuse” (happy childhood), the place where “elle savait qu’elle était chez elle, parmi les siens. […] Les joies et les peines étaient l’affaire de tous. Bonheur et malheur étaient toujours partagés” (she knew where she was, among her community. […] A place where everybody’s joys and sorrows were the business of all. There, happiness and misfortune were always shared).13 Her entourage is filled with wonder at her smile, but they remain completely unaware of her thoughts, persuaded that, nurtured by

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the affection that everybody assumes she must feel around her bed, “elle sourit aux anges” (she smiles at the angels).14 The conversations of Meriem’s entourage and her comatose divagations run like a river, bearing the slag and cinders of the Algerian war, the expectations, fears, gory images, memories of collective and individual experiences, disappointments, difficulties, joys, and daily concerns, as well as endless discussions about the weather, this unexpected snow in mid-March. Family and friends also evoke Meriem’s childhood. In the first chapter, her mother Zohra tells how her daughter, when she was a child, had once picked up “une hirondelle blessée, fauchée en plein vol par une pierre” (a wounded swallow, hit in full flight by a stone).15 This implied assimilation of the wounded swallow with the ailing Meriem is reinforced by the foreboding impression that Zohra suddenly feels while recounting this anecdote. Through the window pane, she sees that the swallows “sont en train de mourir de froid sous les flocons qui ensevelissent la ville” (are dying of cold under the flakes that are burying the city).16 She feels as if “quelqu’un veut [lui] adresser un message! ‘Prépare le linceul de ta fille, ô Zohra’” (someone is trying to send her a message! […] “Prepare the shroud of your daughter, O Zohra”).17 Death is palpable in the hospital room; the whiteness of the snow that buries the city suggests a type of shroud destined for Meriem. The episode from the past resounds in the present like a distressing echo. It is heightened by the words that Zohra remembers saying to the children at the time: “Chez les arabes, l’hirondelle est un oiseau sacré. […] Malheur à celui qui laissera mourir une hirondelle! La malédiction des Anciens le poursuivra jusqu’à la fin de ses jours” (For Arabs, swallows are sacred birds. […] Cursed are those who let a swallow die! The curse of the Elders will pursue them until the end of their days).18 The words of the Elders of the community are also carried in the river flow that reaches Meriem’s ears. They mix with songs, prayers, and Koran sourates—some are translated, others are not, leaving the non Arabicspeaking readers themselves in a sort of fog; they are left to struggle with inaccuracy and lacunar comprehension, similar to what Meriem experiences in her moments of unconsciousness. The title of the novel evokes the ritual beginning of many oriental tales equivalent to ours that take place “once upon a time”: “Il y avait et il n’y avait pas, et le lys et le basilic” (There was and there was not, both the lily and the basil).19 In the Berber tradition, women have been the guardians of this treasure of oral culture passed down through the generations, from mother to daughter. Ben Mansour uses the polyphony of these female voices by weaving together the languages of French, Berber, and Arabic. As a linguist, she has spent

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years collecting oral literature, the voices of women who have so often been denied, who were victims but who also stood up in anger and revolt, of women who have struggled, throughout Algerian history, to apprehend a reality that society refused them. In The Song of the Lily and the Basil she gives a voice to these overlooked women, and rages against the disempowerment of women who had fought in the War of Independence. She denounces the betrayal of history: women’s cheated hopes, corruption, authoritarianism, indifference, and also the authorities’ rejection of the acquisition of knowledge. In a flashback toward the end of the novel in the aftermath of the Algerian war, Meriem hears a female Algerian militant cry out in rage: “Je me suis battue pendant huit ans mieux que les hommes, j’ai été torturée et j’ai connu les geôles des paras, et vous venez me dire que je dois baisser la tête et me plier aux diktats des mâles!” (I fought for eight years, and better than men, I was tortured and I knew the jails of the French, and you’re telling me that I must bow my head and submit to the orders of men!).20 In contrast, the conversations among women in the novel affirm the feminism of Islam. At the end of the novel, readers finally learn the circumstances of the accident that brought Meriem to the hospital. Her outing to Derb Messoufa stemmed from her desire to visit this neighborhood of her childhood, an Arab neighborhood that represented for her a beautiful Algeria before war and the domination of religious fanaticism. As we discover this, a sudden hemorrhage forces doctors to the decision to operate on the patient. Meriem has lost too much blood; she needs to undergo surgery. At this point, no one knows if the operation will save her. The book ends with Meriem entering the operating room. One can only hope that, like the swallow that she had picked up in the snow and saved from death when she was a child, she will finally be able to take flight. One can only hope that this time, Meriem, like the swallow of the popular saying, will announce the arrival of spring. The word “operation” has already been used several times in the conversations around the hospital bed, but with a different meaning; it has referred to military operations carried out by the combatants of both sides of the Algerian war. Consequently, Meriem’s “operation,” linked linguistically and by proximity to the military operations discussed, acquires significance as a metaphor for the fate of the people of Algeria. Whatever the outcome of the surgery may be, the War of Independence, with its massacres, its horrors, its deaths, its tortures, “avait anéanti son enfance. On avait fait d’elle une enfant vieillie et ratatinée sur elle-même” (had destroyed her childhood. It has turned her into an aged weaseled

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child).21 Similarly, Algeria remains a scarred nation, constantly nursing the wounds of her traumatized past. Even before the accident, during the time of the war, “[Meriem] ne parlait plus et lorsqu’elle ouvrait la bouche, c’était pour crier, hurler sa douleur et sa peine aussi immense que le désert qui prolongeait Tlemcen” (she was already no longer speaking, and when she opened her mouth, it was to scream, howl her pain and her sorrow, all as immense as the desert that prolonged Tlemcen).22 Evil cannot be spoken; it can only be faintly whispered by writers of fiction able to give it textual form. In the case of Ben Mansour, this is accomplished through the weaving of the echoes of voices. The fragmented account of the horrors committed during the war reaches the ears of a patient reduced to silence. The visitors and the medical personnel are not aware that the young Meriem, in her torpor, is able to capture, in bits and pieces, her country’s tragic history. And yet, Meriem cannot verbally express her own stories of suffering. Communication is only one-way. Voices are shoveled away, along with dashed dreams, frustrations, ghosts from the past, and individual and collective nightmares. The hemorrhage that forces doctors to operate on Meriem announces other episodes of bloodshed to come to this wounded and powerless country, itself also reduced to silence, and that nobody listens to anyway.

Evil and the Unbearable Task of the Reader in The Prayer of Fear The Prayer of Fear is preceded by a quote by Maurice Blanchot, which serves as its epigraph: “Le Dire ne console pas de ce qui reste à dire” (Enunciation does not comfort from what remains to be said).23 In this quote, Blanchot encapsulates the difficulty of enunciating evil that is at stake in the novel. The central character, Hanan, is a young woman who has left Tlemcen in order to pursue her studies in France, and who decides after several years to return definitively to Tlemcen. Upon her arrival at the airport a bomb explodes. She is among the victims of this blind violence and is rushed to the hospital. She awakes after surgery, singing the lyrics of a popular Arabic love song: “Khallini, khallini ama’k. Gardemoi auprès de toi. Khallini ama’k dima ah ya zinat attabsima. Garde-moi éternellement auprès de toi! Ô toi au doux sourire!” (Khallini, khallini ama’k. Keep me close to you. Khallini ama’k dima ah ya zinat attabsima. Keep me close to you forever and ever! O you with a sweet smile!).24 Immediately afterward, she finds herself caught in “un voile de douleur” (a veil of pain).25 She has been amputated, reduced to a mere “tronc” (“trunk”).26

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Hanan’s pain is “intolérable et indicible” (unbearable and inexpressible).27 She can no longer speak. Seeing that her mother, Abla, is not present in her hospital room, she manages to whisper an interrogatory exclamation: “Où est Mwa! Où est Mwa” (Where is Mwa! Where is Mwa?).28 She subsequently learns that her mother has become insane and cannot stop howling her reproaches to God.29 She screams that the faith that He created has turned away from His teachings. It is now a religion that preaches violence. She cries aloud that she will not recognize as hers a “pays qui assassine et laisse mourir les meilleurs de ses enfants!” (a country that assassinates and leaves the best of her children to die!).30 When Hanan manages to utter another sound, it is to request something to drink, but her throat hurts terribly in emitting her request. She is then “saisie de vertige. Elle cherch[e] désespérément de l’air et aval[e] sa salive” (seized with dizziness. She tries to breathe and to swallow her saliva).31 Her attentive great-grandmother, Lallah Kenza, who is at her bedside, notices and understands her struggle: “Tu veux parler” (You want to speak).32 The narrative asserts that “la douleur la faisait suffoquer” (the pain was suffocating her).33 Hanan feels as if she has to scrape her throat in order to clear it, and realizes that she must breathe deeply in order to succeed in saying but a few words; she uses them to curse a society that has chosen “l’obscurité à la lumière, l’ignorance à la raison et à la culture” (darkness over light, ignorance over reason and culture).34 A morphine shot finally enables her to speak more freely. She proclaims that she knows that “ses jours sont désormais comptés” (her days are numbered from now on), and chooses this moment to give last instructions to the family and friends surrounding her regarding how she wishes her funeral to take place.35 Hanan decides that, as soon as she is transportable, she will leave with Lalla Kenza, her great grandmother, and go to Aïn el Hout, the family home town, where she wishes to die. Hanan expresses the wish that her cousin, also named Hanan, accompany her family to her funeral. She announces that she refuses to have the Al Burda, the traditional verse of death, said by those attending her burial. Instead, she requests a song to be sung, the very same song that she was humming when she awoke following her amputation.36 She informs those surrounding her that in the time that she has left before dying, she will diligently write a book both day and night, based on the information that she finds in the family manuscripts, her own memories, and additional commentary. She will also incorporate proverbs and songs that her great grandmother shares with her. This book will tell the story of women, of their fight, and of the oral history that they have passed down from generation to generation. She

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stipulates that at her vigil, this book, written by a truncated woman, should be read to the attendees by her cousin, the other Hanan. Between Hanan’s singing of the love song upon awakening after her operation, and the singing of the same song that is to replace the traditional Koran verse at her funeral, the enunciation of Evil will first occur through Hanan’s reading of the family manuscripts and her listening to Lalla Kenza’s recounting of traditional stories of their family history. It will continue to unfurl in her own writing, before the narrative can finally end definitively in the oral mode, through the public reading at her funeral. The project will consist of overlapping stories that mix the remote past of Islam—eighth-century Andalusia Islam, writings by Rumi and Averroes, the fall of Grenada in 1492—with distorted Islam’s bleak present and possibly bleaker future, threatened by Islamism, emigration, and acculturation. What will this book represent? For Lalla Kenza, Hanan’s great grand-mother, it will represent Life, just as the source of her own stories, handed down from generation to generation, originated from what she calls “le premier livre” (the first book), which too is a “livre de la vie” (book of life).37 But it is also one of great suffering and death. Hanan’s goal is to create a book in which she intends, before her death, to “rassembler […] les morceaux épars de [sa] vie éclatée […] afin de triompher de la mort et de la barbarie” (to gather […] scattered pieces of [her] broken life […] in order to triumph over death and cruelty).38 To be sure, the individual life story of Hanan and that of her fellow Algerian women are inextricable. Hanan’s unbearable sufferings will be spoken by the other Hanan in a kind of transmutation. Hanan’s stories and the sufferings that they recount become her own, as the two Hanans become indistinguishable: Plus la jeune femme avançait dans la lecture du manuscript de Hanan, plus le texte s’emparait d’elle. Elle ne se reconnaissait plus! Les inflexions de sa voix étaient devenues plus graves. Son rire était celui de Hanan. Elle n’avait plus aucune distance avec ce qu’elle lisait. […] Elle allait se métamorphoser en Hanan la morte.39 [The more the young woman advanced in her reading of Hanan’s manuscript, the more the text took hold of her. She no longer recognized herself. The inflections of her voice were becoming deeper. Her laughter was that of Hanan’s. She no longer had any distance from what she was reading. […] She was transforming herself completely into Hanan the dead woman.]

But in fact, evil is unable to be expressed directly. Evil can only be approximated through a slow and convoluted process. The reader catches

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glimpses of the face of evil not through its direct inscription, but rather through its effects on the intra-diegetic reader, the other Hanan. As doubles of the reader, attendees of Hanan’s funeral bear witness to the cousin’s confrontation with evil: “Tu dois cesser immédiatement la lecture de ce manuscript. Il est en train de te détruire” (You must immediately cease reading this manuscript. It’s destroying you).40 The reader most fully apprehends the pain and suffering expressed in the manuscript in the reaction of the cousin who, possessed by Hanan’s story, becomes afflicted with acute physical pain during the reading. The attendees have the impression that she is choking: “Une douleur intolérable irradiait de ses pieds bandés jusqu’à sa taille. […] Peu à peu le texte s’enroulait autour d’elle comme une pieuvre. C’était comme si le corps d’Hanan, celle qui était définitivement éteinte, l’étreignait jusqu’à l’étouffement” (An intolerable pain shot forth from her bandaged feet up to her waist. […] Little by little the texte wrapped itself around her like an octopus. It was as if Hanan’s body, the one who was definitively dead, was choking her, even completely suffocating her.)41 La Prière de la peur constitutes, in large part, an indictment of Islamism, which is revealed as the primary source of much evil. Along with her book, Hanan has left a posthumous letter for her cousin. In her letter, Hanan warns her against false zealots and sanctimonious hypocrites.42 Her words echo her mother Alba’s lamentations in the very first chapter of the novel, her tirade against those who “défigure[nt] la religion de l’Aimé de Dieu” (disfigure the religion of God’s chosen one).43 Alba is a pious woman, but protests against the strict imposition of religion. Every day, during the call to prayer, Elle se lav[e] rituellement […] mais sursaut[e] à la voix nasillarde qui appell[e] les fidèles à la prière. “Soyez maudits! […] Votre voix n’attire pas les fidèles vers Dieu, elle les fait plutôt fuir. […] Soyez maudits! Je vais me plaindre à Dieu et lui en faire part dans ma prière! Il vous châtiera, vous qui le faites passer pour un sanguinaire, alors qu’il est avant tout Rahim et Rahman: clément et miséricordieux! Soyez maudits!”44 [[S]he ritually used to wash herself, but would always shudder at the voice calling the faithful to prayer. “A curse on you! […] Your voice does not attract the faithful towards God, it rather makes them flee. […] May you be cursed! Cursed! I will make God hear my complaints, and he will share my pain. He will punish you, you who make Him pass for a bloodthirsty God, whereas He is, above all, ‘Rahim and Rahman: lenient and merciful.’ You will be cursed!”]

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Islamist terror is present throughout the novel, and etched in with the precision of a scalpel, often for several pages in a row.45 Most vivid are the images that Ben Mansour gives of the young Algerian girls, raped and killed in order to instill fear in the hearts of the people: Les jeunes filles sont arrachées des écoles et des collèges sous les yeux des chefs d’établissement et des enseignants. […] Elles sont violées, égorgées, décapitées et jetées comme du bétail à l’entrée des collèges pour faire l’exemple. Qui décrira la douleur des parents? Qui analysera la lâcheté? Qui saura trouver les mots justes pour peindre l’horreur et l’épouvante de ces adolescents devant la lame rouillée introduite dans leur sexe et tranchant sous un flot de sang leur jeunesse et leur vie?46 [Young girls are taken by force from the classrooms in front of their teachers and principals. They are raped, bled, decapitated, and thrown like animals at the entrance of the schools to set an example. Who will decry the parents’ suffering? Who will analyze such cowardice? Who will know how to find the right words to paint the horror and fear of these adolescents who confronted the dull blade thrust into their sex to pierce, in a flow of blood, their youth and their life?]

The narrative leads us to believe that descriptions such as these are mere suggestions rather, of an indescribable evil. Will any words be the right words to paint such horrors? Overwhelmed by grief and physical and emotional pain, the other Hanan states that she must stop reading as it is her only hope to be able to live on, to escape the cycle of horror in which she feels engulfed. Her presentiments are justified as a group of Islamists attack the place where the vigil is held. In the carnage Hanan’s great grandmother is assassinated, decapitated in fact, along with others. The other Hanan succeeds in escaping with her family during the massacre; they manage to hide, bleeding and panting, in a nearby cave where she succumbs to a heart attack caused by her pain and sorrow. In order to escape the horror devouring her while reading Hanan’s account, the cousin chooses to suppress the scream. She refuses to continue reading, yet she herself ends up becoming another victim. Once again, evil is inexpressible, and if it can somehow be written, it cannot be uttered aloud. Early in the novel, Lalla Kenza explains the “prayer of fear”—which gives its title to the novel—to her grand-daughter Hanan shortly before the young woman dies. According to Lalla, the prayer of fear is one that is not spoken allowed, but is acutely felt rather, and lived out, much like the evil that has inflicted the novel’s female characters:

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La prière de la peur ne se récite pas, ma fille. C’est un rituel instauré par le prophète Mohammad pour conjurer la peur. Un prophète aussi peut éprouver de la frayeur, être traversé de doutes. Mohammad sur Lui la Paix et le Salut, n’avait pas honte d’avouer son anxiété et son épouvante face à la mort, ma fille. Il n’avait cessé de répéter “Je ne suis qu’un homme.” C’est cela le sens de cette prière.47 [The prayer of fear cannot be recited, my daughter. It is a ritual founded on the Prophet Mohammad’s attempt at conjuring up fear. A prophet too can experience fear, and he always struggles with doubts. Mohammad, Peace be upon Him, was not ashamed to acknowledge His own fears of death, my daughter. He never ceased to repeat “I am just a man.” That is what this prayer means.]

In Ben Mansour’s novel, death and vengeance are inflicted in the most gruesome ways. Life is torn apart without any mercy. The violence of certain scenes is unbearable. And yet, the author also manages to describe the lost Eden of an earlier, cosmopolitan Algeria.48 She reclaims the multicultural essence of her land, including, among the multiple layers of the Algerian people, famous figures like Saint Augustine and the legendary famous Judeo-Berber warrior-leader “la Kahéna,” but also the Ottoman rulers and the thousands of “pied-noirs” who also shaped modern Algerian culture.49 The final image of this otherwise dark novel expresses hope as the nation of Algeria emerges from its ashes in a second birth: “Par le serment des femmes/ Et lorsqu’elles jurent, ells tiennent/ De tes centres, tu renaîtras, Algérie” (By the oath of women/ And when they pledge, they hold their pledge/ Out of your ashes, you will rise again, Algeria).50

The Death and Rebirth of the Voice in The Year of the Eclipse Ben Mansour’s third novel, The Year of the Eclipse, is composed of four books, “Illusions” (Illusions), “Crépuscule” (Dusk), “Ténèbres” (Shadows), and “Renaissance” (Rebirth). The first book begins, once more, with the description of a semi-conscious female character, a device that, as we have already seen, Ben Mansour used in her previous novels to convey victims’ self-absence and self-exile, but also the incommunicability of evil. Hayba, a thirty-three year old Algerian gynecologist, wanders about the streets of Paris, not really knowing or caring where she might end up. She is burdened by a terrible trauma that has destroyed her life.

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She shuffles along in a daze, from a subway train to a bus. She is five months pregnant. The reader soon discovers that she is haunted by the rape of her daughter, her own rape, and the massacre of her husband and daughter, murdered before her eyes when their house was attacked by a mob of Islamists. In this novel Ben Mansour reveals the hidden side of the summer of 1999. Whereas most everyone is speaking of the impending eclipse of the millennium, Ben Mansour describes this dark time for Hayba and the Algerian nation in such a manner that she almost blinds her reader. In the subway, Hayba tries to read a book of poems written by the Sufi poet Rumi, and suddenly stops on a verse she cannot comprehend: “Mais l’amour de l’éphémère n’est pas l’amour” (But the love of what passes away is not love).51 Her only wish then is to pass away in sleep: “Dormir définitivement! Ce sommeil-là, au moins, lui aurait apporté la délivrance tant espérée!” (To sleep forever! This type of sleep, at least, would have brought her the deliverance she had long hoped for).52 In the subway car, Hayba is surrounded by strangers, acting again as a kind of tragic chorus surrounding the isolated main character. She seems to hear random words whose meaning is incomprehensible, and which pass away. Some phrases spark flashes of memories. Yet, even in her torpor Hayba remains a fighter; she has the will to live in order to welcome her child who was conceived, before her rape, during a moment of bliss. Once again, the victim’s voice cannot be uttered or heard. Hayba’s words cannot escape her shattered body: “Aucun son ne pouvait sortir de sa bouche blessée par les sexes de ses tortionnaires” (Not a single sound could leave her mouth, wounded by her torturers’ penises) while at the same time her torturers’ voices haunt her memory.53 Her own voice will only be heard through psychotherapy. The psychiatrist “qui avait décidé de la sortir de là” (who is committed to getting her out of the terrible state she is in) repeatedly invites her to talk.54 His request “dites-moi” (tell me) sounds to Hayba like the opportunity given to Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights to recount a story in exchange for her life, an invitation that would “introdui[re] à la parole vivifiante” (open up to a speech that gives life).55 Telling stories saves the story-teller who starts all her tales with: “cette histoire est si extraordinaire que si elle avait été écrite avec du fil et une aiguille, au plus profond de l’œil, elle aurait servi de leçon à celui qui aurait voulu s’instruire” (This story is so extraordinary that if it had been written with needle and thread, in the most remote part of the eye, it would have been used as a lesson for whoever is willing to learn).56 Only the enunciation of her unspeakable experience will give her back her life: words will be the source of rebirth.

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When Hayba starts to speak during a session, as “lentement, les mots s’étaient libérés du carcan de sa gorge” (slowly the words had begun to free themselves from the grip of her throat) she does so to explain that, in fact, she has already died: “Je suis devenue une gisante. Ma vie s’est arrêtée à trente-trois ans, comme celle du Christ” (I have become a recumbent statue on a tomb. My life stopped at thirty-three years of age, like that of Christ).57 However, she is not convinced that her interlocutor can truly understand what she is saying: “Mais vous, l’étranger, comment pourriez-vous le comprendre? se dit Hayba pour elle-même” (But you, stranger, how could you understand? Hayba thought to herself).58 As if reading her mind, the therapist tells her that “Je ne suis pas là pour comprendre. Je suis là pour entendre” (I am not here to understand but to listen).59 But will this be enough to heal her? On her way back from the therapist, after this first release of words, Hayba is again haunted by “les voix de ces chiens qui ne l’avaient jamais quittée. Leurs rires de démons et leurs visages d’enfer ne lui laisseraient jamais aucun répit” (the voices of these dogs that have never left her. Their hellish laughter and their demons’ faces would never leave her any respite).60 She continues to carry inside of her “le drame” (the drama) of her trauma.61 Are the sensations of her tongue, which she feels has turned to mush, the lasting effects of the piercing penetrations of her agressors’ penises? The narrator poses the question: “Hayba se leva en titubant, sa langue était pâteuse et son haleine fétide. […] Etait-ce vraiment l’effet des tranquillisants, ou celui des sexes enfournés dans sa bouche […]?” (Hayba wobbled as she rose, her tongue was doughy and her breath was foul. […] Was it truly the effect of the tranquilizers, or that of the penises shoved in her mouth?).62 Hayba experiences a few happy flashbacks to moments spent with her husband, Abd el-Wahab, and her daughter, Dounia, from her life before the carnage, but the swift return to the stark reality of the present smashes to pieces her sweet memories. Unable to understand how God can allow pain and suffering to be committed in his name, she addresses God in a prayer. Faced with the evil of her world, Hayba implores the divine to reveal his true nature of love and mercy: Mon Dieu, si Tu existes, aide-moi, et montre-moi ton vrai visage, celui d’amour et de miséricorde. Si Tu existes, pourquoi permets-tu qu’en Ton nom, on oblige les femmes à se couvrir de noir, comme des 404 bâchées? Qu’on empêche les couples de marcher ensemble dans la rue, ou les femmes de travailler? Depuis quand, en Ton nom, demande-t-on à une mère de choir le premier de ses fils qui mourra? Depuis quand coupe-t-on un nourrisson en deux parties, une pour le père, une pour la mère? Depuis quand viole-t-on une mère sous les yeux de sa fillette? Puis cette même

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Having finished her desperate appeal to God, Hayba notices that she has reached the Saint Sulpice Church and proceeds to enter like a “somnambule” (sleepwalker).64 She contemplates a prayer etched in the stone of the church walls. At first, she hesitates to read but “Après tout, les mots ne sont-ils pas tous pareils, quelle que soit la religion, quand il s’agit de s’adresser à Dieu, même lorsqu’il s’est éclipsé?” (After all, aren’t the words similar, whatever the religion, when it is meant to reach God, even when He has “eclipsed” himself?).65 Here again, the word “eclipse” is reminiscent of the title of the novel: God can disappear, just like the sun during an eclipse, leaving his creatures to confront the evils of the world. A priest “au visage tout de douceur” (with a face of true kindness), comes to tell her that the church is about to close.66 His gentleness reminds her of one of the monks of Thibérine, devoted to the rural community that they had served for decades without any kind of proselytism, until all were slaughtered by Islamists in 1996.67 Back in her room, Hayba performs a kind of ritual cleansing, which appears to be particularly liberating.68 She washes herself several times and then confronts her past. She forces herself to recall her own life, and to analyze her own journey, the journey of her relationship with her husband, Abd el-Wahab. She focuses on the forebodings that have marked her career and that of Abd el-Wahab. She recalls their departure from Algeria, their return two years later, the daily massacres heard on the radio, their commitment to work in the desolate Algerian South, in Ouargla, the incompetence of the party in power, the misery of the population, the birth of their daughter, “cette nouvelle naissance au péril de sa vie” (this

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expected new birth and the dangers doctors have said it would imply for her life).69 She also remembers the murders of Algerian intellectuals and of famous singers.70 “Crépuscule” (Dusk), that moment of the day in which the earth’s horizon eclipses the sun, is the name of the second book of the novel. It carries as its epigraph a pithy commentary on memory by Blanchot: “Le souvenir est la liberté du passé” (Memory is the freedom of the past).71 In this section of the novel, Hayba will have to agree to remember her past, without occulting anything. Once again, the metaphor of the eclipse acts like a presage. Hayba’s journey through her past will be difficult: she will have to pass through the darkness of the eclipse. This “dusk,” announcing total darkness, is filled with the recent horrors committed in Algeria, as reported by the French press, and by telephone calls and conversations with Algerians who have just returned from Algeria, or who have fled the country. The Islamist movement is in perpetual metamorphosis. A new group is emerging; they call themselves “Ghadibun Allah,” Allah’s Angry Fighters: “[Ils] éventrent en premier lieu les femmes enceintes et s’acharnent sur les fœtus” ([They] first rip open pregnant women, then massacre the fetuses).72 The members of this insane new faction cut the phalange of their right index finger “pour ne plus louer Allah. Puisqu’après les prières, le musulman doit louer Allah avec l’index de la main droite” (to prevent themselves from ever praising Allah, since after prayers true Moslems must praise Allah with the index finger of their right hand).73 Above all, Hayba remembers a time punctuated by violence that afflicted all levels of Algerian society, especially girls and women: A l’hôpital, la violence reflétait celle de la société algérienne qui, les années d’euphorie et d’espoir passées, exprimait son malaise par les coups de couteau ou de hache, le suicide des femmes et des jeunes, les meurtres pour l’honneur et l’inceste. L’abus sexuel des oncles, des pères ou des frères sur les petites filles et les adolescentes devenaient monnaie courante. Les pauvres victimes arrivaient au service de Hayba, enceintes, et brisées.74 [At the hospital, the violence reflected that of Algerian society, which, after the years of euphoria and hope had passed, expressed its malaise by stabbings and axings, the suicide of women and young girls, murders in the name of honor and incest. The sexual abuse of infant and adolescent girls by their uncles, fathers, or brothers became common currency. These poor victims came to Hayba’s service pregnant and broken.]

Hayba also remembers that her husband Abd el-Wahab, upon learning about the sterility that was supposed to strike her after her daughter

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Dounia’s difficult birth, had taken to alcohol. At the time, this discovery had plunged her into syncope, followed by several months’ daze.75 She also remembers that her pied-noir friend, Moricette Dupré and her husband, Richard, who had visited them in Algeria at the time of Dounia’s birth, had warned her of possible danger before they left, and had made a prediction: “Prends soin de toi, Hayba. Souviens-toi de mes paroles. Fais très attention à Dounia, et à Abd el-Wahab, je t’en supplie. Tu as un chemin à faire. Il sera terrifiant et au bout, il y aura la lumière” (Take care of yourself, Hayba. Remember my words. Pay close attention to Dounia and to Abd el-Wahab, I beg of you. You will have a journey to make. It will terrify you, but at the end there will be light).76 The book closes with a description of Hayba and her husband terrorized, living in fear: Hayba voyait défiler le film des semaines […], ce climat de plus en plus oppressant qui, comme un étau, s’était peu à peu resserré autour de ce qui avait fait jusque-là leur vie et leur bonheur. Chaque jour était ensemencé par les graines de la mort. […] Hayba et Abd el-Wahab ne sortaient plus le soir, à cause de l’état d’urgence et de la terreur qui régnait.77 [Hayba watched the weeks go by as if she were watching a movie […], this climat, increasingly oppressive that, like a vice, had little by little squeezed that which up until then had been their life and their happiness. Each day was sowed by seeds of death. […] Hayba et Abd el-Wahab no longer ventured out at night because of the state of urgency and the terror that reigned.]

The third book, “Ténèbres” (Shadows), is preceded by a quotation from One Thousand and One Nights that serves as a preface for the torturous journey of Hayba that the section unfurls: Ami, déserte les lieux où règne l’oppression Et laisse la maison retentir des cris de deuil de ceux qui l’ont bâtie Tu trouveras d’autres terres que la tienne, Mais ton âme est une, et tu ne la retrouveras pas.78 [Friend, leave the places where oppression reigns And let the house resound with the mourning cries of those who built it You will find other lands than yours But your soul is one, and you will not find it.]

Hayba’s journey of memory often crosses zones of darkness. She vividly remembers their departure from Oran, their arrival at the hospital in Ouargla, and her discovery of a society corroded by Islamist thugs.79 She relives having met the serene Sufi Islam of Zaouïas—these welcoming

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brotherhoods monasteries—as well as her intuitions, her fears, and her presentiments.80 She also recalls the announcement of her new pregnancy, against all odds, which gave her great joy. Terrible nightmares invade her sleep in Paris. When she awakes, the narrative mode of free indirect discourse presents us with a series of questions: “Que s’était-il passé? Où était la frontière entre hier et aujourd’hui? Entre la réalité et les rêves? Entre la vie et la mort?” (What had happened? Where was the border between yesterday and today? Between reality and dreams? Between life and death?).81 Afflicted with existential angst, Hayba is lead by this unbearable darkness, this living “enfer” (hell), to envision suicide.82 She tells her therapist: “Je ne veux plus vivre” (I do not want to live any longer).83 She ends up slowly expressing her desire to get up, “ouvrir la fenêtre et de se jeter dans le vide” (to open the window and jump out).84 Faced with an overwhelming past—“un passé béant” (a gaping past)—and a future that presents itself to her as “le néant absolu” (absolute nothingness), she feels “murée dans son mutisme” (enclosed in her mutism).85 At this critical point in her therapy, she can finally describe the scene of the horrible murder of Abd el-Wahab—“dans sa colère, Hayba trouva les mots” (in her anger, Hayba found the words)—and acknowledges that she feels responsible for his death: “Je suis responsable de la mort de mon mari et de ma fille. J’aurais dû écouter mes amis et quitter l’Algérie” (I am responsible for the death of my husband and my daughter. I should have listened to my friends and left Algeria).86 The therapist has hardly any time to reply. As quickly as she recovered her voice to begin confronting her trauma, she succumbs to utter silence. Still in the therapist’s office, Hayba suddenly faints, or, as the narrator describes, as falling into “un trou noir”—the black hole of a total eclipse.87 The black hole of Evil, forever inexpressible, which closes, again and again, on the cry of the victim. After the therapy session, from which she had to be physically transported home, Hayba sleeps for two whole days. This deep sleep brings her back to the side of the living. The fourth book of the novel, “Renaissance” (Rebirth), seems to refer to Hayba’s new job. She becomes a doctor’s assistant. Little by little, a romantic relationship establishes itself between her and Doctor Jacques Najac. His life has also been marked by mourning as his wife and son died in a car accident. Like Hayba, he too “[a] dû reconnaître les corps déchiquetés” (had to recognize the mutilated bodies) of his spouse and child at the morgue.88 Hayba later discovers Jacques’s family history; his grandfather had converted to Islam, and Jacques himself is a Sufi.89 Hayba’s first reaction is fear: Is she, in fact, becoming “la petite Algérienne

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martyrisée, toute prête à succomber à la compassion, au charme, à la fortune de Jacques Najac” (the little Algerian martyr, ready to succumb to Jacques Najac’s compassion, charm, and fortune)?90 She decides to flee, but Najac finds her and says the only words that can reach Hayba: “Je vous aime pour votre courage, votre dignité, votre fierté, et votre amour de la vie. Je vous aime et je ne veux plus vous quitter, même si je sais que le chemin qui nous attend sera périlleux” (I love you for your courage, your dignity, your pride, and your love for life. I love you, and I do not want to lose you, even if I know that the journey that awaits us will be perilous).91 His sincerity, stripped of any kind of naiveté—“le chemin qui nous attend sera périlleux” (the journey which awaits us will be perilous)—breaks the carapace that Hayba had forged.92 To be sure, Hayba’s rebirth is achieved through the intermediary of a lover who “conna[ît] [s]a douleur” (knows her suffering), who can apprehend her trauma through his own.93 The baby that she is expecting is due at the moment of the eclipse: “A midi huit minutes, alors que la lune recouvrait le soleil” (At 12:08 p.m., precisely when the moon entirely covered the sun) a baby boy was born, followed by a baby girl.94 Is this an ending in which all’s well that ends well? Is this a happy ending? Not so: “Mais cette joie immense fut de courte durée. Dans la salle de réanimation, Hayba fit une hémorragie” (But this immense joy did not last. In the recovery room, Hayba has a hemorrhage).95 Hayba is once more engulfed in a daze, and afflicted with mutism: “Hayba voulait crier, mais le son restait bloqué dans sa gorge. Des sombres, des personnages transparents se dessinèrent” (Hayba wanted to scream, but the sound remained trapped in her throat. Shadows, transparent figures took shape around her).96 Like antique heroes, Hayba travels to the underworld. Her journey and encounters are described for several pages. There, she meets her ancestors lined up along a corridor of light. She finally feels welcomed and a sense of belonging, but ends up being firmly rejected by her beloved grandfather. He summons her to return to the living. She has “une obligation de vivre. Vivre!” (an obligation to live. To live!).97 Her grand-father’s order is loudly repeated by a chorus composed of all her ancestors. Hayba thus returns to life. The reader can believe again that life has finally triumphed. The two babies have been named Hassan and Hasna— two names that she had selected—while their mother was fighting to hold on to life.98 But when the new-born are delicately placed in Hayba’s arms, horror strikes again: though they both have their murdered father’s beloved black curly hair, they also have a wick of white hair, and their gaze is not that of a baby but an adult’s.99 Still more terrifying, they have “la première phalange de l’index droit manquante” (the first phalange of

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their right index finger missing).100 The novel ends with the scene of Hayba, “sombr[ant] dans le sommeil” (sinking back into sleep), after having renamed her children “Ghadab Allah. La colère de Dieu! Ghadab Allah” (Ghadab Allah. God’s Anger! Ghadab Allah).101 With such an ending, it is evident that the traumatic past continues to haunt Hayba. Ben Mansour’s novels demonstrate evil’s resistance to full expression. Horror can be written, but the task is not easy and the result is only partial. The novelist has time and again resorted to convoluted ways to enunciate it. In The Song of the Lily and the Basil, readers follow the meandering thoughts and feelings of a comatose teenager unable to communicate her trauma as she is stricken with mutism. Moreover, her perception of the sufferings and conversations of Algeria’s painful past expressed by those surrounding her bedside reach her ears only in bits and pieces. In The Prayer of Fear we are left with a book that cannot be read through in its entirety, as its impact on us is unbearable. And yet Ben Mansour manages to strongly denounce what she believes is a horrendous subversion of Islam to give us glimpses of absolute evil, to communicate to the reader its effects on others through the intermediary of a diegetic surrogate reader who physically and emotionally suffers through her reading of a manuscript of trauma that is only partially shared with us. In The Year of the Eclipse, the enunciation of evil takes place during a brief moment of disclosure through the medium of psychotherapy, as well as through the intermediary of another victim who shares a traumatic past similar to the heroine’s. Ben Mansour demonstrates in her trilogy how vital it is for writers to bear witness, even if the act of witnessing is painful, incomplete, and executed in the most oblique ways. Expressed through the dramatization of a fiction that reduces plot to its essential elements, evil acquires the power of a myth. Verisimilitude is not an issue: these missing phalanges speak the truth. Evil is pointed at by the striking image of amputated fingers, severed from the hands of innocent newborns.

