About

This study examines how representations of different processes and experiences of late capitalism in post-1973 French fiction may be considered to be figured as generating ‘everyday’ traumatic symptoms which intersect with those of the ‘afterlives’ of the Second World War and decolonization.  Using DSM-5 and theories of trauma, late capitalism and the everyday, I explore how novels by Daeninckx, Darrieussecq, Ernaux, Houllebecq, Modiano, Plhes and Sebbar draw on different media to provide ‘lost footage’ of historical trauma and of ‘everyday’ late capitalist traumatic symptoms, shedding new light on these important novels as well as on the theorization of trauma and late capitalism.  My innovative critical framework, established in my first year, draws on DSM-5 symptomology and theories of trauma, postmemory, globalized late capitalism and the ‘everyday’ to identify how fictional representation elucidate the effects of what I establish as ‘everyday’ late capitalist trauma as distinct from , but intersecting with, the traumatic effects of the Second World War and decolonization of France.  This framework is then used to anyalyse my primary corpus.  Spanning various genres (from the roman policier to life-writing) more or less knowingly, these contrasting post-Trente glorieuses  novels at once reference the legacies of traumatic conflict and represent the contemporary economics as generating guilt, shame, responsibility, re-experiencing, avoidance, negative cognition, detachment and diassociation.  My analyses demonstrate how, at various generational removes, these contrasting novels draw on television, film, photography and the print media creating ‘lost footage’ not only of events but also of these ‘everyday’ traumatic-symptom-producing processes.  The interdisciplinary relevance of my study across the arts and humanities will provide a highly original contribution to knowledge as, whilst focusing on French fiction and culture, it offers new insights on trauma, late capitalism and postcolonial societies during a period of radical global economic change