1 - The Feminine ‘I’

Summary

In this chapter, I examine the novels Les Absents by Georgia Makhlouf and Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan. These war stories are told by a feminine ‘I’ who, against the structuralist claim according to which the choice of the narrative voice does not matter, plays multiple important roles. Speaking from a gendered position, the ‘I’ appropriates the narrative space traditionally occupied by men's voices, to bear witness to her own trauma and to the trauma of others, to preserve the victims’ memories, and to write the war history. In Les Absents, the witnessing ‘I’ tells her story of war and exile and shows the reader the many aspects of trauma: trauma is amnesiac, individual and collective and unspeakable. It is also a nagging repetition of thoughts and themes. Trauma becomes the language by which the ‘I’ bears witness.

In Sitt Marie Rose, the ‘I’ attempts to record history as it unfolds but fails. Her narrative space is drastically reduced with the emergence of other voices all speaking with the first-person pronoun. They are the voices of the militia men and of the activist they have kidnapped, Marie-Rose. Just like the unnamed narrator, Marie-Rose challenges the men's historical views, and tries to tell her version of history. She ends up dead.

Before we proceed to the examination of the ‘I’ as the witness of trauma in Les Absents and the witness of history in Sitt Marie Rose, it is important to ask first what the functions are of the ‘I’ as narrator.

‘I’ as narrator

The literary choice of the first-person pronoun as narrator is significant. From a linguistic point of view and as suggested by Roman Jakobson, the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’ are both codes and messages. They are codes as they clearly carry their own definitions; they are messages as they vary in the context in which they are enunciated (Jakobson 1963: 176–9). To say it differently, the pronoun ‘I’ will always mean the reference to the self. However, this speaking self varies depending on the context. The same logic applies to the ‘you’ pronoun but not necessarily to the ‘he/she/it’ pronouns. Furthermore, the first and the second person pronouns ‘I/you’ exist in a bilateral relationship where the ‘I’ assumes the role of the enunciating subject and the ‘you’ assumes the role of the recipient. These pronouns cannot exist outside this relationship of enunciator–recipient.