Overview

An intersectional investigation of identity formation in Marcel Proust’s magnum opus. As metonyms for broader categories such as class, sexuality, and ethnicity, the three most discussed identity groups in Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu – snobs, inverts, and Jews – prove to be deeply intertwined and perplexing representations. Attentive to these interwoven complexities, Proust's Snobs, Inverts, and Jews examines the novelist’s exploitation of classification systems as a means to subvert the notion of a fixed identity. To illustrate Proust’s challenges to a social order that restricts our perceptions of identity, Adeline Soldin addresses the inconsistencies and friction surrounding the portrayal of these key figures in his seven-volume novel. Many scholars have recognized that the narrator’s formative journey in La Recherche leads to disillusionment and increased mockery of his fellow characters. Soldin contends, however, that Proust does not merely deride characters’ behavior, but rather interrogates their diverse motivations and tendencies, thereby exposing the performative nature of identity. Proust's Snobs, Inverts, and Jews draws on Judith Butler's theories of performativity to illustrate Proust’s precocious portrayal of identity in La Recherche as an elusive, unattainable idea that characters pursue yet consistently fail to establish. Ultimately, the enigmatic and anonymous narrator models fluidity and promotes fantasy and imagination to compensate for the limitations imposed on individuals by social and linguistic conventions.

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Reviews

Soldin’s intersectional approach and theoretical framework of Butlerian performativity offers an exciting new perspective on one of the most significant works of European modernism. Based on perceptive close readings, her argument that Proust exposes and undermines the social systems that govern human performance and limit our notions of identity is persuasively and consistently developed throughout in relation to the three categories of snob, invert, and Jew/Jewishness. * Axel Stähler, Professor of North American Literature and Culture, University of Bern, Switzerland *

Author Information

Adeline Soldin is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Dickinson College, USA.

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