In this episode, we discuss the powerful, magisterial closing pages of Annie Ernaux’s The Years (pp.182-225) alongside philosophical work in progress by Alice Harberd, one of our hosts. In this paper, Alice considers various ‘narrative’ theories of the self, and argues that, when it comes to the articulation of a sense of self, ‘narrativity is a choice’. We examine Ernaux’s intertwining of personal and sociological selves and ponder to what extent it embraces, or resists, narrative form. We are joined in the UCL Studio by Emmanuel Campion-Dye, a Philosophy PhD student and an ever spirited and probing member of our Philosophy and Literature Reading Group.

Hosts:

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Guest:

Emmanuel Campion-Dye, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss the experience and the representation of the self in time. We consider philosophical approaches to the question of personal change, focusing on a paper by Marya Schechtman entitled ‘Glad it Happened: Personal Identity and Ethical Depth’. Is the self diachronic, extending over time? Or is it episodic, identical with itself only for short periods?

For Schechtman, self-experience is multiperspectival, comprising both temporally extended and temporally local perspectives; we contain many selves and this fact is central to the complexity of our moral life. We look closely at pages 137-182 of Annie Ernaux’s The Years to see whether the author’s rendering of her own self in time reflects such multiperspectivalism.

Hosts:

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss Annie Ernaux’s writing in The Years alongside a paper by Jenefer Robinson entitled ‘Style and Personality in the Literary Work’. We consider Robinson’s assertion that an author’s style expresses their personality, and set it in the context of influential views of style formulated by such modernists as Flaubert, Joyce, and T.S. Eliot, and by such literary theorists as Barthes, Bakhtin, and Kristeva. Ernaux’s own study of literature coincided with the heyday of literary theory in France. We use Robinson’s paper as a starting-point for reflection on the purposes and effects of the impersonal style Ernaux crafts in The Years.

Hosts: Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London and Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.