The Therapeutic View of Contemporary French Literature: Between Trauma and Narration

Abstract

Taking French literature as a framework, this paper reflects on the therapeutic focus that permeates contemporary texts. Contemporary literary projects center on alleviating the individual’s suffering and facing the devastating social stages of this day’s societies or, at least, as Alexandre Gefen points out in his essay Réparer le monde (2017), do good, all the while distancing themselves from any political viewpoints. By placing human beings at the center of the literary scene, we witness the transitivity that caring for the tensions, afflictions, and tearing of the self entails while still paying attention to the individual lives that History has avoided. Therefore, the mending approach of contemporary French literature demands a self-critical stance from the individual regarding their own condition and social environment. In this framework, the therapeutic practice of literature, or bibliothérapie, weighs the daily life and immediate surroundings from which identity is to be made visible and from which trauma is narrated and the disturbed self is cathartically freed.