The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of French SELF AND REFUSE: WASTE ON THE HUMAN SCALE IN 21ST-CENTURY FRENCH ÉCRITURE DE SOI A Dissertation in French by Laura Kmonicek Call 2016 Laura Kmonicek Call Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2016 ii The dissertation of Laura Kmonicek Call was reviewed and approved* by the following: Vincent Bruyère Assistant Professor of French at Emory University Committee Co-Chair & Dissertation Co-Advisor Special Member Jennifer Boittin Associate Professor of French, Francophone Studies and History Committee Co-Chair & Dissertation Co-Advisor Jean-Claude Vuillemin Liberal Arts Research Professor, Professor of French Monique Yaari Professor of French Studies Richard Doyle Liberal Arts Research Professor, Professor of English Kathryn Grossman Professor of French Head of the Department of French & Francophone Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ABSTRACT In the 21st century, when wastes from fossil fuel emissions to mega-landfills have become a central focus of global cooperative initiatives, it stands to reason that authors, artists, and filmmakers have come to include waste materials in their self-representative works. In a self- writing style corresponding with Michel Foucault’s description of écriture de soi, Annie Ernaux, Agnès Varda, and Jean Rolin glean cultural materials from various sources including books, libraries, real-life events, oral histories, and interactions with others in waste zones ranging from official landfills to liminal zones of material and human abandon. Incorporating the materials and stories of people they gather there into their self-understandings they problematize waste for readers and viewers. Making visible the invisible assumptions of waste and waste-dependent communities, they question why individuals and nations display some materials as self- representative when those that they disguise may constitute individual and national treasures equally worthy of display. Their subversive archives challenge traditional end-of-life limits for materials and individuals in a century in which scientists and engineers turn to waste for resources to create healthy and sustainable societies. Their personal archives provoke questions about France’s national display spaces. Their Self-Writing models new possibilities for waste that recognize that it may be repulsive and obscene, but it is also informative and powerful in constituting human self-understanding. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... vi Preface .................................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. xii Introduction Environmental Questions of Waste Materials and Self-Reflection .................... 1 Scientific and Cultural Waste Narratives: ................................................................ 3 An Ontological Question .......................................................................................... 8 Theoretical Context .................................................................................................. 37 Cultural Context ....................................................................................................... 45 Literary Context ....................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 1 Displaying waste: Self-preservation with the archive, the landfill, and self- writing in Les Années ....................................................................................................... 72 Ernaux’s oeuvre........................................................................................................ 75 Fragmentation in Les années .................................................................................... 81 Waste Materials in Les années ................................................................................. 88 Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 115 Chapter 2 Reflecting Waste: Spaces in Between in Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse and Les Plages d’Agnès .................................................................................... 117 Varda’s Oeuvre ........................................................................................................ 119 Self-Writing Collections and Correspondance ......................................................... 123 Liminal Spaces ......................................................................................................... 127 Framing Liminality .................................................................................................. 130 Creating with Fragments .......................................................................................... 143 Voice and Self-Reflection ........................................................................................ 150 Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 156 Chapter 3 Locating Waste: Waste and Collective Self-Understanding in Jean Rolin’s La Clôture and Un Chien mort après lui ............................................................................... 157 Rolin’s Oeuvre ......................................................................................................... 159 Collective Self-Writing ............................................................................................ 162 Heterotopia ............................................................................................................... 165 Waste Spaces ............................................................................................................ 172 Waste-Dependent Populations ................................................................................. 184 Self-Reflection in Waste .......................................................................................... 191 Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 197 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................. 198 v Bibliography..................................................................................................................... 216 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 0-1. Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendöme, comtesse de Boulogne et d'Auvergne………………...4 Figure 0-2. Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendöme, comtesse de Boulogne et d'Auvergne, detail……..…..4 Figure 0-3. Narcissus……………………...……………………………………………………...34 Figure 0-4. Narcissus After Caravaggio……………………...…………………………………..34 Figure 2-1. Screenshot of Gleaner………………………...…………………………………….135 Figure 2-2. Screenshot of Varda………………………...………………………………………135 Figure 2-3. Screenshot of Varda’s hand……………………………………..………………….139 Figure 2-4. Screenshot of potatoes………………………………………………………………139 Figure 2-5. Screenshot of crushed metal……………………………………………...…………147 Figure 2-6. Screenshot of plastic sheet…………………………………………...…………..…148 vii PREFACE When materials become fixed cultural metaphors, we stop questioning them. Waste is one of these deeply ingrained metaphors, but I began to wonder about this when reading my partner’s work on microbial waste remediation, a double taboo of using microbes to treat waste water. For engineers in his field, waste is a resource and their ultimate goal is to rehabilitate it. With this unique perspective I could read my primary sources with a gleaner’s eye and see new possibilities for waste in literature. Waste may not have appeared vital to my original proposal, which targeted transitional zones in nutrient cycles. As I read my corpus, however, the modern- day miracle of transforming waste to resource emerged as a global challenge with local implications on everyone’s daily lives. Coming from a background in Environmental Sciences, which deal largely in toxic and non-toxic waste management and remediation, I was already predisposed to consider waste’s impacts. Finally, as a parent I became aware of waste production’s central importance in our autobiographies. Adults may be repulsed by waste materials, but children’s daily stories revolve largely around their biological waste production. Their personal habits are sources of drama, celebration, power struggles, and myriad other quotidian narratives. At some point, our lives take on more diverse narrative patterns, but in the beginning it is all about waste production, and for good reason. First, societies value the productive capacities of their members and very small children are incapable of “producing” anything else. Second, regular biological waste production is also a sign of good health, and children’s parents are highly concerned by their health. This object of cultural disgust is equally a sign of life. Ambiguous and paradoxical, waste of all kinds requires years of cultural education to properly identify and handle. Even basic objects like an old sneaker in the road are difficult to classify—it may be waste in the West but a new shoe in another culture or even a work of art for a photographer. viii In Les