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https://doi.org/0.38003/ccsr.3.5-6.9
La dystopie W pour dire l’horreur des camps de concentration. Une étude sur les hétérotopies de Perec
Samuel Holmertz
; New York University
Abstract
In the work of Georges Perec, the novel W or the Memory of Childhood (1975) is an attempt,
halfway between autobiography and detective novel, to reveal the greatest enigma of
the existence of the writer, namely the tragic fate of his mother who was deported to
Auschwitz from where she would never return. In order to be able to outline the ignominy
of the concentration camps, Perec refers to a story that he himself had invented during
his childhood: one on the island of W. Based on the Olympic ideal, its residents are athletes
who must endure a series of inhuman challenges. The monstrous dystopia of the Island
of W thus echoes the historical facts of the Second World War, which directly affected
Perec, although he did not witness them in person. In the perspective of a study of the
island of W, the concept of heterotopia forged by Michel Foucault will set the theoretical
perspective for this work. This article will also analyze how the places – both the spaces
of the everyday life and heterotopias, other spaces which very often play an allegorical
role (Ellis Island, to which Perec dedicated a book, is also an example), as the island of W
does – occupy a prominent place in Perec’s works. This stresses out the metonymic power
generated by the creation of spaces, whether entirely invented or borrowed from reality,
since they always tell something other than merely showcase themselves and install a
mirror game between fiction and reality.
Keywords
heterotopia, dystopia, space, childhood, concentration camps
Hrčak ID:
328119
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2021.
Visits: 450 *