I was of the race of paradise-losers.” 1 42 W in t e r 1989 S u leim a n Feminist critics, including Cixous herself, have laid particular empha sis on the role of gender in the coming to writing. I learned to speak French in a garden from which I was about to be expelled because I was Jewish. Everything that constituted my social and cultural self-beginning with the essential, which I was lacking. “ Everything about me joined together to forbid me to write: History, my story, my origin, my gender. Hélène Cixous has written about the coming to writing, “la venue à l’écriture” -a process in which the place where one feels oneself to be starting from is of crucial importance. What is at stake, however, is not a categorization or pigeon-holing, but rather, the recognition that the subject of writing is not a disembodied, transcendental ego. This may sound too much like a dubious pop psycho sociology (“ Who is the German-speaking Jew living in Prague in 1910, and how will his writing differ from that of the French homosexual thief living in a prison outside Paris in 1930?” ). One important insight of contemporary critical theory has been that the very meaning of those questions, as well as the answers one might find for them, will differ not only according to individuals, but also, per haps primarily, according to the situation-the race, class, gender, and historical moment-of the person who is asking them or about whom they are asked. But explicitly formu lated or not, I believe they are always present when a writer sets out to write his or her life. If the autobiographer is a writer par ailleurs-which means, in this instance, not on the side but centrally -the self she or he conceives and gives birth to in the process of auto biography is the writing self: How did I become a writer? What does it mean, for me, to write? These questions are not always asked explicitly, although they often are in a writer’s autobiography-in Les Mots, for example, or in Mémoires d ’une jeune fille rangée. An autobiographer, we could say, is one who imagines, understands, expresses, becomes pregnant with, and conse quently gives birth to the self in writing. Simone de Beauvoir and the Writing Self Susan Rubin Suleiman H OW DID BEAUVOIR CONCEIVE OF HERSELF-or, putting it more strongly, conceive her self-as a writer? To conceive has multiple meanings, all of which are relevant: to form in the mind, to imagine to understand to express in particular words to think to become pregnant with. Specific Languages Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-1144 OAI: oai:DiVA.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: L'écriture autobiographique, l'ordre du récit National Category Place, publisher, year, edition, pages2004. The analysis also puts the presence of the autobiographical pact under the light. It will also show that both authors resemble when it comes to choice of memories, order of narrative and literary background. This analysis will show that, even if there is a difference between sex, family and the reasons for writing, there are many resemblances, some of them more or less expected than others. One of these critics is Philippe Lejeune. Researches made by French critics claim that the autobiographical work of Beauvoir and Sartre differ. The analysis is primarily based on the theorist Philippe Lejeune’s work concerning the autobiographical pact and the identity of name. The purpose of this literary essay is to make a comparison between the two autobiographies, examining the order of narrative, the reasons for writing, the chronology and the interest in children’s literature. As the authors lived together during a big part of their lives, it is especially interesting to study the resemblances and the differences of their way of writing and also of the contents of the autobiographies. Especially the autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre was expected for a very long time, thanks to the fact that he had told his audience he would write a work about his life. The audience has both loved and criticized the two works. Beauvoir released her Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée in 1958 and Sartre published Les Mots in 1964. Almost 200 years later, the two French authors and philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre published their autobiographies. In the end of the 18th century, the first French autobiographical work was written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 2004 (French) Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE credits Student thesis Abstract
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