Notes 1

Latifa Ben Mansour, La Prière de la peur (Paris: La Différence, 1997), 259. Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Random House, 1987), xix. 3 Ben Mansour, La Prière de la peur, 380. 4 All English translations of Ben Mansour are mine. 5 Latifa Ben Mansour, Le Chant du lys et du basilic (Paris: La Différence, 1998), 90-91, 203. 6 Ibid., 87. 2

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Ben Mansour, Le Chant du lys et du basilic, 113. Ibid., 34, 51. 9 Ibid., 58. 10 Ibid., 58. 11 Ibid., 33. 12 Ibid., 77, 79. 13 Ibid., 100, 49, 99. 14 Ibid., 99. 15 Ibid., 28. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 28-29. 18 Ibid., 28. 19 Ibid., 57. 20 Ibid., 352. 21 Ibid., 193. 22 Ibid. 23 Ben Mansour, La Prière de la peur, 7. 24 Ibid., 20. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 21. 27 Ibid., 20. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 21. 30 Ibid., 21-22. 31 Ibid., 23. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 24. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 25. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 54. 38 Ibid., 42. 39 Ibid., 191. 40 Ibid., 275. 41 Ibid., 314, 316. 42 Ibid., 138. 43 Ibid., 13. 44 Ibid., 12. 45 Ibid., 352-353, 357-358, 363, 371. 46 Ibid., 352-353. 47 Ibid., 56. 48 Ibid., 218. 49 Ibid., 76, 223, 238, 272-273, 333-335. 50 Ibid., 380. 51 Ben Mansour, L’Année de l’éclipse (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 2001), 9. 8

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Ibid., 10. Ibid., 13-14. 54 Ibid., 14. 55 Ibid., 15. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 16. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 17. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., 32. 63 Ibid., 33. 64 Ibid., 35. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 39. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 43-44. 69 Ibid., 66. 70 Ibid., 98. 71 Ibid., 107. 72 Ibid., 111. 73 Ibid., 112. 74 Ibid., 130. 75 Ibid., 136-37. 76 Ibid., 152. 77 Ibid, 152-53. 78 Ibid., 155. 79 Ibid., 182-83. 80 Ibid., 190. 81 Ibid., 195. 82 Ibid., 196. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., 197-98. 87 Ibid., 198. 88 Ibid., 243. 89 Ibid., 250. 90 Ibid., 251 91 Ibid., 255. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 243. 94 Ibid., 263. 95 Ibid., 264. 96 Ibid. 53

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Ibid., 266. Ibid., 267. 99 Ibid., 270. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., 271. 98

Writing What Cannot Be Said

THE PO/ETHICS OF THE CHILD TESTIMONY: DENOUNCING THE EVILS OF GENOCIDE IN MONÉNEMBO’S THE OLDEST ORPHAN MAMADOU WATTARA

L’enfant sait courir mais il ne sait pas se cacher. [The child knows how to run but he doesn’t know how to hide.]1 Il a vécu les choses, lui, et avec des yeux d’enfant. La vérité sort de la bouche de l’enfant. [He has experienced things, and through a child’s eyes. Truth comes through the mouth of the child.]2

The Problems and Stakes of Representing Genocide: The Rwandan Context Evil is too often perceived in Manichean terms as the opposite of good.3 However literature has the potential to offer a more nuanced approach to the issue, especially when treating accounts of genocide and mass atrocities. This essay will focus on specific ways in which literature can bring to light the evils of genocide, including the trauma from which victims continue to suffer, as well as the literary manifestations of the ongoing process of healing. Whereas it only takes but an instant for evil to manifest itself in a society, it often takes generations to overcome its many consequences and to heal the invisible wounds. In genocide studies, evil is understood as embedded in the perpetrator’s very intent—to wipe out the victim’s entire family line, including women, children, and the elderly. This intent is what distinguishes genocide from conventional war and offers the justification of referring to it as “absolute evil.”4 Approaching a literary text through the theoretical tools provided by postcolonial, genocide, and trauma studies can teach us much about the complex and multi-faceted nature of historical events considered evil, including how both individuals and societies react to forms of collective violence. This essay will consider how literature can bear witness to

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genocide, reveal the incommensurable human suffering that it causes, and teach us about the psychological impact on individuals and the societies in which they live. I will devote special attention to exploring ways in which the use of childhood narratives can be a particularly effective strategy both in uncovering the crimes of genocide and in subverting conventional historical representations. For the sake of methodological clarity, it is important to recall both the history and the definition of the word genocide. Coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Rafaël Lemkin, genocide is formed from the Greek word genos (race, tribe) and–cide, from the Latin cidere, to kill.5 After having witnessed the horrors of the Shoah, in which all members of his family perished except for his brother and himself, Lemkin launched a campaign aimed at the recognition and inscription of genocide as a crime against humanity. His efforts found success when in 1948 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which took effect in 1951. The Convention defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.6 By this definition, genocide may certainly be characterized as absolute evil. Not only does it seek to exterminate entire family lines, it also strives to erase all traces of the crime along with the memory of the victims. In this essay, I am especially interested in how the language of a special category of testimony, the child testimony, testifies to—as well as resists—this erasure. Violence—physical or textual—has long been recognized as a basic aspect of the francophone African novel. However, writers have approached evil almost exclusively from the viewpoint of adults.7 This essay will consider another approach to the treatment of evil by examining texts in which children become the narrators or witnesses, and by considering what children’s testimonies can contribute to our understanding of how the mind reacts to violence. I will provide an analysis of discourse, especially the speech of children, as a means of denouncing and coping with violence in francophone Guinean novelist Tierno Monénembo’s L’Aîné des orphelins (The Oldest Orphan, 2000), inspired by the commemorative Fest’Africa project “Rwanda: Ecrire par devoir de mémoire” (Rwanda: Writing in Duty to Memory). As supporting texts that also shed light on the nature and function of child narratives, I will also consider passages from Franco-Ivorian author Véronique Tadjo’s L’Ombre d’Imana (The Shadow of Imana, 2000), also inspired by the FestAfrica project, and Hungarian writer Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness (1975), an account of the Holocaust. As we shall see, The Oldest Orphan exploits the use of metathesis, neologisms and other speech errors not only to

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mimic children’s language but also to underscore the devastating effect of post-traumatic disorder on the child narrator. What’s more, they also participate in a revision of our understanding of genocide. A few words should be mentioned concerning the nature and scope of these texts. From an historical point of view, genocide is defined as the intent of complete annihilation of difference. It is this intent that constitutes the basis of every genocidal logic. From a literary perspective, the understanding and representation of evil becomes more nuanced. In Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille observes that literature from Emily Bronte to Jean Genet, and from Baudelaire to Kafka involves “une attirance désintéressée vers la mort” (a disinterested attraction towards death).8 While dimensions of The Oldest Orphan and Fatelessness demonstrate a “disinterested attraction to death” all the while bearing in mind the reality of genocide as the annihilation of difference, The Shadow of Imana seems to be concerned only with elucidating the latter; it aims to present genocide solely in humanitarian and philosophical terms. It is also important to note that while all three texts bear witness to genocide, The Oldest Orphan and The Shadow of Imana are considered third-party testimonies about the Rwandan genocide. As the authors did not live through the actual 1994 genocide, their writings constitute fictional accounts of survivor’s testimonies. In contrast, Fatelessness is a testimony about the Holocaust based on the author’s personal experience. This essay will consider what an analysis of children’s testimonies of violence can add to the question of how to represent extreme events. If genocide is presented as “absolute evil”—an experience that is beyond communication, an event that defies mimetic representation—then the question for art becomes how to approach genocidal reality without “un effet de déréalisation” (a derealization effect), to paraphrase Catherine Coquio.9 Tadjo draws attention to this crucial challenge facing the writer. In her recount of her visit to Rwanda in 1998, Tadjo’s narrator states: “Notre imagination n’atteindra jamais la réalité” (Our imagination will never get anywhere close to reality).10 I will delineate the narrative strategies used by Monénembo, as well as Tadjo and Kertész, especially the use of children’s voices, to overcome the artistic challenge of representing genocide. The literary representation of genocide migrates toward one of two conceptual poles: the history of the arts and the history of ideas. If both aim to make events intelligible, historiography claims a certain calling in the production of “truth.” The writer, on the other hand, seeks to develop a style to relate the torments of history, without nevertheless succumbing to the pathetic. It is important to be aware of this question when dealing with

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any testimonial writing for a text’s instrumentalization or sensationalism can exert a great influence on the reader. Many have argued that an effective use of language in the writing of genocide seeks to account for the horror of the tragedy that is represented, while at the same time taking care not to wallow in description. As Gérard Nauroy asserts in his study of literary representations of human massacres, “l’excès du massacre engendre les excès de ses évocations littéraires, vouant à l’échec tout effort pour le dire avec vérité, car il appelle soit les débordements d’une rhétorique macabre et partisane, soit le silence” (the excess of the massacre gives rise to excesses in its literary evocations, dooming any effort to speak of it with truth, for it calls for either an outpouring of macabre, partisan rhetoric or else silence).11 This dilemma for the writer faced with the difficult problem of the representation of genocide can be transcended by deploying a hybrid imaginary where aesthetics and ethics come together. The general definition of aesthetics refers to the science of the beautiful such as can be found in a work of art. In literature, the term refers to the production of an artistic work, including all that is involved in the mechanics of constructing a literary text. In this sense, aesthetics also includes poetics as a narrative strategy. It is from this angle that I wish to approach, more specifically, the theme of childhood, and more specifically the use of a child narrator, in each of the novels under consideration. Inspired by the literature of the concentration camps, the theory of traumatic realism allows us to approach the delicate question of the representation of genocide by emphasizing the traumatic dimension of extreme events. In his presentation of traumatic theory, Michael Rothberg states: Traumatic realism is marked by the survival of extremity in the everyday world and is dedicated to mapping the complex temporal and spatial patterns by which the absence of the real, a real absence, makes itself felt in the familiar plenitude of reality. […] The traumatic realist project is an attempt not to reflect the traumatic event mimetically but to produce it as an object of knowledge and to transform its readers so that they are forced to acknowledge their relationship to posttraumatic culture.12

Rothberg’s observations can provide a relevant critical framework for discussing genocide tales. Accordingly, mimesis is immediately rejected as the goal of fiction. Trauma theory, like postcolonial studies, places the emphasis on memory and the individual experience of History to the detriment of official versions that have the tendency to silence the multiform effects of historical events on the individual. Instead, readers are called upon to admit their belonging to an era of post-traumatic

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culture—confronted as they are with a new era of genocidal violence— which the world would prefer to banish from its consciousness. The collision of history and literature is particularly rich in the framework of the project “Writing in Duty to Memory.” The urgent and voluntary nature of the work of memory seems at times to confer upon this initiative the tone of an “agonic cry.”13 The torments of History find their full human dimension in Monénembo’s hands. There, creation takes on a performative quality in its transmission of memory. According to Boris Diop, writers must distinguish “human truth” from “factual truth.”14 Nevertheless, the representation of genocide questions the role of emotional affect. In “Montrer l’horrible dans sa réalité a-t-il encore un sens? L’artiste et la mémoire,” Lionel Richard discusses the limitations of the use of graphic images in contemporary artistic representations of war and other forms of mass violence, and its effects on the reader: Assurément, ces images ont le pouvoir de dénoncer l’inhumain: celui qui donne à voir cet inhumain prend parti, et c’est à son honneur. Son témoignage, à moins d’esthétiser le macabre, accuse. Il appelle à s’indigner. Mais quelle est son efficacité? L’image documentaire prétend apporter des réponses. L’art, non: il interroge. [These images assuredly have the power to denounce the inhuman: the one who presents a picture of the inhuman dimension takes sides, and it is to his or her honor. A writer who bears witness without aestheticization of the macabre is pointing his finger. His testimony calls upon us to show our outrage. But what is its effectiveness? The documentary image claims to provide answers. Art does not: it questions].15

Richard seems to imply here that the artistic dimension—by means of aestheticization—should take precedence over a documentary-like approach that purports to capture brute reality. In literature, exploring the potential of artistic creation by using new narrative strategies is one way for a writer to testify to the unnamable human suffering. Below, I shall discuss how in recent francophone literature on genocide, flashbacks (analepsis) of fragmented memories, the citing of proverbs, and speech errors including metathesis, neologisms, and the confusion of words in children’s testimonies constitute important devices that authors use to reflect and reflect on a tormented history. Monénembo’s The Oldest Orphan treats one of the darkest chapters in the history of the twentieth century: the April 1998 genocide of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus by extremist Hutus. The poetics of the novel is characterized by “un refus de fonctionner comme le discours de la vérité où sont opposés le vrai et le faux” (a refusal to function as the discourse of

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truth where the true and the false are opposed).16 In his calling to “write in duty to memory,” Monénembo chooses to emphasize the fictional dimension as a narrative strategy meant to draw attention to a survivor’s testimony. He utilizes a first-person narration to reflect the broken life and fragmented identity of an adolescent. Borrowing from Coquio’s terminology, we could call this type of writing in which a worldview is expressed according to a single narrator’s perspective “homogeneous miming.”17 Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana and Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness also draw attention to the devastating effects of genocide on society. Both are interested in the psychology of children. Indeed, the youth occupy a choice position in the construction of the story for they symbolize not only future hope but also the agents who will perform the actual work of remembering. A serious consideration of their testimonies is a means of affording a larger perspective on the fate that young people have experienced before and during the genocides. The Shadow of Imana is neither a conventional novel nor a travel narrative, but rather a hybrid of both in presenting itself as ethnographic observation. It is composed of very short narratives organized into six small chapters. Four years after the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, the narrator Véronique travels to Rwanda to bear witness to the tragedy of an entire continent.18 During her stay, Véronique visits sites of the genocide where she listens to and records the testimonies of genocide survivors, including women and children. It should be noted here that whereas both Monénembo and Tadjo favor fiction, the narrative voice in both works recognizes the limits of fiction in speaking the truth of the genocide. As Tadjo asserts: “notre imagination n’atteindra jamais la réalité” (our imagination will never reach reality).19 Written from the perspective of Georg, a fifteen-year-old adolescent Hungarian Jew deported to Auschwitz, Imre Kertész’s semiautobiographical novel entitled Fatelessness is an attempt to describe the experience of Nazi camps in a quasi-documentary style with an eye for detailing the “brute reality” of events. In his conversation with Georg upon his liberation, a journalist sums up Kertész’s poetic intention. The journalist is interested in what the young boy has to say about his deportation to Nazi camps because he offers “a new individual color in the tiresome flood of brute facts.”20 The child narrator’s perspective refuses a certain metaphorization that has become a commonplace in literature of the Shoah and that consists in painting the world of the concentration camp as Hell. In fact, what the narrator has lived in the camps is so extreme that he finds words inadequate to translate them. To be sure, Fatelessness demonstrates an unbridgeable chasm separating those who

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lived through the concentration camps and those who never entered. The former are unable to truly share their experiences with the latter. This inability constitutes in fact a primary theme of the novel.21 Each of the child testimonies bears witness to resistance on the part of the survivor to “reminisce” about the past, especially when it is the source of trauma. Tadjo’s narrator takes note of the psychic repression from the past among those with whom she spoke. She observes that in children, avoiding the past can often take the form of lies, thereby underscoring a contradictory aspect in the testimony of child survivor: “Si vous les poussez à parler, à dire leur vie antérieure; ils s’enfoncent plus loin dans le mensonge, ce bouclier contre la cruauté des adultes. Ils diront ce que vous voulez entendre” (If you push them to talk, to speak of their former life, they retreat further into lies, lies that shield them from the cruelty of adults. They will tell you what you want to hear).22 As this quote suggests, to repress painful memories, to avoid reliving their traumatic past, children who survived the worse human atrocity fabricate stories. This same phenomenon can be seen in The Oldest Orphan. The very first time that Faustin meets Claudine, the social worker, he lies about his identity, about where he comes from, and about his parents: Dis-moi, d’où viens-tu, mon petit: de Cyangungu?, de Ruhengeri? Non, de Kigali! Et où sont tes parents? Ici à Kigali! Notre maison se trouve à Gikondo! […] Dis-moi, mon petit, comment t’appelles-tu? Cyrille! Cyrille Elyangashu! A Gikondo, tout le monde connaît la famille Elyangashu! [Tell me, where do you come from, young man? From Cyangungu Province or Ruhengeri? No, Kigali! And where are your parents? Here in Kigali! Our house is in Gikondo! […] Tell me, young man, what’s your name? Cyrille! Cyrille Elyangashu! In Gikondo everyone knows the Elyangashu family!]23

Lies do not, however, constitute the entirety of children’s testimonies, but more often are simply the initial obstacle to bearing witness. They also do not preclude the child’s speech from becoming a valuable source of material from which we can gain a better understanding of genocide and trauma. As Tadjo’s narrator explains, by piecing together the fragmented testimonies of children made orphans by the genocide, she hopes to paint a

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more accurate picture of what happened and to bear witness to the atrocity of this crime against humanity: “Vous entendrez parfois des bribes de vérité. Les morceaux de leur histoire s’imbriquent les uns dans les autres, et puis enfin l’image se dessine” (You will hear a few snatches of the truth. The fragments of their stories overlap with each other, and finally, a picture emerges).24 Maurice Halbwachs explains that as a social convention, language can provide a reliable framework for recollection to take place: “Les conventions verbales constituent donc le cadre à la fois élémentaire et le plus stable de la mémoire collective […]” (Verbal conventions therefore constitute an elementary and highly stable framework for collective memory).25 Hence, my interest here in various types of speech phenomena in children’s testimonies. The barbarity of the genocidal act is especially insufferable. In the Rwandan context, neighbors often turned into torturers who used knives, often with a level of sadism that defies the human imagination. It is from the perspective of approaching evil itself that Tadjo, in responding to the invitation to “write in duty to memory,” chose to speak of the massacre of the Tutsis. As the narrator of The Shadow of Imana states in bearing witness to the genocide26: “Le principe du Mal existait. […] Le Mal existait bien avant le souffle de vie” (The concept of Evil existed. […] Evil existed long before the breath of life).27 She goes on to affirm that “Le génocide est le Mal absolu. Sa réalité dépasse la fiction. […] Il faut reconnaître le Mal” (Genocide is Evil incarnate. Its reality exceeds any fiction. […] We must acknowledge the existence of Evil).28 To tell the full extent of the genocidal act means to recognize, and indeed, confront the very face of evil. It is this confrontation that the following sections seek to elucidate in child testimonies.

Retrodiction and Child Language: the Testimony of Trauma Historiography involves the retrospective analysis of events that the historian may not have personally experienced. Accordingly, the reconstruction of past events becomes a matter of finding causal relations between historical facts to contextualize them for a better understanding. This conception of History is present in most of the texts written in connection with the project “Writing by Duty to Memory.” History and literature have a point of convergence in the sense that both aim at the production of meaning. As Henry Rousso emphasizes,

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Pour une part, l’histoire savante est elle-même un vecteur de mémoire, qui ressortit à un processus ayant pour finalité d’appréhender le passé et de lui donner une intelligibilité, au même titre que d’autres vecteurs de mémoire, telles la commémoration, la création littéraire et artistique, ou encore les associations d’anciens combattants, de résistants, de déportés.29 [For one thing, scholarly history is itself a vector of memory, emerging from a process whose end goal is to apprehend the past and give it meaning, intelligibility, in the same way as do other vectors of memory, such as commemoration, literary and artistic creation, or even groups for veterans, resisters, deportees].

From this viewpoint, through the construction of a plot, the writer makes use of retrodiction each time that he or she tries to explain an historical event. As Paul Veyne explains: “Les problèmes de rétrodiction sont au contraire des problèmes de probabilité des hypothèses: un événement étant déjà arrivé, quelle en est la bonne explication?” (The problems of retrodiction are the opposite of the problems of probability in hypotheses: since an event has already happened, what can be the best explanation for it?).30 In The Oldest Orphan, the use of analepsis as a narrative procedure becomes an act of reconstitution with a double aim: it allows for the reconstruction of the past of Faustin, the child narrator, and also affords a glimpse of life in Rwanda before the genocide in order to emphasize the psychological abyss and the moral degradation into which the adults’ barbarity plunged a child of ten. As a stylistic procedure, analepsis reveals the victim’s suffering and justifies the child narrator’s psychology. The individuality of the subject is thereby restored, as if to reaffirm the demiurgic function of the writer. This aspect of restoring individuality is primordial, for behind every project of genocide lies the manifest will of the executioners to deny the humanity of their victims. The case of Rwanda was no different in this regard. To rally a greater number to their sinister cause, the conspirators of the genocide simply employed a surname for the Tutsis that members of the first armed rebellion used from the 1960s onward to designate them: “inyenzi,” or cockroaches. If, for the Tutsi rebels, this term summed up their guerrilla tactics, based on their constant mobility and the endless harassment of their adversary, in 1994 the Hutus used the same term to denigrate Tutsi dignity, to deny their humanity purely and simply. The violence of this semantic shift has no equal other than in the monstrous hatred that gave rise to it. Psychologists specializing in understanding the intent of collective acts of violence call this phenomenon “the intentionality of perpetrators.”31 In literature, the

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flashback is crucial to restoring the integrity of the victim. The novels analyzed here bear witness to connections between the psychopathological dimension of trauma that haunts the mind of a subject and the resurgence of memories of an autobiographical order. Richard McNally observes that there is in the flashback, a situation both of distortion and of reconstruction: “Flashbacks are vivid, emotionally intense experiences that produce the illusion of reliving the trauma. […] Like autobiographical memories in general […] flashbacks inevitably entail reconstruction and distortion.”32 The literary representation of trauma involves subjectivization, if only in its phantasmatic aspect. Moments lived are represented or recounted according to a logic that places the subject in relationship to the outside world. By placing emphasis on reliving or reminiscing, the narration in The Oldest Orphan gives back to Faustin his past—that is to say, his memory and especially, his identity as much as do the unflagging efforts of social and humanitarian workers in physically reuniting him with his younger siblings, the sole survivors of his family. The restoration of individual identity and the reconstruction of the family unit have a strong symbolic significance. They oppose the intentionality of the executioners, which aims at the complete annihilation of every Tutsi family. Monénembo’s novel, which seeks to be a fictional reconstruction of the genocide such as it was lived by a small boy of ten, refuses to be divided into chapters. The story is presented rather as fragments of memories gathered and organized along the lines of the cinematographic technique of the flashback. Invented by the industry of the seventh art, this term was employed by clinicians for the first time in 1960 to speak of the phenomena of hallucinatory reliving among victims of torture or collective violence and survivors of genocide. According to McNally, the flashback designates in this case “sudden, unbidden, emotionally intense sensory experiences (such as visual images or smells) that seemingly reinstate the sensory impressions that occurred during the trauma. The vividness of the imagery produces a disturbing sense of reliving the experience.”33 Commenting on the involuntary nature of the unbearable images that haunt him, Faustin expresses himself in these terms: “Mes souvenirs du génocide s’arrêtent là. Le reste on me l’a raconté par la suite ou alors cela a rejailli tout seul dans ma mémoire en lambeaux, par à-coups, comme des jets d’eau boueuse jaillissent d’une pompe obstruée” (My memories of the genocide stop there. The rest, I was told later, or it resurfaced on its own in my tattered memory in spurts like muddy water pouring out of a clogged pump).34

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Flashbacks in the novel underscore both the physical and psychological dimensions to violence, which is depicted as the rape of childhood innocence. Only ten years of age at the time when the first groups of the Interahamwe militia (a Hutu paramilitary organization) launched their murderous crusade upon his village of Nyamata, the protagonist Faustin witnesses scenes of unprecedented violence that leave profound marks upon his still fragile personality. Five years later, he provides the following account of the crusade: Les paisibles groupuscules que j’avais aperçus tout à l’heure sautèrent en l’air brandissant des marteaux, des machettes et des massues à clous […]. Je compris le sens des croix rouges sur les murs: c’étaient les maisons des Tutsi. Maintenant certaines d’entre elles brûlaient, d’autres étaient encerclées. Des femmes cherchaient à sauver leurs gosses. Elles étaient vite rattrapées. On les étendait dans leur propre cour, on leur sectionnait les tendons. Les bambins, on leur fracassait la tête en les cognant contre les murs. [The peaceful small groups I had seen earlier under the mango trees and in front of the service station jumped up in the air brandishing hammers, machetes, studded clubs […]. I now understood the meaning of the red crosses on the walls: those were Tutsi houses. Some of them on fire, others were surrounded. Women were trying to save their kids. They were quickly caught. They were made to lie down in their own yard and their tendons were slit. Their children’s heads were smashed against the walls.]35

This flashback is a good example of hypotyposis: a vivid, realistic description that gives the impression of having an image before your very eyes. Faustin’s first brutal contact with unbridled violence recounted here is placed in sharp contrast with the innocent mind of the child narrator. But this flashback in fact begins with a passage immediately preceding this violent scene. While fearing impending tragedy, the elders comment on Faustin’s innocent nature: “‘[Mais] c’est le fils de Théoneste! Voyezmoi ça: il joue au cerf-volant! Les tueries vont commencer et il joue au cerf-volant! […] Nous allons tous, mourir, Faustin, et toi tu joues au cerfvolant’” (“Oh, that’s Théoneste’s son. Look at him playing with his kite! The killings are about to start and he’s playing with his kite. […] We’re all going to die, Faustin, and you’re playing with your kite”).36 Whereas Faustin is behaving like an ordinary child, enjoying a typical child’s game—kite flying—the brutal attack on his village can be described as a rape of the child’s world. The textual juxtaposition of the two images—a child flying a kite and a tumultuous assault by a death squad—only adds to

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the violence and the barbarity of the act of genocide described. To be sure, this assault also marks the very end of innocence, as the two-part flashback demonstrates. Monénembo returns to this unfortunate consequence of genocide in an interview by underscoring the impact of the Rwandan genocide on youth: “Une fois l’innocence perdue, il ne reste plus rien” (Once innocence is lost, nothing remains).37 In the novel, a child soldier in the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) discusses the impact of the Rwandan genocide on youth in similar terms, thereby summarizing in eloquent fashion Monénembo’s own perspective on the genocidal act as an utter loss of innocence38: “Des enfants ont tué des enfants, des prêtres ont tué des prêtres, des femmes ont tué des femmes enceintes, des mendiants ont tué d’autres mendiants, etc. Il n’y a plus d’innocents ici” (Children have killed children, priests have killed priests, women have killed pregnant women, beggars have killed other beggars, and so on. There are no innocents left here.39 Commenting on the singularity of Monénembo’s “contrat d’engagement” (contract of engagement) within the framework of the “Writing in Duty to Memory” project, Coquio observes that the writer distances himself from the facts themselves in order to unveil a certain truth to genocide, which is the tragic loss of childhood innocence: Monénembo, lui, se tient au contraire volontairement à distance des faits pour restituer sa vérité du génocide: la destruction de l’enfance, et à travers elle de toute innocence. C’est-à-dire la disparition en définitif du tragique. Son interprétation de l’événement, éthique plus que politique, désigne le brouillage des catégories morales au sein d’un monde usé, dont le génocide dit la vérité de fond: celle d’une inhumanité que la justice ne fait qu’aggraver.40 [For his part, Monénembo on the contrary keeps his distance from facts in order to restore his truth about genocide: the destruction of childhood, and through it, of all innocence. That is, the definitive disappearance of the tragic. His interpretation of the event, more ethical than political, designates the blurring of moral categories in the heart of the weary world, where genocide speaks the fundamental truth: that of an inhumanity that justice only exacerbates.]

The return to the past as a narrative procedure is an effective strategy to make the past emerge in the present; to reiterate the horror before the world, before all those who, for diverse reasons, underestimated or ignored the scope of one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. The narrative choice finds its justification in its intent to privilege the traumatic dimension of the events in the young survivor. We can describe The Oldest Orphan as an instance of “traumatic narrative” because the text is

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punctuated by various atrocious memories, like those found in the following passage: La Cité des Anges bleus n’avait que deux inconvénients: la discipline stricte […] et les pleurs hystériques, absolument insupportables, qui montaient de l’aile des filles à n’importe quelle heure du jour et de la nuit. La journée, je m’éloignais vers les champs de manioc pour en diminuer l’effet sur ma tête. [The City of the Blue Angels had only two drawbacks: strict discipline […] and the absolutely unbearable hysterical weeping off and on, day or night, coming from the girls. During the day, I’d go far out toward the manioc fields to lessen its effects on my head.]41

As this passage illustrates, for the characters in the novel, their relationship to the recent or distant past has a traumatic dimension. In certain cases, the flashback of the traumatic event teaches us something about the effects of trauma themselves. For instance, in an arresting passage in which Faustin reminisces about the immediate days following the end of the genocide as he wanders the deserted streets of Kigali, he suggests that the extremity and ubiquity of violence during the Rwandan genocide has caused him to lose all sense of time: Le râle des agonisants et le vrombissement des tanks cédèrent la place à la voix des vendeuses de papayes et de maracujas. Le changement se fit sans que l’on s’en aperçoive […]. Même dans la puanteur des caniveaux où, au fil des jours, la pisse des ivrognes et des putes avait surpassé en volume le sang coagulé et la cervelle gluante des cadavres. Ne me demandez pas combien de mois s’étaient écoulés! [The rattle of the dying and the roar of the tanks gave way to the voices of the women selling papayas and passionfruit. We didn’t notice the change […]. Even in the stench of the gutters where, as the days went by, the piss of drunks and the whores replaced coagulated blood and the sticky brain matter of the dead. Don’t ask me how many months had gone by!]42

We have a dual interest in this passage. In addition to the representation of a trauma that disorients the narrator, there is an entire language of scatology that reflects the intentionality of the executioners. The absence of decent graves and the description of the immediate environment of the bodies speak volumes about the intent of the genocidal killers: to show the “animality” of their victims. We could even speak of the “second death” of the victims, reinforced by their quasi-anonymity as underscored by the

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mass graves. But above all, it is the cruelty and monstrosity of the killers that is retained and that best denounces the genocidal violence. Faustin’s evocation of the prison world during the genocide allows for a description of another facet of trauma. Arrested, tried, and condemned to death for the murder of his friend, Faustin is for the moment suspected of the crime of genocide. Because of the judicial system’s misinterpretation of the nature of Faustin’s violent act—he is treated as if he were a “génocideur” (a perpetrator of genocide)—the act of avenging the honor of his violated sister loses its “chivalrous” character, which is drowned in the swamp of moral decline echoed throughout the novel.43 Left to the bullying of his co-detainees, in prison Faustin lives blatantly manifest forms of post-traumatic stress, which his account reveals: “On est obligé d’être sans arrêt sur ses gardes. Dormir, voilà le moment le plus agonisant! Depuis mon arrivée ici, je me réveille en sursaut une dizaine de fois, la nuit, le front en sueur, en appelant ma mère au secours” (You always have to be on your guard. Sleep is the most frightening time! Since I’ve been here, I wake up suddenly ten times at night, sweating, calling my mother for help.)44 In addition to flashbacks, an aspect of childhood narratives that targets injustices and reevaluates the past is the voice of cynicism. The casualness and nonconformity that mark the language of the young narrator of Monénembo’s novel seem to be part of a certain rejection of the adult, post-genocidal world. Faustin shows not only mistrust toward adults, he also questions the social worker Claudine’s motives for helping him: “A coup sûr, pensai-je, elle va me donner un billet, elle va m’inviter à coucher avec elle” (“No doubt,” I thought, “she’s going to give me some money and ask me to sleep with her”).45 Furthermore, during his trial he refuses to cooperate with his defense attorney and sabotages the entire procedure. Asked by one of the judges if he has any remorse about what he did, Faustin’s answer is shockingly blunt: “Je m’excuse, monsieur le juge, mais je n’ai aucun sens du regret” (“I’m sorry, sir, that I have not an ounce of regret”).46 Then, speaking to another prosecutor who urges him to save his life, Faustin exclaims: “Oh! ma bonne vieille mère, répondis-je, je n’ai fait que ça, ces derniers temps: sauver ma tête. Si on me la coupe, je n’aurai qu’un regret: n’avoir pas suffisamment profité de mon temps” (“Heh, my good woman,” I replied, “that’s all I’ve done these past few years is save my neck. If I get my head cut off, I’ll regret only one thing, that I didn’t take more advantage of the good times”).47 The system of justice to which Coquio alluded above is harshly critiqued in the novel by the cynical narrator. Meant to punish the perpetrators and protect the survivors, “justice” condemns Faustin to

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death, thereby making him a double victim. The reader learns that Faustin was arrested for having committed a crime of a very different nature: he killed his friend Musinkôro whom he caught raping his younger sister. However, the justice system ends up treating him as if he participated in perpetrating the genocide. What’s more, while waiting for his trial, Faustin is held in prison along with hundreds of men and women also accused of genocide. Some of these “génocideurs” could be his parents’ murderers. To make matters worse, the court sentences him to death. Faustin reacts to the verdict with the same cynicism and irony that he embodies throughout the story. In the following passage, after the judge refers to him as a monster, Faustin replies with dark sarcasm: —Tu es un monstre, Faustin! Tu ne mérites pas d’appartenir au genre humain! —Je n’ai jamais pris ça pour une gloire, appartenir au genre humain! Jamais je n’ai vécu aussi heureux que quand j’étais dans la mine d’étain. [“You’re a monster, Faustin! You don’t deserve to be part of the human race!” “I’ve never thought that belonging to the human race was praiseworthy. I’ve never been as happy as when I was in the tin mine.”]48

Bataille’s notion of evil can also be enlisted to interpret Faustin’s crime of passion as distinct from genocidal violence or “absolute evil.” In the “moral void” of the genocidal context, the heroic act that leads Faustin to kill his friend—his sister’s rapist—is rich in symbolism. Speaking of the link between literature and evil, Bataille makes the distinction between “Evil” as a disinterested attraction toward death and an “evil” whose origin is self-interest or passion: Le Mal, envisagé sous le jour d’une attirance désintéressée vers la mort, diffère du mal dont le sens est l’intérêt égoïste. Une action criminelle “crapuleuse” s’oppose à la “passionnelle.” La loi les rejette l’une et l’autre, mais la littérature la plus humaine est le haut lieu de la passion. [Evil, seen in the light of a disinterested attraction towards death, differs from the evil based on self-interest. A “foul” criminal deed is contrary to a “passionate” one. The law rejects both of them, but truly humane literature is the high point of passion.]49

Faustin ends up in prison because of a crime of passion. He will sabotage his defense at the risk of his life. He is condemned to death—a verdict that leaves him unflustered. The symbolic breadth of Faustin’s chivalrous act

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that was undertaken to defend the family honor can be set against all of the genocidal crimes aimed at the complete destruction of whole families. The distinction that Bataille makes between two types of evil helps us to understand genocidal logic as working to deny the victims’ humanity, whereas Faustin’s murderous act constitutes a high point of human passion at the heart of literature. Therein lies the whole merit of this novel: by combining the unique power of fiction and testimony, it denounces genocide as of an entirely different nature—as sheer madness. The effects of genocidal violence also emerge in speech errors as a type of symptom. Toward the novel’s conclusion, Faustin cynically describes his story as “ni une histoire de langue ni une histoire de taumatrismes [sic], c’est une histoire de couteau” (not a story about languages or taumatrisms, it’s a story about knives).50 “Taumatrisme” is the tormented child narrator’s deformation of the word “traumatisme” (traumatism). It is in fact an example of metathesis, the rearranging of sounds or syllables of a word. At the metadiscursive level, we can identify the stylistic figure employed as preterition, in the sense that the author did not correct the narrator’s speech error. In The Oldest Orphan, the narrator’s voice, as the one giving the testimony, draws attention to the delicate problematic of language in the writing of genocide. The entire narrative of Monénembo’s novel is indeed about language and trauma; contrary to what the child narrator—who himself is the author’s creation—claims. In his narrative, Monénembo experiments with language in very specific ways as part of his commitment to bear witness to the Rwandan genocide. By doing so, Monénembo avoids a documentary-style of writing that seeks to render the horrible nature of genocidal reality through a display of graphic images. Cathy Caruth’s definition of traumatism will assist us in discussing the relevance of “traumatic language” in The Oldest Orphan: In its general definition, trauma is described as the response to an unexpected or overwhelming event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena. Traumatic experience, beyond the psychological dimension of suffering, suggests a certain paradox: that the most direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute inability to know it, that immediacy, paradoxically, may take the form of belatedness. The repetitions of the traumatic event—unavailable to consciousness but intruding repeatedly on sight—thus suggest a larger relation to the event that extends beyond what can be simply seen or what can be known, and is inextricably tied up with the belatedness and incomprehensibility that remain at the heart of this repetitive seeing.51

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Faustin’s psychology is a textbook example of trauma, as described by Caruth. By claiming that “this is neither a story of language nor a story of taumatrism,” the narrator ignores his traumatic situation, which keeps resurfacing through flashbacks, nightmares, and speech errors, such as in the example of the metathesis taumatrism. Another example of speech error is Faustin’s use of the French word “avènement,” which can reveal a new perspective on the Rwandan genocide. In repeatedly referring to the massacres of 1959, The Oldest Orphan presents the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi as the climax of a series of massacres that began decades before. This manner of interpreting recent events by linking them to earlier, similar events can help the reader understand the recent Rwandan tragedy as part of a great cycle of repetitive or recurring violence. It perceives the 1994 genocide as stemming from and a continuation of previous massacres. In addition to the numerous references made to the massacres of 1959, the speech of the child narrator also appears to make the connection between the present and past. In speaking of the first interrogation that followed his arrest by the soldiers of the RPF, Faustin seemingly commits another error of speech: “Je fis un effort surhumain pour revenir sur les fameux avènements que ma mémoire ne voulait plus revoir. Soudain, tout s’éclaircit. Ma bouche s’ouvrit toute seule et je parlai si vite qu’il m’arrêta pour faire venir mon vieux compagnon de route” (I made a superhuman effort to go back over the famous advents that my memory refused to revisit. Suddenly, it was all clear. My mouth opened and words spurted out; he stopped me and had my old road companion join us).52 These words from Faustin evoke the distressing psychological condition of the young boy and the resultant dilemma. On the one hand, he desires to forget the atrocious events that he witnessed. On the other, we find the narrator reliving these very same episodes. It is important to note the semantic and linguistic confusion in the words used by the young narrator to describe the genocide. Faustin ignores the difference in meaning between the word that he uses and the word that he seemingly intends to use by repeatedly employing the expression avènements in lieu of évènements, which the media and others that surround him employ to speak of the genocidal massacres. This confusion of words that are almost homonyms is particularly revealing at the metadiscursive level: it is indicative of an important poetic intention evoked in this essay—namely, the inscription of a narrative thread in a retrodictive perspective. The etymology of “avènement” (sometimes translated as “advent” in English) informs us that the word comes from the Old French “avenir,” meaning that which is “to come.” In modern French, the word avènement refers to the arrival of something, especially in the

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sense of its establishment. Thus, we can speak, for example, of the “avènement” of a durable peace in a country. The narrator’s confusion of words very similar in meaning, pronunciation, and spelling constitutes the subtle expression of a particular approach to explaining the genocide as one that takes into account the first massacres of the Tutsis in 1959, as an “establishing” or “founding” event that would trigger others to follow. More generally, this expression and many others found in the child’s speech—“taumatrismes,” “pédrophile,” “Notions-Unies”—also bear witness to the trauma of a child who suffered greatly after the attack on his village. After surviving the massacre at a church in Nyamata, and following his admission to the orphanage, the City of Blue Angels, the ten-year-old Faustin then fell into a coma. Since recovering from this near death experience, his use of language becomes part of a memory work that attempts to make sense of the tragic events that he recounts: “J’étais devenu important: le détenteur du secret, le seul à pouvoir dénouer le mystère des trois petits diables, comme ils disaient. Mais pour les édifier il fallait bien que je commence à éclaircir les choses pour moi-même. J’étais sorti du coma dans un état lamentable” (I had become important, the possessor of a secret, the only one able to solve the mystery of the three little devils, as they said. But to enlighten them, first I had to start clearing things up for myself. I came out of the coma in a terrible state).53 The child narrator’s unorthodox play of language is part of this struggle to “clear things up,” to try to understand the incomprehensible. To summarize my observations of the child testimony in The Oldest Orphan thus far, the narrative employs flashbacks, cynicism, and speech errors as part of a project of retrodiction that sheds new light on the extent and nature of the Rwandan genocide. To be sure, this nature includes the effects of trauma on the survivor’s psychology. The witness’s fragmented stories and speech reveal traumatic memory at work in the service of retrodiction, and as such can be considered a work of reinterpretation of history in its aim to untangle complex tragic events.54

A Hybrid Poetics to Bear Witness to Genocide As a rule, official accounts of history do not consider the point of view of children. However, the child’s perspective constitutes an important object of study for theorists since, through their testimonies, the young narrators fill in critical gaps in our understanding of trauma. Monénembo’s tale of genocide can shed new light on existing narratives and at times even challenge or subvert them. By giving voice to children, these

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testimonial texts are both subversive and transgressive. They are subversive in that they may compete with official historical accounts, and they are transgressive in allowing child narrators to utter the atrocities caused by adults. After all, the etymology of the word “enfant” (child) is the Latin infants—the one who does not speak. In this section, I will focus on the hybrid nature of children’s testimonies. By hybrid, I am using Bakhtin’s notion that refers to the author’s conscious or intentional use of language in his or her narrative: “Tout roman dans sa totalité, du point de vue du langage et de la conscience linguistiques investis en lui, c’est un hybride (Every novel in its totality, from the point of view of language and from the linguistic awareness invested in it, is a hybridity).55 Faustin’s frequent reciting of proverbs—the primary vehicles of wisdom and the transmission of ancestral memory—allows the lost child to recover some sense of coherence in his upended world. This use of language also functions as an attempt to give life back to the memories of his people, especially those of his father Théoneste and to Funga, the old healer of the village. In remembering his first days in Kigali, the city of mass graves created by the RPF, Faustin offers the following words: “J’avais fini par trouver mon compte au beau milieu du chaos […]. Le vieux Funga a raison. ‘Le monde, il marche même si c’est souvent de travers’” (I had managed to rescue something out of the chaos. […] Old Funga is right: “Life marches on, but often in the wrong direction”).56 Later, Faustin recites another proverb: “‘L’enfant sait courir mais il ne sait pas se cacher,’ J’aurais pensé à cette parole des anciens” (The child knows how to run but he doesn’t know how to hide. I would have thought of this saying from the elders).57 These proverbs reaffirm the significance of orality to the act of bearing witness, as recognized by both postcolonial and trauma studies, but also by the writers of the project, “Rwanda: Writing in Duty to Memory.” In his essay on globalization, Monénembo very eloquently makes the connection between proverbs—an essential rhetorical tool in oral tradition—and memory: “Le conte invite à découvrir, le proverbe, à savoir et à retenir. Le conte est une atmosphère, le proverbe, un moment de vérité” (A tale is an invitation to discover, a proverb is a tool for knowledge and retention. A tale is about feeling, the proverb is a moment of truth).58 The child narrator’s use of proverbs— learned from his father and other close relatives—is a way to bring them back to life. Accordingly, this memory work resembles the writer’s. As we may recall, one of the primary goals of writers of genocide is to restore the victims’ dignity and to defeat or counter the genocidal intention to erase the victims’ memory. This literary act is beautifully executed by Philip Gourevitch, New York Times’ reporter and investigative journalist—one of

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the very first foreigners to testify about the Rwandan genocide—in his book We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. In the passage below, Gourevitch describes his impressions after arriving at the site of a massacre in Rwanda, accompanied by the soldiers of the RPF a few weeks following the end of the genocide: The dead at Nyarubuye were, I’m afraid, beautiful. There is no getting around it. The skeleton is a beautiful thing. The randomness of the fallen forms, the strange tranquility of their rude exposure, the skull here, the arm bent in some uninterpretable gesture there—these things were beautiful, and their beauty only added to the affront of the place. I couldn’t settle on any meaningful response: revulsion, alarm, sorrow, grief, shame, incomprehension, sure, but nothing truly meaningful.59

 In The Oldest Orphan, it is the use of proverbs that the narrator has inherited from the elders in his community that keeps alive the memory of the narrator’s loved ones killed during the genocide, as the child attributes each proverb to a particular relative. This particular use of proverbs in a child’s testimony of genocide is a good example of “transcultural memory,” a term that Josias Semujanga uses to describe the hybrid, intertextual quality of tales of genocide in Rwanda.60 Confronted with the destructive violence that constitutes the backdrop of the tale of genocide, the novelistic writing in The Oldest Orphan seeks to be a building tool in the logic of counter-violence. The survivor struggles to rediscover his human integrity as the memory of the dead triumphs over the barbarity and anonymity to which the executioners sought to condemn them forever. Monénembo draws attention to the highly pernicious nature of genocidal violence as it makes a lasting impression upon children, the most fragile layer of society. Another aspect of “transcultural memory” and one that is very relevant to our discussion of the Rwandan genocide is the involvement of the French government in the events of 1994. To begin, one must keep in mind the necessarily hybrid character of French-African literary expression. As Monénembo states: La littérature chez nous n’[est] jamais qu’un accidentel point de jonction entre palabres africaines et les lettres européennes. Une fille naturelle du griot et de l’aède, en somme! L’œuvre africaine porte naturellement des charges hétéroclites dont l’auteur n’a pas toujours conscience du degré de mixage mais dont il croit encore déceler les origines.61 [Literature for us is never an accidental point of juncture between African palavers and European letters. It’s a natural daughter of the griot and the

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bard, in fact! The African text naturally carries disparate traces, where the author is not always aware of the degree of mixing but whose origins he believes he can discover.] .

