Self-Narration and Autofiction in Jean-Luc Lagarce’s Juste la fin du monde
Gülseren Şen DağtekinJuste la fin du monde [It’s Only the End of the World] by Jean-Luc Lagarce is a play that portrays a family gathering on a Sunday to mark the return of the eldest son who, long estranged from his family, has come back with the intention of announcing his imminent death to his loved ones. For a reader (and spectator) familiar with the author’s biography, the text of the play contains significant similarities to Lagarce’s life, and the main character, Louis, resembles Lagarce in many aspects. What is the nature of the elements of self-writing in the play? How can they be categorized? What are their functions? This analysis of the elements of self-writing based on a definition of its various categories has allowed this article to identify that the play lies on the boundary between autofiction and autonarration. This is because it stages a dramatization of an episode from the narrator’s life while employing the three processes Gasparini (2009) mentioned for defining autonarration: fragmentation, metadiscourse, and alterity. Thus this study has determined the possibility that autonarration in this context serves a retrospective function, a reconstruction of the author’s self as an attempt to articulate the unspeakable aspects of his existence.
Écriture de Soi et Autofiction Dans Juste la fin du monde de Jean-Luc Lagarce
Gülseren Şen DağtekinJuste la fin du monde de Jean-Luc Lagarce est une pièce qui met en scène un rendezvous familial dominical à l’occasion du retour du fils ainé, qui, longtemps éloigné de sa famille, revient avec l’intention d’annoncer sa mort prochaine à ses proches. Pour un lecteur (et spectateur) familier de la biographie de l’auteur, le texte de la pièce contient un nombre important de similitudes avec la vie de Lagarce, et le personnage principal, Louis, lui ressemble par bien des aspects. Quelle est la nature des éléments de l’écriture de soi dans la pièce ? Comment les catégoriser ? Quels sont leurs enjeux et leurs fonctions ? Notre analyse des éléments de l’écriture de soi basée sur une définition de ses différentes catégories nous a permis de mettre en avant le fait que la pièce se trouve à la limite entre l’autofiction et l’autonarration, car elle met en scène une dramatisation d’un épisode de la vie du narrateur, tout en exploitant les trois procédés évoqués par Gasparini pour définir l’autonarration : « la fragmentation, le métadiscours, l’altérité » (Gasparini, 2009). Nous avons ainsi déterminé la possibilité que l’écriture de soi ait ici une fonction de rétrospection, de « reconstitution » du soi de l’auteur et qu’elle soit une de tentative de mettre des mots sur l’indicible de son existence.
Juste la fin du monde [It’s Just the End of the World] by Jean-Luc Lagarce (1990) is a play that depicts a family gathering on a Sunday to mark the return of the eldest son, who, having been distant from his family for a long time, has comes back with the intention of announcing his imminent death to his relatives. For a reader or spectator familiar with the author’s biography, the text of the play contains numerous similarities to Lagarce’s life, and the main character, Louis, bears many resemblances to Lagarce. However, one cannot categorize this play as autobiographical because the author does not claim such an approach and has he emphasized some clearly fictional elements. Nevertheless, through the play’s narrative and scenic techniques, it evidently offers elements of self-writing. Thus, this study attempts to address the following questions: What is the nature of the elements of self-writing in this play? How can they be categorized? Can autofiction be mentioned? What are the stakes involved? To answer these questions, this article initially focuses on the play itself, its author, its writing context, and its basis while considering the novelty and specificity of the theatrical forms highlighted by Lagarce. Subsequently, the article explores the self-writing revealed in the play, first by attempting to define the genre and its subgenres (i.e., autobiography, autofiction, autonarration, and autofabulation) and then by determining which elements in the text related to this writing belong to which categories. Lastly, the article seeks to understand the stakes and functions that underlie the use of these specific techniques. Juste la fin du monde is a complex work with multiple dimensions and readings that are challenging to summarize while conveying the substance of the text. This play is one of Lagarce’s most well-known, especially due to its recent adaptation to film by Xavier Dolan, and can perplex readers and spectators with its innovative use of theatrical structures and the distinctive style of its dialogues. If reading is a moment of laborious pleasure, watching the play adds to this pleasure and the dimensions of the work, especially because the director has contributed to constructing meaning by filling the gaps the author left regarding the direction of the play on stage. Juste la fin du monde creates a sense of blurred lines between fiction and reality: One hesitates between the presence and absence of the author in the work, and determining to which type of self-writing it belongs has been challenging. This analysis of the elements of self-writing based on a definition of its various categories has led to identifying the play as being on the border between autofiction and autonarration because it stages a dramatization of an episode from the narrator’s life: the attempt to return and express imminent death. However, the play also employs the three processes Gasparini (2009) mentioned for defining autonarration: fragmentation, metadiscourse, and alterity (Gasparini, 2009). Fragmentation occurs because, similar to the formal structure of the play, the elements of self that are scattered throughout the work are disparate and only enunciated through fragments and pieces of memories evoked by different characters, sometimes contradicting each other. This gives rise to otherness due to the presence of different perspectives proposed for the same facts over which the quasi-spectral presence of the author’s heteronym, Louis, introduces a metadiscursive discourse that never aims to explain or unravel the complex situation represented in the play. This study has thus determined the possibility of self-writing here to have served a retrospective function, a reconstruction of the author’s self as an attempt to articulate the unspeakable aspects of his existence. The works of Lagarce, both through his diaries and the staging of his heteronyms and doubles, has constantly employed various techniques of self-writing as tools for the quest of the past, the quest for understanding and self-expression in the most tragic aspects of existence.
