Mapping The Self Between Two Homelands: Serge Doubrovsky’s Divided Autofictional Identity

Annie Jouan-Westlund

pages: 99 – 108
published online: 22 july 2013

ABSTRACT

The textualization of space is a common signifying practice among autobiographers. In the case of Serge Doubrovsky, there is an intrinsic correlation between his writing and his existence divided between France and America. This article traces the origin of his displacement and its manifestations in his autofictions drawing his fragmented life still in progress rather than a totalizing representation of his self. It argues that because of his double space of existence, autofiction became the only place that could accommodate and stimulate his writing in a constant shift between two countries and two genres, autobiography and fiction.

Key words: Identity, autofiction, autobiography, genre, self.