Autobiography and the French-speaking world: hide-and-seek between ‘we’ and ‘I'

Abstract

Why should the subject of autobiography be studied in the specific context of the French-speaking world? Does the autobiographical pact have a Franco-French specificity that places literature from elsewhere on the margins? Francophonie, a term that I have retained despite the fact that the concept has been so decried recently by the proponents of world literature, encompasses all writers who use the French language to tell the story of a universal reality, that of human beings. After giving a few basic definitions, I will present a brief overview of French-speaking writers who have resorted to autobiography, before focusing on two writers from the Maghreb, Driss Chraïbi and Maïssa Bey. Observing the way they write shows that autobiography functions in a different way for authors from cultures far removed from Western culture.