Ghosts of Influence? Spectrality in the Novels of Marie Darrieussecq

Abstract

Marie Darrieussecq states that her work aims to ‘questionner le vide’ (‘question the void’), a process that involves the concomitant exploration of ‘l’absence à soi-même’ (‘absence from oneself’), which is, for her, the condition of writing as such.¹ All of her work is marked by absence — whether from others or oneself — and by loss (in particular regarding the figure of the dead child). This is linked with the author’s own family history, which was indelibly marked by the death of an infant brother. But what is the relation, in Darrieussecq’s writing, of absence and loss to influence? The author throws light on this question in an essay she wrote in order to defend herself against accusations of plagiarism: Rapport de police (Police Report).² Here, she sets out her view that the writer’s task is ‘se transformer en chambre d’échos et de métamorphoses’ (‘to transform oneself into a room of echoes and metamorphoses’).³ And so she connects what others see as plagiarism with the idea that influences, be they explicit or implicit, avowed or denied, are part of any writer’s work.⁴ She makes numerous references to works that have inspired her own writing. Le Bébé (The Baby, 2002), which aimed to recreate the author’s own world, was punctuated by quotations and by artistic, literary, cinematic and psychoanalytic references that stop short of word-for-word quotation.