In Faustin’s speech errors, and in the author’s refusal to correct them, it can be said that Monénembo’s narrative resists full submission to a certain ideology of linguistic francophony. By extension, his unorthodox use of the French language can also be seen as a way to denounce the notion of “Françafrique,”62 an unofficial relationship between France and “le pré carré,” the term designated for African states in which France exerts great influence in major political decisions. It is in this context that we must understand as a denunciation of “Françafrique” the following comments of the lawyer figure in Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana, a nameless attorney from another non-specified African country who provides pro bono legal assistance to those accused of genocide and helps rebuild the country’s crumbling justice system: “Je le sais, j’en suis témoin: la France a tout gâché. Elle a trahi tout un peuple” (I know the truth of this, I am a witness to it: France ruined everything. She did not keep her promises, she betrayed this country).63 Furthermore the anonymity of this character makes him a voice for an entire continent that suffers from the evils of neo-colonialism. The last pages of The Oldest Orphan reveal the macabre secret of Faustin’s survival. He survived the killings by snuggling up against his mother’s cadaver, feeding himself with his mother’s blood, as if it were milk. This is a strong image that long remains engraved in the reader’s memory, but at the same time, it offers the key to the personality of the survivor child. Faustin is not only his mother’s son, he also remains the offspring of a demoniacal and perverse genocidal machine of death. It is this observation that must be seriously considered. As Lemkin asserts, “La mémoire n’a pas seulement pour fonction d’enregistrer les événements passés mais de stimuler l’éveil de la conscience humaine” (Memory’s function is not only to register past events but to stimulate the awakening of the human conscience).64 Unlike conventional war, genocide destroys the very fabric of society by indiscriminately targeting children, women, and the elderly. Furthermore, children who survive are left with no parent to care for them. Faustin and his siblings are the perfect examples of this painful situation described in The Oldest Orphan. By drawing our attention to the consequences of genocide, it could be said that fiction calls upon the reader to engage in memory work as well, a key aspect in preventing future crimes against humanity. The Rwandan authorities fully understood art’s potential to reflect on history and their cooperation with the project: “Writing in Duty

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to Memory” should be viewed from this perspective. Coquio refers to the Rwandan government’s collaboration in the project as “efforts to internationalize” the memory of genocide because of the wide audience that the project has reached outside of Rwanda.65 Our interest in the hybrid textuality of the child’s testimony could benefit here from considering further examples of hybridity in the child testimony of the Nazi genocide that constitutes Kertész’s Fatelessness. The “writing of the self” in this context takes place in sorrow, as seen by the fragmentary character of Georg’s story and the recourse to phantasms to speak of the torments of history. Nevertheless, Kertész opts for a linear plot. Indeed, Fatelessness begins in a Hungarian city where the reader discovers the Jewish family of the young adolescent, whose father is deported when the narrator is only fourteen; one year later, he in turn is deported. The novel ends with his return to his native city upon the liberation of the camp by Allied forces. Furthermore, there seems to be a refusal to testify to the horrors of Nazi camps as all the painful details are deliberately omitted in the narration. This selective memory, however, can be interpreted as a subtle way to depict the unspeakable through ellipsis. Fatelessness is thus above all a work of autofiction—it is part autobiographical and part fictional. Writing decades after the events, Kertész the author must burrow into his past to bring back to life his adolescent memories. Still, unlike numerous autobiographical tales in which we read the “upheavals of memory,” the memories of the narratorauthor in Fatelessness are selective for an additional reason. Phrases like “as to what followed, it would be hard to recount” and “there was not a whole lot I could tell him that would be of much interest” are just as much “loci of memory.”66 This discursive practice that recurs throughout the narration allows the narrator-author to pass over in silence the most painful episodes of the long year that he spent in the Nazi concentration camps. In the following quote, Claude Mouchard describes the different dimensions of the child’s perspective that Kertész creates in his narrator: Le “je” dans ce livre puissant qu’est Etre sans destin, est un adolescent— dont Kertész recrée, avec une sorte de respect, le point de vue. Ses façons de dire ou de “se dire” ses pensées, chacune de ses perceptions ou émotions, tout est pris dans l’imprévu dans le déconcertant, tout est fait d’instants qui se dilatent, inintelligibles. On dirait que le “je” cherche le plus longtemps possible à accepter les choses comme elles viennent. Bonne volonté naïve d’un jeune, qui ne peut croire que le monde lui soit devenu à ce point hostile? Il vit une désorientation qui fut celle de toutes

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les victimes: l’organisation des événements par les nazis comportait de livrer les victimes à l’ignorance de ce qui allait leur arriver.67 [The “I” in this powerful book Fatelessness is an adolescent—whose point of view is recreated by Kertész with a kind of respect. His ways of telling or of “telling himself” his thoughts, each of his perceptions or emotions, everything is seen as unexpected in disconcerting him, everything is made up of moments that expand, unintelligible. It could be said that the “I” seeks for the longest possible time to accept things as they happen. The naïve good will of a young person, who cannot believe that the world has become so hostile to him? He experiences a disorientation common to all victims: the organization of events by the Nazis consists of keeping victims ignorant of what was to happen to them.]

More than the simple naivety about which Mouchard speaks, the narrator seems to have internalized Nazi hatred and ideology. The substitution of points of view—that of the narrator who suddenly superposes himself upon that of the SS officers—is particularly revealing. It shows to what extent the Nazi ideology has been internalized by the victim, who explains that he “was driven to perceive through the doctor’s eyes.”68 At the level of writing, it resembles the narrative strategy that Pierre Bayard calls “indivision énonciative” (enunciative indivision) in which a sudden and unexplained shift in point of view occurs, thereby blurring the narrative perspective.69 To speak the unspeakable about the reality of the concentration camps is thus achieved through this doubling of viewpoints. These different examples of narrative tropes—ellipsis, enunciative indivision, and repressed memory—attest to the pertinence, if not the necessity, of a rich textual hybridity in the child testimony that employs numerous literary techniques in approaching the complexity of genocide. The restraint in telling that is a characteristic of narration in Fatelessness, if linked to a refusal to show Nazi violence, can be read on the other hand as an elliptical expression of violence. Commenting on the uniqueness of “oeuvres-témoignages” (testimonial writings,) Mouchard emphasizes that “[le poème] dit aussi, elliptiquement, la violence subie” (the poem also speaks elliptically of the violence that has been experienced).70 Of course, we cannot deny prose this power of evocation in absentia.71 The narrator is careful to comment on certain situations that bring about immense atrocities as if the context itself were more than sufficient to inform the reader. The moments of self-censorship and repression in Fatelessness have the value of an unambiguous denunciation of Hitlerian totalitarianism and its procession of atrocities. For example, when asked by a journalist about his experience in the camps, the narrator

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replies: “I replied that there was not a whole lot I could tell him that would be of much interest.”72 The “enunciative indivision” discussed above seems to be part of this transgressive writing that inscribes “Evil” in the heart of the text itself. Further consideration of Bataille’s thoughts on the relationship between evil and literature can place the narrator’s adoption of a Nazi’s perspective in Fatelessness into richer context. According to Bataille, the literary text, in becoming a form of communication, bears with it “Evil.” One of the meanings of evil in the sense discussed by Bataille is “transgression:” Seule la littérature pouvait mettre à nu le jeu de la transgression de la loi— sans laquelle la loi n’aurait pas de fin—indépendamment d’un ordre à créer. […] La littérature est même, comme la transgression de la loi morale, un danger. Étant inorganique, elle est irresponsable. Rien ne repose sur elle. Elle peut tout dire. Ou plutôt elle serait un grand danger si elle n’était (dans la mesure où elle est authentique, et dans l’ensemble) l’expression de “ceux en qui les valeurs éthiques sont le plus profondément ancrées.” [Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law—without which the law would have no end—independently of the necessity to create order. […] Literature, like the infringement of moral laws, is dangerous. Being inorganic, it is irresponsible. Nothing rests on it. It can say everything and would be a great danger (to the extent in which it is authentic and complete) were it not the expression of “those in whom ethical values are most deeply rooted.”]73

One passage from Fatelessness in which the Nazi doctor is examining prisoners to determine who is fit for the labor camp is a good example of this narrative practice. The child witness explains his adopted point of view: “I was driven to perceive through the doctor’s eyes how many old or otherwise unusable people there were among them.”74 To be sure, it is understood through the context given in the narrative that those deemed “unfit” by the doctor would be sent to the gas chambers. As the young prisoner sees through the eyes of a Nazi doctor, the perspective on the crime is blurred from a narrative point of view. This seems to indicate that the victim has internalized his abusers’ inhumane practice. But this is also a way for the protagonist to escape the extreme psychological conditioning that aims to deprive him of any will. Through this mental representation— seeing himself as the Nazi doctor—he was able to reverse the roles, to become the agent of evil. This practice in which points of view are superimposed, referred to by narratologists as reported or narrativized monologue, is of capital

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importance. It allows us entry into the psychology of the character. We are aware of the extent to which the unfortunate adolescent has succumbed to the conditioning of the world of the Nazi concentration camp. This passage can be set alongside the following words of a Jewish character from Romain Gary’s La Danse de Gengis Cohn (1967), speaking about the Nazi executioner: “Je ne sais plus, parfois si je suis en lui ou s’il est en moi” (Sometimes I no longer know whether I am in him or he is in me).75 Narrativized monologue—as in the example provided here—and enunciative indivision are specific to fiction. Through these literary practices the writer can access the characters’ inner life. Furthermore, they indicate how literature and testimony can be intertwined to transgress the boundaries between genres. Such a transgression translates into a hybrid poetics that reveals genocidal reality. In this essay, I have looked at how the child testimony bears witness to genocide in unique ways. At the level of writing, the rejuvenation of point of view in the “homogenous mime” of Monénembo’s novel corresponds to a discursive strategy that allows the text to denounce genocidal evil in its entire complexity. With various types of speech errors, discursivization becomes the locus of both “dévoiement” (leading astray) and “dévoilement” (unmasking).76 It reveals the effects of trauma on victims as well as a force of counter-violence that seeks to undo the genocidal act. Its use of enunciative indivision and proverbs allows the “other” to further attest to psychic mechanisms that the child utilizes to reorient himself both during and in the aftermath of destruction. For the past two decades the Great Lakes region of Africa has witnessed genocide and many armed conflicts during which women and children have been indiscriminately targeted. The latter are often used as child-soldiers and sometimes forced to commit horrible atrocities. With peace gradually returning to the region and as the survivors slowly and painfully struggle to rebuild their lives, we need to listen to their testimonies to help them recover from their trauma. As we are reminded by Dori Laub, one of the greatest pioneers on Holocaust and oral testimony, “Le récit non écouté est un traumatisme aussi grave que l’épreuve initiale” (the testimony that has no listener is as serious a trauma as the initial event).77 While texts like The Oldest Orphan fill in a critical gap in Sub-Saharan literature, more needs to be done to render account of the endemic nature of the brutal conflicts in Eastern Africa and their devastating consequences on children.

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Notes 1

Tierno Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000), 93; Tierno Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska, 2004), 56. 2 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 107; English translation is Ruth Marie Mitsch. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of original French quotes are Mitsch’s. 3 This essay has been translated from the French by Ruth Marie Mitsch. 4 From a legal point of view, in order to successfully prosecute crime, fight against impunity, and prevent the repetition of mass atrocities, there should be no ambiguity in identifying criminal intent. 5 Rafaël Lemkin, Qu’est-ce qu’un génocide? (Monaco: Rocher, 2008), 8, 257. 6 These acts include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Ibid., 260). 7 It is worth mentioning that an important shift happened in the representation of mass violence in African literature starting in 2000. Quite a few novels published around that time frame bring attention to the scourge of child-soldiers in the many devastating civil wars in Africa—from Liberia and Sierra Leone to the Congo. For instance, the Nigerian writer and political activist Ken Saro Wiwa published Sozaboy (London: Longman, 1995), an autobiographical novel about a young man who fought in the separatist army during the War of Biafra. Ahmadou Kourouma returned to the literary scene with Allah n’est pas obligé (Paris: Seuil, 2000); and two years later Emmanuel Dongala published Johnny chien méchant (Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 2002). This text narrates a child-soldier’s experience in the brutal Congolese civil war. The film Johnny Mad Dog (2008) directed by JeanStéphane Sauvaire, was inspired by this novel. 8 Georges Bataille, La Littérature et le Mal (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 25; George Bataille, Literature and Evil, trans. Alastair Hamilton (New York: Marion Boyars, 1985), 29. 9 We are paraphrasing Catherine Coquio who seems to agree with Walter Benjamin’s idea that there is a relationship between any document of culture and violence. See Catherine Coquio, Rwanda. Le réel et les récits (Paris: Belin, 2004), 99. 10 Véronique Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana: Voyages jusqu’au bout du Rwanda (Paris: Actes Sud, 2000), 25; Véronique Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda (Oxford: Heinemann, 2002), 15. 11 Gérard Nauroy, L’Ecriture du massacre en littérature, entre histoire et mythe (Berne: Peter Lang, 2004), 2. 12 Michael Rothberg, Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 140.

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This expression was used to characterize the writing of francophone Canadians in their struggle for cultural emancipation. See Patrick Corcoran, The Cambridge Introduction to Francophone Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 14 This distinction is made by Boris Diop in a seminar entitled “Topics in SubSaharan Literature,” given at Rutgers in the fall semester, 2008. 15 Lionel Richard, “Montrer l’horrible dans sa réalité a-t-il encore un sens? L’artiste et la mémoire” Libération 5259 (16 avril, 1998): 2-3. 16 Joseph Paré, Ecritures et discours dans le roman africain francophone postcolonial (Ouagadougou: Kraal, 1997). 129. 17 Coquio, Rwanda, 143. 18 In the prologue, the narrator asserts that “Je partais avec une hypothèse: ce qui s’était passé nous concernait tous. Ce n’était pas uniquement l’affaire d’un peuple perdu dans le cœur noir de l’Afrique. Oublier le Rwanda après le bruit et la fureur signifiait devenir borgne, aphone, handicapée. C’était marcher dans l’obscurité, en tendant les bras pour ne pas entrer en collision avec le futur” [I was starting from a particular premise: What had happened there concerned us all. It was not just one nation lost in the dark heart of Africa that was affected. To forget Rwanda after the sound and fury was like being blind in one eye, voiceless, handicapped. It was to walk in darkness, feeling your way with outstretched arms to avoid colliding with the future] (Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 13; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 3). 19 Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 25; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 15. 20 Imre Kertész, Fatelessness, trans. Tim Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 251. 21 Lionel Richard traces the need to express the “fracture entre les survivants des camps et les autres, les ‘hommes normaux’” (rupture between the survivors of the camps and all others, “normal people”) back to David Rousset’s L’Univers concentrationnaire (1945) (Richard, “Montrer l’horrible dans sa réalité a-t-il encore un sens,” 2-3). Other subsequent works also insist on this incommunicability, such as George Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1975), which insists on the incommunicability of his traumatic past. As the narrator states: “L’indicible n’est pas tapis dans l’écriture, il est ce qui l’a bien avant déclenchée” (The unspeakable is not hidden in writing, it is what has set it in motion) (George Perec, W ou le souvenir d’enfance (Paris: Denoël, 2006), 63). Translation is Mitsch’s. 22 Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 98; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 86. 23 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 58; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 33-34. 24 Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 98-99; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 86. 25 Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (New York: Arno, 1975), 82. 26 The project “Writing in Duty to Memory” was part of a series of artistic events known as Fest’Africa, organized in 1998 by the group Arts et Médias d’Afrique. Their aim was to express to the people of Rwanda the solidarity of Africa and its diaspora. In addition to The Oldest Orphan and The Shadow of Imana, the project inspired numerous other works, including Nocky Djedanoum’s, Nyamirambo! (Bamako: Le Figuier et Lille, 2000), Monique Ilboudo’s Murekatete (Bamako: Le

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Figuier et Lille, 2000, Koulsy Lamko’s La Phalène des collines (Butare: Kuljaama, 2000), Venus Kayimahe’s France-Rwanda: les coulisses du génocide: témoignage d’un rescapé (Paris: Dagorno, 2001), Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangwa’s, Rwanda: le génocide des Tutsi expliqué à un étranger (Bamako: Le Figuier et Lille: 2000), Boubacar Boris Diop’s Murambi. Le livre des ossements (Paris: Stock, 2000), and Abdourahman Waberi’s Moisson de crânes (Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 2000). 27 Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 132; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 116. 28 Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 38; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 26-27. At the symbolic level, Tadjo often describes evil in terms of ignorance, the origin of genocide: “L’obscurité a caché le soleil et l’ombre a noyé la terre” (Darkness has hidden the sunlight and shadow has engulfed the earth) (Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 133; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 117). 29 Henry Rousso, La Hantise du passé (Paris: Les éditions Textuel, 1998), 25. Emphasis added. 30 Paul Veyne, Comment on écrit l’histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1971), 195. 31 See Tierno Monénembo, “Rwanda: Le désir de mémoire : Entretien avec Mongo Béti et T. Monénembo” Boutures 1.3 (2000): 1-7. 32 Richard J. McNally, Remembering Trauma (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) 117. Emphasis added. 33 McNally, Remembering Trauma, 113-14. 34 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 156; Tierno Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 96. Emphasis added. 35 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 151-52; Tierno Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 93. 36 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 150; Tierno Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 92. 37 Monénembo,“Rwanda,” 1-7. 38 The Rwandan Patriotic Front is the Tutsi armed rebellion that in 1994 fought the remnants of the RAF (Rwandan Armed Forces), the national army of Rwanda, and the interahamwe militias responsible for the genocide. Since then the RPF has been in power in Rwanda. 39 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 41; Tierno Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 23. 40 Coquio, Rwanda, 143 41 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 66; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 38-39. 42 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 47; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 27. 43 Coquio, Rwanda, 144. 44 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 91-92; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 55. 45 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 57; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 33. 46 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 136; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 83. 47 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 137; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 83. 48 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 137; Tierno Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 84. 49 Bataille, La littérature et le mal, 25; Bataille, Literature and Evil, 29.

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50 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 92; the English translation is Ruth Marie Mitsch’s. The literal translation of “histoire” as “story” is preferred here. 51 Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 91-92. 52 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 46; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 26. 53 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 70; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 41. 54 One of the dangers involved with “retrodiction” is that it tends to present only one side of a story, therefore “silencing” other aspects of it. For example, in The Oldest Orphan no Hutu character describes what life used to be for this group in Rwanda before 1959. Doing so would have given the reader a more balanced perspective on the 1994 genocide. Accordingly, the retrodictive approach fails to comment on the conditions of the Hutu majority in pre-independence Rwanda and prior to 1959. This omission, whether intentional or not is manifested in the text as a “lieu de mémoire” (loci of memory) to borrow Pierre Nora’s expression. 55 Mikhail Bakhtin, Esthétique et théorie du roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 182. Translation is Scott Powers’. 56 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 49; Monénembo, The Oldest Orphan, 28. 57 Monénembo, L’Aîné des orphelins, 93. Translation is Mitsch’s. 58 Tierno Monénembo, « Mondialisation, culture métisse, imaginaire hybride,” Présence Francophone 69 (2007): 176. 59 Philip Gourevitch, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (London: Picador, 1991), 19. 60 See Josias Semujanga, Le génocide, sujet de fiction? Analyse des récits du massacre des Tutsi dans la littérature africaine (Montréal: Nota Bene, 2008), 27. 61 Monénembo, “Mondialisation,” 174. 62 “Françafrique” is a neologism designating the channels of influence and political clientelism that characterize the relations between France and several African states. See François-Xavier Verschave, La Françafrique: le plus long scandale de la République (Paris : Stock, 1998). 63 Tadjo, L’Ombre d’Imana, 37; Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, 26. 64 Lemkin, Qu’est-ce qu’un génocide?, 12. 65 Coquio, Rwanda, 79. 66 Kertész, Fatelessness, 248. 67 Claude Mouchard, Qui si je criais…? Œuvres–témoignages dans les tourmentes du XXe siècle (Paris: Editions Laurence Teper, 2007), 136. 68 Kertész, Fatelessness, 87. 69 Pierre Bayard, Il était deux fois Romain Gary (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1990), 59. 70 Mouchard, Qui si je criais…?, 72. 71 In Parole, mot, silence: pour une poétique de l’énonciation (Paris: Corti, 1985) Pierre Van Den Heuvel discusses the enunciative value of silence in writing. 72 Kertész, Fatelessness, 248. 73 Bataille, La Littérature et le mal, 20; Bataille, Literature and Evil, 25. 74 Kertész, Fatelessness, 87. 75 Romain Gary, La Danse de Gengis Cohn (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 68.

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Paré, Ecriture et discours, 155. Cited in Annick Cojean, “Les voix de l’indicible,” Le monde, April 25, 1995, 3. The English translation is Scott Powers’. 77

BEIGBEDER’S EVIL PERSONAE IN WINDOWS ON THE WORLD: AUTHORIAL ETHICS AND 9/11 MARIE-CHRISTINE CLEMENTE

In award winning and best-selling novel Windows on the World (2003), Frédéric Beigbeder mingles thoughts on his life with the story of fictitious character Carthew Yorston, a successful real estate agent from Texas who is trapped with his two sons in the restaurant “Windows on the World” atop the World Trade Center on the fateful day of September 11th, 2001. The novel follows the timeline of the attacks as each chapter stands for a minute lapsed between 8:30 a.m. and 10:29 a.m. on that morning. The odd minutes relate the story of the characters trapped in the towers from Carthew’s point of view whereas the even minutes correspond to Beigbeder’s own contemplative thoughts. As Beigbeder intends to write “ce qui est interdit” (what is forbidden) and never refrains in the novel from any imagined graphic detail, his definition of evil can seem rather straightforward.1 Similarly, one could accuse Beigbeder of the sin of pride as he reconstructs one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the history of mankind while taking some liberties with the truth. But is it possible to define Beigbeder as evil? Wouldn’t doing so involve a simplistic, overly generalized definition of evil merely as what is cruel and extreme? In Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, Alain Badiou denounces the consensus on which the definition of the concept of evil is generally based today.2 According to the philosopher, by defining evil a priori as what is barbarian, the ethical framework that underlies today’s society would prevent itself from thinking the singularity of situations and should be rejected altogether. Badiou believes that instead one ought to be faithful to the singularity of events and consider their ensuing situations accordingly. He calls this process of fidelity to an event the process of truth and gives the example of Einstein, after whom one cannot conceivably continue to practice physics within its classical framework. Badiou describes evil as the interruption of one’s fidelity to the truth, and lists three main figures of “Evil”: simulacrum (the fidelity to an insubstantial

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truth), betrayal (the failure of living up to a fidelity), and disaster (the disregard of the unnamable aspect of a truth, of the differences of opinions, to force a consensual naming of the truth).3 By refusing to omit any detail from what took place inside the Twin Towers on 9/11, the figure of Beigbeder in Windows on the World would not only correspond to today’s consensual understanding of evil as barbarian, it would also be consistent with Badiou’s definition of “the Good” as a fidelity to the process of truth.4 How could Beigbeder simultaneously be good and evil? Could he intentionally assume an evil dimension to champion “the Good”—or vice versa? Why would he do this? His countless literary references seem symptomatic of this ambiguity. Why does Beigbeder constantly summon literary canons? Is it to acquire a certain level of legitimacy? Is it a scheme to prevent us from singling out his narrative and to prevent us from being in a position to incriminate him? Or do these references provide him with the ironic distance that other authors such as Michel Houellebecq and Bret Easton Ellis have used to denounce the evils of today’s society? Attempting to recount as precisely as possible what took place inside the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11th, 2001, Beigbeder, the narrator of Windows on the World, appears to know no limits when it comes to the representation of horror. He writes: “Les seuls sujets intéressants sont les sujets tabous. Il faut écrire ce qui est interdit” (The only interesting subjects are those which are taboo. We must write what is forbidden).5 This leads him to the depiction of terrifying graphic scenes such as the following: Les serviettes ont empêché mes fils de voir les torches humaines du 106è: deux cadavres en feu devant la porte des ascenseurs, la peau rouge et marron, les yeux sans paupières, les cheveux en cendres, les visages arrachés et couverts de cloques, soudés au linoléum fondu. On voyait qu’ils étaient vivants à leur ventre qui bougeait. Tout le reste était immobile comme une statue. [Thank God the napkins meant the boys didn’t see the human torches on 106: two bodies in flames near the elevator doors, skin red and black, lidless eyes, hair turned to ashes, faces peeling away, covered in blisters fused to the melted linoleum. From the movement of their chests we could tell they were still alive. The rest of their bodies were still as statues.] 6

This passage shows how far Beigbeder is willing to go in the depiction of gruesome details. As the narrator does not refrain from—and occasionally seems to relish in—such unpleasant descriptions, defining him as evil can appear rather straightforward. This absolute disregard for limits is

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reminiscent of Sade who, as Susan Neiman stresses, is one of the only modern writers to provide us with “portraits of pure evil.”7 Marcel Hénaff writes: “‘To say everything’ is the sign of a great audaciousness, an apparently boundless program, which Sadean discourse deems indispensable and definitive.”8 A legacy that Beigbeder apparently acknowledges when he refers to sadomasochist clubs and narrates passages reminiscent of Sade’s prose9: Les deux traders sont dans la salle de réunion, ils savent que c’est fini […] cadavres violets autour d’eux, ceux de leurs collègues et patrons étouffés […] malgré l’odeur de mort et la chaleur atroce, ils sont très excitants à regarder. […] – Je vais te remplir de foutre chaud, dit le brun en Kenneth Cole. – Ouuuah je monte aussi. Après je VEUX boire ta pisse, dit la blonde en Ralph Lauren. – Attends, je veux d’abord fister ton con dégoulinant jusqu’à l’avantbras, dit le brun en Kenneth Cole. Je veux que tu souffres pendant que je jute. [The two traders are in the conference room and they know it’s all over [...] purple corpses (the ones of their asphyxiated colleagues and bosses) are around them […] despite the smell of death and the atrocious heat, they are really exciting to look at. [. . ]. - I am going to fill you with warm cum, the brown-haired man wearing Kenneth Cole says. -Wow, I’m coming too. After that, I WANT to drink your piss, the blond woman wearing Ralph Lauren says. - Wait, I first want to push my fist in your gooey cunt, the man in Kenneth Cole says. I want you to suffer while I climax.]10

Surely, the parodic dimension of this scene should not be overlooked— and we will analyze it more thoroughly below—but one will agree with the author when he recognizes in an interview with Alain-Philippe Durand that “Il est certain que Windows on the World est par certains côtés un roman insoutenablement obscène” (It cannot be denied that Windows on the World is sometimes unbearably obscene).11 By describing the couple as exciting to look at, the narrator betrays his voyeuristic tendency. Furthermore, this scene takes place but a few moments before the collapse of the towers. The insertion of an overly detailed graphic sex scene at such an unlikely moment in the narrative seems to suggest that the narrator is indulging in its description and makes it easy for one to conclude that he may be deriving some sadistic pleasure from the painting of this Sadean tableau.

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Beigbeder’s irreverent juxtaposition of human suffering and graphic scenes is likely to be deemed gratuitous and one could wonder if he would not be evil in Colin McGinn’s definition of the concept: “Perhaps the very evil of the malicious desire is what gives it potency: the agent aims at pain because it is bad to do so. Badness is seen as a reason for performing the act.”12 In light of the author’s description of graphic experiences of horror that may have happened to actual people, one is indeed under the impression that he depicts such scenes precisely because he wants to scandalize his reader, “because it is bad to do so.” The morbidity of the above scene, which verges on necrophilia and scatophilia while the towers are about to collapse, leaves one to wonder whether this novel is a case of what in Art and Fear Paul Virilio refers to as “snuff literature”: You don’t make literature out of warm and fuzzy feelings, they say. And they are probably right. But how far do we go in the opposite direction? as far as SNUFF LITERATURE, in which the conformism of abjection innovates an academicism of horror, an official art macabre entertainment?13

The description of Carthew awaiting his most certain death in a confined space with a camera aimed at him but nobody to help him does indeed recall the idea of snuff videos: C’est alors que [Carthew] repère la caméra […]. Quelques centaines de mètres plus bas, au centre de contrôle déserté, sur un des nombreux moniteurs du mur d’images en noir et blanc, apparaissent un quadragénaire gesticulant avec ses deux enfants [...]. Des milliers d’ampoules rouges clignotaient sur le tableau de bord devant les fauteuils abandonnés. [That’s when [Carthew] spots the camera [...]. Several hundred feet below, in the deserted Command Center, on one of the hundreds of black-andwhite monitors on the video wall, a forty-year old man appears, waving, flanked by his two children [...].On the console in front of empty chairs, thousands of red lights blink.]14

As Beigbeder appears to recognize no limits in the depiction of gruesome details, his American publishers decided to leave out some passages from the English translation. The Sadean tableau referred to above, for instance, was entirely left out of the English version of the novel and, similarly, Beigbeder’s comparison between his characters’ ordeal and a gas chamber in Auschwitz was deemed inappropriate by the publishers and therefore omitted from the English version.15 The fact that among Beigbeder’s numerous provoking remarks, it is precisely his reference to the Holocaust that was regarded as overstepping is extremely

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interesting when considered in light of Badiou’s illustration of the paradox of “radical Evil”16: The extermination [of the European Jews] is indeed both that which measures all the Evil our time is capable of, being itself beyond measure, and that to which we must compare everything (thus measuring it unceasingly) that we say is to be judged in terms of the manifest certainty of Evil. As the supreme negative example, this crime is inimitable, but every crime is an imitation of it.17

By comparing 9/11 and Auschwitz, Beigbeder would thus deny both events their respective singularity and be evil in Badiou’s sense of betrayal, as the writer would fail to live up to the fidelity that he owes to both events. In addition, he would also be evil in the sense of disaster since, by comparing 9/11 to a previous event, he would deny this event its unnamable dimension and appear “to want, at all costs and under condition of a truth, to force the naming of the unnameable.”18 The removal of this passage by the American publishers could suggest that they agreed with the spirit of Badiou’s concept of evil and deemed Beigbeder’s comparison as unfaithful to the “process of truth,” and thus as unethical. However, it is probably rather the author’s invocation of the ghost of Auschwitz in such a way that appalled them (since, as Badiou explains it, Auschwitz is the unsayable “supreme negative example” of “the manifest certainty of Evil” in today’s society).19 Beigbeder’s comparison being likely to be regarded as impertinent and shameless, the publishers probably erased it for fear of readers perceiving Windows on the World and its author as the ultimate manifestations of evil—in today’s pre-established meaning of evil as barbarian. But, whether working from Badiou’s definition of evil or from the consensual definition that he denounces, to characterize Beigbeder as evil turns out to be far more complex since defining the very narrative identity of the person referred to as Beigbeder in Windows on the World is itself extremely problematic. As the roles that Beigbeder assumes constantly shift, the reader never knows whether he is dealing with Beigbeder the author, the narrator, or the protagonist. In addition, the sphere of his persona is further expanded by the fact that Carthew always leaves the uncanny impression of being Beigbeder’s American equivalent. Indeed, Beigbeder and Carthew share substantial similarities. As Beigbeder explains it when he cites the French literary critic Albert Thibaudet, a generation can be defined as “une classe d’âge qui a vécu à vingt ans un évènement historique dont elle ne se remettra pas et qui la marquera à jamais” (an age group who, at twenty, lived through a historic event from

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which they will never recover and which will forever mark them).20 So for his generation: “Ce fut 1989: j’avais 25 ans, et la chute du mur de Berlin sonna le glas des idéologies. Un espoir effréné naquit: le libéralisme allait convertir la planète entière [...] je resterai à jamais marqué par la religion de l’argent des années 80” (It was 1989: I was twenty-four and the fall of the Berlin Wall sounded the death knell of ideology. A reckless hope was born: liberalism would conquer the whole planet […] I was forever marked by the eighties religion of money).21 Similarly, Carthew did not hesitate to swindle his clients to make a fortune and, to this extent, the two narrators can be regarded as being part of the same money-worshipping generation.22 They are also both divorced with children whom they do not know how to raise. In one scene, Beigbeder narrates the tantrum that his daughter Chloé throws in the restaurant at the top of the Tour Montparnasse by writing: “Ma fille m’a souri en murmurant ‘je t’aime, papa.’ Je l’ai prise dans mes bras. Je savais très bien qu’elle voulait juste se faire pardonner sa conduite insupportable au Ciel de Paris. Tant pis, j’ai accepté ce cadeau” (My daughter smiled at me and whispered, “I love you, Daddy.” I took her in my arms. I knew she was just trying to get me to forgive her for her unforgivable behavior in Le Ciel de Paris. Never mind: I accepted this gift).23 Helpless when it comes to relating to his young daughter, he even goes as far as to consider himself guilty of abandoning her: “Je m’accuse d’abandon d’enfant.” (I accuse myself of abandoning my child).24 Similarly, Carthew makes the following prayer: “Seigneur, je suis faible, j’ai péché et je me repens. Oui j’ai divorcé, c’est ma faute, ma très grande faute. J’ai quitté mon foyer, mes deux fils ici présents” (Lord, I’m weak and I’ve sinned and I ask forgiveness. Yes, I got divorced, it was my fault, my grievous fault. I left my family, my two sons who are here with me).25 As Carthew shares several defining features with Beigbeder, and as Beigbeder is known for creating characters that are echoes of his own persona in his novels, it seems well-founded to regard Carthew as another of the author’s doubles.26 But, as Beigbeder’s perspective is to be found in the even minutes of the chronology and Carthew’s in the odd minutes, the novel’s structure establishes an unprecedented differentiation between him and his double. Accordingly, when Beigbeder claims that his aim in the novel is to find himself (“Que suis-je venu chercher ici? Moi.” (What did I come here to find? Me.)), one is left wondering why he distances himself from his double by placing him in the Twin Towers on the morning of the September 11th attacks.27 As Beigbeder and Carthew consider themselves guilty of the same type of offenses—abandonment of children, egocentrism,

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greed, hedonism—one could possibly regard Carthew as Beigbeder’s sacrificial double. As René Girard writes: Fieldwork and subsequent theoretical speculation lead us back to the hypothesis of substitution as the basis for the practice of sacrifice [...]. Society is seeking to deflect upon a relatively indifferent victim, a “sacrificeable” victim, the violence that would otherwise be vented on its own members, the people it most desires to protect.28

Carthew being the author’s double, his jumping from the “Windows on the World” would thus equate with Beigbeder’s very own death and could provide Beigbeder with the opportunity to destroy the part of himself that he so loathes as well as to expiate the crimes of which he accuses himself. Carthew’s status as a sacrificial victim is to a certain extent confirmed by the character himself when he makes the following comment before jumping from the Twin Towers: “Nous aussi on sait se sacrifier” (We know what self-sacrifice is too).29 Although the notion that the novelist actually created the character of Carthew as a sacrificial double can be argued, it cannot be denied that Carthew’s status as Beigbeder’s double undermines any attempt to accuse Beigbeder of pure evil when he kills off his character. As McGinn states: “Sadism becomes mere masochism if I am not ontologically distinct from the agent [...]. Any conception that unifies agent and victim tends to undermine the possibility of evil.”30 However, Beigbeder never clearly acknowledges this type of relationship with Carthew and claims to use Carthew’s 9/11 story to give his narrative its necessary momentum. He writes: “Je suis […] obligé de reconnaître qu’en s’adossant au premier grand attentat de l’hyperterrorisme, ma prose prend une force qu’elle n’aurait pas autrement. Ce roman utilise la tragédie comme une béquille littéraire” (I am also obliged to concede that in leaning on the first great hyperterrorist attack, my prose takes on a power which it would not otherwise have. This novel uses tragedy like a literary crutch).31 Placing a 9/11 narrative alongside an autobiographical narrative, Beigbeder’s text could be read as symptomatic of his parasitic tendency, a quality that he recognizes when he declares: “J’ai depuis toujours ce sentiment étrange d’encombrer les autres. D’où mon goût pour le parasitisme: ma vie est une soirée où je suis entré sans carton d’invitation” (For a long time I’ve had the feeling that I am a burden to others. Hence my taste for parasitism: my life is a party where I showed up without an invite).32 The very structure of the novel actually appears to reproduce this parasitic pattern as Beigbeder nests his own reflections in the timeline of the World Trade Center attacks even though some of the events that he

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relates do not truly take place on that day—as a matter of fact, the “8:56” slot is the only even minute slot that is truly simultaneous with the events to which it refers. Furthermore, since Beigbeder presents his youth as trauma-free, one can wonder whether the attacks on the World Trade Center are not providing him with the substance that his autobiography would otherwise lack. He writes: “Ni violé, ni battu, ni abandonné, ni drogué. Juste des parents divorcés et excessivement gentils avec moi. Je suis traumatisé par mon absence de traumatisme” (I haven’t been raped, beaten, abandoned, drugged. Just divorced parents who are excessively kind to me [...]. I’m traumatized by my lack of trauma).33 Leading theorists have defined trauma as a psychological wound that, after being inflicted, remains buried for a certain time under the surface of the mind and thus of any autobiographical text trying to reflect this mind. Given his untraumatic biography, Beigbeder would lack an element essential to the depth of his narrative and the very frame of the novel seems to mimic his covering up that absence. As explained earlier, the timeline that structures the novel is divided between two narratives that alternatively eclipse each other. Consequently, what is taking place in one narrative when the other comes to the fore is omitted from the plot, literally overshadowed by the narrative in the limelight—the novel consisting of two half narratives rather than a complete one. As one narrative conceals part of the other, it could be assumed that what is to be found under the surface of one narrative is the other’s traumatic dimension (since trauma, by definition, is buried under the surface). The traumatic dimension of Carthew’s narrative would thus be veiled by Beigbeder’s narrative and bring depth to it as there would be something to be found under its surface. In turn, Beigbeder’s trauma would bring depth to Carthew’s plot. Except that Beigbeder does not have a trauma and Carthew’s narrative would be bound to remain superficial as it would be underlain by the void of Beigbeder’s absence of trauma. This strategy would in all likelihood not provide Beigbeder with a trauma of his own, but it would at least enable him to bring depth to his own narrative since Carthew does have a trauma. The character declares: Mon plus grand traumatisme, c’est le film King Kong (la version de 1933) [...]. Dans les années 70, ils ont tourné un remake en couleurs qui se passait sur le World Trade Center. Je m’attends d’un moment à l’autre à voir un gorille géant escalader les tours; j’en ai la chair de poule; croyez-le ou pas, je n’arrête pas d’y penser. [My greatest trauma is the film King Kong (the 1933 version) [...]. They did a remake in color in the seventies which uses the World Trade Center.

