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MARIE NDIAYE Blankness and Recognition

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MARIE NDIAYE Blankness and Recognition MARIE NDIAYE Blankness and Recognition Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 30 LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 1 04/10/2013 07:52:59 Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures Series Editors EDMUND SMYTH CHARLES FORSDICK Manchester Metropolitan University University of Liverpool Editorial Board JACQUELINE DUTTON LYNN A. HIGGINS MIREILLE ROSELLO University of Melbourne Dartmouth College University of Amsterdam MICHAEL SHERINGHAM DAVID WALKER University of Oxford University of Sheffield This series aims to provide a forum for new research on modern and contem- porary French and francophone cultures and writing. The books published in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures reflect a wide variety of critical practices and theoretical approaches, in harmony with the intellectual, cultural and social developments which have taken place over the past few decades. All manifestations of contemporary French and francophone culture and expression are considered, including literature, cinema, popular culture, theory. The volumes in the series will participate in the wider debate on key aspects of contemporary culture. Recent titles in the series: 14 Andy Stafford, Photo-texts: 22 Lucy O’Meara, Roland Barthes at the Contemporary French Writing of the Collège de France Photographic Image 23 Hugh Dauncey, French Cycling: A 15 Kaiama L. Glover, Haiti Unbound: A Social and Cultural History Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial 24 Louise Hardwick, Childhood, Canon Autobiography and the Francophone 16 David Scott, Poetics of the Poster: The Caribbean Rhetoric of Image-Text 25 Douglas Morrey, Michel Houellebecq: 17 Mark McKinney, The Colonial Humanity and its Aftermath Heritage of French Comics 26 Nick Nesbitt, Caribbean Critique: 18 Jean Duffy, Thresholds of Meaning: Antillean Critical Theory from Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Toussaint to Glissant Contemporary French Narrative 27 Edward Welch and Joseph McGonagle, 19 David H. Walker, Consumer Contesting Views: The Visual Chronicles: Cultures of Consumption Economy of France and Algeria in Modern French Literature 28 Rosemary Chapman, What is 20 Pim Higginson, The Noir Atlantic: Québécois Literature?: Reflections on Chester Himes and the Birth of the the Literary History of Francophone Francophone African Crime Novel Writing in Canada 21 Verena Andermatt Conley, Spatial 29 Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Ecologies: Urban Sites, State and V. Y. Mudimbe: Undisciplined World-Space in French Cultural Africanism Theory LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 2 04/10/2013 07:52:59 Andrew Asibong Marie NDiaye Blankness and Recognition LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 3 04/10/2013 07:52:59 First published 2013 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2013 Andrew Asibong The right of Andrew Asibong to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights 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 written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-84631-946-4 cased Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 4 04/10/2013 07:52:59 Why couldn’t they see it? It still puzzles me. Frances Farmer LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 5 04/10/2013 07:52:59 LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 6 04/10/2013 07:52:59 Contents Acknowledgements viii Abbreviations ix ‘C’est justement qu’il n’y a rien!’: Introducing NDiayean Blankness 1 1 Blankness/(Dis)integration: The First Novel Cycle 32 2 Blankness/(Re)generation: The Second Novel Cycle 69 3 Ghouls, Ghosts and Bloodless Abuse: NDiaye’s Undead Theatre 109 4 Little Baby Nothing: Framing the Invisible Child 142 Conclusion: A Beam of Intense Blankness (Prière pour le bon usage de Marie NDiaye) 168 Appendix: Plot Synopses 176 Notes 210 Bibliography 223 Index 240 LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 7 04/10/2013 07:52:59 Acknowledgements I want to thank the School of Arts at Birkbeck for allowing me a term’s research leave to start writing this book and the AHRC for the nine-month Early Career Fellowship I needed to finish it. Naomi Segal offered me crucial guidance and expert editing as the book’s final shape emerged. For palpable contributions to my decade of thinking, feeling and writing around NDiaye’s work, I thank Lydie Moudileno, Anne Martine Parent, Clarissa Behar, Daniel Bengsch, Sarah Burnautzki, Shirley Jordan, Michael Sheringham, Jean-Yves Cendrey, Patrick ffrench, Thomas Deltombe, Sandrine Fauvin, Dominique Rabaté, Cornelia Ruhe, Hannah Eaton, Hywel Probert, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Chantal Quiquine, Jim