FACETTES DE LA HONTE CHEZ ANNIE ERNAUX
FACETS OF SHAME WITH ANNIE ERNAUX

Summary/Abstract: Shame is a characteristic that is frequently linked to other emotions, like guilt. Both may be effects of the traumas the person has experienced. Shame is an intersubjective emotion, meaning that it is always activated or repeated in response to another person, whether they are physically present or not. Its source is a broken relationship with another.In the current paper, we propose employing theoretical psychoanalytical and sociological approaches to analyse the emotion of shame. We will demonstrate a variety of its forms, using examples from Annie Ernaux's book La Honte. We shall observe that this emotion can appear in a variety of ways, such as social, physical, sexual and psychological, depending on its nature and the context in which it occurs. All these different types of shame, which are frequently combined into one sensation, are expertly depicted in the French author's novel. Depending on its emergence and intensity of manifestation, shame may have a destabilizing or mobilizing effect. In Annie Ernaux's book, which describes the family life of a twelve-year-old girl, both influences are there. Born into a modest provincial world, but with a mother who understands the opportunity that education can offer her child, the young girl will benefit from an education that few children of her condition could receive. She has access to a world at her private school that is completely apart from her family life. Despite her brilliant school results, the contact with this world is also painful, because of the comparisons the girl will make (always to her disadvantage and the world she comes from), but also because of the feelings of shame, embarrassment and humiliation she often feels around people who make her feel uncomfortable (colleagues, teachers, doctors). We will analyse the symbolic violence often felt by the main character of the book, but also an episode of physical violence between parents which the young girl witnessed and which constituted a real trauma. Psychoanalysis will provide us with a series of theoretical systematizations that will place the experience of shame in a different framework. A seemingly normal, even happy childhood hides deep and unmanageable fragments for a girl who has not even learned the words for emotions, let alone how to manage them.

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