Annie Ernaux: corpo e oggetto in transizione

In Annie Ernaux’s works, the story, narrated from multiple points of view, becomes the object of a two-dimensionality intrinsic to the complex relationship that has always linked body and object, human and material. If, in fact, the human, bodily dimension predominates, in Ernaux’s writing the objects are not relegated to a simple background function, but collaborate in the creation of a general picture which, through ekphrasis and actual images, conveys the idea of a physical, emotional, personal and social change. By paying attention to the role of the body and its use in the author’s descriptions, it is in fact possible to observe a part of the world that from Lillebonne, her birthplace, expands towards a Europe with less and less defined borders, giving new life to stories that the writer intends to “save”, at least in memory. In the same way the objects, relics of memory and at the same time a warning of modernity, reconstruct a past of fetishistic attention, of desire for what cannot be possessed and of affection for what remains, in a path which, from school diaries to clothing, from household appliances to technological means, leads photography to the fetish par excellence.