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In recent years, scholars have begun to acknowledge the analogy between cinema and the operations of memory. Since Ernaux presents memory largely in visual terms, a synopsis of some of the major notions connecting memory and visual media, namely photography and cinema, will shed light upon the cinematic devices integrated into Ernaux‟s narratives. In her study, Memory and the Moving Image: French Film in the Digital Era, Isabelle McNeill seeks to examine ways in which memory, history and the moving image are related (2). McNeill suggests that: “Seeing film as an analogy for memory suggests another way in which film may act as a constitutive element of collective memory: filmic images may shape the form of our memories as well as the content” (32-33). In fact, we will determine at the end of Chapter 2 that in Les Années, Ernaux metaphorically designates the process of memory as a cinematic device by which collective history is conveyed. Because of their visual and visible nature, memories, much like photographic or filmic images, adopt tangible aspects. Those aspects are then further materialized through the act of writing.

Philippe Dubois deems the photograph as the material equivalent of a memory by stating, “Une photo est toujours une image mentale. Ou, pour le dire autrement, notre

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observing that “les souvenirs se présentent comme images” (“Définition de la mémoire” 29), but diverges from Dubois in extracting the “photographic” memory-image from the realm of static passivity. Echoing Barthes‟ ça-a-été, 13 in La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Ricœur designates the remembered past as “l‟ayant-été du passé souvenu, ultime référent du souvenir en acte” (58). In Ernaux‟s case, the “souvenir en acte” is tantamount to a series of images originating in the memory as if they were part of an internal motion picture. Envisioning past experiences, particularly those we consider traumatic or violent, as film sequences is hardly an uncommon phenomenon, for as Susan Sontag notes, we tend to express how “real” an event appeared with statements such as, “It seemed like a movie” (161).14

Since the images visualized within the memory are imbued with movement rather than frozen in the permanent stasis of a photographic image, we might revise Dubois‟ assessment in cinematic terms by stating that memory consists not merely of photographs, but of photograms, the individual photographic images imprinted sequentially on a film reel, then put into motion by a projecting device. Film scholar Jeanne-Marie Clerc defines

photograms as “une série de photographies immobiles auxquelles seul le mouvement de l‟appareil confère l‟apparence de la vie” (160). The impression of motion is significant when associating memory with the mechanisms of cinema in Ernaux‟s works, for, as we shall see in Chapter 3, each text presents the narration of scènes and images from her past, functioning in those cases as what we may also designate as memory-images. These memory-images are set into motion by the operation of memory before being materialized into writing. Ricœur‟s

13 _{In determining the essence of the photographic image in La Chambre claire, Barthes concludes, “Le nom du} noème de la Photographie sera donc : « ça-a-été »” (120).

14 _{My examination of La Honte in Chapter 3 will revisit Sontag‟s assertion. In the text, Ernaux persistently} refers to the traumatic memory in which her father attempted to murder her mother as a scène (La Honte 38).

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assertions that memories appear to us as images and that the memory is “in action” facilitate situating memory not only in the realm of the cinematic, but more importantly, when

considering Ernaux‟s professed quête du réel, in the very domain of the real. In short, the manner in which Ernaux writes memories and elucidates the operation of memory

demonstrates a fusion of literary and cinematic techniques. Examining the notions of movement and corporality that are unique to the cinematic image will facilitate our understanding of Ernaux‟s practice.

Isabelle McNeill notes that “a filmic image is a moment from the past given form and movement” (32). Indeed, as I shall determine in Chapter 2, Ernaux‟s deployment of

cinematic techniques attributes a realist vocation to the visual image. Maureen Turim states: “The ability of cinema to display motion offers another dimension to the realist dimension of photography. Film is an even more powerful medium of realism than photography” (14). Likewise, in his 2009 study entitled Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image, John Mullarkey recognizes the importance of movement, in conjunction with time, in establishing the “realness” of the cinematic image:

Cinema, with its images, gives us reality rather than some pale imitation of it. Image is every thing. The two ways it does this are through time and movement, the latter being the indirect representation of the former. But irrespective of being direct or indirect, the

movements shown in cinema are real. And this is so not only on account of everything being an image. Hence, there is a second point to be made, that compounds the first: every thing is in motion. In a universe where only „duration‟ (change) is real, the moving images of film have an equal claim on reality – film gives us immediately self- moving images. (89; emphasis in original)

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Christian Metz further elucidates the impression of reality imparted by the filmic image. He tells us that cinema represents reality more authentically than a still photograph not only because of movement, but also due to the corporality instilled by movement: Compared to still photography, motion-picture photography possesses a higher degree of reality (because the spectacles of real life have motion). Motion imparts corporality and gives them an autonomy their still representations could not have…The object is substantiated…Two things, then, are entailed by motion: a higher degree of reality, and the corporality of objects. (Film Language 7)

With regard to corporality and motion, we will find Metz‟s assertions pertinent when considering Ernaux‟s writing of memory in cinematic terms in the following chapter.

The process of memory has been metaphorically assigned technical and machine-like characteristics in its capacity to receive, to bear the imprint of and to transmit past

experiences. In 1999, brothers Jean-Yves and Marc Tadié, a professor of comparative

literature and a neurosurgeon, respectively, published Le sens de la mémoire, presenting both the physiological and philosophical aspects of memory. Further reinforcing the visual nature of memory, the Tadié brothers liken the human eye to a camera that records, then transmits images to the visual zone of the brain, which serves as a “receiver,” before setting the images in motion. Yet, unlike its electronic counterpart, memory permanently retains the imprint of those recordings. The Tadié brothers explain the process as follows:

Des images et des sons se transforment en ondes, puis redeviennent images ou sons. La différence est que, pour notre corps, la caméra ce sont nos yeux, les fils, câbles ou satellites sont nos vies optiques et le récepteur de télévision est la zone visuelle de notre cerveau…Une fois le match de rugby terminé, la télévision éteinte, le récepteur ne garde rien de ce qu‟il a reçu, alors que notre cerveau va en conserver la

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The emotional effect, whether positive or negative, of certain event leads to that “imprinting” as a memory. Chapter 3 of this dissertation will present such indelible memory- images in Ernaux‟s corpus. In Le sens de la mémoire, the Tadié brothers explain the origin and imprinting of memories as follows:

Lorsque nous explorons nos souvenirs, la plupart d‟entre eux sont restés imprimés d‟une façon tout à fait indépendante de notre

volonté…La plupart de nos souvenirs sont ceux qui, d‟une façon ou d‟une autre, et en cas uniquement pour nous-mêmes, ont eu une charge émotionnelle ou affective plus importante que le reste de notre vie quotidienne. Ils sont donc restés dans notre mémoire parce que la charge affective a entraîné, d‟emblée, un afflux de neurotransmetteurs qui ont imprimé le fait ou l‟objet dans un nouveau réseau neuronal.

(124-25; my emphasis)

In fact, an “imprinted” visual memory is a particularly common result of traumatic incidents. According to Judith Herman, traumatic memories are “imprinted in the brain in the form of vivid images and sensations” (qtd. in MacCurdy 36). We will discover in Chapter 3 that these recorded and imprinted images, along with the numerous photographs in Ernaux‟s corpus, enhance the primary flashback narrative.

The theories presented in this introductory chapter, particularly those relating to the corporal presence, movement, reception, imprinting, projecting and freeze-framing of filmic images will facilitate my re-reading of Ernaux‟s memory and memory-images as adaptations of cinematic processes.