L’absence de (re)pères et ses mécanismes destructifs. La part du fils ou (en)quête généalogique pour la récupération de l’identité
The absence of genealogical figures and its destructive mechanisms. La part du fils or the genealogical quest to recover one’s identity

Summary/Abstract: The problem of identity, the questioning of one’s origins, have become the subject of the contemporary literature and of the modern individual in search of himself. Nevertheless, this propensity is not shared only by a recent past, it is rather an inborn feature of the humanity itself, a privileged subject of literature, transmitted from Antiquity. The novel La part du fils (Coatalem 2019) is also defined by this tendency of connecting the personal experience to the literature and thus transforming the theme of identity in a central subject of the story. The reason of writing, the quest of a grandfather, disappeared in the Second World War, the tenacity of the narrator, all these elements point to an explicit aim: to retrace the familial and the personal identity of the narrator. Animated by the idea of a familial and moral duty, the grandson undertakes a foray in the ex-concentration camps so as to symbolically encounter his grandfather. This fruitful research delivers a material rich in details about the practices of the Nazi system and particularly about the concentration machine. The unjustified arrests, the deportation, the forced labour, the violence, the starvation, the lack of sleep are the agents of the metamorphosis in the carceral space where most of the captives will have been annihilated. In the absence of the genealogical figures, the grandson, assuming the role of an archaeologist, will be completely committed to his quest which will help him recompose the familial identity and define his own identity.

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