Lattimer, Pauline Eaton, Andrew Billing, Aude Campmas, Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield, Warren Motte, Emma Campbell, Frank Lowe, Corinne Ranaraja, Nora Cottille-Foley, Daniel Rosen, Nathalie Wourm, Rémi Astruc, Marie-Claire Barnet, Charles Forsdick, Peter Hallward, Nick Harrison, Cécile Laborde, Johanna Malt, Edlira Mandis, Ana de Medeiros, Christophe Meurée, Dominic Thomas, Adam Thirlwell, Emma Wilson and (ce Suisse qui n’est pas mon frère) Nicolas Xanthos. I am indebted to several cohorts of undergraduate and postgraduate students at Birkbeck who have helped me shine a beam of intense darkness on NDiaye’s texts over the years, and also to Hywel for his quixotic fraternity, Frank for his alpha function, Chantal, Eleanor and Silke for being so present, and HSG for the surprise of real community. Cheryl and Giorgia help me to value where I came from, Donna and Laura help me to cherish where I am, and Hannah’s cover image grasps my dream of blankness in a way that bears witness not only to her artistic genius but also to the uncanny flows of our discours vivant. I owe Marie NDiaye herself more than words can say, but dedicate this book to Suzanne Dow, my November ’77 consœur (“an excellent vintage!” as she once put it), in solidarity and rage. LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 8 04/10/2013 07:53:00 Abbreviations AV Autoportrait en vert CC Comédie classique DSE La Diablesse et son enfant EF En famille FCB La Femme changée en bûche GP Les Grandes Personnes H Hilda L Ladivine LGP Les Grandes Personnes MCE Mon cœur à l’étroit N La Naufragée P Providence PDM Papa doit manger PP Les Paradis de Prunelle QRA Quant au riche avenir RC Rosie Carpe RH Rien d’humain S La Sorcière SE Les Serpents SO ‘Les Sœurs’ SOU Le Souhait TMA Tous mes amis TFP Trois femmes puissantes UTS Un temps de saison LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 9 04/10/2013 07:53:00 Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 10 04/10/2013 07:53:00 ‘C’est justement qu’il n’y a rien!’: Introducing NDiayean Blankness He turned toward me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. ‘Nitre?’ he asked, at length. ‘Nitre,’ I replied. ‘How long have you had that cough?’ ‘Ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh!’ My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. ‘It is nothing,’ he said, at last. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ Introducing NDiayean Blankness My first encounter with Marie NDiaye’s world was traumatic. It was a production of her play Papa doit manger at the national theatre, the Comédie-Française, in 2003, an event which had been receiving a great deal of publicity in France at the time. As the lights came up and the audience began to applaud, the two women sitting next to me asked me if I was going to be all right. It was an embarrassing situation. Juliet Mitchell provides us with a useful working definition of that over-used term ‘trauma’: A trauma, whether physical or psychical, must create a breach in a protective covering of such severity that it cannot be coped with by the usual mechanisms by which we deal with pain or loss. The severity of the breach is such that even if the incident is expected, the experience cannot be foretold. We cannot thus make use of anxiety as a preparatory signal. The death of a sick relative, the amputation of a diseased limb may be consciously known about in advance, but if they are to be described as traumatic then the foreknowledge was useless. In trauma we are untimely ripped. (Mitchell, 1998: 121) LUP Asibong, Marie NDiaye.indd 1 04/10/2013 07:53:00 2 Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition What could I tell these strangers who were so politely inquiring after my well-being? That the play we’d just seen had ripped me wide open? That a ghost had stuck its tongue in my ear? Couldn’t they feel it inside them too? They seemed just fine. All the people clapping furiously around us seemed fine, in fact, uplifted – perhaps – by the humour, novelty and charm of the unprecedented multicultural spectacle they had just enjoyed in the house of Molière. Perhaps they were pretending. After all, wasn’t that just what I was doing when I eventually reassured the women that I was perfectly all right? Only I could know that time had stopped, for me, the moment the curtains went up. The dead-eyed performers had bonded with a buried part of myself, something as blank and ghoulish as they were. And life would never be the same again.1 A reader unfamiliar with the plays and prose fiction of Marie NDiaye might conclude from my slightly mystical testimony that her narratives and situations must themselves contain some kind of deep intensity, glowing, in the manner of classical tragedy, or 1950s Hollywood melodrama, with a wild and cathartic potential for pure feeling.
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