Marc Vandersmissen

Édouard Louis has published five novels since 2014, somewhere between autofiction and autosociobiography. In this work, the writer recounts his process of construction as a young gay intellectual. To achieve this, he has to confront the systems of norms he encounters as he traverses different social milieus: the poverty of his family in the countryside, the bourgeoisie of his friends in the provinces, the power of his lovers in Paris. Against this backdrop, this article aims to explore the forms of the sense of abnormality felt by É. Louis during these experiences. We'll see how renewed confrontation with a norm foreign to himself (a cleaved habitus) led the author to develop an original approach to literature: through an aesthetic of confrontation, the author pursues a political objective, namely to invite the reader to join a new form of class struggle.

In Journal sexuel d’un garçon d’aujourd'hui, Arthur Dreyfus records his sexual experiences over several years. But he doesn’t limit himself to recounting his sexual intimacy; he also writes down some of his thoughts on other areas, such as relationships, writing and psychoanalysis. He generally proceeds in short narratives that can take different forms (anecdotes, poems, letters...) and are brought together to form a work of over 2000 pages. The reader is thus led into the author’s systems of thought. The aim of this article is to highlight the labyrinthine construction of this work: first, we’ll see how the Journal is the result of a search for identity. Next, we’ll look at how this work proposes a new form of intertextuality. Finally, we look at the form of the Journal and its impact on the reader. In this way, we offer the first keys to reading a complex but powerful work.