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Any minute now I expect to see a huge gorilla scaling the towers—believe it or not I’ve got goose bumps right now, I can’t stop thinking about it.]34

As Carthew’s trauma is uncannily reminiscent of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Beigbeder’s autobiography would literally be underlain by 9/11’s traumatic dimension, and his claim that he is exploiting this event to endow his narrative with the necessary momentum would be partly confirmed. However, the structure of Windows on the World becomes more complex when the narrator starts feeling sympathy for Carthew and this compassion turns out to seriously undermine his claim that he is using 9/11 solely as a “literary crutch.” Indeed, Beigbeder’s attitude towards the attacks on the World Trade Center, which is first detached and cynical, radically changes after the narrator is confronted with relics of 9/11 victims in New York City’s Saint Paul’s Chapel. He writes: “J’ai porté ma main à ma bouche. Pour la première fois, j’ai ressenti le Onze Septembre. J’avais cessé de m’apitoyer sur moi-même. Au milieu de cette si gentille douleur se tenait un cynique en larmes” (I bring my hand to my mouth. I no longer feel sorry for myself. Here in the midst of this terribly saccharine suffering stands a cynic in tears).35 This first outburst of sympathy is central to the dynamic of the text as Beigbeder starts meddling in Carthew’s narrative timeslots soon after this scene, bringing to an end the narrative’s binary structure. At 9:31, Beigbeder’s first intervention during an odd minute takes place a mere twenty-four pages after his experience of sympathy. More importantly, although Beigbeder had claimed that he would know no limits in the description of what took place inside the Twin Towers on that morning, once he empathizes with Carthew he starts cutting the narrative when it becomes too gruesome. Thus, the author’s identification with his character further prevents us from categorizing him as Sade’s heir. He indicates the passages that he leaves out with the mentions “(paragraphe coupé)”36 or “(page coupée)”37 ((Paragraph cut)38 or (Page cut))39 and explains that: J’ai coupé des descriptions insoutenables. Je ne l’ai pas fait par pudeur ou respect pour les victimes [...]. Je les ai coupées parce qu’à mon avis, il est encore plus atroce de vous laisser imaginer ce par quoi elles sont passées. (Sans compter toutes les phrases que je suis incapable d’écrire.) [I have cut out the awful descriptions. I have not done so out of propriety [...]. I cut them because, in my opinion, it is more appalling still to allow you to imagine what became of them.]40

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In the French version, he adds: “Without mentioning all the sentences I am unable to write.” It is noteworthy that even though Beigbeder claims that he left these scenes unrepresented to let the real horror of the day come through, his statement turns out to be rather ambiguous as he neglects to clarify why he is incapable of writing these scenes. As Colin Davis remarks: “In [Abraham and Torok’s] usage it is clear that what is unsayable can in fact be said. It is unsayable because it is struck with taboo, it is shameful or criminal; but it is not in any sense beyond or outside the capabilities of language.”41 Accordingly, if Beigbeder’s incapacity to describe certain scenes could possibly be attributed to his failings as a writer, they could also be ascribed to the intensity of the emotions overwhelming him—the sympathy discerned earlier would suggest the latter. What started as a sympathetic feeling for Carthew seems eventually to develop into a full-fledged identification when he refers to him as his fictional cousin: Ma grand-mère était américaine, elle s’appelait Grace Carthew-Yorstoun [...]. Mon cousin est mort dans votre restaurant le 11 septembre 2001 avec ses deux fils […]. Carthew Yorstoun est le nom de famille de ma grandmère. Enlève le “u” et tu obtiens Carthew Yorston, un personnage de fiction. [My grandmother was American, her name was Grace Carthew Yorstoun [...]. My cousin died in your restaurant on September 11, 2001 with his two sons [...]. Carthew Yorstoun was my grandmother’s family name. Take out the “u” and you have Carthew Yorston, a fictional character.]42

Reminiscent of Narcissus looking at the pool, Beigbeder seems to have glanced at his text and mistaken the reflection facing him for somebody else’s, only belatedly realizing that Carthew was actually himself. This misconstruction could be ascribed to the fact that he supposedly first wrote Windows on the World to find himself bluffed by borrowing a 9/11 narrative as his trauma. This notion of the text as mirror is not a new one. Susan Beckett’s remarks on this analogy in Henri Bosco’s works shed new light on Beigbeder’s case: Pour Bosco, l’écriture elle-même constitue une sorte de miroir où il se contemple afin de “[se] mieux connaître.” À l’instar de l’auteur, le narrateur bosquien prend la plume, lui aussi, afin de se voir et se connaître. Récits, journaux, agendas, mémoriaux, se succèdent [...] autant de miroirs où le je discerne un reflet inquiétant. L’acte d’écrire suscite l’apparition d’un double [...] où l’on écrit presque exclusivement à la première

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personne. “Si je m’observe, ‘je est un autre,’” écrit Gaston Bachelard dans l’essai “Fragment d’un journal de l’homme.” Le philosophe s’en explique : “le redoublement de la pensée est automatiquement un dédoublement de l’être.” [For Bosco, the act of writing itself is a sort of mirror where he can contemplate himself to “know himself better.” Following the example of the author, Bosco’s narrator starts writing in order to watch himself. Narrations, journals, diaries, memorials follow each other [...] and become mirrors where the I [“je”] sheds frightening reflections. The act of writing triggers the apparition of a double [...] where one exclusively writes in the first grammatical person. “If I look at myself, ‘I is an other,’” Gaston Bachelard writes in his essay “Fragment d’un journal de l’homme.” The philosopher explains: “This doubling of the mind automatically becomes a split being.”]43

The specular power in Windows on the World is rendered all the more salient when we consider that both Carthew and Beigbeder are narrating from towers made of glass. Carthew is reflecting from the ruins of the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, “Windows on the World,” while Beigbeder is writing atop Paris’s Tour Montparnasse in the restaurant “Le Ciel de Paris,” a place which according to him is “tout ce qui reste du Windows on the World: une idée. Ce concept saugrenu et prétentieux d’un restaurant au sommet d’une tour qui domine la ville” (all that remains of the Windows on the World: an idea. The preposterous and pretentious idea of a restaurant at the top of a tower which dominates the skyline).44 In other words, both men are speaking from the ghost of the “Windows of the World” and their narrative spaces seem to coincide as Beigbeder is trapped in the same restaurant as Carthew. He writes: “Like Carthew, I also want to get out of this restaurant” (Moi aussi, comme Carthew, je veux sortir de ce restaurant).45 The entrapment of the protagonists in a glass tower inevitably brings to mind Foucault’s description of Bentham’s panopticon in Discipline and Punish: À la périphérie un bâtiment en anneau; au centre, une tour; celle-ci est percée de larges fenêtres qui ouvrent sur la face intérieure de l’anneau; le bâtiment périphérique est divisé en cellules, dont chacune traverse toute l’épaisseur du bâtiment; elles ont deux fenêtres, l’une vers l’intérieur, correspondant aux fenêtres de la tour; l’autre, donnant sur l’extérieur, permet à la lumière de traverser la cellule de part en part. Il suffit alors de placer un surveillant dans la tour centrale [...]. Par l’effet de contre-jour, on peut saisir de la tour, se découpant exactement sur la lumière, les petites silhouettes captives dans les cellules de la périphérie [...]. Le dispositif

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Beigbeder’s Evil Personae in Windows on the World panoptique aménage des unités spatiales qui permettent de voir sans arrêt et de reconnaître aussitôt [...]. Visible: sans cesse le détenu aura devant les yeux la haute silhouette de la tour centrale dont il est épié. Invérifiable: le détenu ne doit jamais savoir s’il est actuellement regardé; mais il doit être sûr qu’il peut toujours l’être. [At the periphery, an annular building; at the center, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other [...]. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery [...]. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately [...]. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.]46

The security camera that films Carthew is indeed connected to a deserted control room, which hints at a Foucauldian panoptic structure insofar as nobody seems to be looking at him and one can only assume, not prove, that Beigbeder, the narrator, is actually witnessing his agony. Beigbeder may or may not be present, but the characters, and possibly the reader, seem always to behave as if he were observing. Furthermore, Carthew’s allusion to a “prison de verre” (glass penitentiary)47 and Beigbeder’s following comment on his reflection on/in a glass building seem to confirm their entrapment in a panopticon-like structure: “Les glaces fumées des tours de verre, dans lesquelles j’aperçois mon reflet [sont “une fenêtre sur le monde”] [...]. Je fuis cette image en accélérant le pas mais elle me suit comme un oiseau de proie [...]. Le roman est un miroir sans tain, derrière lequel je me cache pour voir sans être vu” (The tinted windows in which I can see my reflection [are a window on the world] [...]. Fleeing the image I walk faster, but it follows me like a bird of prey [...]. A novel is a two-way mirror behind which I hide so I can see and not be seen).48 Unable to escape his own reflection, Beigbeder becomes a prisoner of the panopticon. But his position appears to be double as he claims that, confronted with this window, he can see everything without being seen—which would also make him the supervisor of the panopticon. Beigbeder’s possible central position in this tower structure is to some extent confirmed by his quotation of Marilyn Manson at the beginning of

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the novel: “La fonction de l’artiste est de plonger au coeur de l’enfer” (The function of the artist is to plunge into the depths of hell).49 Beigbeder’s function as an artist would be to immerse himself in the heart of the blazing Twin Towers—which he seems to confirm when he writes: “Aujourd’hui les livres doivent aller là où la télévision ne va pas. Montrer l’invisible, dire l’indicible” (Nowadays, books must go where television does not. Show the invisible, speak the unspeakable).50 In this sense, the narrative structure of the novel would be working in the following way: Beigbeder, the writer, is present in a central tower, thus enabling him to have an all-encompassing vision of the novel and its characters. Beigbeder, the protagonist and narrator, is trapped in a glass cell where he would be bound to confront his own reflection. Accordingly, this would be a case of split personality where the author would lock up a version of himself in order to monitor it better. This type of construction is to a certain extent echoed by Beigbeder’s list of “Je m’accuse” (I accuse myself), where the accused, the accuser, and the judge who utters the final sentence (“Je me condamne” (I sentence myself)) appear to be one and the same person51: Je m’accuse de sombrer dans la facilité à 9h36 [...]. Je m’accuse d’adorer tout ce que je critique, en particulier l’argent et la notoriété [...]. Je m’accuse d’esthétique sans éthique. [I accuse myself of being facile at 9:36 [...]. I accuse myself of loving all that I disparage, especially, money and fame […]. I accuse myself of esthetics without ethics.]52

We will come back to the notion of guilt that is present in this condemnation later. Self-centered, this accusatory declamation—which, one will note, is a direct reference to Zola’s “J’accuse”—takes on an undeniably egocentric, if not narcissistic, dimension that seems to be echoed by the panoptic structure of the novel. As a matter of fact, if one considers Carthew’s status as Beigbeder’s double, this structure would gain an additional layer, verging once again toward the “je.” Indeed, Beigbeder, the narrator of the even minutes, can see what is happening to Carthew while Carthew is never granted any insight into Beigbeder’s side of the story—he does call out to him once, but this only implies that he is aware of his existence and can hear him, not that he can see what is taking place in his timeslot. Therefore, the panopticon underlying Windows on the World could be read as having a central tower inhabited by the author,

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an intermediary annular building with Beigbeder, the protagonist, inside it, and an external annular building where Carthew would be trapped. As the windows separating these different layers are described as “two-way mirrors,” the reflections of the writer’s different personae would be superimposed on the central tower of the panopticon, creating an overall blurry image of Beigbeder. It would thus be more than a simple “split” that would take place when Beigbeder faces his text: it would be a multiplication of personae. Consequently, Beigbeder the narrator of the even minutes would be as distinct as Carthew from Beigbeder the author. In fact, all the different versions of Beigbeder would be different, yet still the same as they revolve around the figure of the author and refract his different aspects. In this sense, the panoptic structure of the novel would not be a pure Foucauldian structure and could be more accurately described by comparing it to a kaleidoscope in the way that it presents changing, distorted images of the author. Interestingly, Myriam Watthee-Delmotte and Paul-Augustin Deproost in Imaginaires du Mal use the figure of the kaleidoscope to describe evil in modern literature: La littérature moderne en vient à dire le Mal comme creux du discours, épreuve de l’absence, errance infinie entre les signifiants et deuil du symbolique lui-même. C’est pourquoi le Mal, en définitive, ne s’exprime plus en une figure précise, mais dans un kaléidoscope de formes qui s’épuisent à dire son manque. [Modern literature has come to describe Evil as the vacuum of speech, the ordeal of absence, a restless wandering between the signifiers and symbolic mourning itself. This is why, eventually, Evil does not express itself as a clear figure anymore, but as a kaleidoscope of forms that exhausts itself to articulate its void.] 53

In other words, the center of control of the panoptic structure of Windows on the World could after all be empty and simply a fantasy, the different reflections of Beigbeder’s figure creating an illusion and Beigbeder truly being the prisoner of the panoptic structure that he claims to be. However, as Susan Beckett remarks regarding the writer Henri Bosco, illusions are often the works of the devil himself: La pire ruse du diable, quand il se servait du miroir, ce n’était pas d’y apparaître sous son aspect banalement épouvantable, mais d’attendre en cachette derrière notre propre image, et cette image nous fit oublier qu’elle n’était qu’une illusion, et une illusion qui nous enchantait dangereusement, car, dans ce cas, le diable c’était nous.

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[The worst trick of the devil when he used the mirror was not to appear under its dreadfully banal aspect, but to hide and wait behind our own reflection, and the image reflected made us forget that it was just an illusion, and that this illusion was dangerously bewitching us because in this case, the devil was us.]54

Insofar as Beigbeder writes that he is hiding behind the mirror of the text, he could indeed be that devil that infiltrates the center of the narrative structure to hide behind the text and have the reader face an illusion. Accordingly, Beigbeder’s figure is comparable to that of the serpent in the Bible. As Françoise Mies describes it: La figure même du serpent dans la Genèse n’est pas univoque. Le serpent ne représente pas seulement le mal déjà là et extérieur à Adam et Ève, mais celui qui tente, c’est-à-dire, précisément, celui qui s’introduit au coeur de l’homme pour aliéner son désir: c’est une extériorité qui se fait passer pour l’intériorité même de l’homme alors qu’elle l’aliène. [The very figure of the snake in Genesis is not unambiguous. The snake does not only represent the evil that is already there and that is exterior to Adam and Eve, but it also represents the one that tempts, which is to say, precisely the one that infiltrates the heart of man to alienate his desire: it is an exteriority that assumes the aspect of the very interiority of man while alienating it.]55

Even though this description can seem rather plausible, as Beigbeder’s statements can be rather ambiguous and sometimes even contradictory, it remains impossible to draw a definitive conclusion regarding whether he is the mastermind of the panopticon. Indeed, whenever one seems to have finally grasped the true nature of his figure, one discovers that he does not leave us enough elements to irrevocably identify him, as if there were yet another veil that needed to be lifted for him to actually show his true colors. In this sense, Beigbeder’s authorial persona is reminiscent of the character of Clamence in Camus’ La Chute. As Ellison puts it: “In the universe of La Chute a mask seems merely to hide more masks.”56 A phenomenon that Clamence himself acknowledges when he writes: “Je fabrique un portrait qui est [...] un masque.” (I construct a portrait which is [...] a mask).57 Also reminiscent of La Chute is the blur that Beigbeder makes between reality and fiction. Consider Clamence’s remark regarding the insubstantiality of his confessions:

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Beigbeder’s Evil Personae in Windows on the World Il est bien difficile de démêler le vrai du faux dans ce que je raconte. Je confesse que vous avez raison [...]. Les auteurs de confession écrivent surtout pour ne pas se confesser, pour ne rien dire de ce qu’ils savent. Quand ils prétendent passer aux aveux, c’est le moment de se méfier. [It’s hard to disentangle the true from the false in what I’m saying. I admit you are right [...]. Authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse.]58

Similarly, in relating the events of 9/11, Beigbeder takes some liberties with the truth to change it for the worse. Indeed, no children were present in the Twin Towers at the time of their collapse, making David and Jerry’s existence in reality impossible. And when he refers to Stanley Prainmath, a man who actually faced the plane hitting the tower on September 11th, he never specifies that the man in fact survived the impact.59 But, when it comes to changing what truly happened on that morning for the better, Beigbeder claims that he cannot do it and leaves his characters in the tower: “J’aimerais pouvoir changer quelque chose, crier à Carthew de foutre le camp de là [...]. Livre inutile comme tous les livres. L’écrivain est comme la cavalerie, qui arrive toujours trop tard. ” (I would like to be able to change things, to scream at Carthew to get the fuck out of there, fast [...]. A useless book, like all books. The writer is like the cavalry, always arriving too late.).60 To be sure, this statement can be read as a heartfelt acknowledgement of his limits as an author, but since he seems to infringe upon this alleged faithfulness to the truth when it suits him, a blur between what he can do (or wants to do) and what he cannot do (or does not want to do) emerges and his adaptation of reality hints at a possible definition of Beigbeder as evil in Badiou’s definition of the concept. As Damian Catani writes: “[According to Badiou], evil is simply the interruption of a subject’s fidelity to a truth by the various sorts of corruption it must inevitably face: fatigue, confusion, and dogmatism.”61 Futhermore, Beigbeder can sometimes come across as relishing his power over the outcome of the narrative and over the life and death of his characters. When it comes to his annihilating the tower in which Carthew is entrapped, it is interesting to note that one minute before the tower is supposed to collapse (10:28 a.m.), Carthew writes: “L’effondrement de la tour Nord aura lieu dans une minute.” (The collapse of the North Tower will occur in one minute). The text of the chapter is organized in two columns that accurately assume the shape of the Twin Towers. An aerial is even present).62 If this unorthodox configuration can legitimately be

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regarded as a tombstone raised by Beigbeder in the memory of the towers, it could also be read as Beigbeder’s attempt to re-erect the towers—in which case, their resurrection and their collapse would be simultaneous and Beigbeder would appear as reasserting the power of creation and destruction that he wields over his text. He does indeed seem to boast of his omniscience when he writes: “Signé: Monsieur je-sais-tout. (En anglais: ‘Mister Know-it-all’)” (Signed: Mr. Know-it-all (in French, Monsieur Je-sais-tout)).63 This statement does have an undeniable selfmocking dimension to it, but Beigbeder’s claim of omniscience is nevertheless noteworthy. The destruction of the towers corresponds to their rebirth and they could be likened to the Phoenix rising from its ashes, which is to a certain extent confirmed by Carthew who, once dead, is still granted a voice and does explicitly refer to himself as a phoenix risen from its ashes.64 Having the power over life and death, the already virtually omnipresent Beigbeder would assume an omnipotent and thus God-like position. To this extent, one could potentially accuse him of abusing his free will, the very sin that led to Adam’s Fall. As Catani explains it: “Man became a sinner by abusing his free will, which led God to divide evil in two categories: moral evil (sin), which is inherent to man as a result of the Fall, and natural evil (suffering, which is the punishment meted out by God for man’s sin).”65 The characterization of Beigbeder’s persona as morally evil seems further confirmed by the fact that his reenactment of the destruction of the World Trade Center could allow one to accuse him of being in a position equivalent to that of the actual 9/11 terrorists. He indirectly acknowledges this in the following passage on the responsibility of Huysmans’ protagonist, Des Esseintes, with regard to the attacks: Extrait d’À Rebours de Huysmans: “C’était le grand bagne de l’Amérique transporté sur notre continent […] Eh! croule donc société! meurs donc, vieux monde! s’écria des Esseintes, indigné par l’ignominie du spectacle qu’il évoquait […].” Je le savais! Le vrai coupable de l’attentat n’est pas Oussama Ben Laden mais ce fieffé Des Esseintes. Je me doutais bien que ce dandy décadent adoptait un comportement un peu louche. À force de trouver esthétique le nihilisme, les enfants gâtés cautionnent les mass murderers [...]. Le dandysme est inhumain; les extravagants, trop lâches pour passer à l’acte, préfèrent suicider les autres qu’eux-mêmes. [Extract from Against the Grain by Huysmans: It was the vast, foul bagnio of America transported to our Continent [...]. “Well, crumble then, society! perish old world!” cried Des Esseintes, indignant at the ignominy of the spectacle he had conjured up […].

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Beigbeder’s Evil Personae in Windows on the World I knew it. The person really responsible for this attack wasn’t Osama bin Laden, but the incorrigible Des Esseintes. I thought that decadent dandy was behaving a little oddly. Having for so long found nihilism cool, spoiled children root for serial killers […]. Dandyism is inhuman; the eccentrics, too cowardly to act, prefer to suicide others rather than themselves.]66

The term “dandy” seems to be extremely well suited to describe the public figure of Beigbeder and, elsewhere in the novel, the narrator uses the same expression of “spoiled child” to describe himself.67 Not to mention that, like Des Esseintes, he contemplated suicide during his teenage years but preferred to face the cowardice of his adolescence.68 To be sure, he could pretend that the above accusation is solely aimed at Des Esseintes, but he does confirm that he, too, is a murderer when he writes regarding the murder of one of his characters in a previous publication: “Comment me faire pardonner le meurtre de la vieille dame de Floride à la page 201 de 99 francs?” (How can anyone forgive me the murder of the old woman in Florida on page 201 of my previous novel?).69 One will notice here that as the murder of the old lady in 99 francs is a direct reference to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Beigbeder appears to make reference to a certain lineage of literary crimes to acknowledge his own guilt. This aspect is further confirmed by the narrator’s repeated references to Baudelaire, whose aesthetics is usually regarded as underlain by what Marcel Ruff has called “l’esprit du mal” and who Beigbeder himself identifies as “le génie du mal.”70 But the “poëte maudit” is not only Beigbeder’s literary ancestor. As Scott Powers has observed, since Beigbeder has often referred to his chin as his most “defining facial feature,” his remark on the protruding chin of Baudelaire’s statue in the Montparnasse cemetery seems to suggest that this statue can be regarded as yet another of his incarnations.71 Furthermore, Beigbeder describes Baudelaire’s statue as challenging the tour Montparnasse: “Baudelaire…, le génie du mal trône face à la tour Montparnasse et semble la défier.” (Baudelaire…, “the genius of evil” sits enthroned facing the Tour Montparnasse, seeming to scorn it.)72 This description conveys the impression that the statue, which is in the position of Rodin’s “Penseur,” is actually plotting against the towers—a feeling that is strengthened by the photograph of the Tour Montparnasse that Beigbeder juxtaposes with the picture of Baudelaire’s statue. Indeed, the photograph is taken from the Montparnasse cemetery and, due to this unusual perspective, a tombstone in the shape of a cross is to be found at the same level as that of the tower. Made of a two-tower silhouette, this photograph inevitably echoes the Twin Towers and, as one of these figures is a cross, it seems uncannily to

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evoke the fate that awaits the towers in the novel. As if challenged by Beigbeder/Baudelaire, the towers were doomed to collapse. In this passage, Beigbeder indirectly attests his wickedness through his unequivocal association with Baudelaire, whom he presents as his kindred figure. The numerous references to canonical literary evil figures that Beigbeder makes suggest that the narrator is genuinely acknowledging his crimes. But, one should not forget that the very fact that these selfaccusations are linked to other literary personae actually prevents one from accusing Beigbeder of evil. Indeed, as the narrator situates himself in the line of recognized writers such as Camus, Huysmans, Dostoevsky, and Baudelaire, accusing him of being a murderer would mean indicting these authors who have now become canonical. In addition, as Beigbeder embeds his narration in this intertextual web, his text becomes increasingly difficult to single out and to judge as an entity, the references he surrounds his text with acting as a shield against possible critiques. He apparently owns up to this scheme when he places the introductory quotations under the title “Paratonerres” (Lightning Rods).73 The numerous literary references that he scatters throughout his text would function much like lightning rods: the wrath of his detractors would be deflected from his text in being distracted by the references. Consequently, Beigbeder’s text would remain safe from criticism. This defense mechanism seems to underlie the whole narrative since Beigbeder appears systematically to ward off any condemnations by being the first one to accuse himself of the crimes for which one could indict him—his list of “Je m’accuse” being a perfect illustration of this defense.74 For instance, he writes: Quant à l’exception culturelle française, [...] elle consiste à faire des films exceptionnellement chiants, des livres exceptionnellement bâclés, et dans l’ensemble des œuvres d’art exceptionnellement pédantes et satisfaites. Il va de soi que j’inclus mon travail dans ce triste constat. [As for the cultural exception to American cultural hegemony that is France, [...] it consists in churning out exceptionally tedious movies, exceptionally slapdash books and, all in all, works of art which are exceptionally pedantic and self-satisfied. It goes without saying that I include my own work in this sorry assessment.]75

As Ralph Schoolcraft explains, this self-defensive mechanism makes it impossible for anyone to legitimately condemn him: Les critiques l’agressent en oubliant qu’il s’adresse déjà à sa propre personne les mêmes critiques, souvent en pire, dans les romans dont ils

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Beigbeder’s Evil Personae in Windows on the World font le compte rendu. Devant cette surdité, Beigbeder finit par réagir, en publiant un article désopilant dans lequel il fustige L’Égoïste romantique [...] de Frédéric Beigbeder. Preuve s’il en fut jamais que décidément Beigbeder ne rate jamais aucune bonne fête. [When critics attack him they forget that he has already accused himself of worse sins in the very novels that they are reviewing. Confronted with this deafness, Beigbeder reacts and publishes a humour article in which he flays L´Égoïste romantique [...] by Frédéric Beigbeder. Proving once and for all that Beigbeder never misses a joke.]76

Beating his critics to the punch, Beigbeder does not leave his detractors any room to judge him seriously, a lesson he seems to have learned from Clamence’s self-ascribed role of “juge-pénitent”: Puisqu’on ne pouvait condamner les autres sans aussitôt se juger, il fallait s’accabler soi-même pour avoir le droit de juger les autres. Puisque tout juge finit un jour en pénitent, il fallait prendre la route en sens inverse et faire métier de pénitent pour pouvoir finir en juge [...]. Plus je m’accuse et plus j’ai le droit de vous juger. [Inasmuch as one couldn’t condemn others without immediately judging oneself, one had to overwhelm oneself to have the right to judge others. Inasmuch as every judge some day ends up as a penitent, one had to travel the road in the opposite direction and practise the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge [...]. The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you.]77

To this extent, Beigbeder could possibly be read as accusing himself to freely accuse others. But, once more, he prevents one from making any final conclusion. As he writes elsewhere in the novel: “J’accuse beaucoup les autres pour éviter de m’accuser moi-même” (I blame other people to avoid blaming myself).78 Not sparing anybody from his attacks (including himself) and one never knowing whether he accuses himself to be in a better position to accuse others or whether he accuses others so as not to accuse himself, it becomes virtually impossible to clarify Beigbeder’s standpoint. However, one will notice here that when Beigbeder writes his list of “Je m’accuse,” the accused, the accuser, and the judge, who are apparently one and the same person, could actually be regarded as standing for different versions of the author since, as seen before, the boundaries of his persona are unclear. Therefore, when Beigbeder writes “Je m’accuse,” the accusation could be aimed at one of his versions by another of his versions. “Je” and “les autres” would thus be virtually interchangeable

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notions and the novelist would turn out to direct the criticism toward himself when he accuses others. Likewise, he accuses society in general when he condemns himself. By merging “je” and “les autres” into one entity, Beigbeder seems to have learned another of Clamence’s tricks: Je m’accuse, en long et en large [...]. Je mêle ce qui me concerne et ce qui regarde les autres. Je prends les traits communs, les expériences que nous avons ensemble souffertes, les faiblesses que nous partageons [...]. Avec cela je fabrique un portrait qui est celui de tous et de personne [...]. Le portrait que je tends à mes contemporains devient un miroir. [I accuse myself up hill and down dale [...]. I mingle what concerns me and what concerns others, I choose the features we have in common, the experiences we have endured together, the failings we share [...]. With all that I construct a portrait which is the image of all and of no one [...]. The portrait I hold out to my contemporaries becomes a mirror.]79

Beigbeder apparently recognizes this legacy when, after having stated that his novel is a two-way mirror behind which he hides, he also adds, virtually quoting Clamence: “Le miroir dans lequel je me regarde, je finis par le tendre aux autres” (The mirror in which I see myself, in the end, I give to others).80 Accordingly, the reflection of “les autres” would have to be taken into account in the kaleidoscopic structure outlined earlier on and the figure of Beigbeder would thus gain a new dimension going far beyond the central figure of the novel’s author to reach “les autres.” Beigbeder confirms this inclusion of “les autres” in a central figure when he explains the mechanism that underlies his work in his essay “Pour un nouveau Nouveau roman”: S’il fallait définir un nouveau Nouveau roman, il faudrait chercher dans cette zone-là: le romancier qui dit “je” pour absorber le monde. Le romancier qui se regarde dans le miroir qu’il promène le long du chemin. Au lecteur de voir le monde derrière le reflet de l’écrivain. [If one had to define a new “Nouveau roman,” one would have to look there: the novelist who says “I” to absorb the world, the novelist who looks at himself in the mirror that he carries along his path. It is the reader’s duty to find the world behind the reflection of the writer.]81

So, the mirrors that pervade Windows on the World would be similar to the mirror used by Stendhal to describe nineteenth-century French society. Except that they would not solely reflect twenty-first-century French society, but also take into account the figure of the author. The reflection

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of the author being superimposed with the reflections of “les autres,” a universal persona would emerge. As this persona would still contain glints of Beigbeder, it would enable the novelist to freely criticize this new figure while targeting the vices of today’s society. As Beigbeder seemingly infiltrates a panoptic structure that mirrors “les autres,” one could define him as a subjectivity that infiltrates itself in otherness. He could thus, to a certain extent, be regarded as the literal opposite of the biblical snake that is an “extériorité qui se fait passer pour l’intériorité” (exteriority that assumes the aspect of an interiority).82 In other words, Beigbeder might willingly assume an evil dimension to be in a better position to denounce the vices that he apparently exalts. The dangers of this mechanism ought to be stressed. Indeed, since Beigbeder’s figure is multi-faceted and his text inscribed in a multilayered intertextual web, most of his detractors seem to fall into the same trap and read his text from the same perspective. As we never know how trustworthy Beigbeder’s accounts and statements are, and as the different levels of irony and parody in the novel subsequently become difficult to distinguish, our understanding of the novelist’s standpoint is never settled and we are inevitably tempted to read the whole text from the same perspective. Consequently, when looking at the scenes of human suffering referred to earlier, their accentuated ironic undertone should be taken into account and should not solely be read as a provocative mise-en-scène. Doing so would mean reading them literally and missing their extreme self-consciousness. It would seem that they could also be read as an indictment of our society’s tendency to exploit the suffering of others and use it as entertainment. Accordingly, Windows on the World would have to be read from a perspective similar to the one used to interpret the works by writers such as Michel Houellebecq and Bret Easton Ellis. As Beigbeder embeds his text in countless cultural references, he does indeed seem to belong to that “civilisation de la citation” (civilisation of citation) that Fortier describes in the case of Bret Easton Ellis, but which can also be regarded as characteristic of other writers including Houellebecq.83 Regarding Beigbeder, Houellebecq, and Ellis, Van Wesemael writes: “En mettant en parallèle les oeuvres de Beigbeder, de Houellebecq et d’Ellis, on voit apparaître de nettes analogies: s’y expriment des visions du monde plus ou moins similaires, s’y dessinent des personnages très semblables, s’y créent des esthétiques comparables” (When the works of Beigbeder, Houellebecq, and Ellis are laid side by side, clear resemblances come to the fore: they express similar visions of the world, the characters depicted are akin, and their aesthetics is very much alike).84 In addition, Beigbeder himself in Un roman français recognizes that Bret Easton Ellis “a eu

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beaucoup d’influence sur [son] travail” (truly influenced [his] work) and Messier’s remark on American Psycho could easily have been written with regard to Windows on the World85: What is ironic, however, is that these critics and advocate groups might have not only contributed to creating more interest in the novel, but also, by seemingly overlooking its emphasized satiric undertone, totally missed the fact that the novel actually criticizes the very same acts it appears to glorify.86

As a matter of fact, one will remember that in the Sadean tableau referred to above, Beigbeder uses designer brands to describe his characters, which can actually be read as a direct allusion to Ellis’s American Psycho. Surreptitiously scattering hints as to how one should understand his text, Beigbeder proves one more time that he is entirely aware of the dynamics underlying his text and remains ahead of his detractors. In conclusion, to read the figure of Beigbeder in Windows on the World as purely evil would mean missing the different layers of irony inscribed in the text. Beigbeder does indeed appear to be cruel and barbarian, but this dimension seems entirely deliberate on his part. Willingly assuming an evil persona and interjecting an ironic distance between the reader and his text, Beigbeder would overdo some traits of today’s evils—namely 9/11 and its shameless hijacking by media and politics—to be in a better position to criticize them. Taking into account the singularity of 9/11’s circumstances and refusing to assume any consensual stand, Beigbeder could be regarded as following the ethical line of conduct advocated by Badiou. Far from being “Evil,” Beigbeder would appear to be playing the devil’s advocate.

Notes 1

Frédéric Beigbeder, Windows on the World (Paris: Gallimard, 2003), 359; Frédéric Beigbeder, Windows on the World, trans. Frank Wynne (London, New York, Toronto and Sydney: Harper Perennial, 2005), 301. 2 Badiou, Alain, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (London and New York: Verso, 2001). 3 Ibid., 71. 4 Ibid., 67. 5 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 359; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 301. As the French original title is in English, the mentions “(French)” and “(English)” respectively refer to the original and the translated English version of Beigbeder’s novel.

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6 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 108; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 84. 7 Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 278. 8 Marcel Hénaff. “The Encyclopedia of Excess,” in Sade and the Narrative of Transgressions, ed. David B. Allison and Mark S. Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 142. 9 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 225. 10 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 342-3. This passage is not present in the English translation of the text and the translation here is my own. 11 Alain-Philippe Durand, “Entretien avec Frédéric Beigbeder,” in Frédéric Beigbeder et ses doubles, ed. Alain-Philippe Durand (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 29. The translation is my own. 12 Colin McGinn, Ethics, Evil and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 82. 13 Paul Virilio, Art and Fear, trans. Julie Rose (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), 58. 14 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 238-9; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 196-97. 15 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 334. 16 Badiou, Ethics, 63. 17 Ibid., 63. 18 Ibid., 86. 19 Ibid., 63. 20 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 340; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 283. 21 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 340; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 284. 22 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 48. 23 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 133; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 103-104. 24 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 254; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 209. 25 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 205; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 167. 26 In Frédéric Beigbeder et ses doubles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), AlainPhilippe Durand suggests that Marc Marronier in L’Amour dure trois ans, Octave Parango in 99 francs and Oscar Dufresne in L’Egoïste romantique can all be read as doubles of Frédéric Beigbeder. 27 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 209; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 171. 28 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (London and New York: Continuum, 2005), 3-4. 29 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 354; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 296. 30 McGinn, Ethics, Evil and Fiction, 65.

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31 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 360; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 301. 32 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 225; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 184. 33 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 62; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 45. 34 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 65; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 47. 35 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 215; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 176. 36 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 332. 37 Ibid., 334. 38 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 277. 39 Ibid., 278. 40 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 331; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 276. 41 Colin Davis, Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead (London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2007), 87. 42 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 363-64; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 304-305. 43 Susan L. Beckett, “Le Miroir du diable : reflets du mal dans l’œuvre de Henri Bosco,” in Le Mal dans l’imaginaire littéraire français (1850-1950), ed. M. Watthee-Delmotte and M. Zupancic (Paris and Montréal: L’Harmattan, 1998), 112. The translation is my own. 44 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 45; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 29. 45 Beigbeder, Windows on the World, original version, 280. This passage is not present in the English translation of the text. The translation is my own. 46 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 201-3. Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish,” in Literary Theory: An Anthology, ed. J. Rivkin and M. Ryan Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 554-55. 47 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 325; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 271. 48 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 288; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 240-41. 49 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 12; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 1. 50 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 359; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 301. 51 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 253-55; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 209-11. 52 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 254; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 210.

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53 Myriam Watthee-Delmotte and Paul-Augustin Deproost. “Introduction,” in Imaginaires du Mal, ed. M. Watthee-Delmotte and P. A. Deproost (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2000), 10. The translation is my own. 54 Beckett, “Le Miroir du diable,” 112. The translation is my own. 55 Françoise Mies. “Mon Faust de Paul Valéry : Persistance de la question du mal par-delà le dépassement de ses figures traditionnelles,” in Le Mal dans l’imaginaire littéraire français (1850-1950), ed. M. Watthee-Delmotte and M. Zupancic (Paris and Montréal: L’Harmattan, 1998), 107. The translation is my own. 56 David R. Ellison. “Withheld Identity in La Chute,” in The Cambridge Companion to Camus, ed. E. J. Hughes (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 180. 57 Albert Camus, La Chute (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), 161. Albert Camus, The Fall, trans. Justin O’Brien (London: Penguin, 2000), 102. 58 Camus, La Chute, 139-41. Camus, The Fall, 88-89. 59 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 109. 60 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 43; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 27. 61 Damian Catani, “Notions of Evil in Baudelaire,” Modern Language Review 12 (2007): 1006. 62 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 365; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 306. 63 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 89; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 69. 64 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 306. 65 Catani, “Notions of Evil in Baudelaire,” 990. 66 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 83; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 63. 67 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 45. 68 Ibid., 45. 69 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 84; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 64. 70 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 117. 71 Scott M. Powers, “Post-Modern Narratives of Evil and 9-11: The Case of Frédéric Beigbeder,” in Territories of Evil ed. N. Billias (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 135. 72 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 148; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 117. 73 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 12; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 1. 74 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 253-55. 75 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 33; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 19.

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Ralph Schoolcraft. “Pour prendre au sérieux Frédéric Beigbeder” in Frédéric Beigbeder et ses doubles, ed. A.P. Durand (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 90-91. The translation is my own. 77 Camus, La Chute, 159-62. Camus, The Fall, 101-103. 78 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 221; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 182. 79 Camus, La Chute, 161-2. Camus, The Fall, 103. 80 Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French), 288; Beigbeder, Windows on the World (English), 241. 81 Frédéric Beigbeder. “Pour un nouveau Nouveau Roman” in Frédéric Beigbeder et ses doubles, ed. A.P. Durand (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 47. The translation is my own. 82 Mies, “Mon Faust de Paul Valéry,” 107. 83 Fortier, Frances, “L’Esthétique hyperréaliste de Bret Easton Ellis” Tangence 44 (1994): 103. 84 Sabine Van Wesemael, “Le Potentiel transgressif de l’art contemporain,” in Frédéric Beigbeder et ses doubles, ed. A.P. Durand (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 158. 85 Frédéric Beigbeder, Un roman français (Paris: Grasset, 2009), 92. 86 Vartan P. Messier, “Violence, Pornography, and Voyeurism as Transgression in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho,” Atenea 24 (2004): 75.

