Although she is the same age, comes from a similar background, and has an important literary and critical body of work, she is far from being some kind of double. Just as there were two Marguerites (Yourcenar and Duras, opposed in every way), can we not say that there are two Annies?
Annie Ernaux and Annie Le Brun seem to represent two irreducible currents and approaches: one of the institutionalised left, a left that always holds power in the cultural milieu, and the other issuing from a left recalcitrant, something closer to anarchism but without claiming any label, and which, in fact, abhors them.
Le Brun grates and whips, without getting on her high horse; she isn’t outraged in the same tones as Ernaux, nor does she feel invested with a project of denunciation, even one that does not extend to the branch on which it is believed to rest: she clearly understands that indignation is an element of the system, and one which keeps it afloat. She is a feminist critical of every doctrinaire position, unsparing of the institution, similar, in her intransigence to Ernaux, but bearing a discourse that it is difficult to recuperate. A thorn in one’s thoughts: an Annie who never would have won the Nobel, and who, in any case, would have let it be known that she didn’t want it anyway.
Patrick Autréaux on Annie Ernaux and the late Annie Le Brun. Translated by Tobias Ryan.
