Overview

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. This is the first critical study in English to focus exclusively on the work of Marie NDiaye, born in central France in 1967, winner of the Prix Femina (2001), the Prix Goncourt (2009), shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2013), and widely considered to be one of the most important French authors of her generation. Andrew Asibong argues that at the heart of NDiaye’s world lurks an indefinable ‘blankness’ which makes it impossible for the reader to decode narrative at the level of psychology or event. NDiaye’s texts explore social stigmata and familial disintegration with a violence unmatched by any of her contemporaries, but in doing so they remain as strangely affectless and ‘unrecognizable’ as their dissociated protagonists. Considering each of NDiaye’s works in chronological order (including her novels, theatre, short fiction and writing for children), Asibong assesses the aesthetic, emotional and political stakes of NDiaye’s portraits of impenetrable selfhood. His book provides an original and provocative framework within which to read NDiaye as a simultaneously hybrid and hyper-French cultural figure, fascinating and fantastical practitioner of the postmodern – and reluctantly postcolonial – ‘blank arts’.

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Andrew Asibong's 'Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition' is the authoritative study of one of France's most intriguing and pioneering contemporary authors, indeed of an author whose work compels us at every turn to rethink the ways in which identity, literature, and nationality have heretofore been conceptualized. A highly intelligent and distinguished book that will be seen as a milestone in the well-deserved critical recognition of a major writer. Andrew Asibong's erudite and spirited book will be a landmark in studies of Marie NDiaye's writing. Its core ambition is to capture and anatomize what is perhaps the principal and most enigmatic aspect of NDiaye's fantastical work: the combination of a numb emotional detachment on the part of key protagonists and a coolly distant narrative voice which, in the face of the open intolerable violence depicted, appears not only perplexing but almost as troubling as the violence itself. Asibong refers to this conspicuous absence of affect as 'blankness', and homes in on what he conceptualizes as the 'zones of representational and affective impoverishment' (p. 3) in the author's work. The book is ambitious in scope, providing comprehensive coverage of NDiaye's entire, formally diverse output. Readers will find here a critical analysis of blankness in every work published by the author to date. Following a critical introduction, Asibong proceeds by dividing NDiaye's novels into two 'cycles' (a chapter is devoted to each) following up with a chapter on NDiaye's theatre and one on the way in which the child is framed in her writing (a much more interesting decision than simply devoting a section to her texts for children, although these are covered here). The book also contains a useful (and extensive) appendix which provides detailed plot synopses of all NDiaye's novels, theatre, short stories, illustrated works, and children's books, and which is in its own right an informative and engrossing read. Asibong's critical introduction sets out how blankness is to be understood, both in terms of the range of disorders it covers and in relationship to the psychotherapeutic perspectives that provide his critical apparatus. A spectrum of what he calls 'thinkers of denial' (p. 16), including Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, Peter L. Giovacchini, and Andre Green, is drawn upon in order to explore two key phenomena that thread throughout NDiaye's writing: traumatized infant experience resulting from parental unavailability (Green's 'dead' mother theory is especially central here) and racial stigmatization. Asibong probes the author's unrelenting concern for both blankness and 'blancness' (denial of colour) (p. 23) as well as analysing in fine-grained detail the ways in which these intersecting disorders compound and complicate one another. The book's overarching narrative traces the evolution of NDiayean blankness and detects in some of her recent work a tentative opening towards recognition (recognition of unarticulated trauma and recognition of the needs of others). Further, Asibong draws into the mix NDiaye's responses to her own blackness within a (superficially) colour-blind French Republican context, suggesting persuasively that the author's lived experience and public image correspond closely to the pattern of emotional denial he is drawing out. His scrupulously elaborated thesis and the detailed analyses it produces are compelling, illuminating, and original. Combined with his lively concern for glancing intertextual references to an eclectic constellation of authors, film-makers, and cultural forms, they deftly capture the specificity of this sometimes maddeningly elusive writer. While this is an immensely scholarly work, it is at the opposite pole from NDiayean detachment. Asibong writes with verve, and with an involvement which is contagious. His book is the product of a fervent personal engagement with the unnerving cruelty of NDiaye's vision. He is courageous enough to let this surface in ways which serve only to strengthen the value of his study and the pleasure to be derived from it. It seems