IS KINDLY JUST KINKY? IRONY AND EVIL IN JONATHAN LITTELL’S THE KINDLY ONES NADIA LOUAR

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. —Walter Benjamin, Illuminations1

Writing and the Holocaust No other literary subject interweaves ethics and esthetics more viscerally than the Jewish genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. And few other historical events have generated so much incomprehension. The magnitude of the extermination and the mental and moral chaos that it has provoked in human societies, have ritualized all discursive practices pertaining to the subject, and established an ethical distance that has inflected its systems of representation. French journalist and film director, Claude Lanzmann, who spent eleven years working on his awe-inspiring documentary, Shoah, offers the prescriptive formula of refusing to understand: I had clung to [the] refusal of understanding as the only possible ethical and at the same time the only possible operative attitude. This blindness was for me the vital condition of creation.2

And in the words of Samuel Beckett: “To be an artist is to fail as no other dare fail.”3 Nowhere more so than in the context of the Holocaust is this sine qua non condition of creation more appropriate. Proclaimed by the Irish author who has been referred to as the last modernist,4 this approach to art augurs the challenges that postmodernist artists face when impelled to search for means to express the inexpressible: that is to say, to express in familiar terms that which defies our sense of reality. The task of the artist who attempts to depict the Nazi genocide leads to Theodor Adorno’s famous and influential injunction against writing poetry after Auschwitz.5

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“Incomprehensible,” “inconceivable,” “unimaginable,” and “unthinkable” are the terms most often used to qualify an inaccessible death in life experience. The paradox that informs these attempts at representation is the need to speak and the impossibility of speaking. As Beckett peremptorily sums it up, “An art turning from [the inexpressible] in disgust,” in order to turn towards the only expression possible: The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.6

Few statements have encapsulated as exactingly the Zeitgeist after Auschwitz as does this sublime definition of art. Such an aporia explains the silence of many survivors finding the void much more eloquent than all the inadequate words that they could use to fill it. Ritually imposed silence often stands as a memorial act, and replaces the words that could only translate the obscene attempt to speak or, more controversially, to explain. From Primo Levi’s debilitating incident at his arrival in Auschwitz when he brutally learns that in the camp the “why question” does not apply (Hier ist kein warum),7 Lanzmann understands that “there is an absolute obscenity in the project of understanding.” As Thomas Trezise remarks, “the effort to comprehend, conceive, imagine, or think of the Holocaust often—if not always—entails a tangible sense of taboo.”8 However, the duty of memory compelled survivors to tell the tales of the camps and, despite their reluctance, many offered their testimonials in writing. The testimonial form was the logical narrative strategy that presented itself for these accounts. The harrowing “survival story” emerged as an ethical literary genre that followed its own rules and conventions. The testimonial narrative developed according to specific ethical and esthetical constraints that began to change as real life survivors gradually disappeared and fictional memoirs emerged. With the inexorable passing of time, the actual memory-based individual testimony with its corollary inaccuracy and distortion was succeeded by Holocaust fictions often based on extensive historical research and documentation. If new archives coming from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union allowed fictional memoirists to polish their works, new ethical obstacles confronted second generation writers who struggled even more anxiously with questions of ethics and esthetics in their fictional representations of the victims of the Nazi monstrosity. As Berel Lang observes, “Nowhere is the moral presence of the author more insistently asserted than in the “imaginative” writing that takes the Holocaust as its subject.”9 In the words of Alice Yeager Kaplan, the question is: “what happens to the

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memory of history when it ceases to be testimony?”10 How can the postHolocaust writer fabricate an eyewitness authority endowed with the ethical prerequisites that the specific genre demands? As Ellen Fine points out in her essay: If writers of the first generation feel guilty for transgressing boundaries in their representation (or misrepresentations) of the dead, their question “how to speak” becomes for [the following] generations “do I have the right to speak?”11

“No one bears witness to the witness,” Paul Celan writes in his elegiac poem Aschenglorie.12 The poet and Holocaust survivor speaks to us about individual (in)human experiences that can be neither conveyed nor relayed. Transmission fails for lack of possible identification or empathy. The artists thus removed from the circumstances are faced with what Robert Jay Lifton called “the creative guilt,” a fear of hubris associated with imaginatively reconstructing an historical sacred event: “The event is rendered so historically sacred that recreating it in any form can be psychologically perceived as hubris by both artists and their audiences.”13 These representational problems have traditionally been posed to fictional memoirists telling their tales from the victim’s point of view. For a perpetrator assuming fictional authority over these events would be considered a transgression in every way, shape, and form. This assumption was confirmed by the reception of the controversial publication of Les Bienveillantes by young Francophone American writer Jonathan Littell, published in 2006 in France, translated into German as Die Wohlgesinnten in 2008, and into English as The Kindly Ones in 2009. By delegating the narrative authority to a high-ranking Nazi administrative officer, and then allowing him to tell his story from the vantage point of his idiosyncratic National Socialism, Jonathan Littell has without a doubt violated a literary taboo.14 The indignation comes indeed from the fact that Littell’s novel presents itself as pertaining to the ethical literary genre of the testimonial narrative, generated by the victims of the Holocaust in an attempt to convey their unique experience. On the contrary, the literary memoir that the author of The Kindly Ones offers appears to strip the genre of its constitutive ethical raison d’être and replace it with the anathematized pretext of giving a selfexculpatory voice to one of the victims’ executioners. Rather than attempt to capture the subjective representation of an unprecedented human experience, the narrator of Littell’s novel purports to relate meticulously the story of a Nazi criminal. After 900 pages of a graphically detailed description of the Jewish genocide, obvious questions arise. Is Jonathan

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Littell a scandalous literary hoax as some editors and critics have claimed? Or, is his novel a brilliant and ironic interrogation of evil itself? The title of the novel, The Kindly Ones, refers to the conclusive part of the Oresteia, the only surviving Greek trilogy of Aeschylus, which examines the course and aftermath of Clytemnestra’s slaying of her husband Agamemnon, and the subsequent dilemma facing their son Orestes. The main themes of Aeschylus’s Kindly Ones are vengeance, justice, and ethics, and its climax is the transformation of the Furies (who punish crimes against blood kin) into the Kindly Ones (figures of social reconciliation). In this essay, my aim is to show that rather than perverting the genre and exploiting the subject matter, Littell actually exposes the crimes of his protagonist and unmasks him as a perverted criminal. Through a literary analysis of the narrative strategies of The Kindly Ones, I hope to show that the ironic structure devised by Littell in his novel undermines the authority and reliability of the narrator, and exposes him as an incestuous matricide, an opportunistic murderer, and as a fictional foil to the ambitious and zealous civil servant described by Arendt in her controversial portrait of Adolf Eichmann.15 Indeed, despite the fact that Littell’s narrator Max Aue offers as an explanation a version of the banality of the evildoer, the Arendtian paradigm cannot be applied to the novel because of its mythical framework, which is far from “banal.” I will argue that within the story’s mythical framework, the author unfurls the life story of his intra-diegetic narrator—Aue’s Nazi experience during the war—and, ironically, fails the self-exculpatory project of the extra-diegetic narrator—an older Aue, reminiscing and telling that story.16

Kindly or Kinky? The Kindly Ones, a Faustian memoir, tells the fictional story of Doctor Maximilien Aue, a former SS intelligence officer, who, some thirty years after the war, looks back at his life as a Nazi.17 Although Aue is a fabricated character, his world is peopled by historical figures such as Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss, and Hitler himself. Now a family man living under a false identity in France as the manager of a lace factory, Aue reminisces with cool-eyed precision about his time as an observer and active participant in Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front, from Poland to Stalingrad, to the death camps and Berlin. If Aue decides to speak out now, it is not, as he asserts, to justify his deeds to the reader but simply to set the record straight for himself: “Si je me suis résolu à écrire après toutes ces années, c’est pour mettre les choses au point pour moi-même. Pas pour vous” (If after all these years I’ve made

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up my mind to write, it’s to set the record straight for myself, not for you).18 To be sure, such an assertion immediately invites an ironical viewpoint on the part of the reader since this straightening appears in a printed book sold to readers! There is nevertheless nothing apologetic in Aue’s Dantesque but seemingly tranquil recollection of his life during the extermination of the European Jews during World War Two. Throughout his narrative, Aue preserves an emotional and temporal distance that allows him to comment and reflect on the past events while describing them in their horrendous immediacy. Susan Suleiman critically envisions the novel’s protagonist as a “reliable historical witness” for his exceptional, though unrealistic, qualities as an observer and reporter: Littell’s Aue has qualities that only a fictional character can have: he is present, as an observant participant, in just about every place where the worst crimes against humanity were committed […]; and most important he possesses the intelligence and analytic ability, the emotional detachment and temporal distance, as well as a certain moral sensibility, to act as a reliable historical witness.19

Aue is definitely a “Nazi Zelig” as Samuel Moyn suggests in his article,20 in that, like the Woody Allen title character, he has the ability to be ubiquitous.21 As such, he can easily play the part of the historical witness. The reliability of Aue as an historical witness depends on his reliability as a narrator, and yet, as we shall see, the narrative irony structurally inscribed in the novel ruins all his chances to maintain both of these statuses. In order to identify Aue as a compromising witness of History, it is essential to recognize the Orestes-like character that he represents in his tragic family story, which proves to be a “neurotic’s family romance” that reaches the readers through fragmental flashbacks that puncture his selfauthorized version of Nazi History.22 This mise en abîme, which I would describe here more appropriately as a mise en abyss (in fact, “abîme” translates literally as “abyss” in English), results in the tragic fall of Aue as a reliable narrator who cannot for long maintain the objective distance that he pretends to uphold in his graphic rendering of his life as a quasiomniscient Nazi spokesman.23 The lexical proximity that readily prompts me to describe the literary process as a mise en abyss rather than en abîme, in fact, discloses the novel’s underlying irony; rather than exposing a frame story that would reflect the main one, as the literary device of the mise en abîme intends to do, it leads to a vortex in which Aue’s memoir ironically falls down the abyssal horrors of mythical and historical tragedy in the course of which the narrator is denied his authority. The discrepancy

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between the character that Aue is fabricating in his memoir and the one that actually emerges as a result of his fractured narrative in fact eludes him. The readers’ difficulty in immediately appreciating the irony at work in the novel is due to the plethora of identifiable interpretative routes that it proposes (such as its presentation of indiscriminately recognizable Nazi “types” and its idiosyncratic blend of Holocaust theories.) As a result, despite its resounding success, the novel has appalled many critics, historians, and readers. After the American writer won two of the most prestigious French literary awards, the Goncourt prize, given to the author of the best and most imaginative prose work of the year, and the Grand prix du roman de l’Académie Française, one French commentator felt entitled to list all the language errors that he could find within the text, including Anglicisms, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. Other critics focused on the subject matter by refuting the ethical and historical legitimacy of such a piece of literature. For instance, French philosopher Michel Terestchenko and historian Edouard Husson reacted by co-writing a book denouncing the Holocaust voyeurism in Littell’s novel. Significantly entitled Les Complaisantes, Jonathan Littell et l’écriture du mal, the authors refer to the novel as “de la saloperie, du porno nazi, de la complaisance pour le Mal !” (It is absolute rubbish, Nazi porn, sheer indulgence for evil!).24 They accused the author of trivializing one of the most painful moments of human history. Peter Schöttler, a Francophone German historian, called the novel a “strange, monstrous book” that is fraught with errors and anachronisms over wartime German culture, and compared Aue to Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith’s talented amoral and criminal character.25 The novel is indeed a succès de scandale. While it has evoked numerous objections, it has also become the source of a renewed interest for Holocaust studies and literatures, and has led to a revisit of Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil.” More important than the reactionary attitudes and early editorial condemnations of the book by the Parisian intelligentsia, the literary phenomenon of The Kindly Ones has brought back to the forefront some of the most burning questions about literature, evil, and moral responsibility. Despite its prefatory claims that the novel only aims at describing the facts and events the way they were—“laissezmoi vous raconter comment ça s’est passé” (let me tell you how it happened)—it raises questions about the relation between ethical philosophy and esthetic practices, and engages in an ironic discussion on the “correct” or “appropriate” ethical attitude towards such a crucial historical moment as the second world war.26

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“Man is Wolf to Man” is without a doubt the philosophical truth that the reader extracts from these nine hundred pages of constant murders. Very early in the novel, he warns his readers “Vous ne pourrez jamais dire: tu ne tueras point, c’est impossible” (You can never say: I shall never kill, that’s impossible).27 As if his readers could have any doubt after two hundred pages of summary executions, he reminds them that man’s heart is abyssal and his action incomprehensible: [L]e bien et le mal sont des catégories qui peuvent qualifier l’effet des actions d’un homme sur un autre; mais elles sont foncièrement inadaptées, voire inutilisables, pour juger ce qui se passe dans le cœur de [l’]homme. [[G]ood and evil are categories that can serve to qualify the effect of the actions of one man on another; but they are, in my opinion, fundamentally unstable, even unsuitable, to judge what goes on in the heart of […] man.]28

The Kindly Ones appears first as a narrative about the impossibility of understanding humankind and the inability of men to judge one another. It also confronts readers with the esthetic response of the second generation to memory and trauma, that is to say, “the possible ethical directions that work on memory can take.”29 In his memoir, the narrator sets himself the task of explaining the inexplicable by posing as a human archetype. He then proceeds to explain his past deeds as a Nazi criminal by stating that each man is a potential criminal, and that under the “right circumstances,” each is bound to become an executioner.30 What was mistakenly considered unethical by the critics and labeled voyeuristic is not only that a Nazi officer is given a voice but also that he is given an unapologetic discourse. What shocks critics and readers is the fact that the character in the novel and the author during his interviewing duties do not take an explicit and radical stand against the Nazis. In his occasional interviews, the author asserts that he “wanted to show how relatively normal individuals from the cultivated western world fall prey to collective madness,” and that, by way of conclusion, “there is a German in all of us, we are all Germans.”31 On another occasion he echoes Flaubert’s oftquoted “Madame Bovary, c’est moi” by proclaiming: “Let’s say that I am Max Aue, I could have very well been Max Aue if I were born German in 1913 rather than American in 1967.”32 In other words, according to Littell, as Aue is human, none of his readers is immune from becoming a Nazi. In the novel, echoing Arendt, Aue compares the “banality” of Eichmann’s personality to, and conflates it with, the mediocrity of human nature in general:

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Tout ce qui comptait, pour [Eichmann], c’était de montrer ce qu’il pouvait faire, de se mettre en valeur. […] L’évacuation des Juifs était la solution à son problème. […] Et il n’était pas le seul, cet homme, tout le monde était comme lui, moi aussi j’étais comme lui, et vous aussi, à sa place, vous auriez été comme lui. [The only thing that counted, for him, was to show what he could do, to prove his worth. […] The evacuation of the Jews was the solution to his problem. […] And he wasn’t the only one, this man, everyone was like him, I too was like him, and you too, in his place, you would have been like him.] 33

As the protagonist makes clear as early as the first sentence of the book, what he has done during the war is what any of his human brothers would or could have done, had they been in similar circumstances: “Frères humains, laissez-moi vous raconter comment ça s’est passé” (Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened).34 By claiming the reader as his human brother in the opening line of the novel, Aue imposes immediately his affiliation with his fellow humans, and as such, considers them as equally able to commit the crimes that he committed. It appears that it is precisely against the peremptory human fellowship, seemingly professed both by the author and the narrator, that some publishers strongly reacted, and consequently refused to publish the novel. Ronald Blunden, editorial director of Calmann-Lévy explains the reasons for his refusal to publish The Kindly Ones: L’empathie est ce qui provoque une communion avec les victimes […], [et] nous oblige à aller vers elles, et ce mouvement n'a rien à voir avec celui qui nous fait nous détourner, horrifiés mais fascinés, de leur bourreau, dont Jonathan Littell voudrait néanmoins nous faire assumer l'abjection au titre de notre appartenance commune à l'humanité.35 [Empathy is what provokes a communion with the victims […], obliging us to go towards them, and this movement has nothing to do with what makes us, horrified and fascinated, to turn away from their executioner, whose abjection Jonathan Littell would nonetheless like us to assume in the name of humanity to which we all belong.]36

Readers such as Blunden who approach the text under the guidance of an unreliable narrator and artful author scandalously reject the empathy for the perpetrator that the first-person narrative entices. The novel has thus not surprisingly been judged on moral grounds, criticized for its historical and linguistic inaccuracies37 and has even been dissected (and sometimes

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appreciated) by psychoanalysts.38 The novel has also been criticized for presenting a character that does not bear verisimilitude to a real Nazi Officer.39 It is as if everybody forgot the self-evident truth that The Kindly Ones is above all a “roman” (novel), as is conspicuously labeled on its cover under the title. This gesture on the part of Littell to alert readers to the fictional nature of his text can be compared to Magritte’s famous quote regarding the fiction of representational art. As Julia Kristeva reminds Littell’s readers in her discussion of the novel: “Je rappellerai seulement le mot de Magritte, sous l’image d’une pipe: ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’” (I will simply recall Magritte’s description under the image of a pipe: ‘this is not a pipe’).40 Indeed, the version of history told by the fictional character, Max Aue, comes from the imagination of its author. Even though the novel is saturated with historical documentation, it is neither a veracious depiction of history nor an historical novel. What is striking in Littell’s work, and that which has obviously misled the readers, is the amount of information that the author has gathered for the composition of his narrative epic. The reader knowledgeable in Holocaust narratives will easily identify the nomenclature established by Raul Hilberg in his work, The Destruction of the European Jews,41 and s/he will surely be reminded of the testimonies of survivors as well as the records of Nazi criminals. However, the research that the author carried out in writing his book does not merely serve to attest to the historicity of the events depicted but also allows him to devise his abominable fictional tale. Littell’s activity in the 1990s as a humanitarian in Bosnia and Chechnya among other places, as well as his Judaic heritage, neutralized suspicion and made possible the writing and the publication of such a formidable piece of fiction. For this project, Littell immersed himself in archival research for years. We learned from Littell’s translator, Charlotte Mandell, that the author of The Kindly Ones compiled a DVD including archival material, recordings of Eichmann’s speeches, footage of some camps after the liberation, and articles published during the war.42 Even within the novel, the narrator reckons that the amount of information provided by historians and survivors about the camps is such that prospective readers will be able to fill in the gaps that he left on the subject in his narrative. The conflation of the various narrative layers (personal, historical, mythic) on which the novel is constructed is conducive to the ambiguous status of the novel and its dithyrambic criticism. In his insightful reading, Liran Razinsky approaches The Kindly Ones through the question of genre. The critic shows that multiple genres intertwine in the novel, such as the historical novel, literature dealing with trauma, the testimonial genre, and the literature of transgression, which

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Razinski prefers to term “literature of excess,” thereby linking the novel to George Bataille’s theories of excess.43 Its many sources of inspiration and its generic excess are precisely what make this text a highly literary and polyphonic novel that distinguishes it from historiography. Although the novel relies on well-documented war testimonies and the most recent available war archives, it also inscribes in its structure many literary works and myths that rightly lead Florence Mercier-Leca to qualify the novel as “un livre bibliothèque,” that is to say, a book that does not necessarily reflect reality but refers to literature.44 In his article entitled “The Kindly Ones and the Russian Classics,” Georges Nivat also brings to the foreground the literary filiations and affiliations that Littell’s fiction entertains with authors such as Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Grossman, and Tolstoy, to name a few.45 However, as announced earlier, the myth of the Oresteia, as the title of the novel alleges, is undeniably the most direct literary lineage that the work offers. Littell declares that he finally found the fundamental structure of his novel in the Oresteia. He reported being vitally influenced by Greek thought and its ethical system, specifically, its view on justice, morality, and guilt: L'influence de la pensée grecque sur le livre va bien au-delà de sa structure eschyléenne. J'aime beaucoup la façon qu'avaient les Grecs de penser la morale, qui est beaucoup plus pertinente pour essayer de comprendre ce genre de phénomène-là que l'approche judéo-chrétienne. Avec le judéochristianisme, on est dans la faute, le péché, dans le jeu entre péché pensé et péché commis. L'attitude grecque est beaucoup plus carrée. […] L'intention n'entre pas en compte. […] Peu importe la raison qui l'a amené à commettre [le crime], il a commis cet acte, il va être jugé et condamné. Ça n'a rien à voir avec la culpabilité.46 [The influence of Greek thought on the book goes well beyond its Aeschlyean structure. I very much like the manner in which the Greeks had conceived of morality, which is much more pertinent in trying to understand the type of phenomenon in question than the Judeo-Christian approach. With Judeo-Christianity, one is at fault, in sin, in the play between the sin imagined and the sin committed. The Greek perspective is much simpler […]. Intention is not taken into account. […] The reason that led one to commit the crime does not matter, he committed the act, he will be judged and condemned. It has nothing to do with guilt.]47

In the novel, Max proceeds to demonstrate that the only possible justice that can be applied to men, if justice is to be applied, is the Greek application of the law. Good and evil in the Greek context are ineffective

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and irrelevant categories. Since all men are potential killers and morality is not an inherent human quality, guilt is not a moral experience but the result of external circumstances to which man instinctually responds. Aeschylus scholar, Albin Lesky, envisions Aeschylean plays as, “the union of fatal necessity and personal will.”48 According to him, there is a “union of external coercion and personal readiness.”49 Once the tragic hero surrenders to the necessity, “forces are released in him that make him passionately seek to fulfill his aim.” The tragic hero is thus a “man led by fate to a terrible deed, which he not only accepts but desires and passionately undertakes.”50 Lettered in Classics, Aue vulgarizes the legal laws of the Areopagus Court (which, we must remember, exists only in the realm of the imagination) in order to accommodate his self-serving version of history. He then exposes the case of one of Christopher Browning’s “ordinary men” whose charge was to execute the sick and the wounded German soldiers in a sanatorium in the Ukraine51: On a beaucoup parlé, après la guerre, pour essayer d’expliquer ce qui s’était passé, de l’inhumain. Mais l’inhumain, excusez-moi, cela n’existe pas. Il n’y a que de l’humain et encore de l’humain : et ce Döll en est un bon exemple. […] S’il était né en France ou en Amérique, on l’aurait appelé un pilier de sa communauté, un patriote; mais il est né en Allemagne, c’est donc un criminel. […] Le hasard seul fait de lui un assassin plutôt qu’un héros ou un mort. Ou bien alors, il faudrait considérer ces choses d’un point de vue moral non plus judéo-chrétien, […] mais grec: les Grecs, eux, faisaient une place au hasard dans les affaires des hommes, […] mais ils ne considéraient en aucune façon que ce hasard diminuait leur responsabilité. Le crime se réfère à l’acte, non pas à la volonté. [There was a lot of talk, after the war, in trying to explain what had happened, about inhumanity. But I am sorry, there is no such thing as inhumanity. There is only humanity and more humanity: and that Döll is a good example. […] If he had been born in France or America, he’d have been called a pillar of society and a patriot; but he was born in German and so he is a criminal. […] Chance alone makes him a killer rather than a hero, or a dead man. Otherwise, you would have had to consider these things from a moral standpoint not Judeo-Christian, […] but rather Greek: for the Greeks, chance played a part in the doings of man, […] but they did not consider that this chance diminished one’s responsibility in any way. Crime has to do with the deed, not the will.]52

As Florence Mercier-Leca shows, the mythic reading of the novel is implied in the title and throughout the novel.53 The matricide that Aue

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perpetrates halfway through the novel confirms this link, and induces the readers to follow the mythic path.

Is Max Aue a Nazi Orestes? The fundamental structure of Jonathan Littell’s novel is inspired from the final play of the Greek trilogy The Oresteia by Aeschylus. The Oresteia includes the Agamemnon, The Libations Bearers, and The Eumenides, also known as the furies or the kindly ones. It recounts the tragedy of the House of Atreus, which is considered the most famous secular family in western literary history, partly because it tells the story of a far-reaching family curse, full of sex, violence, and horrible deaths spanning generations. In the Agamemnon, the eponymous character returns home victorious from Troy after a ten-year siege only to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra, who had been plotting with her lover Aegisthus in revenge for the loss of her daughter, Iphigenia, sacrificed to the gods by her father Agamemnon. In the Libation Bearers, Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, returns from exile. He meets with his sister Electra and tricks his way into the palace where he kills his mother and her lover. For this offense he is exposed to the vengeance of the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance, by whom he is hunted from place to place. In The Eumenides, Orestes is in Delphi where he is absolved and protected by Apollo, but the Furies are still pursuing him. He then returns to Athens to be judged in the court of appeals. At the court, Apollo defends him and the Furies prosecute the matricide. Thanks to the intervention of Athena, who presides over the case, Orestes is acquitted. When they hear the verdict of acquittal, the Furies are outraged and threaten to ruin the land of the Athenians. However, the goddess Athena addresses them with mild words of exhortation and gradually pacifies their wrath by recounting the honors that they will receive if they peacefully take up their abode in Attica. In the end, their hearts are softened; their curses are turned into blessings. From “the Furies,” they are renamed “the Kindly Ones.” As the conclusive play of the trilogy, the Eumenides marks the end of the continuous cycles of bloodshed. According to Ian Johnson, the play emblemizes the shift from a monarchal system of vendetta in Argos to a democratic system of litigation in Athens.54 Indeed, in the conclusion of the play, the traditional goddesses of vengeance are incorporated into the justice system and become kind and fair.According to A.E. Haigh, “The peaceful conversion of these mysterious goddesses of the underworld from Avenging Furies into Benign Goddesses typifies in the most beautiful

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manner the spiritual meaning of the play: the eventual supremacy of mercy over justice.”55 However, according to French Classics scholars, JeanPierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, the denouement of the Oresteia displays an unresolved ethical tension, which, to me, lies at the very center of Littell’s novel: the complex legal and ethical intricacies that distinguish vengeance from justice: Orestes, who is guilty of a monstrous crime, […] is acquitted by the first human court ever instituted in Athens. Those taking up his defense [first of all, Apollo] plead that […] his actions must be classified as […] justifiable murder. The acquittal is obtained only thanks to a procedural artifice, after Athena has, by casting her vote, restored the equality of votes for and against Orestes. The young man is thus legally absolved […] although from the point of view of human morality he is not fully exonerated.56

It is precisely because of the ethical and formal questions that Greek tragedy poses as a genre that the framing of Littell’s The Kindly Ones within the structure of the Oresteia establishes a moral and political ambiguity. It signals the unreliability and incompatibility of the two narrative voices that, rather than agreeing, contradict each other. As mentioned earlier, in The Kindly Ones, the intra-diegetic narrator’s story undercuts the extra-diegetic narrator’s credibility. Greek tragedy presents the readers with a conflict of ethical forces, which is in fact never resolved. Only formally concluded, it does not attain ethical certainty. Accordingly, the tragic plot that structures Aue’s story indicates that although the character manages to escape punishment and live a quiet life under his new identity, his crimes catch up with him. The novel ends indeed with the kindly ones finally tracking him down. As the last sentence reads: “Les bienveillantes avaient retrouvé ma trace” (The Kindly Ones were on to me).57 Clemens and Weser, the two policemen/ furies who have been chasing Aue from place to place for the murder of his mother and his stepfather, are now dead. And yet, the last sentence of the novel implies that writing his story has unleashed both his crimes and his guilt associated with them. The recollection of his past crimes, now recounted, has finally come back to the surface to haunt him. It appears that the formal denouement of Aue’s self-exculpatory account leads to self-condemnation.58 Telling the story of his criminal life to an imaginary third party who is no other than himself (he allegedly writes to set the record straight for himself) leads him back precisely to himself and his crimes. He ends up being the victim of tragic irony since his anticipated objective exculpatory version of history leads him in fact to the

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recognition of his guilt. Isn’t this what the final sentence of the novel clearly indicates? The definition of irony offered by Beda Alleman refers to a mode of discourse that precisely implies an opposition between what is said and what is meant.59 I would argue that the key to this unresolved conclusion comes from the ironic subject position that the narrator is given. The remarkable opening line of the first-person narrator that anchors his memoir in an identifiable ethical literary genre (which immediately generated in lieu of literary criticism a moral argument for or against the novel and its author) should in fact be read ironically: “Laissez-moi vous raconter comment ça s’est passé” (Let me tell you how it happened).60 If the narrator addresses the reader as his human brothers and claims that he is writing to set the record straight for himself and not for us readers— “pas pour vous” (not for you)—the author, Littell, writes for the victims, the dead, as his dedication, “Pour les morts” (For the dead) spells out, and sides with them against the executioners. Indeed, the dedication is part of the “paratext” that Gérard Genette defines as follows: More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold. [It is] a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that […] is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it. […] A fringe of the printed text, which in reality controls one’s whole reading of the text.61

In this respect, despite the author’s provocative endorsements in his interviews of his Nazi chronicler’s vindications, a distance is established that separates the implied author’s voice62 from the narrator’s. This distance, entirely obliterated by some readers who accordingly responded with criticism that rapidly turned into personal attacks, is illustrated in the conspicuously divided audience that respectively compared the novel either to an artistic tour de force or to sheer pornography. In the same vein, it is probable that the author is equally ironic in choosing musical titles for the seven uneven parts of the novel rather than out of cultural pretentiousness—une culture “tape-à-l’œil”—as Guy Laflèche accused him of doing.63 For music dilettantes versed in mundane language, the musical titles that the author gives to his seven chapters do conjure up Johann Sebastian Bach but they also suggest a more figurative and crude idiom; alongside “Allemande I et II” which in the context of the narrative obviously refers also to Nazi Germany; “Sarabande” evokes multitudes, agitation, and even lascivious dances much like the bacchanals that Aue

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describes at the Deutsches Haus; “Courante” is a familiar term for diarrhea, which afflicts the Nazi soldiers in the scenes devoted to descriptions of war and genocide; Gigues are women’s legs (which remind us of the literal and symbolical dismembering of the Jews by the Nazis). (The chapter entitled “Air,” does not display (to my knowledge) the same double entendre but is rather self-explanatory. It exposes Aue’s releasing his sexual impulses, and his phantasm reaching its paroxysmal actualization.) Aue’s early proclamation of his affiliation with his human brothers should accordingly be read ironically. Instead of fashioning himself as the counterpart of his guilt-free and crime-free readers, he gradually unmasks himself as a criminal falling into the abyss of homicidal perversion. By attempting to force on the whole of humanity a visceral criminal behavior bound to erupt under the right circumstances, Aue pretends to render normative his own monstrosity. In a similar vein, by shifting, as early as in his preamble, the focus from the atrocious act to the corruptive nature of human beings, the narrator, as a competent legal representative, (he has a degree in Law as do most of his colleagues) establishes the premise of his exculpatory theories on responsibility and guilt. As a matter of fact, the narrator relies on the power of his intellectualism, literary knowledge, and logorrhea to convince the reader that there is no hierarchy in evil (a killer is a killer however gruesome the method is), and that men are natural born killers. One is to conclude that anyone could very well commit his crime. However, the irony lies in the fact that Aue cannot but fail to appear to his readers as a human brother. His creator has endowed him with intelligence and declamatory skills but he has also attributed to him a mythical cursed fate that singles him out and ultimately ostracizes him. Even if his “renaissance man” persona gives him some authority if not reliability as a narrator, he does not succeed in convincing the attentive reader that he is a man just like him. Littell’s literary tour de force is predicated on the fact that irony lies at the structural core of the novel. By making Aue an Orestes-like protagonist in a mythologized Nazi narrative, the author prevents him from ever becoming an ordinary human being with whom the reader can identify. At the same time, the subject position of the protagonist in the narrative affords him a ringside seat in order to observe the otherwise inaccessible mind of a Nazi criminal. The mythical framework that underlies the structure of this astonishing narrative trek has often been dismissed particularly by historians. However, it serves as the ethical condition on which the narrative of the unreliable Nazi narrator performing the task of an historical expert witness can be told. The tragic irony comes from the unapologetic Aue/Orestes

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who begins his narrative by provokingly imposing his kinship on his readers, and ends up being exposed as a matricide and grotesquely found later sodomizing himself with a tree branch in the castle of his sister while the Russians are coming (no pun intended). Although the reader whom Aue intends to address in the incipit is François Villon’s clement reader to whom the French poet begs for clemency from his prison while awaiting execution (see the first quote below), in the course of the narrative Aue’s reader identifies with another type of reader: the hypocrite and perfidious reader whom Baudelaire addresses in Au lecteur (To the Reader), the prefatory poem to Les Fleurs du Mal (see the second quote below): Frères humains, qui après nous vivez, N'ayez les cœurs contre nous endurcis. Car, si pitié de nous pauvres avez, Dieu en aura plus tôt de vous mercis. [Brothers that live when we are dead, Don’t set yourself against us too. If you could pity us instead, Then God may sooner pity you.]64 (Villon, La Ballade des pendus) La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine, Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps, Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords, Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine. […] Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère! [Folly, error, sin, avarice Occupy our minds and labor our bodies, And we feed our pleasant remorse As beggars nourish their vermin. […] You know him reader, that refined monster Hypocritish reader— my fellow—my brother!] 65 (Baudelaire, Au lecteur)

Despite the author’s attempts to establish kinship with his readers, by framing his narrator within the myth of a cursed family, Littell has denied Aue his universal quality and damaged his narrative authority and

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reliability, which relies on his kinship with his fellow men. Because the vast majority of readers would find it difficult to identify with an incestuous closeted homosexual matricide, Aue ends up being used and abused by his author in order to play the part of an expert witness thanks to whom he can explore every aspect of the Nazi perpetrator’s mind.

The Myth of the Nazi Perpetrator as an Expert Witness By mythologizing the memory of history of his protagonist without taking a stand, the author forces him to be an ambiguous witness, partly memorialist, partly voyeur. In so doing, he reiterates the fundamental principle of the testimony genre according to which bearing witness is an ethical task. If Aue is able to tell his story in such careful detail, it is because he actually enjoys watching: “Le plaisir de voir ces choses était humain, aussi” (The desire to see these things was also human), Aue claims.66 His predilection for showing rather than telling, to use the Jamesian dichotomy, is revealed early in the novel when Aue aligns himself with Leontios, the story of whom Plato recounts in book IV of The Republic. The platonic tale illustrates the “Principles of Opposites” that characterize the human soul. The story of Leontius as it was remembered and told by Socrates is recited word for word in Littell’s text: En feuilletant mon Platon, j’avais retrouvé le passage de La République auquel m’avait fait songer ma réaction devant les cadavres de la forteresse de Lutsk : Léonte, fils d’Aglaion, remontait du Pirée par le côté extérieur du mur Nord, lorsqu’il vit des corps morts couchés près du bourreau; et il conçut un désir de les regarder, et en même temps ressentit du dégoût à cette pensée et voulut se détourner. Il lutta ainsi avec lui même et plaça sa main sur les yeux, mais à la fin il succomba à son désir et, s’écarquillant les yeux avec les doigts, il courut vers les corps, disant: “Voilà, soyez maudits, repaissez-vous de ce joli spectacle!” [Leafing through my Plato, I had found the passage of The Republic that my reaction in front of the corpses in the Lutsk fortress had brought to mind: Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed, near the executioner, some dead bodies lying on the ground; and he felt a desire to look at them, and at the same time loathing the thought he tried to turn away. For a time he struggled with himself, and covered his eyes, till at length, overcome by the desire, he forced his eyes wide open with his fingers, and running up to the bodies, exclaimed: “There! You devils! Gaze your fill at the beautiful spectacle!”]67

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The allegory that Aue integrates in his narrative reveals the sublime and monstrous nature of the narrator as a witness. At the same time, it signifies the mode of representation and the moral impasse that is at stake in the act of witnessing. In his definition of the sublime, Edmund Burke asserts that the sublime has the power to compel and destroy the individual. Omnipresent (he is present at every step of the killing process) and demonstrating a level of knowledge bordering on omniscience (he possesses the facts and the lucidity to probe into his compatriots’ minds), Aue becomes an expert witness who proceeds to tell it all, exactly “as it happened.” What this clairvoyance entails is Aue’s ostracization from the living; he ultimately finds himself relegated to the limits of human imagination and understanding. Indeed, the last sentence of the novel suggests that the narrator succumbs to his “integral” testimony. Georgio Agamben identifies the “integral witness” in the cadaveric figure of the muselman, that is, a concentration camp prisoner who already exhibited the signs of death and usually died within a couple of weeks.68 Witnessing from “beyond the deadly pit” is the mythical subject position that Aue can take on. Only through a Faustian pact can the Nazi “hero” take the floor. As soon as Aue promised to tell how it all happened, his fate was sealed and bound to a mythical reenactment of tragic ends. There is a need therefore to resituate the text where it belongs, that is, in the world of the imagination where history, myth, and tragedy merge at the whim of the author. The Kindly Ones offers a mythic, historic, literary, and linguistic palimpsest that lends itself to many readings. Through the various literary affiliations that the novel exhibits, the text multiplies its narrative perspectives and leads to the controversial reactions that the book provokes. It has been read either as a fascinating literary work that dares to affront through fiction one of the most sensitive subject matters in modern literary history, or as a voyeuristic tale participating in the Holocaust industry. In other words, kindly might have appeared inadvertently kinky. As I hope to have shown, the ethical stance of the implied author that the structural irony of the text uncovers prevents empathy for the perpetrator but provides him with an unrealistic focalization that allows him to see it all, and as a result, to say it all. The reading pact that the reader is offered can thus be considered Faustian as well if one considers that when the reader enters the realm of fiction, s/he has to agree to momentarily suspend judgment, overlook the implausibility of the narrative, and in return, be allowed to have access to an unspeakable truth that can only be approached in the never ending fictional repetition of the traumatic events. Indeed, if as Marianne Hirsch asserts, one of the signs of trauma is its delayed recognition, its retelling is necessarily informed by

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repression and distortion rather than by the direct and immediate recollection of historical facts.69 This is exactly how the author of The Kindly Ones devised the story of his reminiscent Nazi protagonist; in a performative literary gesture, he presented the reconstructed and distorted imaginary memoir of a guilty Nazi Officer that delayed till the final sentence the recognition of his traumatic criminal past: “les Bienveillantes avaient retrouvé ma trace” (The Kindly Ones were on to me).

Notes 1

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Knopf, 1969): 256. Claude Lanzmann and Shoshana Felman, “The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude Lanzmann,” American Imago 48.4: 479. 3 Ruby Cohn, ed., Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment (New York: Grove Press, 1984), 145. 4 Anthony Cronin, Samuel Becket: The Last Modernist (New York: HarperCollins, 1996). 5 Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 34. The famous dictum, which has ironically inspired an ongoing tradition, is an excerpt from a larger sentence that says: “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today.” 6 Cohn, Disjecta, 139. 7 Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: MacMillan, 1993): 28-29. 8 Thomas Trezise, “Unspeakable,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 (2001): 39. 9 Berel Lang ed., Writing and the Holocaust (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), 10. 10 Alice Yeager Kaplan, “Theweleit and Spiegelman: Of Mice and Men,” in Remaking History: DIA Art Foundation Discussions in Contemporary Culture, eds. Barbara Kruger and Phil Marian (Seattle: Bay Press, 1989), 160. 11 Lang, Writing and the Holocaust, 43. 12 “Niemand zeugt für den zeugen.” 13 Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Vintage Books Random House, 1969), 473. 14 Martin Amis’ Times Arrow (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), and D. M. Thomas’s White Hotel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981) also provoked scandalized reception. White Hotel, like The Kindly Ones, was criticized for its “pornographic” exploitation of the Holocaust. See for instance, Susanne Kappeler’s The Pornography of Representation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986). 15 I am referring of course to the famous controversy triggered by Arendt’s Report on Eichmann’s trial. Arendt was attacked by the International Jewish intellectual 2

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community for describing the bureaucratic behavior aspect of the Nazi final solution and minimizing the anti-Semitic element as well as blaming the passivity of the Jews during their own extermination. In her equally famous letter to Gershom Scholem, she refutes these accusations: “I never asked why the Jews ‘let themselves be killed.’ On the contrary, I accused Hausner of having posed this question to witness after witness.” Peter Baehr, ed., The Portable Hannah Arendt (Penguin Classics, 2003), 394. 16 See the distinction timely and clearly established by Scott Powers in his essay in this volume. 17 In the course of the reading we understand that he writes after the publication of Speer’s memoirs and Eichmann’s trial. 18 Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 11. Littell, The Kindly Ones, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 3. Emphasis added. 19 Susan Rubin Suleiman, “When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the Holocaust: On Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes,” New German Critique 106.36.1 (Winter 2009): 5. 20 Samuel Moyn, “A Nazi Zelig: Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones,” The Nation, March 4, 2009. (http://www.thenation.com/article/nazi-zelig-jonathan-littellskindly-ones) 21 Scott Powers traced the origin of the German term to the eponymous movie directed by Woody Allen in 1983. 22 “The family romance” according to Freud is an exceptional fantasy life dominated by the theme of family relations, first appearing in children’s play just before puberty and reenacting the primary love-connection of the child with the parent of the same sex while setting a pattern for later psychological and sexual development. Daydreaming is one of the activities that serve wish fulfillment and emending real life, and they have two principal aims, one erotic, and the other ambitious. (Otto Rank summarizes Freud The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 49-51. The fantasy in which Aue indulges in the chapter entitled “Air” can be read like the inhibited exuberant fantasy of a child who has not overcome this specific phase of sexual and psychological development. This is what his sister suggests when she tells him at each encounter with him that what happened between them (their incestuous embraces) belongs to the past, to their childhood. 23 Mise en abîme or abyme is a French literary term derived from the heraldic device of inserting a small shield within a larger shield bearing the same device. A composition en abyme is a story within a story, where the “story within” reflects and complements the significance of the larger story. It denotes self-reflection within a literary work. In the Kindly Ones, I want to show that instead of a reflecting process, we find an abyssal process. The structural irony in the novel prevents the intra-diegetic’s story to concur with, and thus to reflect the story told by the extra-diegetic one. On the contrary it gives illegitimacy to the larger story and unreliability to the extra-diegetic narrator. 24 “La Fabrique des bourreaux,” last modified May 1, 2010,

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http://www.fragil.org/focus/713. 25 Peter Schöttler, “Tom Ripley au pays de la Shoah,” Le Monde, October 14, 2006, 19. 26 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 11; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 3. 27 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 30; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 24. 28 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 544; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 590. 29 Gerd Bayer, “World War II Fiction and the Ethics of Trauma.” Forthcoming. For the question of generational responses to the Holocaust, see Marianne Hirsch’s “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 (2001): 5-37. I would like to thank Gerd Bayer for introducing me to her work. 30 Aue’s conclusion concurs with those that were drawn from the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971, and from the Milgram experiment in the 1960s at Yale University. Both experiments purported to demonstrate how ordinary people (i.e., middle-class college students) can take ghastly actions that they would have never believed they were capable of taking. These results support the Arendtian thesis according to which banal individuals are capable of extraordinary actions. 31 "Ich wollte zeigen, wie relativ normale, abendländisch kultivierte Individuen einem kollektiven Wahn verfallen. Die Deutschen sind wir, jeder ist ein Deutscher. Sadisten gibt es überall, aber sie interessieren mich nicht besonders. Mir geht es um die Normalität des Totalitarismus. Moralische Urteile in den Begriffen von Gut und Böse werden der Wirklichkeit nicht gerecht. Die Griechen gingen von den Fakten aus, nicht von den Beweggründen. So war es auch bei den Nürnberger Prozessen. Diese Sicht ist mir lieber. Les Bienveillantes ist kein historischer Roman, sondern ein Roman der Geschichte." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 11, 2006. 32 “Maximilien Aue: je pourrais dire que c’est moi,” accessed August 23, 2010, http://www.lefigaro.fr/magazine/20061229.MAG000000304_maxmilien_aue_je_p ourrais_dire_qu_c_est_moi.html. 33 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 718-19; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 782-83. Emphasis added. 34 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 11; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 3. 35 “Un bienveillant cynisme,” accessed August 23, 2010, http://passouline.blog.lemonde.fr/2007/03/. 36 Translation is Scott Powers’. 37 Paul Eric Blanrue. Les Malveillantes: Enquête sur le cas Jonathan Littell. Paris: Editions Scali, 2006. 38 Henri Dedet, “Les Bienveillantes mises en questions,” Psychanalyse 1.11 (2008): 105-117; André Green, “Les Bienveillantes de Jonathan Littell,” Revue française de psychanalyse 71.3 (2007): 907-910. 39 Edouard Husson, “La Vraie histoire des Bienveillantes,” L’Histoire 320 (Mai 2007): 7-19. 40 “De l’abjection à la banalité du mal,” accessed August 23, 2010, http://www.kristeva.fr/abjection.html.

