Autobiography, the dangers of knowledge and Genet's suspect reader
CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD
Genet's autobiographical work is noticeably resistant to providing its reader with a conventional autobiographical account of the author's life and self. Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs writes the self principally through its fantasies; Journal du voleur reveals a reluctant autobiographical narrator. My article argues that Genet's determination not to supply the traditional ingredients of autobiography stems from his insights as a prisoner into the means by which deviant, anti-social individuals are made to conform to society's demands. I suggest that Genet is conscious of how the regime of ‘haute surveillance’ in prison aims to correct the unacceptable practices of the prisoner by exposing them knowingly to a constant watchful gaze, which should instil obedience. In this insight, Genet foreshadows Michel Foucault's theorizations in Surveiller et punir on the workings of the prison system. Foucault states that the watchful gaze allows knowledge to be amassed about the prisoner: once reduced to the known and the predictable, a prisoner's behaviour is no longer a threat and he can be disciplined and subjectified. I argue that Genet's treatment of his reader and aversion to autobiographical conventions reflect a determination to avoid subjectification, and to continue acting as an irritant to his society.
1 See, for example, Pierre Laforgue, ‘Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs’ ou la symphonie carcérale (Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2002); Frieda Ekotto, L'Écriture carcérale et le discours juridique chez Jean Genet (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2001); Aïcha El Basri, L'Imaginaire carcérale de Jean Genet (Paris, L'Harmattan, 1999). Roland A. Champagne's article, ‘Jean Genet in the Delinquent Colony of Mettray: The Development of an Ethical Rite of Passage’, French Forum, 26.3 (Fall 2001), 71–90 makes reference to the reforming function of Mettray, as outlined by Foucault, only to assert its inefficacy. Instead, Champagne's purpose is to situate within a Levinassian ethical framework what he sees, in a reading divergent from mine, as Genet's treachery towards his fellow inmates and overtures to his readership in Miracle de la rose.
2 Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris, Gallimard, 1975); in references abbreviated to Surveiller.
3 Jean Genet, Miracle de la rose ([Lyons(?)], Barbezat-L'Arbalète, Gallimard, 1946); Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs ([Lyons(?)], Barbezat-L'Arbalète, 1948); Journal du voleur (Paris, Gallimard, 1949). In references these will be referred to as MdR, NDDF and JdV respectively.
4 See Georges Gusdorf, ‘Conditions et limites de l'autobiographie’, in Formen der Selbstdarstellung. Analekten zu einer Geschichte des literarischen Selbstportraits. Festgabe für Fritz Neubert, ed. by Günther Reichenkron and Erich Haase (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1956), pp. 105–23 (p. 110) and Georges May, L'Autobiographie (Paris, PUF, 1979), pp. 26–29.
5 In popular autobiography, the memoirs of notorious criminals remain popular. Recent examples include Roy Shaw, Prettyboy (London, Blake, 1999); Charles Bronson, Bronson (London, Blake, 2000); and in French, the autobiography of terrorist and convicted murderer Jean-Marc Rouillan, Je hais les matins (Paris, Denoël, 2001).
6 Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, I, La Volonté de savoir (Paris, Gallimard, 1976), pp. 79–82.
7 Franz Kafka, ‘In der Strafkolonie’, in Das Urteil und andere Prosa, ed. by Michael Müller (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1995), pp. 56–88.
8 It is particularly clear in late twentieth-century autobiographies that the idea of fixing the self by adopting a confessional approach, resulting in a complete and definitive portrait of it, is anathema. See, for example, Michel Leiris, La Règle du jeu, 4 vols (Paris, Gallimard, 1948–76); Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots (Paris, Gallimard, 1964); Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes (1975), second edn (Paris, Seuil, 1995); Georges Perec, W ou le souvenir d'enfance (Paris, Denoël, 1975).
9 Surveiller, pp. 343–49, and see MdR, passim.
10 Information given by Edmund White, Genet (London, Chatto & Windus, 1993), p. xv.
11 Michel de Montaigne, ‘Au lecteur’, Essais, I, ed. by Alexandre Micha (Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1969), p. 35.
12 Foucault quotes here from E. Ducpétiaux, Des colonies agricoles, 1851, p. 61.
13 Such an approach is behind the following investigations of autobiographical writing: Estelle C. Jelinek (ed.), Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1980); Barbara Rodriguez, Autobiographical Inscriptions: Form, Personhood and the American Woman Writer of Color (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999); Paul Robinson, Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
14 See Surveiller, pp. 223–24.
15 On transgressive reinscription, see Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 279–325.
16 See Lejeune, ‘Autobiography and Social History in the Nineteenth Century’, in On Autobiography, ed. by Paul John Eakin, trans. by Katherine Leary (University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 163–84 (pp. 168–72), and Foucault, Histoire, pp. 80–81.
18 On this concept, see Michael Sheringham, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires — Rousseau to Perec (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 137.
19 This phenomenon has received attention from a number of commentators, although I know of no discussion which links it to subjectification; particularly notable are Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet: comédien et martyr (Paris, Gallimard, 1952), pp. 395–467; Colin Davis, ‘Genet's Journal and the Ethics of Reading’, French Studies, XLVIII (1994), 50–62, and Ethical Issues in Twentieth-Century French Fiction: Killing the Other (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000), ch. 8; Sheringham, pp. 146–48, 202–10.
20 See MdR, p. 55 and White, Genet, p. 270.
21 Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris, Seuil, 1975), pp. 33–35.
22 This article first took the form of a paper, ‘A Convict's Autobiography, Dangerous Knowledge and Genet's Suspect Reader’, delivered at the annual conference of the Australian Society for French Studies in Brisbane in July 2003. I am grateful to Anneliese Parkin for her help on the question of Maori naming practices.