fitting that the first extended monograph on this major writer should offer such a sharply responsive account of her work, and that its own winning obsessiveness should match that of its subject. Andrew Asibong's erudite and spirited book will be a landmark in studies of Marie NDiaye's writing. Its core ambition is to capture and anatomize what is perhaps the principal and most enigmatic aspect of NDiaye's fantastical work: the combination of a numb emotional detachment on the part of key protagonists and a coolly distant narrative voice which, in the face of the open intolerable violence depicted, appears not only perplexing but almost as troubling as the violence itself. Asibong refers to this conspicuous absence of affect as 'blankness', and homes in on what he conceptualizes as the 'zones of representational and affective impoverishment' (p. 3) in the author's work. The book is ambitious in scope, providing comprehensive coverage of NDiaye's entire, formally diverse output. Readers will find here a critical analysis of blankness in every work published by the author to date. Following a critical introduction, Asibong proceeds by dividing NDiaye's novels into two 'cycles' (a chapter is devoted to each) following up with a chapter on NDiaye's theatre and one on the way in which the child is framed in her writing (a much more interesting decision than simply devoting a section to her texts for children, although these are covered here). The book also contains a useful (and extensive) appendix which provides detailed plot synopses of all NDiaye's novels, theatre, short stories, illustrated works, and children's books, and which is in its own right an informative and engrossing read. Asibong's critical introduction sets out how blankness is to be understood, both in terms of the range of disorders it covers and in relationship to the psychotherapeutic perspectives that provide his critical apparatus. A spectrum of what he calls 'thinkers of denial' (p. 16), including Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, Peter L. Giovacchini, and Andre Green, is drawn upon in order to explore two key phenomena that thread throughout NDiaye's writing: traumatized infant experience resulting from parental unavailability (Green's 'dead' mother theory is especially central here) and racial stigmatization. Asibong probes the author's unrelenting concern for both blankness and 'blancness' (denial of colour) (p. 23) as well as analysing in fine-grained detail the ways in which these intersecting disorders compound and complicate one another. The book's overarching narrative traces the evolution of NDiayean blankness and detects in some of her recent work a tentative opening towards recognition (recognition of unarticulated trauma and recognition of the needs of others). Further, Asibong draws into the mix NDiaye's responses to her own blackness within a (superficially) colour-blind French Republican context, suggesting persuasively that the author's lived experience and public image correspond closely to the pattern of emotional denial he is drawing out. His scrupulously elaborated thesis and the detailed analyses it produces are compelling, illuminating, and original. Combined with his lively concern for glancing intertextual references to an eclectic constellation of authors, film-makers, and cultural forms, they deftly capture the specificity of this sometimes maddeningly elusive writer. While this is an immensely scholarly work, it is at the opposite pole from NDiayean detachment. Asibong writes with verve, and with an involvement which is contagious. His book is the product of a fervent personal engagement with the unnerving cruelty of NDiaye's vision. He is courageous enough to let this surface in ways which serve only to strengthen the value of his study and the pleasure to be derived from it. It seems fitting that the first extended monograph on this major writer should offer such a sharply responsive account of her work, and that its own winning obsessiveness should match that of its subject. Andrew Asibong's erudite and spirited book will be a landmark in studies of Marie NDiaye's writing. Asibong writes with verve, and with an involvement which is contagious. His book is the product of a fervent personal engagement with the unnerving cruelty of NDiaye's vision. He is courageous enough to let this surface in ways which serve only to strengthen the value of his study and the pleasure to be derived from it. It seems fitting that the first extended monograph on this major writer should offer such a sharply responsive account of her work, and that its own winning obsessiveness should match that of its subject.

Andrew Asibong's 'Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition' is the authoritative study of one of France's most intriguing and pioneering contemporary authors, indeed of an author whose work compels us at every turn to rethink the ways in which identity, literature, and nationality have heretofore been conceptualized. -- Professor Dominic Thomas A highly intelligent and distinguished book that will be seen as a milestone in the well-deserved critical recognition of a major writer. -- Michael Sheringham, Marshal Foch Professor of French, University of Oxford

Author Information

Andrew Asibong is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Birkbeck, University of London and the author of François Ozon (Manchester University Press, 2008).

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