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Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 42 “Charlotte Mandell: Living Inside The Kindly Ones,” last modified March 14, 2010, http://beatrice.com/wordpress/2009/03/14/charlotte-mandell-in-translation. 43 Liran Razinsky, “History, Excess and Testimony in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes,” French Forum 33.3 (Fall 2008): 70. 44 Florence Mercier-Leca, “Les Bienveillantes et la tragédie grecque. Une suite macabre à l’Orestie d’Eschyle,” Le Débat (dossier Les Bienveillantes de Jonathan Littell) 144 (March-April 2007): 46. 45 Georges Nivat, “Les Bienveillantes et les classiques russes,” Le Débat (dossier Les Bienveillantes de Jonathan Littell) 144 (March-April 2007): 56-65. 46 “Propos recueillis par Florent Georgesco, ‘Jonathan Littell, homme de l'année.’” Accessed on August 23, 2010 (http://www.lefigaro.fr/lefigaromagazine/2006/12/29/01006-20061229ARTMAG 90304 maximilien_aue_je_pourrais_dire_que_c_est_moi.php). 47 Translation is Scott Powers’. 48 Albin Lesky, Decision and Responsibility in the Tragedy of Aeschylus, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 86 (1966): 84. 49 Ibid., 82. 50 Ibid. 51 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution (New York: HarperPerrenial, 1992). 52 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 542, 545; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 589, 592. 53 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 23, 60, 380, 461; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 16-17, 57, 411, 499. 54 Ian Johnson, “Lecture on the Oresteia,” accessed August 23, 2010, http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/aeschylus.htm. 55 A. E. Haigh, “The Oresteia: A Synopsis and Analysis of the Trilogy by Aeschylus” in The Tragic Drama of the Greeks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 116. 56 Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, trans. Lloyd Janet (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981), 56. Emphasis added. 57 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 894; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 975. 58 Gerd Bayer comments on this ethical development from a philosophical point of view in his forthcoming article, “World War II Fiction and the Ethics of Trauma.” He endorses and contrasts Heidegger’s notion of Gewissen and Ricœur’s argument in Oneself as Another to Levinas’s understanding of ethics as originating from an encounter with the other. 59 Alleman, Beda, “De l’ironie en tant que principe littéraire,” Poétique 36 (1978): 385-398. 60 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 11; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 3. 61 Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2. Emphasis added. 62 The famous concept that Wayne C. Booth coined in his Rhetoric of Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 1983).

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63 Guy Laflèche, “Une bienveillante fiction: L'exploitation éditoriale et romanesque du génocide des Juifs par les Nazis,” accessed on August 23, 2010, http://mapageweb.umontreal.ca/lafleche/po/go/jl.html. 64 “La Ballade des pendus” is Villon’s epitaph. Translation can be found on line: http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/09/ballade-of-hanged-villonepitaph.html 65 Translated by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954). See also http://fleursdumal.org/poem/099. 66 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 97; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 98. 67 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 97; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 98. 68 Georgio, Agamben, Ce qui reste d’Auschwitz, trans. Pierre Alfieri (Paris: éditions Payot et Rivages, 1999), 106. 69 Hirsch, “Surviving Images,” 8.

JONATHAN LITTELL’S THE KINDLY ONES: EVIL AND THE ETHICAL LIMITS OF THE POST-MODERN NARRATIVE SCOTT M. POWERS

Quel homme seul, de sa propre volonté, peut trancher et dire, Ceci est bien, cela est mal? [What man alone, of his own free will, can come to a decision and say, This is good, that is evil?]1 Peut-être préféreriez-vous, à mes réflexions malsaines et absconses, des anecdotes, des historiettes piquantes. [Maybe, instead of my unwholesome, abstruse reflections, you would rather have anecdotes, spicy little stories.]2

Post-modernities As an account of the Shoah, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (2006) is necessarily a narrative about evil. In its exploration of the causes of the destruction of the Jews, in its attempt to provide a different kind of response to the question “how could this have happened?,” the novel adopts a quintessentially post-modern approach. This essay is devoted to the analysis of The Kindly Ones as precisely a post-modern treatment of evil. The inherent value of such an account is its potential to elucidate a rich depiction of the Holocaust that recognizes the complexity of its origins. At the same time, a post-modern perspective runs the risk of abandoning moral concepts such as good and evil. As Holocaust scholar Berel Lang has argued, “if post-modernity expected to leave anything behind, [it would be precisely] the nostalgia for the binary or dualistic thinking [that] opposes virtue to vice and then asserts that we can tell [...] the difference between them.”3 The events of the Shoah, related by a fictitious Nazi perpetrator writing decades later, as is the case in Littell’s The Kindly Ones, may readily lead to a relativization or rejection of the moral concepts of good and evil. In fact, it would come as no surprise if

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the elucidation of a post-modern perspective of crimes of genocide by a narrator occupying the subject position of a former Nazi amounted to an act of self-exculpation. Indeed, the argument made by Max Aue, Littell’s narrator, presents human behavior as historically contingent, and constitutes a plea for his exoneration. In direct address, Aue asserts that the reader would have acted in kind, had (s)he been confronted with similar circumstances: “Ce que j’ai fait, vous l’auriez fait aussi” (You might also have done what I did).4 What’s more, the author’s statements seem to coincide with the narrator’s rationale. Littell has asserted in an interview published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 11 2006 that he “wanted to show how relatively normal individuals from the cultivated western world can fall prey to collective madness,” and that “there is a German in all of us, we are all Germans.”5 Littell is even reported in Le Figaro Magazine on December 30, 2006 as having stated: “Maximilien Aue, je pourrais dire que c’est moi” (Maximilien Aue, I could say that I am he). In light of what many may perceive as a morally objectionable thesis, elucidated by the narrator and seemingly shared by the author himself, do we therefore, along with other scholars, denounce The Kindly Ones, consisting in large part in the detailed description of the suffering and death of the Jews in the hands of the Nazis, as “de la saloperie, du porno nazi, de la complaisance pour le Mal” (absolute rubbish, Nazi porn, sheer indulgence for evil)?6 I believe that there is good reason not to do so. It is commonplace to warn against confusing the narrator with the author, even when the author shares common biographical traits, conveys similar points of view, or even claims to identify with his or her narrator. Flaubert’s oftquoted claim that “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” certainly has not deterred a wealth of criticism devoted to how the textual dynamics of Flaubert’s novel offers a harsh critique of the female protagonist. As I will argue in this essay, numerous characteristics of Littell’s narrative undermine the narrator’s thesis. To cite just one example here, the novel’s dedication “Pour les morts” (For the dead) contrasts in spirit and scope with the narrator’s testimony given to assuage his image as a former Nazi.7 I hope to show that Littell’s text sets its own post-modernity in opposition to the narrator’s post-modern perspective, as if to warn us against the dangers that the moral implications of a post-modern perspective of historical events such as the Shoah entail. The text challenges the narrator’s viewpoint by calling into question the possibility of a coherent thesis presented by a self-sufficient cogito and that is sustained throughout nine hundred pages of text. In line with the post-structuralist dismissal of the notion of a stable authorial self with a single, discernable intent, Littell’s

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novel invites us to identify multiple forces, voices, and discourses that constitute the text and whose oppositions and contradictions may themselves generate new and perhaps even unintended meanings. In our attempt to understand the rich dynamics of a literary text such as The Kindly Ones, it would be a mistake for us to take hold of a single proclamation made by its author as if it were the key to unlocking its overarching “message.” Such a reductive approach would amount to adhering to a “master narrative” that a post-modern work such as Littell’s does not allow. It is interesting to note that a few scholars and artists have suggested that for The Kindly Ones to be sufficiently understood, it must be interpreted through the lens of one particular discipline. André Green, renowned scholar of psychoanalysis, boldly claims that “seul un psychanalyste est en mesure de saisir la profondeur et l’étendue de la problématique de cette œuvre” (only a psychoanalyst is capable of grasping the breadth and depth of the problematics of this work).8 Renowned film director Claude Lanzmann pronounced an equally bold statement in an interview on November 28, 2006 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in asserting that the only people who can completely understand this book, the only ones who have acquired the historical knowledge necessary to understand The Kindly Ones, are Raul Hilberg— prominent historian of the Holocaust—and himself, by virtue of working alongside Hilberg and through his own laborious research on the destruction of the Jews.9 The juxtaposition of these two seemingly contradictory claims—each one suggesting that the novel must be read through the lens of one discipline—psychoanalysis or history— underscores, rather, the complexity of The Kindly Ones in its engagement in multiple systems of thought to portray the origins of evil as anything but monolithic. Before proceeding to a textual analysis of The Kindly Ones, I would first like to clarify what I mean by a post-modern perspective on evil. In literature, the post-modern style has been characterized by its irony and self-contradictions, the frequent use of parody, its resistance to paraphrase, distillation, and closure, as well as what Brian McHale calls heterotopia, or the textual deployment of various contradictory discourses on the perceived reality of the world.10 These elements of the post-modern style, I would argue, have inevitable implications for post-modernism as a veritable vision of evil. For instance, a text’s deployment of multiple, competing discourses reflects, if not occasions, the rejection of those grand narratives that attempt to account for all historical events or human behavior within the framework of a single discipline or theoretical model.11 Indeed, theorists’ refusal to have recourse to a single grand

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narrative such as Marx’s economic theories on capital and class struggle or Freud’s oedipal complex to account for complex phenomena constitutes the historical rupture denoted by the “post” in post-modernism. The postmodern cynicism of a single explanation of Being, expressed by a writer’s unresolved engagement with competing paradigms, reflects a vision that refuses to identify one overarching source of evil, and a perspective that recognizes the question of evil as multifarious.12 Post-modernist theory has also had strong implications for the notion of human agency—traditionally one of the most important factors considered by philosophers in the question of evil. Human agency was already a waning notion during what is commonly called the “modern” period, in which grand narratives pushed the conscious human will to the wings of history’s stage. Today, postmodernists often seem to efface entirely the notion as they underscore countless biological, psychological, linguistic, discursive, social, and economic forces as the veritable actors in historical events. Most recently, with the advent of a new, information age, philosophers and writers also consider various forms of political discourse (or propaganda) and the media as powerful manipulators of historical events. No longer predicated on individual agency, the self constitutes the vehicle, often unknowingly, through which impersonal forces act out. Hannah Arendt laid the groundwork for such a post-modern vision of evil by portraying the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann as an unmotivated evildoer: Evil men, we are told, act out of envy; this may be resentment at not having turned out well through no fault of their own (Richard III) or the envy of Cain […]. Or they may be prompted by weakness (Macbeth) […]. Or by covetousness […]. However, what I was confronted with was utterly different and still undeniably factual. I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to trace the incontestable evil of his deeds to any […] motives.13

Arendt’s depiction of Eichmann not as a scheming, demonic executioner with a hatred for Jews, but rather as an apathetic personality and simple cog in the wheel of a much larger socio-economic machine, takes even further the modernist gesture of rendering problematic the notion of the “evildoer” by suggesting that the most destructive forms of evil happen precisely in the absence of human agency.14 The narrator of The Kindly Ones seems to be closely following Arendt in his depiction of the perpetrators of the Shoah, at least with regard to Nazis like himself. In his explanation of the Nazi death machine, the narrator states: “L’exécutant est aliéné par rapport au produit de son action. […] La victime a été

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amenée là par d’autres hommes, sa mort a été décidée par d’autres encore, et le tireur aussi sait qu’il n’est que le dernier médaillon d’une très longue chaîne […]” (The worker is alienated from the product of his labor. […] The victim was led there by other men, his death was decided on by yet others, and the shooter knows that he is only the last link in a very long chain).15 In this self-portrayal, Aue casts himself not as a scheming evildoer, not as a cause of evil, but rather as an effect. In reflecting on his collaboration in the mass execution of Jews in the forests of Poland, he places the blame on an ambiguous “ils” (they) with no identifiable antecedent, all the while describing himself as an unfortunate victim: “Une bouffée d’amertume m’envahit: Voilà ce qu’ils ont fait de moi, me disaisje, un homme qui ne peut voir une forêt sans songer à une fosse commune” (A sudden burst of bitterness invaded me: so this is what they’ve turned me into, I said to myself, a man who can’t see a forest without thinking about a mass grave).16 As I will demonstrate below, the post-modernity of Aue’s account of Nazi perpetrators lies in large part in the evocation of numerous reasons to explain the atrocities, none of which entirely dominates the narrative or is presented as the underlying answer to the question “how could this have happened?” But whereas he elaborates on a lengthy number of theories regarding the origins of evil, seemingly exhausting all of the possibilities, he curiously rejects human agency as a potential source or “collaborator.” I will consider the possibility that an important dimension of Littell’s novel offers a critique of a vision of evil common enough in some trends of postmodern thought that ignores human deliberation as a significant factor. In my analysis of The Kindly Ones, I will attempt to make the distinction between two post-modern accounts of the Nazi testimony that the novel presents. On the one hand, the narrator deliberately attempts to explain his crimes by providing a post-modern description of the various roles that he has played in the destruction of the Jews. He presents them as the unintended consequence of a myriad of inevitable external and subconscious forces that traverse the self and that exclude the possibility of the subject’s responsibility and intentionality. On the other, an oppositional textual mode steeped in irony and parody undermines—even deconstructs—the narrator’s self-exculpatory project. I will conclude by considering whether The Kindly One’s post-modern textuality, in opposition to Max Aue’s own post-modern perspective on his role in the Shoah, succeeds in restoring the notions of good and evil, in recuperating a distinction between righteous and wrongful acts. I will consider descriptions of the Nazi body in the novel, and more specifically its physiological responses to the killings, as possible indicators of the

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undeniable presence of evil. I will also consider a possible recuperation in the text of the notion of human agency as a contributing factor in the perpetration of evil, and of thought itself as an essential component to avoiding evil. If this is the case, Littell would seem to follow Arendt even more closely. Whereas in her report of the Eichmann trial, Arendt appears at points to subtract human will—and responsibility—from large-scale events that breed suffering and death, in later publications, especially The Life of the Mind, she in fact recovers the notion of human agency. Within, she resurrects the thinking subject by considering thinking itself as a prophylactic against evil. In the end, my study questions whether the ultimate ethical responsibility of postmodernity is to find a way to retain if not the thinking subject in its integrity, than at least its shadow, if we are to maintain a sense of right and wrong, good and evil.

The Nazi Testimony A roughly binary structure constitutes The Kindly Ones, in which an historical account of the major events of the Endlösung and a biographical account of the narrator’s adolescence and early adult life interweave to create the textual fabric. Within this overarching structure, the narrator enlists a number of competing psychological and historical discourses among many others in constructing a richly variegated, polyphonic mosaic of the origins of evil. Aue’s testimony is one that draws on the understanding of evil as originating from a multiplicity of forces other than human agency. Such a perspective can be appreciated for its recognition of evil as a complex question and that cannot be accounted for by a single grand narrative. To begin, Aue mentions several possible reasons and insinuates others for his becoming a member of the Nazi party. Through a number of flashbacks of circumstances in his family history, Aue presents his decision to move from France to Germany, and to join the Nazi party, as part of an act of rebellion against a deep-seated animosity toward his French mother whom he blames for his father’s disappearance when Aue was a young adolescent. His decision is equally based in his admiration and on-going search for his German father: “J’[avais] l’idée qu’autre chose était possible que le chemin étroit et mortifère tracé pour moi par ma mère et son mari, et que mon avenir se trouvait là, avec ce peuple malheureux, le peuple de mon père, mon peuple aussi” (I [had] the idea that something was possible besides the narrow and stifling path outlined for me by my mother and her husband, and that my future was there, with this unfortunate people, my father’s people, my people too).17 The narrator’s

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often subconscious search for the father surfaces violently when a superior gives him a photograph of his father. Much to Aue’s disappointment, his father’s face is so smudged that he remains unrecognizable.18 In reaction to the insurmountable distance that the narrator acutely apprehends here between his father and himself, he destroys the photograph in a fit of rage.19 At this moment, Aue catches a glimpse in the mirror of his own reflection, which he describes as “undone.” Seized with rage once again, the narrator shatters the mirror by hurling a lamp against it. By recounting this episode, the narrator makes it clear that his self-identity is inextricably linked to his father, and therefore threatened by the latter’s absence.20 This anecdote also suggests that Aue’s veritable anger and violent impulses have as their origin his unsettling relationship with his father. The reader has the impression that much of Aue’s motivation for excelling as a Nazi officer at his various reconnaissance missions and report draftings has at least as much to do with a psychological impulse to “please the father” as it does with a genuine conviction in the ideologies of the Nazi party. When Aue’s colleague Dr. Mandelbrod comments on his service to the Reich, and suggests that his father would be proud, Aue cannot help but be profoundly affected by the thought of receiving his father’s approval.21 Aue’s strong emotional attachment to his absent father can be explained by another factor that Aue elucidates in his testimony. Early on in the novel Aue admits that he has strong same-sex desires. Throughout the narrative, Aue recounts several sexual encounters with men while a member of the Nazi party. Aue’s testimony leads us to understand much of his psychological depth as a classic case of a negative oedipal complex, in which the homosexual son’s libido becomes invested in the figure of the father, rather than in that of the mother. Accordingly, from childhood through his adult life the narrator has adopted a “feminine” like attitude toward the father, and seeks the father’s affection while developing feelings of jealousy and hostility toward the mother. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Aue’s relationship with his mother is one of rivalry and animosity that continues into adulthood.22 Memories of the father, on the other hand, are tender and consist of moments in which the son seeks to please and be loved by him.23 In fact, Aue links his misbehavior as a child to the love of the father. He explains that he would steel objects from neighbors not for the sheer pleasure of committing an evil act, but rather as a way of gaining his father’s attention: Vers cette époque, je me mis à chaparder chez nos voisins, très certainement, je le compris plus tard, pour attirer son attention: je volais des pistolets en fer-blanc, des lampes de poche, d’autres jouets, que j’enterrais dans une cachette au fond de notre jardin. […] Ma mère pensait

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The narrators’ use of italics draws attention to the novel’s overarching theme of evil. Here, Aue rejects the possibility that his misbehavior as a child stemmed from a pleasure that he derived from committing certain deeds solely for their evil nature. This rejection corroborates Aue’s underlying thesis that his motives for participating in the destruction of the Jews were not in themselves “evil.” As Aue understands it, his motivations as an adult are inextricably linked to and conditioned by his unresolved family past. As he pithily proclaims in a conversation with his sister: “Le passé n’est jamais fini” (The past is never over).25 Accordingly, by providing a type of psychological self-diagnosis of his family relationships, the Nazi perpetrator diverts attention away from the gravity of his actions as an adult, thereby casting himself in a sympathetic light and exacting empathy from his readers. Aue links his adult life as a Nazi not only to his psychic development in relationship to his parents, but also to his homosexuality. More specifically, he attributes his entry into specific task divisions of the Hitler regime to his need to hide his homosexuality, to escape legal prosecution for his sexual relationships considered to be crimes in Nazi Germany. Early in the novel, Aue describes a turning point in which his decision to join the Sicherheitsdienst (the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party) was made out of fear that his refusal to do so would amount to prosecution. When Nazi officials catch Aue seemingly cruising another man at night in a park notorious for anonymous sexual encounters among men, they make it clear to Aue that by entering the Sicherheitsdienst, he would avoid legal repercussions.26 With very striking visual imagery, and not without conveying more than a hint of irony regarding the situation, Aue intimately connects his homosexuality with the start of his career in the Hitler regime: “Et c’est ainsi, le cul encore plein de sperme, que je me résolus à entrer au Sicherheitsdienst” (And that is how, my ass still full of sperm, I resolved to enter the Sicherheitsdienst).27 With such a description, Aue portrays himself as a victim, a marginalized and persecuted member of Germany society coerced into accepting a position whose precise nature he would only later discover.

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Aue further justifies his actions by attributing them to other psychological traits. For instance, by describing his attraction to absolutes, which he traces back to his childhood, Aue explains his interest in the ideology of the Nazi party: Depuis mon enfance, j’étais hanté par la passion de l’absolu et du dépassement des limites; maintenant cette passion m’avait mené au bord des fosses communes de l’Ukraine. Ma pensée, je l’avais toujours voulue radicale; or l’Etat, la Nation avaient aussi choisi le radical et l’absolu; comment donc, juste à ce moment-là, tourner le dos, dire non. [Ever since I was a child, I had been haunted by a passion for the absolute, for the overcoming of all limits; and now this passion had led me to the edge of the mass graves of the Ukraine. I had always wanted my thinking to be radical; and now the State, the nation had also chosen the radical and the absolute; how, then, just at that moment, could I turn my back, say no.]28

The ambiguity of this description lies in an unresolved tension underlying the question of agency. Never assuming responsibility for his actions, Aue attributes them to an imposing personality trait that leads him to the places of mass execution in the Ukraine. It is not a question of willful actions but rather the narrator’s deep-seated, psychologically programmed behavioral characteristic of thinking in terms of absolutes. In another passage, Aue explains that his potential to commit acts of cruelty stems from yet another inextricable dimension of his psychology— his abiding feeling of insecurity, which he once again traces back to his childhood. In grade school, in order to compensate for his small body size in comparison to his peers, in order to “démontrer une supériorité illusoire” (demonstrate[e] an illusory superiority), the narrator would assume the role of class clown and relentlessly humiliate his teachers.29 It comes as no surprise that, given both his body size and his homosexuality, the young Aue felt marginalized and constantly longed for acceptance. As he explains, another motivation for his joining the Nazi party was to feel a sense of belonging: “Moi aussi, je voulais apporter ma pierre à l’édifice commun, moi aussi, je voulais pouvoir me sentir une partie du tout” (I too wanted to bear my stone to the common edifice, I too wanted to be able to feel a part of the whole).30 In addition to numerous psychological explanations, Aue gives many other reasons that place in perspective the actions of Nazis. They further cast him as an innocent bystander and as an effect of overwhelming or mysterious forces. In certain passages, for instance, Aue considers the atrocities of war from an economic standpoint by suggesting that the

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reasons for the militarization of Nazi Germany were above all driven by an economic, capitalist system of colonization that pillages other countries and peoples. He often describes the Nazi economic machine as both “grandiose” and “mystérieux": Aux gares de triage, on voyait attendre des files interminables de wagons sales, graisseux, boueux, chargés de blé, de charbon, de fer, de pétrole, de bétail, toutes les richesses de l’Ukraine occupée saisies pour être envoyées en Allemagne, toutes ces choses dont les hommes ont besoin, déplacées d’un endroit à un autre selon un plan de circulation grandiose et mystérieux. C’était donc pour cela qu’on faisait la guerre, pour cela que les hommes mouraient? [At the marshalling yards, I watched interminable lines of dirty, oily, muddy freight cars waiting, full of wheat, coal, iron, gasoline, livestock, all the wealth of occupied Ukraine seized to be sent to Germany, all the things men need, moved from one place to another according to a grandiose, mysterious plan of circulation. Was that the reason why we were waging war, why men were dying?]31

Drawing from a perspective in political science that echoes Hannah Arendt’s description of the modern Nation-State in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Aue describes both victim and persecutor of the Nazi regime as puppets of the State, expendable, replaceable, and interchangeable, all in service to the Ideal of the Volk: Dans un état comme le nôtre, les rôles étaient assignés à tous: Toi, la victime, et Toi, le bourreau, et personne n’avait le choix, on ne demandait le consentement de personne, car tous étaient interchangeables, les victimes comme les bourreaux. […] L’homme ne comptait pour rien, la Nation, l’Etat étaient tout […]. [In a State like ours, everyone had his assigned role: You the victim, and You, the executioner, and no one had a choice, no one asked anyone’s consent, since everyone was interchangeable, victims as well as executioners. […] Man counted for nothing; the nation, the State were everything […].]32

In the context of Aue’s narrative, this argument aims to lessen the gravity of the Holocaust by equating the role of victim (the Jew) and persecutor (the Nazi), and attributing evil to the abstract entity of “the State.” A more purely historical explanation is one in which Aue perceives the German nation as the victim of other nations, rather than as the aggressor. Aue understands the extreme nature of the Nazi ideology as an inevitable

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consequence of the aftermath of the Great War, notably the debt that Germany was obliged to pay, and its self-perception as having been rejected by the international community.33 To explain things, Aue also enlists the theory of excess, which he owes to Georges Bataille, who often describes human behavior from sex to war in terms of expenditure. In La Part maudite, Bataille rationalizes that economies must “expend” a portion of their productivity in non-reproductive or wasteful ways—such as through the arts or the construction of “useless” monuments. Otherwise they are destined to catastrophic outpourings, notably war.34 In what seems to be a crude appropriation of Bataille’s theories, Aue summarizes the link that Thomas, his friend and fellow Nazi, makes between the question of excess and the destruction of the Jews: On hait les Juifs parce que c’est un peuple économe et prudent, avare, non seulement d’argent et de sécurité mais de ses traditions, de son savoir et de ses livres, incapable de don et de dépense, un peuple qui ne connaît pas la guerre. Un peuple qui ne sait qu’accumuler, jamais gaspiller. A Kiev, tu disais que le meurtre des Juifs était un gaspillage. Et bien justement, en gaspillant leurs vies comme on jette du riz à un mariage, on leur a enseigné la dépense, on leur a appris la guerre. [We hate the Jews because they’re a thrifty, prudent people, greedy not just for money and security but also for their traditions, their knowledge, and their books, incapable of giving and spending, a people that doesn’t know war. A people that just knows how to accumulate, never to waste. In Kiev you said the murder of the Jews was a waste. Well, precisely, by wasting their lives the way you throw rice at a wedding, we’ve taught them expense, we’ve taught them war.]35

According to this reasoning, the Jews merited their own expenditure. The refusal to expend through spending, sharing, and giving resulted in their becoming waste itself.36 Such a blatant rehashing of Bataille’s theories seems formulaic at best. In the section that follows, we will consider whether explanations such as this one are parodic, and should be read ironically. In his reflection upon the origins of the Holocaust, the narrator even considers a linguistic explanation. Similar to the thesis of some Holocaust scholars such as Berel Lang, Aue contemplates the power of words to conceal meanings and to influence—or “seduce”—people’s thoughts and actions.37 In his assessment of things, Aue paints a rather post-modern/ post-structural portrayal of man as traversed by and made up of discourses and languages that do not belong to him but that serve as the basis of his actions. Words, he claims, such as Endlösung, have a quality of

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“inevitability” about them: we become disarmed by their seductive powers.38 It comes as no surprise, then, that Aue quotes the nationalsocialist poet Hanns Johst in stating that “L’homme vit dans sa langue” (You live in your language).39 Social Darwinism is yet another theory that Aue cites. According to this ideology, it is only “natural” for groups of individuals to oppress and even eradicate others: “Il est normal […] que chaque groupe humain veuille exterminer ceux qui lui contestent la terre, l’eau, l’air […]. Pour garantir sa propre vie, c’est la loi de toutes choses, la guerre permanente de tous contre tous” (It’s normal […] that each human group wants to exterminate those who challenge it over land, water, air […]. To guarantee his own life, that’s the law of things, the permanent war of all against all).40 The individual as agent is clearly absent in the theory of social Darwinism in which the community instinctively acts for the purpose of self-preservation and propagation.41 At times, and in light of his adherence to social Darwinism, Aue cannot help but perceive the world as inherently absurd, even evil. He often expresses a desire to return to the womb, or rather, to have never been born: “J’aurais voulu que la naissance n’existe pas” (I would have liked birth not to exist).42 When one asks Aue if he is happy to have survived the war so far, he reflects on the absurdity of the question: “Heureux d’être vivant? Cela me semblait aussi incongru que d’être né” (Happy to be alive? That seemed as incongruous to me as rejoicing at being born).43 In opposition to the womb, the world is described as unhealthy and sordid: “Je me tordrai et hurlerai pour […] [le] ventre, celui d’avant la lumière, la malsaine, la sordide, la malade lumière du jour” (I too would probably writhe and cry out for […] [the] womb, the one from before the light, the diseased, sordid, sick light of day).44 Aue even goes so far as to describe the world as absurd as the concentration camp in which nothing veritably meaningful is produced, human effort is useless, and suffering abounds.45 By likening the horrors of the Holocaust to life in general, by describing human existence as “evil,” Aue’s testimony continues to aim at lessening the specificity and gravity of the Nazi crimes. Aue’s testimony is one that draws on the understanding of evil as originating from a multiplicity of forces exterior to and other than those of human agency. Such a perspective can be appreciated for its recognition of evil as a complex question that cannot be accounted for by a single grand narrative. This is perhaps demonstrated most concisely over the course of five pages of text in which the narrator considers a lengthy and convoluted account of multiple reasons that explain why, toward the end of the war, most Jews were exterminated as opposed to having been exploited for

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their labor to help combat the Allied forces. I speak of concision very relatively, as these five pages of text consist of only two sentences, but whose length would make Proust’s prose appear somewhat terse. The first sentence amounts to 112 lines of text, the second, albeit much shorter, equaling 46 lines. The structure of these sentences mimics in condensed form the complexity of Aue’s post-modern account of evil as is presented throughout the 900 pages of the novel. Within, Aue considers a variety of opposing forces at play that ended in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the final year of the war, and recognizes his long list as only partial. He asserts that these deaths resulted not from the mind of one scheming evil doer, as in fact “le Führer venait de donner son accord pour l’utilisation des ouvriers juifs sur le territoire du Reich” (the Führer had just consented to the use of Jewish workers in Reich territory). Rather, he argues, they were the result of a veritable chaos of intertwining, competing, and concurring forces: “c’était un foutoir, une véritable pagaille, qui a fait qu’en fin de compte la plupart des Juifs déportés sont morts […]” (it was a mess, a genuine havoc, due to which in the end most of the deported Jews died […]).46 It should be noted that the structure of these two sentences is not only complex, it is also complicated, even unruly. In the three sentences that follow, Aue himself describes his reflections as “absconces” (abstruse).47 This is due not only to the length of the sentences, but also to their lack of grammatical cohesion. The various clauses are often loosely connected at best, and the causal relationships that the conjunctions used imply are not always evident or well thought through. Consequently, the reading of the text conveys the same sense of utter “confusion” and “zizanie” (discord) that Aue claims to feel as he tries to sort through what he calls an utter mess.48 Toward the end of the passage, the narrator’s attempts at understanding amount to unproductive meanderings that, he is the first to admit, have not yielded much enlightenment: “le pourquoi de tout ça, c’est une question dont j’ai déjà beaucoup parlé et à laquelle je n’ai toujours pas de réponse” (the why of all that is a question I’ve talked a lot about and to which I still don’t have an answer).49 The only definitive conclusion that he draws is one that abnegates responsibility: “Je n’ai jamais eu le choix, […] à cause de fatalités pesantes, ce qui fait que voilà, nous nous retrouvons au point de départ” (I never had the choice […], because of the weight of fate, and lo, we’re back just where we started from).50 In listing a long series of possible causes of evil that does little else than create sufficient confusion in hopes of convincing the reader that the perpetrators were simply bystanders caught up in an incomprehensible death machine,

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it should be asked whether the postmodernity of Aue’s account goes beyond what should be its ethical limits. The raison d’être of Aue’s post-modern position is one that aims above all to relieve him of all guilt. On numerous occasions, Aue directly affirms his innocence, his lack of choice, his status as victim of fate.51 Accordingly, the narrator can proceed to dissociate the intent from the act: “Le bien et le mal […] sont à mon avis foncièrement inadaptées, voire inutilisables, pour juger ce qui se passe dans le cœur de [l’]homme. […] Le crime se réfère à l’acte, non pas à la volonté” (Good and evil are […] in my opinion, fundamentally unsuitable, even unusable to judge what goes on in the heart of […] man. […] Crime has to do with the deed, not the will).52 As Aue claims, if he is a criminal, it is not because of him but despite him. The origins of evil lie not in the will of man but in the multiple exterior and subconscious forces that, in his discussion of crime and responsibility from the perspective of the ancient Greeks, Aue names “chance.”53 Among the countless possible contributing “agents” that Aue considers in his account of evil, human agency not only is omitted but also definitively ruled out. It is significant to note that throughout the nine hundred pages in which Aue provides great historical detail of a wide range of dimensions to the Holocaust, there is not a single mention of a case in which an individual took a stance against the destruction of the Jews or the Nazi regime. In passing, Aue briefly mentions Oskar Schindler and Jehovah’s Witnesses but in neither case does he seriously consider their role as agents in refusing to take part in, and in working to undermine the efforts of, the Endlösung.54 Are we therefore to agree with the narrator when, in directly addressing his readers, he tells us that we would have done as he had done? That we would have had no choice but to kill: “Vous ne pouvez jamais dire: Je ne tuerai point, c’est impossible. […] Je suis un homme comme les autres, je suis un homme comme vous. Allons, puisque je vous dis que je suis comme vous” (You can never say: I shall never kill, that’s impossible. […] I am a man like other men, I am a man like you. I tell you, I am just like you!)?55 Does The Kindly Ones text call on the reader to accept Aue’s account as definitive? As one that enlightens us regarding the nature of evil and of human nature? In a later section, I hope to answer these questions by exploring the role of irony in Littell’s text. 

Narrative Voice and Reader Reception Aue not only subtracts the will of man from the question of the origins of evil, he also understands the notions of Good and Evil as historically contingent. According to him, there is no universal, ahistorical understanding

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of evil: “Quel homme seul, de sa propre volonté, peut trancher et dire, Ceci est bien, cela est mal?” (What man alone, of his own free will, can come to a decision and say, This is good, that is evil?).56 Very much in the post-modern vein, Aue interprets history in terms of epistemological epochs that condition society’s moral concepts. He is clearly speaking from a Foucauldian understanding of history as the succession of great epochs characterized by one or more dominating epistemes or historically contingent power-knowledge systems. And more specifically, he appears to follow directly post-modern Franco-Argentine philosopher Miguel Benasayag’s discussion of the historical contingency of evil.57 The narrator describes society’s perception of evil as variable, and dependent upon that which it considers as sacred, and which, throughout time, has shifted from God to King to sovereign individual. What Aue adds to the discussion is his treatment of German National-Socialism as another epoch. According to Aue, under German National-Socialism it is the Volk that has become sacred, and the Führer who incarnates this ideal. From a post-modern perspective, Aue’s assertion of a “national-socialism” epoch, which spans such a short time period of twelve years, and that is limited to the German nation, seems illogical because it is uncharacteristic of the immensely broader post-modern notion of the epoch. What Aue is in fact asserting is that with Hitler’s rise to power, and in the short time of his reign, a new subconscious, broad epistemological model took seat, and conditioned people like Aue to perceive evil, instinctually, in a fundamentally different way. The question must be asked as to whether Aue’s post-modern perspective has become compromised by his own subject position. Does the Kindly Ones text invite us to consider as too facile, and as suspect, Aue’s philosophical meanderings? Whether we interpret Aue’s argument that we would have done as he had done as a sincere and reasonable thesis depends in part on how we react to other related statements of his. For instance, do we agree with Aue when, in a lengthy discussion of the history of Western nations, he asserts that “war is war” and “power is power”? He states: “Ce serait une erreur, grave à mon avis, de penser que le sens moral des puissances occidentales diffère si fondamentalement du nôtre: après tout, une puissance est une puissance” (It would be a mistake, a serious one, in my opinion, to think that the moral sense of the Western powers differs so fundamentally from our own: after all, a great power is a great power).58 Are we to accept Aue’s move to equate all wars and powers of authority as morally equal and of the same nature? And are we willing to accept Aue’s assertion that the Nazi’s crimes of war, including the Endlösung, would not be considered as such had they won the war? “Si nous avions gagné, […] il

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n’aurait plus jamais été question de crimes” (If we had won the war, […] there would have been no more question of crimes).59 Further along in his history lesson, Aue compares the general practice among contemporary nations to place criminals in prison, the sick in hospitals, and the mentally ill in asylums, to the Endlösung and euthanasia. The only difference, Aue suggests, between the two approaches is their historical conditions; he relates one “tradition” to the other by describing both as forms of “institutionalized imprisonment.”60 He rationalizes the treatment of Jews as part of a more generalized system of containment because of their desire to resist full integration into society: “Les Juifs se sont eux-mêmes constitués comme ‘problème,’ en voulant à tout prix rester à part” (The Jews constituted themselves as a “problem,” by wanting to remain apart at all costs).61 According to Aue’s reasoning, because of their resistance to cultural assimilation, it is only natural to turn against the Jews (“il est naturel de se retourner contre les Juifs”) (it is natural to turn against the Jews).62 While Aue’s assertions regarding power, institutional containment, and the scapegoating of Jews are worthy of discussion, and certainly much has been written to bring our attention to the dangers of the former two and the prevalence of the latter, the comparisons that he makes in order to “normalize” the Nazi atrocities, to present them as part of and of the same essence as a larger Western history of warfare, so-called institutionalized imprisonment, the use of power, and anti-Semitism, risks meeting with great resistance on the part of the reader. In another of Aue’s sustained reflection, this time on the foundations of social or biological Darwinism that we briefly discussed in the previous section, the narrator considers biological phenomena in order to rationalize the Nazi treatment of the Jews. But is the reader supposed to be convinced of this reasoning? In the following passage, Aue utilizes the metaphors of disease and contagion to justify the genocide: C’est la loi de tout vivant, chaque organisme ne cherche qu’à vivre et à se reproduire, sans malice, les bacilles de Koch qui avaient rongé les poumons de Pergolèse et de Purcell, de Kafka et de Tchekhov ne nourrissaient aucune animosité envers eux, ils ne voulaient pas de mal à leurs hôtes, mais c’était la loi de leur survie et de leur développement, tout comme nous combattons ces bacilles avec des médicaments qu’on invente tous les jours, sans haine, pour notre propre survie, et notre vie entière est ainsi bâtie sur le meurtre d’autres créatures qui voudraient aussi vivre, les animaux que nous mangeons, les plantes aussi, les insectes que nous exterminons, qu’ils soient réellement dangereux, comme les scorpions ou les poux, ou simplement gênants, comme les mouches, cette plaie de l’homme, qui n’a pas tué une mouche dont le bourdonnement irritant dérangeait la lecture, ce n’est pas cruauté, c’est la loi de notre vie, […] et il

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est normal qu’entre nous nous agissions de même, que chaque groupe humain veuille exterminer ceux qui lui contestent la terre, l’eau, l’air, pourquoi en effet, mieux traiter un Juif qu’une vache ou un bacille de Koch. [It was the law of every living thing, every organism just wants to live and reproduce, without malice, Koch’s bacilli, which had eaten away the lungs of Pergolesi and of Purcell, of Kafka and of Chekhov, had no animosity for us, they didn’t wish their hosts harm, but it was the law of their survival and their development, just as we fight those bacilli with medicines that we invent every day, without hatred, for our own survival, and our whole life is thus built on the murder of other creatures who also want to live, the animals we eat, the plants too, the insects we exterminate, whether they’re actually dangerous, like scorpions or fleas, or simply annoying, like flies, that scourge of mankind, which one of us hasn’t killed a fly whose irritating buzzing was disturbing his reading, that’s not cruelty, it’s the law of our life, […] and it’s normal that among ourselves we act the same way, that each human group wants to exterminate those who challenge it overland, water, air, why, indeed, treat a Jew better than a cow or Koch’s bacillus.]63

This disturbing reasoning, which equates the killing of Jews with medical science’s battle against microorganisms, with our desire to exterminate pesky insects, and even with the act of swatting a fly, clearly serves one purpose—to rationalize the Holocaust. Aue attempts to provide a biological foundation for the Nazi genocide in order to exculpate the Nazi; what the Nazis did was not cruel (“ce n’est pas cruauté”), but rather a biological “law.” Unlikely to convince the reader, the author’s simple adoption of Nazi “scientific” discourse on disease and contagion reads, rather, as an ironic parody of Nazi ideology. The same can be said regarding the narrator’s crude appropriation of other common theories. For instance, in having the narrator regurgitate almost verbatim Bataille’s theories of excess and post-structuralists’s assertions regarding the power of language, doesn’t the text invite an ironic reading of the narrator’s testimony as a half-baked hodge podge of academic theses? Aue passes over so many of them almost as quickly as he evokes them. The Nazi testimony is punctuated by too many stock theories for us not to suspect it as other than disinterested and thorough. In order for us to feel comfortable in reading certain passages of The Kindly Ones in the ironic mode, a number of ambiguities in narrative voice that pose problems of interpretation need to be resolved. It could be argued for instance that some of the narrator’s more objectionable claims should not be considered part of his overall argument asserted in the preface that

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“[we] would have done as [he] had done.” Perhaps the only way to go about selecting which statements should be considered part of the narrator’s overarching “message” and which to reject would be to make the distinction between two narrative voices—one that represents Aue as a thirty-some year old Nazi, the intra-diegetic narrator, and the older, extradiegetic narrator that represents Aue writing the text some decades later, living in France under a pseudonym. The novel’s twenty-page preface in which Aue explains to the reader the reasons that he has for writing the account that follows does in fact set up the existence of these two voices. The problem arises when, within the main body of the text, the reader attempts to determine whether the narrator who speaks represents the thoughts of the young narrator or of the older narrator. As Susan Suleiman has pointed out, the narrative often employs free indirect discourse to signal to the reader that what (s)he is reading is that of the extra-diegetic narrator speaking retrospectively.64 Curiously enough, the most controversial reasons that Aue gives for justifying the Holocaust are in fact textually marked so that the reader understands that it is the extra-diegetic narrator speaking such things despite his cognitive and temporal distance. This is the case, for instance, within the text analyzed briefly above in which Aue argues that “power is power” and “war is war,” and in which he associates the Nazi genocide as a part of, or a variant of, Western society’s institutions of containment, including prisons, hospitals, and asylums. Half-way through his history lesson, he addresses the reader in a way that leaves no doubt as to which Aue is speaking: “Vous devez trouver que je vous entretiens bien froidement de tout cela” (You must think I’m explaining all this to you rather coldly).65 Whereas it is often the case that we can, because of indicators such as the narrator’s direct address to the reader, identify the voice of the extradiegetic narrator, it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether the thoughts and opinions voiced by the young narrator are shared by the narrator’s older self. This is because the extra-diegetic narrator does not intervene in such a way that he expresses disagreement with his younger self’s statements or way of thinking. For instance, the young narrator’s justification of the extermination of the Jews as just one more example of man’s natural inclination to combat contagious illnesses is the result of a dream that he had one night while a Nazi at war. After a description of the dream, the voice of the extra-diegetic narrator states: “Et je compris alors, mais peut-être fût-ce plus tard, en sortant de ce rêve, que cela était juste, que c’est la loi de tout vivant, chaque organisme ne cherche qu’à vivre et à se reproduire [...]” (And I understood then, but perhaps it was later on, when I came up from this dream, that it was right,

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that it was the law of every living thing, every organism just wants to live and reproduce […]).66 Never does the extra-diegetic narrator indicate or suggest that he does not agree with the conclusions that his younger self drew as a consequence of the dream. In fact, certain dimensions of the ensuing statements may lead the reader to believe that the extra-diegetic narrator continues to think in such a way. In the sentences that follow, he expounds on the theories of social Darwinism not to denounce them in any fashion but to better underscore the relevance of the dream as a type of epiphany that he continues to value: “Cette nuit-là dans ma fièvre sa force de vérité me frappa comme jamais auparavant, ou après […]” (That night in my fever its force of truth struck me as never before or since).67 In highlighting this dream as a moment of revelation, an event that conveyed the truth of social Darwinism like no other before or after, the extradiegetic narrator seems rather to identify with and privilege all that this event implied for his cognitive development and for what it teaches us about human existence. Above all, passages such as these indicate that there is no significant difference in mind frame between Aue as a thirtyyear old Nazi and as a sixty-some year old writing decades later. A few more words should be made regarding the challenges that The Kindly Ones poses to interpretation, and that would lend more weight to reading much of the novel in an ironic mode and the narrator’s testimony from an ethical distance. We should consider the possibility that the narrator is deliberately withholding information. On more than one occasion, Aue has difficulty divulging certain pieces of his biography, and reveals them quite indirectly. For instance, he admits his incestuous relationship with his sister in a rather oblique manner. Aue explains that before becoming involved with men, he had in fact “loved a girl” (aimé une fille).68 But instead of revealing her identity, Aue proceeds to discuss a boat outing with his mother and step-father. Only after twenty lines into the description, he casually mentions his sister as being present. After ten lines of description of Aue’s step-father, Aue returns to describe the boat outing, explaining that he was suffering from sea sickness, but that “she” was not. In most baroque style, Aue introduces the pronoun “elle” with no direct antecedent, but does assert that “she” is the one whom he had loved: “Elle, celle dont je parle” (She—the one I’m talking about).69 It is only in the following sentences, without any direct admission on Aue’s behalf, but only through his use of the expression “notre enfance,” that the reader comes to the understanding that “elle” refers to Una. To present his relationship with his sister in embedded code for a reader precisely too focused on trying to “figure things out,” is to manipulate the reader’s reception in order to divert attention away from what should be a shocking

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revelation that would create a cognitive distance between the narrator and the reader. In light of the narrator’s disingenuousness, that is to say his reluctance to be forthcoming in revealing his biography in a direct way and in addressing in his testimony the ethical import of important pieces of his biography such as his incestuous relationship with his sister, the reader should remain circumspect throughout the entire testimonial. How much is the narrator hiding from us? Certain passages of The Kindly Ones demonstrate Aue’s skillful way with words, and his ability to manipulate the opinions of others. He demonstrates in fact the tendency to outright mislead in order to convince others to think or act in a certain manner. On several occasions throughout the testimony, Aue divulges to the reader his wish to have been born a woman, and his opinion that women are the stronger sex.70 Aue makes it clear in addressing the reader that he believes that women are superior to men, both anatomically and intellectually.71 And yet, in his attempt to seduce a young Nazi soldier into having sex with him, he adopts a highly misogynist point of view. To rationalize sexual relationships among soldiers, Aue resorts to praising “fraternal love” and “intramasculine eros,” all at the expense of woman, whose sole purpose, he argues, is to procreate.72 Aue’s art of persuasion succeeds, as the young Nazi soldier is talked into sodomizing Aue.73 The narrator’s conversations with Adolf Eichmann constitute another example of his tendency to mislead his interlocutors. Eichmann engages Aue in questions of philosophy and the applicability of Kant’s moral imperative to the Nazi war efforts. After speculating that Kant’s imperative must be suspended in times of war, Aue responds, as if to affirm his loyalty to both the party and to Kant, that in a national-socialist state, Kant’s imperative becomes one in which the Führer’s will occupies the standard of ethical responsibility.74 However, at the start of the following section, the narrator admits that he did not truly subscribe to such a reformulation of Kant’s imperative, and that what he recounted to Eichmann was nonsense: “Et l’Impératif kantien? A vrai dire, je n’en savais trop rien, j’avais raconté un peu n’importe quoi à ce pauvre Eichmann” (And the Kantian Imperative? To tell the truth, I didn’t have much of an idea, I had told poor Eichmann pretty much whatever came into my head).75 In light of Aue’s record of speaking deceptively to others, and of revealing certain events to the reader in an indirect fashion, it is more than plausible that he is withholding other pertinent information from the reader, in whose eyes he seeks exoneration. What deconstructionists and postmodernists assert as the irreducibly complex and unstable foundations of any given text, due to its manifold internal

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oppositions and contradictions, may be doubly true of an unreliable witness such as a former Nazi seeking amnesty.

Hermeneutics and the Decentered Subject In this novel, there is a blurring of reality and imagination in Aue’s account of things that, I argue, is part of a larger textual dynamics that works to unveil the “decentered” nature of the thinking subject, to borrow Lacan’s important term. Such a decentering further works to undermine the narrator’s perspective and his ability to interpret his surroundings. This happens most visibly in passages of text in which the extra-diegetic narrator himself expresses uncertainty or confusion regarding whether the thoughts that he is elucidating are those of his younger self or of his more mature self: Tout cela, se peut-il que je l’aie alors pensé? De telles idées ne me seraient-elles pas plutôt venues bien plus tard […]? C’était difficile à juger, comme d’un rêve qui ne laisse le matin que des traces vagues et aigres, comme des dessins cryptiques, tel un enfant, je traçais de l’ongle dans le givre des vitres du train. [Is it possible that I thought about all this at the time? Didn’t such ideas come to me later on […]? It’s hard to say, like a dream that leaves only vague, sour traces in the morning, like the cryptic drawings that, in the manner of a child, I traced with my fingernail in the frost on the train’s windows.]76

And then there are numerous instances in which the narrator questions whether what he remembers ever took place. To take but one exemple, Aue poses the question: “De quoi je me souvenais? Je ne savais même plus ce qu’était un souvenir” (What I remembered? I didn’t even know what a memory was anymore).77 Passages such as these render the reader’s task of interpretation even more complicated. Above all, they bring to light the refraction or deformation of a memory through time and the act of recollection, which is especially the case when the past is traumatic.78 The narrator is often acutely aware of the impossibility of knowing for certain that he is accurately relaying past events. He considers his head wound, which he obtained from a bullet that had traversed his brain while on the front lines in Stalingrad, as the cause of this inability to speak with certainty regarding past events: “Qu’avait donc fait cette balle à ma tête? M’avait-elle irrémédiablement brouillé le monde […]?”) (What had the bullet done to my head? Had it irremediably blurred the world for me?).79

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When Aue first returns to consciousness after suffering from his head wound, he describes his attempt at making out his surroundings and what has happened to him as a laborious and endless work of interpretation: “Ah, quel labeur d’interprétation, quel travail sans fin” (Lord, what a labor of interpretation, what endless work).80 And Aue’s attempt to understand his bodily sensations leaves him more perplexed and skeptic of science and reason: Ces sensations inhabituelles et mystérieuses avaient donc une cause, explicable et rationnelle; or, même avec un effort, je ne parvenais pas à les rapporter à cette explication, elle me semblait creuse, controuvée; […] la raison relevait pour moi sa jupe, révélant qu’en dessous il n’y avait rien. [These unusual and mysterious sensations had a cause, an explainable and rational one; but even with an effort, I couldn’t manage to connect the sensations to this explanation, it seemed hollow to me, contrived; […] Reason raised its skirt for me, revealing that there was nothing beneath.]81

A body, Aue concludes, is “impossible à déchiffrer” (“a mad, undecipherable thing”).82 In several instances, multiple efforts made by Aue and others to comprehend phenomena are presented as a difficult and ongoing task. In the end, much of Littell’s narrative is really about the problems of interpretation—of the Holocaust among other things. Many passages appear in fact to be commentaries on the difficulties of determining causeand-effect relationships, especially when Aue engages in conversation with a variety of researchers, doctors, and scientists who attempt to explain the causes of events related to the war. For instance, Doctor Hohenegg spends his time dissecting the bodies of Nazi soldiers in an effort to explain their fatality. In considering the possibilities of malnutrition, fatigue, mental stress, and physical trauma, Hohenegg recognizes the great complexity of determining the origins of death: “Il doit y avoir un complexe de raisons, difficilement dissociables dans ces conditions” (There must be a number of reasons, hard to separate in these conditions).83 The bodies themselves, which Hohenegg receives in his laboratory in a frozen state, are difficult to “thaw”: J’ai à ma disposition autant de corps que je pourrais souhaiter, parfaitement conservés, même si justement il est parfois un peu difficile de les dégeler. Je dois obliger mes pauvres assistants à passer la nuit avec eux près du poêle, pour les faire tourner régulièrement. L’autre jour, à Barbourkine, l’un d’eux s’est endormi; le lendemain matin, j’ai trouvé mon sujet gelé d’un côté et rôti de l’autre.

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[I have as many bodies at my disposal as I could wish for, perfectly preserved, even if it’s sometimes a little hard to defrost them. I have to force my poor assistants to spend the night with them near the stove, turning them over regularly. The other day, in Baburkin, one of them fell asleep; the next morning, I found my subject frozen on one side and roasted on the other.]84

Dr. Hohenegg’s lab work should be understood as a metaphor for the problems that the novel itself presents to the reader, who is faced with an unthawed body of sorts. On so many occasions, The Kindly Ones narrative depicts a painstaking and unconvincing attempt to arrive at the origins of things. In the first section of the novel, Aue is deployed to the Caucus region where he must research the origins of a group of Jews, the Juhuri, who claim not to be “racially” Jewish, but to have converted to Judaism. In order to determine whether or not to recommend the Juhuri for extermination, a study of their ancestry is required. The task proves quite arduous and involves a number of specialists, including linguists, historians, anthropologists, and ethnologists, who spend time gathering evidence and presenting their case for or against the Semitic bloodline of the population. During his deployment, Aue meets a German scientist, Dr. Voss, who seems to act as a voice of reason, an enlightened figure who can see beyond the ideologies of science and its claims to objectivity. In his conversations with Aue, Voss makes pronouncements that could be applied to so many endeavors in The Kindly Ones to arrive at the origins of things. When Aue asks him what he thinks of the “Juhuri question,” Voss asserts the absurdity that lies behind the task of tracing origins: “Ce que j’en pense? Posé comme il l’a été, il est absurde. […] Tout le monde a une origine, la plupart du temps rêvée” (What do I think? The way they’ve put it, it’s absurd. […] Everyone has an origin, most of the time a dreamed one).85 Voss continues by asserting that one can make the evidence say what one wants it to say: “Il y a beaucoup [d’indices scientifiques] et l’on peut tout leur faire dire” (There are plenty [of scientific clues], and you can make them say anything).86 Aue’s attempt to explain his homosexuality serves as an effective illustration of the problematic of tracing origins, and of discerning causal relationships. On occasion, Aue identifies what he seemingly perceives as the origin of his same-sex orientation. He explains to the reader that he did not always prefer the male sex, but had as an adolescent fallen in love with a girl—his twin sister Una. If, while attending a private boarding school for boys, he began to engage in sexual relations with classmates, this is because, as he maintains, sex with boys was a way for him to feel closer to

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his sister. He explains that in the sexual act, he would assume the passive role as a way of imagining what his sister would feel.87 To be sure, such an explanation for Aue’s homosexuality as a displaced love for his sister is highly unconvincing, especially in light of the fact that throughout the nine hundred pages of text, and despite encounters with and sexual propositions made by numerous attractive young ladies, Aue shows absolutely no interest in the opposite sex, is repulsed by the female anatomy, and unlike his male colleagues, makes no observation of a woman’s presence other than to note his lack of interest.88 And whereas Aue admits to having great difficulty in telling women apart, he demonstrates having a keen eye for young males.89 Aue’s attraction to males proves among the most visceral descriptions of his testimony. Despite Aue’s own assessment, the reader comes to understand the origins of Aue’s homosexuality not as straightforward as the narrator suggests, but rather as quite complex and inextricably linked to a number of factors, including the narrator’s transgenderism. As noted early, the narrator reveals his longing to be a woman. At times, he even perceives his body as feminine. On several occasions, the reader comes to understand Aue’s attraction to his sister as having less to do with his instinctual attraction to women than with his desire to be a woman, to be the feminine form of himself. As the narrator himself asserts: “Je voulais être comme elle; […] Pourquoi ne pouvions-nous pas être pareils?” (I wanted to be like her; […] Why couldn’t we be the same?).90 In light of this revelation, the causes of the narrator’s attraction seem more complex than he himself recognizes or is willing to admit. Whereas he describes his sexual relations with men as a choice that he had made during adolescence when he could not be with Una, the textual dynamics suggest that his sexual behavior is not a simple act of the will, but rather part of an opaque complexity of subconscious, environmental, and perhaps biological factors that the reader herself may never satisfactorily sort through, and that many queer and gender studies theorists would warn against oversimplifying. It is curious, to say the least, that Aue presents his homosexuality as a choice, but his involvement in the Nazi genocide as anything but a decision. There are a number of occasions in which Aue himself candidly expresses an inability to understand what is happening around him, which further undermines the integrity of the testimony of the speaking subject: Je comprenais aussi que je manquais assez de talent pour pénétrer les façades, deviner les enjeux cachés. [I also understood that I lacked the skill to go beyond the surfaces of things, to guess at the hidden stakes].91

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Il me semblait perpétuellement sur le point de comprendre quelque chose, mais cette compréhension restait au bout de mes doigts lacérés, se moquant de moi, reculant imperceptiblement, au fur et à mesure que j’avançais. [I kept feeling as if I were on the point of understanding something, but this comprehension remained at the tip of my lacerated fingers, mocking me, imperceptibly withdrawing as I approached it.]92 J’avais du mal à formuler des pensées suivies, elles se fragmentaient sous l’effort. [I had trouble formulating coherent thoughts, they broke up with the effort, only scraps remained, without any link between them.]93

In light of Aue’s inability to comprehend the events that he is witnessing, Aue’s doctor’s diagnosis of his head injury as a “commotion cérébrale” (concussion of the brain) could constitute a metaphor of man’s existential discombobulation in the face of an evil world.94 Aue’s oft recurring dream of feeling lost while riding the subway conveys an underlying anxiety of disorientation and betrays the ego’s lack of control or understanding: Presque chaque nuit maintenant, je montais dans un métro, chaque fois différent mais toujours comme excentré, décalé, imprévisible, et qui m’habitait d’une circulation permanente de trains qui vont et viennent, d’escaliers mécaniques ou d’ascenseurs qui montent et descendent d’un niveau à l’autre, de portes qui s’ouvrent et se ferment à contre-temps, de signaux passant du vert au rouge sans que les trains s’arrêtent, de lignes se croisant sans aiguillage, et de terminus où les passagers attendent en vain, un réseau détraqué et insensé. […] [Les métros] véhiculaient une angoisse translucide et acidulée, je ne pouvais jamais arriver là où je devais, je manquais mes correspondances, les portes des wagons me claquaient au nez, je voyageais sans billet, dans la peur des contrôleurs, et je me réveillais souvent envahi d’une panique froide, abrupte, qui me laissait comme débordé. [Almost every night now, I rode in a metro, each time different but always skewed, strange, unpredictable, haunting me with an endless circulation of trains coming and going, escalators or elevators rising and falling from one level to another, doors opening and closing at the wrong moment, signals changing from green to red without the trains stopping, lines crossing without any shunting, and terminus stops where the passengers waited in vain, a broken-down, noisy, immense, interminable network traveled by incessant and insane traffic. […] The metros bore with them a translucent, nearly acid anguish; I could never arrive where I had to be, I missed my connections, the doors to the cars slammed in my face, I traveled without a

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As I hope to have shown, in many ways The Kindly Ones establishes the decentered nature of the thinking subject. Accordingly, the text encourages us to question expressions of certainty emitted by the narrative voice, including his lack of responsibility or choice.

Irony in the Textual Mode A common element of post-modern texts, irony is another essential component of The Kindly Ones for it encourages a reading of the novel as distinct from the narrator’s perspective. The use of irony adds a critical layer to the novel that discourages the reader from identifying or agreeing with the characters, the opinions that they express, and their actions. Earlier in this volume, Nadia Louar has convincingly argued for an ironic reading of the novel. Here I would like to explore some specific examples. The most recurring technique in the novel that conveys a sense of irony is that of juxtaposition. By highlighting incongruence between events or opinions placed in intimate proximity in a passage of text, the narrative often invites the reader to take a moral position with respect to the narrator and the Nazis. This usually happens in order to underscore the cruelty inflicted on the Jews and the apathy of the perpetrators. For instance, early in the novel, whereas outdoors during a harsh Polish day a group of Jews are commanded to divest themselves of all of their belongings including their clothes, the narrator describes his own feeling of discomfort for not having dressed warmly enough: Les Juifs devaient remettre leurs papiers, à la seconde leur argent, leurs valeurs et leurs bijoux, ensuite les clefs de leurs appartements, étiquetées de manière lisible, et enfin leurs vêtements et leurs chaussures. Ils devaient douter de quelque chose, mais ils ne disaient rien; de toute façon, la zone était scellée derrière le cordon. Certains Juifs tentaient de discuter avec les Polizei, mais les Ukrainiens criaient, les frappaient, les renvoyaient à la queue. Un vent pinçant soufflait, j’avais froid, je regrettais de ne pas avoir pris mon pull-over. [The Jews had to hand over their papers, then their money, their valuables and jewelry, then the keys to their apartments, legibly labeled, and finally their clothes and shoes. They must have suspected something, but they didn’t say anything; in any case, the zone was sealed behind the cordon. Some Jews tried to argue with the Polizei, but the Ukrainians shouted,

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struck them, sent them back into the line. A stinging wind was blowing; I was cold and regretted not having brought my sweater.]96

The distinction must be made here between the event itself, narrated by Aue, and a secondary textual dynamics that, by juxtaposing the acute suffering of the Jews and the narrator’s feeling of discomfort for having forgotten to wear his sweater, creates a cognitive and especially moral distance between the reader empathetic toward the suffering Jews and the apathetic and egotistical narrator. A similar juxtaposition found in another passage contrasts the narrator’s physical comfort and peace of mind with the harsh reality of the concentration camps. Aue describes a moment of serenity as he floats effortlessly in a swimming pool, separated from the rest of the concentration camp by only a “léger repli de terrain” (a narrow rise): “[Je] me déshabillai et entrai dans l’eau. Elle était fraîche, un peu couleur de thé, je fis quelques longueurs, puis restai au milieu à flotter sur le dos et à contempler le ciel et les cimes tremblotantes des arbres” ([I] got undressed and went into the water. It was cool, somewhat the color of tea; I did a few laps and then stayed in the middle, floating on my back and contemplating the sky and the trembling treetops).97 The narrator’s tranquility is interrupted, though only momentarily, by guards pushing two emaciated Jews toward their place of execution. Aue learns from the guards that the prisoners are to be shot for having stolen potato skins. Aue describes his immediate reaction as one of anguish: “Une angoisse insensée m’envahit” (A vivid anguish seized me).98 However, his reaction should not be mistaken for a feeling of empathy toward the prisoners. Rather, he fears that the guards will throw the bodies into the pool, which Aue will have to exit for fear of swimming in blood: “Nous devrions nager dans le sang, entre les corps flottant sur le ventre” (We would swim in the blood, between the bodies bobbing on their stomachs).99 Paradoxically, Aue’s sense of calm returns only when he hears the gunfire in a distance, reassured that the blood will not reach the pool: “Cet état [d’angoisse] dura jusqu’à ce que j’eusse entendu les deux coups de feu, un peu plus loin, à peine audible, comme le pop! pop! de bouteilles de champagne qu’on débouche. Lentement, mon angoisse reflua pour disparaître” (This strange state [of anguish] lasted until I heard the two gunshots, a little farther away, scarcely audible, like the pop! pop! of Champagne bottles being opened. Slowly, my anguish ebbed away and then disappeared altogether).100 To underscore Aue’s failure to empathize with the prisoners, not only does this portion of text contrast through juxtaposition the close proximity of the Jews’ death and the narrator’s serenity, it also underscores the immeasurable cognitive distance between the narrator and

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the veritable conditions of the camp through the use of an arresting simile. Aue’s comparison of the sound of gunfire with that of the uncorking of champagne bottles demonstrates that his point of reference comes from a world of comfort, luxury, and indulgence entirely removed from the environment of destitution, suffering, and death that surrounds him. In its concluding sentence, the passage reemphasizes Aue’s apathy by ending with an image of the narrator returning to his position of tranquil repose as he floats once again on the surface of the pool: “Je me laissai aller sur le dos et flottai” (I let myself go and floated).101 Instances of ironic juxtaposition that contrast the gluttony and sloth of the Nazis with the conditions of the Jews in the camps submitted to forced labor abound in the novel.102 Other instances of ironic juxtaposition include contrasting the fate of Jewish children in the camps with the great sadness that a Nazi architect feels when he must destroy a series of bridges to prevent the Russians from advancing. He likens the bridges to the death of children whereas his war efforts contribute to the murder of veritable children.103 To mention but one more disturbing juxtaposition, a highly erotic scene in which Aue consumes a bottle of liquor while watching his male lover engage in sex with a woman is interrupted by an officer who alerts Aue to his imminent deployment to Auschwitz to assist in its “evacuation” (i.e. the death marches). The news about Aue’s deployment presents itself as an inconvenience, for it interrupts his voyeuristic meditations on “les servitudes de la chair” (the servitudes of the flesh).104 It should be noted that on one occasion, the narrator himself appears to achieve an ironic distance vis-à-vis his own opinions or behavior. Toward the end of the novel, inspired by the writings of E.R. Burroughs, Aue enthusiastically sets himself to drafting a report for the Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to recommend specific social reforms for the S.S. to implement once the war is over and that would encourage the development and reproduction of the Lebensborn. While writing the report, Aue begins to laugh: “Une partie de moi riait presque de l’écrire, mais cela me semblait aussi logiquement découler de notre Weltanschauung” (Part of me almost laughed as I wrote it, but it also seemed to me to stem logically from our Weltanschauung).105 In this instance of psychic splitting, Aue momentarily separates himself from the content of his writings, and in fact catches a glimpse of himself in the act of writing. This ironic distance, of which in this case laughter constitutes its symptom, represents a privileged moment in which the narrator briefly demonstrates the psychic ability to consider his thoughts and actions from outside the Nazi Weltanschauung. It is only in this short-lived instance that the narrative mode (the intradiegetic narrator’s perspective and relay of events) intersects with the level

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of the text (the ironic perspective encouraged by the textual mode). But it is precisely this psychic splitting in Aue as he writes his report that does not occur in the passages of irony described earlier, and that therefore necessarily begs the readers to formulate their own critical perspective. A highly significant event that takes place in Aue’s personal life serves as the prime illustration of the utter disconnect that the narrator all too frequently demonstrates between his perception of events on the one hand, and their veritable nature on the other. Roughly halfway through the novel, the narrator takes leave of his duties in Berlin to visit his mother and stepfather in France. During the last day of his stay, he awakes from sleep to “discover” that they have been brutally murdered. While Aue never admits to the reader that he killed his mother and step-father, all evidence points to his guilt. As Susan Suleiman has noted, the case made by the detectives investigating the crime seems airtight since, among other things, “Aue’s bloody clothes are found in the bathtub of the house where the murder is committed.”106 What remains extraordinary is that throughout the rest of the novel, Aue never seriously considers the possibility that he is responsible for the murders. Rather, he remains fixed on the extraordinary nature of the event, but which is only incredible if he is not in fact guilty. He seemingly does not remember anything concerning the murder of his mother and step-father. As Suleiman explains, Aue’s apparent amnesia is “a textbook case of dissociation.”107 The narrator considers a few explanations, each much more unlikely than his own psychic dissociation.108 In the case of his mother’s murder, Aue’s psychic dissociation presents itself as an extreme form of the on-going partial disruption of his conscious functioning throughout the novel—his inability or unwillingness to grasp the reality of what is happening around him and the consequences of his actions. This is a clear example in which the reader is called upon to weigh the circumstances of the plot in order to infer things that the narrator is either unable or disinclined to recognize. What is even more remarkable is that the extra-diegetic narrator never intervenes to seize the opportunity to admit his guilt.109 It is only the title itself, The Kindly Ones, as an extra-textual indication on the part of the author, which points to Aue as murderer. As Louar explains in her essay, “the kindly ones” is borrowed from the title of the final play of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, and refers to the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance who pursue Orestes for having killed his mother and her lover.110 The term “les bienveillantes” (the kindly ones) does not appear within the novel until its very last page and may refer to any number of entities set on exacting vengeance on Aue’s crimes, whether it is the detectives who investigate the death of his mother and her husband, the

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Russians who have begun their invasion of Berlin and who, he fears, will make him pay for the Nazi genocide, or his own guilt complex that finally awakens: “Je ressentais d’un coup tout le poids du passé, de la douleur de la vie et de la mémoire inaltérable […]” (I felt all at once the entire weight of the past, of the pain of life and of inalterable memory […]).111 Whereas the narrator never explicitly admits his guilt of matricide, the extra-textual title, along with the dynamics of the text itself, point to Aue’s responsibility. The final passages of The Kindly Ones, in which Aue is running simultaneously from the Russians and the prosecutors of his murder through the streets of Berlin, underscore the parallel that the novel makes between Aue’s personal crimes and those that he committed in uniform. As readers, we may avail ourselves of the former to inquire into the nature of the latter. To be sure, both Aue’s responsibility for the Nazi genocide and his psychic dissociation from it are presented in dramatic style throughout the novel’s concluding chapters. When considering the subject position of an ex-Nazi living under an alias and writing a testimonial in order to exonerate himself, it would seem unlikely, in fact, that Aue would not withhold or alter details about his past. It seems very probable that Aue refuses to admit to the reader his guilt in his mother’s murder.112 We cannot help but consider the possibility that the narrator is opportunistically playing the role of the amnesiac, a type of “decentered subject” so to speak, in skirting the issue of his responsibility for his mother’s death, and correspondingly, that of the Jews.

Evil and Thinking In this essay I hope to have contributed to a greater appreciation of Littell’s novel as a rich, multi-layered text. Whereas the Nazi testimony that constitutes the narrative voice enlists a number of explanations of evil that exclude the possibility of human agency, the larger textual dynamics is constantly placing into question the narrator’s project of selfexculpation. More specifically, a post-modernist style of irony through parody and juxtaposition, coupled with a recurring thematic of the irreducible complexity of interpreting causal relationships, render the Nazi testimony more than suspect. Accordingly, the post-modernity of the novel’s textual mode ultimately challenges the narrator’s attempts to dismiss moral concepts such as good and evil and to reject the importance of human agency—two characteristics commonly attributed to trends in postmodern thought. It is as if the text is warning the reader against the dangers of an “academic-like” treatment of the Shoah steeped in a wealth of theory and, paradoxically, entirely sure of the conclusions that it draws,

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despite its engagement in postmodern discourse. I believe that a great potential and underlying characteristic of post-modernist fiction is not only its relentless attempt to sort through the complex web of human and extrahuman forces, but also its nature of drawing attention to its own inconclusiveness. By recognizing the limits of human understanding, postmodernist fiction must constitute a call to vigilance, and propose an ethics that requires us to constantly reassess our ways of thinking about evil, the roles that we may play, and the responsibilities that these roles imply in the perpetration of or fight against evil. The question still remains as to whether Littell’s text in fact upholds a vision of things in which some acts are inherently wrong. In other words, does the concept of evil, in some form or another, retain its currency? In contrast to Aue’s lengthy monologues on the relativization of the moral concepts of Good and Evil, and of the Shoah, there is a significant dimension of the novel that suggests the inherently evil nature of the Nazi genocide. Especially in the first half of the novel, in which Aue witnesses first hand, and at times even helps perpetrate, the brutal mass killings of the Jews, he makes a number of observations regarding bodily symptoms and manic behavior that he and his fellow officers exhibit. As a physiological reaction to the mass killings of Jewish families, Aue and other Nazis suffer throughout much of the novel from “de[s] diarrhées violentes” (violent diarrhea) as well as chronic retching (“hauts-le-coeur”), vomiting, nausea, fever, and chills.113 For the sake of brevity, I will cite but one example: Je vomissais souvent maintenant et sentais que je tombais un peu malade; j’avais de la fièvre, pas assez pour me retenir au lit, mais plutôt de longs frissons et une sensation de fragilité, comme si ma peau devenait de cristal. [I was vomiting often now and felt I was getting a little sick; I had a fever, not enough to keep me in bed, but rather long shivers and a sensation of fragility, as if my skin were turning to crystal.]114

Aue also makes the observation that his hands would tremble (“mes mains picotaient […], mes mains tremblaient encore” (my hands were tingling […], my hands were still shaking)), and that many SS suffered from “dépressions nerveuses” (nervous depressions) and “impuissance sexuelle” (sexual impotence).115 It could be convincingly argued that the bodily descriptions in The Kindly Ones establish the notion of ontological Evil by constituting symptoms of a natural psycho-physiological reaction that become manifest despite efforts on the part of the individual to dissimulate them.

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The narrator’s observations regarding changes in his behavior and that of other Nazis further suggest that what they are doing is inherently wrong. During the scenes of mass killings, Aue describes having developed obsessions with his hygiene, which the reader can recognize as a type of coping mechanism, and more specifically as a case of what psychologists would call reaction-formation: “Par contrecoup, certainement, d’un sentiment de saleté produit par les vomissements, je commençais aussi à prêter une attention presque obsessionnelle à mon hygiène” (As an aftereffect, surely, of a feeling of filth produced by the vomiting, I was also beginning to pay almost obsessive attention to my hygiene).116 To quote but one of several passages in which Aue is constantly on guard against any stains on his uniform, he implores Hanika to wash more thoroughly: Ajustant mon uniforme devant une glace, je remarquai une tache. “Hanika, demandai-je, c’est quoi, ça?”—“Quoi, Herr Hauptsturmfürher?” “La tache, là.” Il regarda: Je ne vois rien, Herr Hauptsturmfürher.”—“Si, si, insistaije, il y a une tache, là, c’est un peu foncé. Frotte mieux quand tu laves.”— “Oui, Herr Hauptsturmführer.” Cette tache me troublait; je tentai de l’oublier en buvant un autre verre. [Adjusting my uniform in front of a mirror, I noticed a stain. “Hanika,” I asked, “what is that?”—“What, Hauptsturmfürher?”—“The stain, there.” He looked: “I don’t see anything, Hauptsturmführer.”—“Yes, yes,” I insisted, “there’s a stain, there, it’s a little dark. Rub better when you do the wash.”—“Yes, Hauptsturmführer.” This stain troubled me; I tried to forget it by having another drink.]117

Aue seems to be afflicted with the “Lady Macbeth” syndrome in perceiving the blood of others on him, and as a consequence, often expresses the desire to change clothes: “J’avais l’impression d’être recouvert de la tête aux pieds du sang […] et je me changeai rageusement; tous mes uniformes me paraissaient d’une propreté douteuse, cela me mettait hors de moi” (I felt as if I were covered from head to foot in […] blood, and I changed furiously; all my uniforms seemed unclean to me, and that drove me out of my mind).118 While describing his firsthand account of the shooting of dozens of Jews at a mass grave site, one of the most gruesome and disturbing descriptions in the entire novel, Aue becomes obsessed with taking out splinters of wood that he has noticed in his fingers: Absorbé, je fléchis mes doigts à plusieurs reprises: tout semblait en ordre. […] Dans le bois, on entendait des coups de feu, les Orpo tiraient sur les

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fuyards; je jetai un regard fugace à mes doigts, pour m’assurer que j’avais bien retiré toutes les échardes. Près de la fosse, l’un des Juifs se mit à pleurer. [Absorbed, I flexed my fingers several times: everything seemed in order. […] In the wood, we could hear gunshots, the Orpos were shooting at the fugitives; I glanced fleetingly at my fingers, to make sure I had taken out all the splinters. Near the ditch, one of the Jews started weeping.]119

During extremely violent scenes such as these, Aue also becomes preoccupied with other trivial annoyances, such as the weather. At the end of a passage in which he has just witnessed an officer crush the skull of a newborn baby against a stove, Aue changes his clothes, smokes a cigarette, and complains about the seemingly endless rainstorm: “J’allai me changer et fumer une cigarette. Dehors, la pluie battait encore, on pouvait croire qu’elle ne finirait jamais” (I finally went to change and smoke a cigarette. Outside, the rain was still beating down, as if it would never end).120 Such instances of dissociation can be explained psychologically in which the psyche builds a system of defense by diverting its attention away from the unacceptable by obsessing about something more acceptable or manageable. As Anna Freud has described it, the reaction-formation is an important mechanism, a “particular mode of defence” adopted by the ego as a protection against an impulse or a “conflict.”121 To be sure, the conflict at stake here, and that which Aue discovers very early in the novel, is the absolute disregard for the life of human beings that is a founding principle of the Nazi ideology that he has embraced. The conflict between on the one hand the officers’ embrace of National Socialism for what they perceive as the Good, and on the other the absolute cruelty and harsh reality of human death, seems to manifest itself physiologically in other individuals as well. For instance, on numerous occasions Aue observes the facial tics and the constant and repetitive fidgeting of Adolf Eichmann during their conversations: Tandis qu’il m’écoutait, un tic curieux déformait le coin gauche de sa bouche; j’avais l’impression qu’il mâchait sa langue. [While he was listening to me, a curious tic deformed the left corner of his mouth; I had the impression that he was chewing his tongue.]122 Lorsque je venais discuter avec lui de l’Arbeitseinsatz, en privé, il m’écoutait, assis derrière son beau bureau, dans sa chambre luxueuse de l’hôtel Majestic, avec un air ennuyé, crispé, en jouant avec ses lunettes ou

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Such pitiful descriptions of this “architect of the Holocaust,” so nicknamed due to his success at managing the logistics of the deportation of millions of Jews, suggests internal conflict and the presence of coping mechanisms as a means of disassociating himself from his actions or of alleviating unwanted feelings. Portrayals such as these more than suggest that the perpetrators’ subconscious is reacting adversely to the nature of the mass killings. If the text does imply the inherent evil of genocide, it could be gleaned from such physiological descriptions. Although the description of violent bodily reactions is part of the narrator’s testimony, they are not part of an argument that he is making. He draws no conclusions from them. Although on the level of narrative voice, bodily descriptions and manic behavior present themselves as secondary information or simply as description of the conditions that the perpetrators had to endure, the reader is more than tempted to ascribe great importance to these descriptions, to interpret them as the veritable signs of the presence of evil, as reactions to evil, as instinctual reactions diametrically opposed to the narrator’s oftentimes overly abstract, theoretical musings. Despite the argument that the narrator often makes to the reader regarding the historical relativity of the concepts of Good and Evil, in a couple rare and thus all the more striking occasions he steps out of character to describe the events of the Shoah in unequivocally moral

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terms. In one such instance, Aue describes the Nazi genocide as an incomparable, absolute Evil: Le gigantesque dispositif que nous avions mis en place continuait à détruire ces gens. Il semblait que cela ne s’arrêterait jamais. Depuis les débuts de l’histoire humaine, la guerre a toujours été perçue comme le plus grand mal. Or nous, nous avions inventé quelque chose à côté de quoi la guerre en venait à sembler propre et pure, quelque chose à quoi beaucoup déjà cherchaient à échapper en se réfugiant dans les certitudes élémentaires de la guerre et du front. [The giant system we had set in motion went on destroying people. It seemed it would never stop. Ever since the beginnings of human history, war has always been regarded as the ultimate evil. But we had invented something compared to which war had come to seem clean and pure, something from which many were already trying to escape by taking refuge in the elementary certainties of war and the front.]125

In this curious passage, the narrator presents the Nazi’s gigantic killing apparatus as entirely different from anything that preceded it. No war in human history, Aue asserts, can compare to the Nazi genocide. Every other war, he claims, seems clean and pure in comparison. This quote clearly describes the Shoah as an absolute event, not only by casting all previous wars in the most positive of terms, but also through the emphatic or tonic pronoun “nous,” the use of which holds the Nazi agenda as distinct from those of all other nations or perpetrators that preceded it. Among the atrocities that cause in Aue an irresistible, “absolute” reaction is his witnessing of the death of children, which he describes as provoking in him a sense of “horror without limits”: “Je me sentais envahi par une horreur sans bornes” (I felt invaded by a boundless horror).126 An event that seemed to have an equally terrifying impact on the narrator is that of a girl whose hanging he had assisted in perpetrating. In considering the possibility that the girl could have been his own beloved sister, and in acknowledging that she was certainly the sister or daughter of someone, he momentarily considers her murder as an absolute event—“une telle cruauté n’avait pas de nom” (such cruelty had no name)—that brings him to tears: “je pleurais” (I wept).127 When Aue first witnesses and takes part in mass killings, he makes it clear that to cope with the reality of death staring him directly in the face, it is a question of not thinking: “Un manque effrayant de conscience de soi, cette façon étonnante de ne jamais penser aux choses, les bonnes comme les mauvaises, de se laisser emporter par le courant, de tuer sans comprendre pourquoi et sans souci non plus […]” ([A] terrifying lack of

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self-awareness, that surprising way of never thinking about things, good or bad, of letting themselves be carried along with the current, killing without understanding why and without caring either […]).128 In order not to stare death in the face, the narrator would often close his eyes. When immediately following an execution, he notices that a young boy who, lying in the mass grave, continues to breathe, Aue closes his eyes: “Je fermai les yeux, devant moi l’enfant haletait toujours” (I closed my eyes; in front of me, the boy was still panting).129 And instead of aiding his fellow officers in searching for another field to transform into a mass grave, he decides to fall behind, lie in the grass, and close his eyes: “Je me couchai dans l’herbe et regardai le ciel. Je fermai les yeux” (I lay down in the grass and looked at the sky. I closed my eyes).130 Such passages seem to corroborate Hannah Arendt’s thesis in The Life of the Mind that evil is the result of the absence of thought. In reflecting back on her observations made concerning the Eichmann trial, in taking note that the only noticeable personality trait that the Nazi bureaucrat exhibited during his trial was thoughtlessness, Arendt poses the question: “could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass […], could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually ‘condition’ them against it?”131 The narrator also raises the question of insensitivity, which is inextricably linked to the notion of thoughtlessness. Only 170 pages into the novel, the narrator explains that with time and enough exposure to death, he slowly became anesthetized: On en prenait en effet l’habitude, on ne sentait, à la longue, plus grand chose; ainsi, ce que je cherchais, désespérément mais en vain, à recouvrer, c’était bien ce choc initial, cette sensation d’une rupture, d’un ébranlement infini de tout mon être; à la place, je ne ressentais plus qu’une excitation morne et angoissante, […] et ainsi, sans bien m’en rendre compte, je m’enfonçais dans la boue tandis que je cherchais la lumière. [One got used to it, and in the long run stopped feeling much; thus what I was trying, desperately but in vain, to regain was actually the initial shock, that sensation of a rupture, an infinite disturbance of my whole being; instead of that, I now felt only a dull, anxious kind of excitation, always briefer, more acrid, […] and thus, slowly, without realizing it, I was sinking into mud while searching for light.]132

Aue describes his initial face-to-face encounter with absolute cruelty as having caused a “rupture,” an “infinite shaking” of his being. But through enough exposure to death, and in the absence of thought, the perpetrator became desensitized. It is this desensitization, as he explains it, that caused

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him to “sink into the mud,” or the “abyss” of which Louar speaks, the metaphor for the path of evil that the narrator trod down as a seemingly inevitable result of this desensitization, and of which all subsequent events of the novel are the consequence.133 I suggest that we read many of the thoughts and opinions expressed by Aue in light of this existential abyss into which he let himself fall so early on as a Nazi officer. It seems, then, that with respect to the link between thought and evil, Littell’s novel follows Arendt very closely. In her analysis of Eichmann, Arendt laid the foundation for a post-modern portrayal of evil as “banal,” as not originating in the negative passions of hate, envy, and the like. In her portrayal of modern man as a mere cog in a gigantic, destructive machine, Arendt appeared initially to subtract human will—and responsibility—from the present-day large-scale events that breed suffering and death. However, in later publications, she recovers the notion of human agency. In The Life of the Mind, she considers the possibility of preventing evil by resurrecting the thinking subject, so to speak. Thinking itself, she argues, may constitute the prophylactic against evil. If Littell’s Kindly Ones does have “a message,” would it not be one that, in the various ways in which it frames the Nazi’s testimony, warns against an uncritical account of one’s involvement in human affairs? Such is, I would argue, the ethical imperative of the post-modern.

Notes 1

Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 545; Littell, The Kindly Ones, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 592. 2 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 719; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 783. 3 Berel Lang, “Evil Inside and Outside History: The Post-Holocaust versus the Post-modern,” in Evil after Postmodernism: Histories, Narratives, and Ethics, ed. Jennifer L. Geddes (New York: Routledge, 2001), 11. 4 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 26; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 20. 5 Quoted by Louar. See above, p.142. 6 Quoted by Louar. See above, p.141. 7 See Louar’s discussion of Littell’s dedication as paratext on p. 149 above. 8 André Green, “Les Bienveillantes de Jonathan Littell,” Revue française psychanalytique (March 2007): 907. Translation is mine. 9 “Ich habe mir gesagt, die beiden einzigen Menschen, die dieses Buch von A bis Z verstehen können, sind Raul Hilberg und ich.” 10 Brian McHale, Post-modernist Fiction (New York: Methuen, 1987), 163. For a description of post-modern narrative structure, see also Steven Connor, “Postmodernism and literature,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism, ed. Steven Connor (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004), 62-81.

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François Lyotard defines post-modernism as “incredulity regarding metanarratives, that is to say, “grand stories about the world and the place of inquiry in it.” François Lyotard, The Post-modern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984): xxiii-xxv. 12 The first portion of this paragraph has been taken and adapted from my article “Postmodern Narratives on Evil and 9-11: The Case of Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World,” ed. Nancy Billias (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2008), 139. 13 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: Volume One (New York: Harcourt Brace Johanovich, 1981), 3-4. 14 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Classics, 1965). Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann in fact implies that the Nazis themselves were the victims of socio-economic forces, in particular the disintegration of class society and the concomitant emergence of a European mass society. 15 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 25; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 18. 16 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 645; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 702. Emphasis added. 17 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 430; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 466. In another instance, the narrator makes it clear, in explaining to his sister Una, that he feels an obligation to his father to move to Germany: “C’est ce que je veux faire, c’est ce que je dois faire. Notre père était allemand. Mon avenir est en Allemagne” (“It’s what I want to do, it’s what I have to do. Our father was German. My future is in Germany”). Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 449; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 486. 18 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 738; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 804. 19 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 740; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 805-06. 20 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 740; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 806. 21 “‘Ton père aurait été fier.’ Ces paroles me touchèrent au vif: ‘Vous croyez?’— ‘Certainement. Tu as fait un travail remarquable’” (“Your father would have been proud.” These words touched me to the quick: “You think?”—“Certainly. You’ve done some remarkable work”) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes¸ 417; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 451). 22 “De nouveau je me sentais rapetisser; devant cette voix impérieuse, ces yeux froids, je perdais tous mes moyens, je redevenais un enfant craintif […]. Je tentai de me maîtriser, mais c’était peine perdue” (Once again, I felt as if I were shrinking; before this imperious voice, these cold eyes, I was going to pieces, I was becoming a fearful child […]. I tried to get control of myself, but it was a lost cause) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 480; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 520). 23 “Je me souvenais de peu de choses, je me rappelais son odeur, sa sueur, comment nous nous ruions sur lui pour l’attaquer, lorsqu’il lisait sur le divan, et comment il nous prenait alors dans ses bras en riant à gorge déployée. Une fois, je toussais, il m’avait fait avaler un médicament que j’avais tout de suite vomi sur le tapis; je mourais de honte, j’avais peur qu’il ne se fâche, mais il avait été gentil, il m’avait consolé puis avait nettoyé le tapis” [I didn’t remember many things, I recalled his smell, his sweat, how we rushed at him to attack him, when he was reading on the sofa, and how he took us then in his arms, roaring with laughter.

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Once when I was coughing he had me swallow some medicine that I had immediately vomited onto the carpet; I was dying of shame, I was afraid he would get angry, but he had been very kind, he had comforted me and then cleaned the carpet] (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 807; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 881). 24 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 180-81; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 190. 25 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 447; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 484. 26 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 75; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 73-74. 27 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 75; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 74. 28 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 95; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 96. 29 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 361; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 390. 30 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 699; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 761. 31 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 154; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 164. 32 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 101; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 102. 33 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 616; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 670. 34 Georges Bataille, La Part maudite (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1967). 35 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 667; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 725-26. 36 For a somewhat related discussion of the theme of expense and the theories of Bataille in The Kindly Ones, see Liran Razinsky’s “History, Excess, and Testimony in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes,” French Forum 33.3 (2008): 69-87. The article considers Littell’s novel as a curious combination of the literary genre of excess or transgression and that of the testimony. 37 Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003). 38 Regarding the term “endlösung,” Aue states to the reader: “On croit encore aux idées, peut-être n’y a-t-il réellement que des mots, et le poids propre aux mots. Et peut-être ainsi nous étions-nous laissé entraîner par un mot et son inévitabilité. En nous, donc, il n’y aurait eu aucune idée, aucune logique, aucune cohérence? Il n’y aurait eu que des mots dans notre langue si particulière, que ce mot-là, Endlösung, sa beauté ruisselante? Car en vérité comment résister à la séduction d’un tel mot? C’eût été aussi inconcevable que de résister au mot obéir, au mot servir, au mot loi” (We still believe in ideas, in concepts, we believe that words designate ideas, but that’s not necessarily true, maybe there aren’t really any ideas, maybe there’s really nothing but words, and the weight peculiar to words. And maybe thus we had let ourselves be led along by a word and its inevitability. Within us, then, there would have been no ideas, no logic no coherence? There would have been only words, in our oh so peculiar language, only that word, Endlösung, its streaming beauty? For, really, how could one resist the seduction of such a word? It would have been as inconceivable as resisting the word obey, the word serve, the word law) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 580; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 631). 39 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 581; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 632. 40 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 742-43; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 808-09. 41 For a lengthier discussion of social Darwinism in Littell’s The Kindly Ones, see Louise Lyle’s “Ideology and the Individual in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes,” French Studies Bulletin: A Quarterly Supplement 109 (Winter 2008): 85-88. 42 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 745; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 811.

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Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 407; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 440. Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 342; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 369. 45 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 572; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 621-22. 46 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 715-16; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 778-79. 47 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 719; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 783. 48 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 716; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 779. 49 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 717; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 781. 50 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 720; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 783. 51 I would suggest, however, that recurring statements in the testimony in which Aue asserts his innocence, are indicative rather of unrecognized feelings of guilt (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 877; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 957). 52 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 544-45; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 590, 592. 53 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 545; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 592. 54 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 536; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 582. 55 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 30; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 24. 56 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 545; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 592. 57 See Miguel Benasayag, Utopie et liberté (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1986). 43-70. 58 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 615; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 668. 59 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 614; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 667. 60 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 617; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 671. 61 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 618; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 671. 62 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 618; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 672. 63 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 742; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 808. 64 Susan Suleiman, “When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the Holocaust: On Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes,” New German Critique 106.36.1 (Winter 2009): 8. 65 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 616; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 669. 66 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 742; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 808. 67 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 743; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 809. 68 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 190; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 200. 69 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 190; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 201. 70 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 158, 189, 821; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 165, 200, 896-97. 71 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 158; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 165. 72 “Il est évident que seul l’homme est réellement créatif: la femme donne la vie, elle élève et nourrit, mais elle ne crée rien de neuf” (It is obvious that only man is truly creative: woman gives life, she brings up children and nourishes them, but she doesn’t create anything new) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 188; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 198). 73 Curiously, in the final sentence of the passage, after Aue is sexually satisfied, he expresses once again his belief in the superiority of women by explaining that the prostate is a gift from God to man to compensate for not being woman: “[Un] don de Dieu à l’homme pour le dédommager de ne pas être femme” (God’s […] gift to 44

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man to compensate him for not being a woman) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 189; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 200). 74 “Agissez de manière que le Führer, s’il connaissait votre action, l’approuverait” (Act in such a way that the Führer, if he knew of your action, would approve of it) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 522; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 566). 75 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 525; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 570. 76 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 317; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 341. 77 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 813; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 887. Other similar instances include the following: “Ces souvenirs, avec la distance, m’arrivaient comme apaisés, presque heureux, nimbés d’une lumière sereine, sans doute déformante” (These memories, given the distance, reached me as if appeased, almost happy, wreathed in a serene, probably distorted light) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 461; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 500); “J’ai déjà écrit une relation de ces événements, et, lorsque je l’écrivais, elle me paraissait véridique, en adéquation avec la réalité, mais il semblerait qu’en fait elle ne corresponde pas à la vérité. Pourquoi en est-il ainsi? Difficile à dire” (I had already written an account of these events, and when I wrote it, it seemed true to me, equal to the reality, but apparently it doesn’t actually correspond to the truth. Why is that the case? Hard to say) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 798; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 870); “Voilà ce dont je me souvenais, or il semble que les choses ne soient pas passées ainsi” (That’s what I remembered, yet it seems that things didn’t happen that way) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 798; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 871). 78 For a discussion of the relationship between imagination and memory in the recollection of traumatic events, see Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1991). 79 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 434; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 471. 80 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 400; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 432. 81 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 403; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 435-36. 82 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 404; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 437. 83 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 354; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 382. 84 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 355; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 383. 85 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 279; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 299. 86 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 280; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 299. 87 “Mieux vaut donc que moi-même je sois elle et tous les autres, moi. […] Et puis, raisonnai-je, cela me rapprocherait encore d’elle” (Better then for me to be her, and all the others, me. […] And also, I reasoned, it brought me even closer to her) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 192; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 203). 88 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 138, 810, 823; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 143-44, 884, 898. 89 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 890, 179; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 970, 188. 90 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 442; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 479. He refers to his head wound both as a third eye and as a “vagin béant” (gaping vagina) through which he acutely perceives his surroundings. In his self-perception as not quite female, Aue feels that he is not necessarily quite wholly himself. He associates his

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lack of complete femininity with his inability to describe himself in speech by using the feminine form of adjectives: “Il ne me manquait en réalité qu’une chose pour être une femme comme elle, une vraie femme, le e muet en français des terminaisons féminines, la possibilité inouïe de dire et d’écrire: ‘Je suis nue, je suis aimée, je suis désirée.’ C’est ce e qui rend les femmes si terriblement femelles, et je souffrais démesurément d’en être dépossédé” (Only one thing was actually lacking to be a woman like her, a real woman, the mute e, in French, of feminine word endings, the extraordinary possibility in that language we shared of saying and writing: “Je suis nue, je suis aimée, je suis desirée.” It’s this e that makes women so terribly female, and I suffered inordinately from being stripped of it) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 474; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 514). He even fantasizes about exchanging roles with Una in the sexual act: “Nous échangions aussi brutalement nos rôles, elle se munissait d’un phallus en ébène sculpté et me prenait comme un homme, […] elle se servait de moi comme d’une femme, jusqu’à ce que toute distinction s’efface et que je lui dise: ‘Je suis ta soeur et tu es mon frère’” (We just as brutally exchanged roles, she equipped herself with a sculpted ebony phallus and took me like a man […] she used me as if I were a woman, until all distinctions were erased and I could say to her: “I am your sister and you are my brother”) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 814; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 888.) Aue’s incestuous relationship with Una is inseparable from his desire to perceive himself as woman: “Lorsque je me regardai dans le miroir, je crus voir Una, et faillis m’évanouir” (When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I saw Una, and I almost fainted) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 380; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 411). 91 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 505; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 548. 92 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 474; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 515. 93 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 752; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 819. Aue takes note of his colleagues’ inability to understand as well: “[Thomas] aussi avait du mal à maintenir un sens de la continuité et de l’importance des choses” ([Thomas] too was having trouble maintaining a sense of the continuity and importance of things) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 378; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 409). 94 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 790; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 862. 95 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 155-56; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 162-63. 96 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 121; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 124. 97 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 553-54; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 601. 98 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 554; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 602. 99 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 554; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 602. 100 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 554; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 602. 101 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 554; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 602. 102 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 566; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 615. 103 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 631; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 686. 104 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 768; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 837. 105 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 756; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 823. 106 Suleiman, “When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the Holocaust,” 17. 107 Ibid.

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“Il avait dû y avoir des cris, du bruit; comment était-il possible que je ne me sois pas réveillé? […] Et qui était-il? Un bandit, un voleur? Mais rien ne semblait avoir été touché, déplacé, bouleversé” (There must have been cries, noise; how could I not have been awakened? […] And who was he? A bandit, a thief? But nothing seemed to have been touched, moved, overturned) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 490; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 532). 109 The same could be said of the twin children that Aue encounters at his mother’s, and whom Una adopts after her murder. Whereas it is less certain that the twins are Aue’s offspring, it is noteworthy that he never considers the possibility (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 677; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 737). 110 See above, pp. 147-49. 111 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 894; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 975. 112 The same could be said regarding the possibility that the twin children that his mother had raised and that Una adopted at her death were his own. Littell, Les Bienveillantes 677; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 737. 113 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 88; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 88. 114 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 168; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 176. Consider also the following quotes: “Mes nausées me reprenaient; depuis Vorochilovsk, ou peut-être plus tôt, je souffrais de nouveau de ces haut-le-cœur épuisants qui m’avaient tant fatigué en Ukraine. […] Je devais faire parfois des efforts pour maîtriser la nausée: je toussais beaucoup, je devenais rouge, je trouvais cela inconvenant” (My bouts of nausea had started up again; since Voroshilovsk, or earlier maybe, I was again suffering from the brutal retching that had so exhausted me in the Ukraine. […] Sometimes I had to make an effort to control the nausea: I coughed a lot, grew red, I found this unseemly) (Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 227; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 241); See also Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 360; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 389. 115 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 104, 229, 578; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 105-06, 243, 628. 116 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 169-70; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 178. 117 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 165; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 173. Consider also Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 166, 170, 381; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 174, 178, 412. 118 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 176; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 185. 119 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 84; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 87. 120 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 151; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 158. 121 Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, trans. Cecil Baines (New York: International Universities Press, 1946), 9. 122 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 513; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 557. 123 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 722-23; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 786. 124 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 734; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 800. 125 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 127; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 130. 126 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 99; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 100. 127 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 836; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 912. 128 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 89; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 89. 129 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 107; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 108. 130 Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 84; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 84.

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Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 5. Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 170; Littell, The Kindly Ones, 179. 133 See above, pp.140-41. 132

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CONTRIBUTORS

Cristian Bratu is Assistant Professor of French at Baylor University. His research interests include French medieval, Renaissance, and twentiethcentury literature, as well as French cinema. He has published articles on French medieval, sixteenth- and twentieth-century literature. He is currently completing a book manuscript on The Author Figure in French Medieval Chronicles. Marie-Christine Clemente is a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is currently completing her thesis entitled “Reading 9/11: An Analysis of the Event and its Literary Representation in the Novels of Frédéric Beigbeder, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Don DeLillo.” Beth Gale is Associate Professor of French at Clark University. She has published articles on postcolonial autobiography, coming-of-age narratives, and the problematics of space in the novel of adolescence. Her book A World Apart: Female Adolescence in the French Novel, 1870-1930 was published in 2010 by Bucknell University Press. Bernadette Ginestet-Levine was born in Algeria and pursued doctoral studies in French Literature both in France and in the United States. She held a number of teaching positions including Lecturer of French at Clemson University. In addition to the publication of essays on the works of Algerian writer Rachid Boudjedra, including his treatment of terrorism, she is a published poet, collagist, and painter. She has received two awards by the French art association “Art et Fraternité.” Nadia Louar is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Her recent publications include articles on Beckett and bilingualism, and on translation and gender in the work of Jean Genet, Jean Sénac, and Virginie Despentes. She is currently completing her book on the poetics of bilingualism in the work of Samuel Beckett.

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Scott Powers is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mary Washington. He has published several articles on evil, (post)modernism, and religion in the writings of Baudelaire, Zola, Céline, and Beigbeder. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the secularization of evil and the return of the religious in modern French literature. Mamadou Wattara was born in Senegal, and grew up in Burkina Faso where he studied English and Education at the University of Ouagadougou. He also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from Hunter College, CUNY and his Master’s in French Literature from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University where he is completing his dissertation entitled L’Écriture du génocide dans les littératures africaine et caribéenne d’expression française: Entre transfiguration émotive du réel et mémoire transculturelle. 

INDEX

Adorno, Theodor, 1, 3, 136, 154, 203 Aeschylus, 9, 139, 146-47, 157, 187 aestheticization, 83 Agamben, Georgio, 153, 158, 203 Algeria, 1, 2, 5-6, 22, 54-62, 64, 6668, 70-75 oral history, 63 pied-noirs, 67 War of Independence, 2, 56-57, 59, 61 Alleman, Beda, 149, 157, 203 Allen, Woody, 140, 155 American Psycho, 131, 135, 208 Amis, Martin, 154 anti-colonialism, 3 anti-Semitism, 174 Arendt, Hannah, 2, 11, 13, 32-33, 37, 139, 141-42, 154, 155, 162, 164, 168, 194-96, 202-03 banality of evil, 139, 195 force, 32 On Violence, 13, 33, 37, 203 The Life of the Mind, 164, 19496, 202-03 The Origins of Totalitarianism, 168, 203 thinking, 11, 164, 179, 184, 195 violence, 32 Aron, Raymond, 13, 28, 36 Auschwitz, 84, 112-13, 136-37, 154, 158, 186 Baader, Andreas, 30 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 149 Bachelard, Gaston, 119 Badiou, Alain, 2, 7, 109, 110, 113, 124, 131-32, 203 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 97, 107

Bataille, Georges, 3, 7, 81, 93-94, 102, 104, 106, 107, 145, 169, 175, 197, 203 theory of excess, 144, 169, 175 Baudelaire, Charles, 81, 126-27, 134, 151, 203-04, 213 Bayard, Pierre, 101, 107, 203 Bayer, Gerd, 156-57 Beckett, Samuel, 136-37 Beckett, Susan, 118, 122, 133 Beigbeder, Frédéric, 1, 7, 8, 109-35, 196, 204-05, 209, 212, 213 99 francs, 126, 132 egoism, 121 L’Egoïste romantique, 128, 132 irony, 130-31 narcissism, 118 omnipotent narrator, 125 omniscient narrator, 121, 125 parasitism, 115 parody, 111 "Pour un nouveau Nouveau roman", 129 Un roman français, 130, 135, 204 satire, 131 self-accusatory, 128 split personality, 121 voyeurism, 111 Windows on the World, 7, 8, 109-35, 196, 204 Ben Mansour, Latifa, 1, 5, 6, 54-76, 204 coma, 57, 59, 75 feminism, 61 God, 65, 69-70, 75 pied-noirs, 72 The Prayer of Fear (La Prière de la peur), 55-56, 62-67, 75

Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature psychoanalysis, 68 psychotherapy, 73, 75 rape, 66, 68-69, 71 The Song of the Lily and the Basil (Le Chant du lys et du basilic), 56-62, 75 The Year of the Eclipse (L'Année de l'éclipse), 67-75 women, 55, 60-61, 71 Benasayag, Miguel, 173, 201 Benjamin, Walter, 136, 154 Berber, 60, 67 Berberova, Nina, 36, 204 Bernanos, Georges, 46 Bettelheim, Bruno, 49, 53, 204 Blanchot, Maurice, 62, 71 Blanrue, Paul Eric, 156 Blunden, Ronald, 143 Booth, Wayne C., 157, 204 Bosco, Henri, 118-19, 122, 133 Bowman, Elizabeth, 36 Bronte, Emily, 81 Browning, Christopher, 146, 157, 204 Burke, Edmund, 153 Burroughs, E.R., 186 Camus, Albert, 13, 24-26, 33, 3536, 123, 127, 134-35, 203-06, 210 absurdity, 25 authenticity, 25 Fall, The (La Chute), 123, 13435, 205 Just Assassins, The (Les Justes), 13, 24-25 33, 35, 204 Myth of Sisyphus, The (Le Mythe de Sisyphe), 25 Rebel, The (L’Homme révolté), 25 revolution, 26 suicide, 25 Caruso, Paolo, 19, 21, 34 Caruth, Cathy, 3, 94-95, 107, 204 Castro, Fidel, 27, 33 Catani, Damian, 124-25, 134, 204 Celan, Paul, 3, 138

215

child testimony, 7, 79-108 lying (in), 85 Clausewitz, Carl von, 13 cogito, 160 Cojean, Annick, 108 Cold War, 4, 12 colonialism, 4, 29-30 communism, 4, 13-15, 18, 20-21, 26-30, 32-36 concentration camp, 2, 84, 101, 103, 137, 153, 170, 185 Connor, Steve, 195 Constant, Isabelle, 39, 51 Contat, Michel, 34-35, 205 Coquio, Catherine, 81, 84, 90, 92, 100, 104-07, 205 Courtois, Stéphane, 32, 37 cynicism, 39, 92-94, 96, 117, 162 Davis, Colin, 118 de Beauvoir, Simone, 13, 18, 34 decentered subject, 2, 10, 179, 188 Diop, Boris, 83, 105-06, 205 Djebar, Assia, 5 Djedanoum, Nocky, 105 documentary style, 144 documentary writing, 83-84, 94, 136 Dongala, Emmanuel, 104 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 126-27, 145 Durand, Alain -Philippe, 111, 132, 135, 205 Duras, Marguerite, 6 egoism, 114, 121 Eichmann, Adolf, 33, 139, 142-44, 154, 162, 164, 178, 191, 194-96 Einstein, Albert, 109 ellipsis, 2, 100-01 Ellis, Bret Easton, 110, 130-31, 135, 205, 208 Ellison, David R., 123, 134 enunciative indivision, 7, 101-03 euthanasia, 174 evil aestheticization of, 83 (as) attraction toward death, 93 banality of, 139, 141-42, 195

216 (as) barbaric, 3, 7, 55, 64, 86-87, 90, 98, 109-10, 113, 131, 154 (as) betrayal, 110, 124 censorship of, 117-18 (as) cruelty, 39, 41, 55, 64, 85, 92, 131 167, 175, 184, 191, 193-94 desensitization of, 194 (as) disaster, 110 (as) egoism, 93 incommunicability of, 6, 54-55, 59, 62-64, 66-67, 73, 75, 136 intentionality of, 10, 87, 88, 91, 163 (as) kaleidoscopic, 122 (as) madness, 94, 142 (as) masochistic, 111, 115 media representations of, 131 metaphorization of, 84 mimesis of, 81, 82 modernist notions of, 162 (as) natural, 150 (as) passion, 93 post-modernist notions of, 162 (as) sadistic, 3, 5, 7, 40, 43-44, 86, 111-12, 115, 117, 131-32 sensationalism of, 82 (as) simulacrum, 109 (as) subsconscious, 163 (as) transgressive, 3, 7, 97, 102, 144 (vs.) thinking, 164, 193, 194 extra-diegetic narrator, 139, 148, 155, 176, 179, 187 fairy tales, 40, 48-49, 50 Fanon, Frantz, 28-29, 31, 36, 205 fascism, 13-14, 33 Felman, Shoshana, 3, 154 Fine, Ellen, 138 flashback (analepsis), 56, 61, 69, 83-84, 88-92, 94-96, 140, 164 Flaubert, Gustave, 142, 160 FLN (Front de libération nationale), 22

Index Fortier, Frances, 130, 135, 205 Foucault, Michel, 2, 119-20, 122, 133, 173, 205 Fraisse, Luc, 42, 51 Françafrique, 99, 107 francophony, 99 free indirect discourse, 73, 176 French Communist Party, 20, 34 French Resistance, 55 Freud, Anna, 2, 191, 201 Freud, Sigmund, 2, 49-50, 155, 162, 205 Fukuyama, Francis, 33 Gandhi, Mohandas, 28-29 Gary, Romain, 103 Genet, Jean, 81, 212 Genette, Gérard, 3, 149, 157, 206 genocide, 1, 6-9, 11, 79-108, 136, 138, 150, 160, 174-76, 182, 18889, 192-93, 197 Girard, René, 3, 115, 132, 206 God, 63, 65, 69-70, 125, 151, 173 gothic novel, 40, 45, 48 Gourevitch, Philip, 97-98, 107 Greek tragedy, 58 Green, André, 156, 161, 195 Guevara, Ernesto "Che", 27, 33 gulags, 33 Haigh, A.E., 147, 157, 206 Halbwachs, Maurice, 86, 105, 206 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 22, 41 Heidegger, Martin, 4, 32, 157 Hénaff, Marcel, 111, 132, 206 heterotopia, 161 Highsmith, Patricia, 141 Hilberg, Raul, 144, 156, 161, 195, 206 Himmler, Heinrich, 139, 186 Hirsch, Marianne, 153, 156, 158, 206 historiography, 86 Hitler, Adolf, 101, 139, 166, 171, 173, 178, 199

Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature Holocaust, 3, 7, 8, 80-81, 84, 103, 104, 112, 113, 136-202 representations of, 102-03, 136202 homogeneous miming, 84, 103 homosexuality, 9, 152, 165-67, 18182 Houellebecq, Michel, 110, 130, 205 human agency, 2, 7, 10, 162-64, 167, 170, 172, 188, 195 Husson, Edouard, 141, 156, 206 Hutus, 83, 87, 89, 107 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 125, 127 hybridity, 7, 97, 100-01 hypotyposis, 89 Ilboudo, Monique, 105 intentionality, 88 intertextuality, 57 irony, 2, 8-10, 26, 39, 93, 110, 130, 131, 136, 139-41, 148-50, 153, 155, 161, 163, 166, 172, 175, 177, 184, 186-88 juxtaposition, 185-86 psychic splitting, 187 Islam, 55-57, 60-61, 64, 71-73, 75 Mohammed, 67 Islamism, 5, 55-56, 64-66, 68, 70-72 Jeanson, Francis, 18, 20, 25-26, 34, 35 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 172 Johnson, Ian, 157 Johst, Hanns, 170 Judt, Tony, 12, 33 Jung, Carl, 2, 5, 38-39, 48-53, 210 Kafka, Franz, 81, 174-75 Kant, Immanuel, 39, 178 Kaplan, Alice Yeager, 137, 154 Kappeler, Susanne, 154 Kayimahe, Venus, 106 Kertész, Imre, 7, 80-81, 84, 100-01, 105, 107, 206 child testimony, 100 ellipsis, 100 enunciative indivision, 101 narrativized monologue, 103 Khrushchev, Nikita, 27, 33

217

King Jr., Martin Luther, 28 Kourouma, Ahmadou, 104 Kravchenko, Victor, 27, 36 Kristeva, Julia, 144, 206 Lacan, Jacques, 2, 179 Laflèche, Guy, 149, 157, 206 Lamko, Koulsy, 106 Lang, Berel, 3, 137, 154, 159, 169, 195, 197 Lanzmann, Claude, 3, 136-37, 154, 161, 207 Laub, Dori, 103, 199, 205 Lee, Mark, 39, 44, 46-47, 49, 51-52 Lemkin, Raphaël, 80, 99, 104, 107, 207 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 20 Lermontov, Mikhail, 145 Lesky, Albin, 146, 157, 207 Levi, Primo, 137, 154, 207 Lévy, Benny, 30, 36, 50, 143, 210 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 50 Lifton, Robert Jay, 3, 138, 154 Littell, Jonathan sodomy, 151 Littell, Jonathan, 1, 8-10, 136-202, 207-09, 211 extra-diegetic narrator, 176-77, 187 hermeneutics, 179 heterotopia, 161 incest, 177-78, 181 juxtaposition, 185-86 matricide, 187 mise en abîme, 140, 155 omnipresent narrator, 153 paratext, 160 parody, 161 post-modernism, 136, 159, 188 psychic dissociation, 187, 19192 psychic splitting, 187 reaction-formation, 191 self-condemnation, 148 thinking, 164, 193-94 transgenderism, 182 voyeurism, 141-42, 153, 186

218 Lyotard, Jean-François, 2, 39, 51, 196, 207 Magritte, René, 144 Mandell, Charlotte, 144, 155, 157, 195, 207 Manson, Marilyn, 120 Marx, Karl, 32, 162 Marxism, 4, 20, 23, 26 matricide, 9, 139, 146-47, 151-52, 187-88 McCall, Dorothy, 18, 34 McGinn, Colin, 112, 115, 132, 207 McHale, Brian, 161, 195, 207 McNally, Richard, 88, 106, 208 memory, 7, 10, 12, 33, 54, 57-60, 63, 68-69, 71-72, 80, 82, 83-88, 91, 95-100, 101, 105-07, 125, 137, 142, 152, 179, 188, 199 Mercader, Ramón, 18 Mercier-Leca, Florence, 145-46, 157 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 36, 210 Messier, Vartan P., 131, 135, 208 metaphorization, 84 metathesis, 7, 83, 94-95 Mies, Françoise, 123, 134-35 mimesis, 81-82 mise en abîme, 155 Monénembo, Tierno, 1, 6, 79-108, 210 aestheticization, 83 child language, 81 child testimony, 79-108 childhood innocence, 89-90 counter-violence, 98 cynicism, 92-94 flashback (analepsis), 83-84, 88, 90, 95 historiography, 86 homogeneous miming, 84, 103 Hutus, 83, 87, 89 hypotyposis, 89 individuality, 87 intentionality, 88, 91 irony, 93 lying, 85

Index metaphorization, 84 metathesis, 80 mimesis, 81, 82 neologisms, 7, 80, 83 preterition, 94 proverbs, 83, 97-98, 103 retrodiction, 86-96 sarcasm, 93 speech errors, 95-96, 99, 103 subjectivization, 88 textual hybridity, 82, 97 transcultural memory, 98 traumatic realism, 82 Tutsis, 84, 87, 88 Morrison, Toni, 54, 55, 75, 208 Mouchard, Claude, 100, 101, 107, 208 Moyn, Samuel, 140, 155, 208 Munich massacre, 29 narrativized monologue, 103 Nauroy, Gérard, 82, 104, 208 Nazism, 1, 4, 8-11, 55, 84, 100-03, 136-44, 147, 149-55, 159-60, 162-70, 172-80, 182, 186, 18889, 191, 193-95, 197, Neiman, Susan, 2, 111, 132, 208 neologisms, 7, 80, 83 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1 Nivat, Georges, 145, 157, 208 Nora, Pierre, 107 Nothomb, Amélie, 1, 4, 5, 38-53, 203-04, 207, 208-09 Antichrista, 40, 45, 49, 52, 208 Artifice of the Enemy (Cosmétique de l'ennemi), 5 40, 46, 48, 49 cruelty, 44, 48 Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements), 40, 44, 52, 208 Hygiene of the Assassin, 40, 41, 43, 46-48. 208 Mercure, 40, 43, 47-48, 52, 208 (the) monstrous, 42-45, 47-48, 51 self vs. other, 40, 42, 46-49

Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature The Stranger Next Door (Les Catilinaires), 40, 42-43, 4749, 51-52, 208 violence, 48 oedipal complex, 162, 165 One Thousand and One Nights (Mille et une nuits), 68, 72 Oresteia (Aeschylsus's), 9, 139, 140, 145, 147-48, 150, 187 paratext, 149, 160, 195 Paré, Joseph, 105 parody, 10, 111, 130, 161, 163, 169, 175, 188 participation mystique, 50 Perec, Georges, 105 Plato, 152 postcolonialism, 79, 82, 97, 105 post-modernism, 2, 10, 11, 136,15963, 169, 171-73, 184, 188-89, 195, 196 ethics, 195 post-structuralism, 2, 160, 175 Powers, Scott M., 126, 134 preterition, 94 Pries, Désirée, 40, 51 Proust, Marcel, 51, 171, 205 psychic dissociation, 187-192 psychic repression, 85 psychoanalysis, 5, 39, 49, 144, 161 coping mechanisms, 11, 192 psychological occupation, 46, 49 Rank, Otto, 155 Razinsky, Liran, 144, 157, 197, 209 reaction-formation, 190-91 religious fanaticism, 55-57, 61, 63, 65 Republic, The (Plato), 152 retrodiction, 7, 87, 95-96, 107 Richard, Lionel, 83, 105 Ricœur, Paul, 157 Rodin, Auguste, 126 Romain Gary, 107 Rote Armee Fraktion, 30 Rothberg, Michael, 82, 104, 209 Rousso, Henry, 86, 106, 209

219

RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), 90, 95, 97, 98, 106 Ruff, Marcel, 126 Rumi, 64, 68 Rurangwa, Jean-Marie Vianney, 106 Russell, Bertrand, 12 Rwandan genocide, 2, 3, 6-7, 79, 81, 86, 90-91, 94, 95-96, 98-100, 106 Rybalka, Michel, 34-35, 205 Saint Augustine, 67 Santoni, Ronald E., 22, 31, 35, 37, 209 sarcasm, 93 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1, 3-4, 12-37, 46, 52, 203, 205, 206-10 authenticity, 20-22 bad faith, 18, 23 Being and Nothingness (L'Etre et le néant), 22-23, 35, 209 bourgeoisie, 20-21, 31, 36 Chips Are Down, The (Les Jeux sont faits), 13 complicity, 28 conflict, 22 Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique), 27-31, 33, 36, 209 Dirty Hands (Les Mains sales), 3-4, 12-13, 14-24, 26, 30, 32, 34, 209 Flies, The (Les Mouches), 13 force, 23, 31 freedom, 18, 20, 22-23, 26, 28 In the Mesh (L’Engrenage), 20 Materialism and Revolution (Matérialisme et révolution), 23-24, 35, 210 Notebooks for an Ethics (Cahiers pour une morale), 23-24, 32, 35, 210 proletarianism, 20 Reprieve, The (Le Sursis), 13

220 Respectful Prostitute, The (La Putain respectueuse), 13 revolution, 20, 22, 23, 28-31, 35 the Other, 22, 27 Wall, The (Le Mur), 13 satire, 131 Sauvaire, Jean-Stéphane, 104 scapegoating, 174 Schindler, Oskar, 172 Scholem, Gershom, 155 Schoolcraft, Ralph, 127, 135 Schöttler, Peter, 141, 156, 210 Semujanga, Joseph, 98, 107, 210 sensationalism, 82 September 11, 3, 7, 12, 32, 109-110, 113-18, 124-25, 131, 156, 160 Skenazi, Cynthia, 50, 53, 210 social Darwinism, 170, 177, 197 sodomy, 151, 178 Sophocles, 21 Soviet communism, 3, 14-16, 18, 27, 29, 34 Spoiden, Stéphane, 39, 43, 51, 210 Stalin, Joseph, 18, 26-27 Stendhal, 129 Stockholm syndrome, 44 Stone, Robert V., 36 subconscious, 2, 10-11, 165, 17273, 182, 192 subjectivization, 88 Suleiman, Susan, 140, 155, 176, 187, 198, 200, 211 superego, 49 Tadjo, Véronique, 7, 80-81, 84-86, 99, 104-07, 211 lying, 85 psychic repression, 85 terrorism, 1-3, 6-8, 12, 24, 28, 30, 66, 72, 109, 115 testimony, 2, 6-7, 9-10, 80-85, 94, 96-98, 100-01, 103, 137-38, 144, 152-53, 160, 163-65, 170, 175,

Index 177, 178, 182, 188, 192, 195, 197-98 reliability of, 140 textual hybridity, 7, 82, 84, 97-98, 100, 103 Thibaudet, Albert, 113 Thomas, D.M., 154 Tillon, Germaine, 55 Tolstoy, Leo, 145 totalitarianism, 25, 55, 57, 101 transcultural memory, 98 trauma, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9-10, 54-55, 57, 62, 67, 69, 73-75, 79, 81-82, 8586, 88, 90-92, 94, 95-97, 103, 105-07, 116-18, 142, 144, 15357, 179-80, 199 traumatic realism, 7, 82 Trezise, Thomas, 137, 154, 211 Trotsky, Leon, 18 Tutsis, 83, 84 86-89, 95-96, 106-07, 210 unconscious, 48, 50, 60, 67 Van Den Heuvel, Pierre, 107, 211 Van Wesemael, Sabine, 130, 135 Vernant, Jean-Pierre, 148, 157, 211 Verschave, François-Xavier, 107, 211 Veyne, Paul, 87, 106, 211 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, 148, 157, 211 Villon, François, 151 violence, 3-4, 12-18, 20-21, 22-36, 47-48, 55-56, 62-63, 67, 71, 79, 80-83, 87-89, 91-93, 94-95, 98, 101, 103-04, 115, 147 Virilio, Paul, 112, 132, 211 von Hayek, Friedrich, 13 Waberi, Abdourahman, 106 Watthee-Delmotte, M., 122, 133-34, 211 Wiwa, Ken Saro, 104 Zedong, Mao, 33 Zupancic, M., 133-34