X: Identity, Reflexivity and Potential Space in Perec's W Ou le Souvenir D'enfance and Gide's Les Faux-Monnayeurs

ca choisit a la hate la lettre retorse/--est-elle ilot, cloitre, tresor ? / Reconnaitre ce recit nonchalant, / l'instinct, l'oreille en coin, / ce certain chant a l'instant arrete/ou chacun sait que s'instaure / la cloture : entre la contrainte etroite / (cette restriction a la lettre, cet elan taciturne, / ce carcan elu ressort, ce coute-que-coute)/ et tout le reste--la nuit nouee, le trou noir / du doute, l'illusion naine du destin, la douce distance / du sens et du non-sens, du conscient et de l'inconscient--/s'inscrira ton ecriture. "Prises d'ecriture" Georges Perec Beaux presents, Belles absentes On lutte bien, tant que l'on croit devoir lutter; mais des l'instant que cette lutte parait vaine et que l'on ne hait plus son ennemi ... Pourtant encore je tiens bon; mais moins par conviction que par defi. X. Ressaisi tout aussitot. 22 March 1916 X. 27 March 1916 Andre Gide, Journal 1887-1925 Three quarters of a century after Andre Gide had formulated his theory of retroaction (1) which highlights the symbiotic relationship between reflexive writing and identity, the work of Georges Perec (whose first literary text was a still unpublished pastiche of Gide's Paludes entitled Manderre) explored the materiality of language in a way that called into question the notion of authorship (and with it concepts of identity and agency). While both approached the text as a highly structured reading experience, Gide's attempts to focus reading patterns was limited to diegetic, structural and metaleptic interventions whereas Perec pushed this exploration of control farther, investigating the ways in which the letters themselves could be linked to hidden meanings, textual structure and personal identity. Thus, while Gide's approach to structure remains mostly literary and metaphorical, Perec's interest in materiality is literal and visceral. Yet for all that separates them, both writers attempt to transform the writing experience into an identity forming process which privileges the potential. I argue here that the desire to control and construct one's self is constantly countered and nuanced, in the work of these two authors, by a contrary impulse: an intense valorization of potential textual space in which desire, identity, textuality and temporality intersect. I argue that this space is conceived of in significantly different terms by each for reasons which derive both from aesthetics and personal identity. I suggest in particular that Perec's exploration of the connection between identity and the dynamic materiality of writing leads him to rethink both reflexivity and the concept of potential space. Here the terra "potential space" refers to a metaphorical textual space opened up by gaps in the narrative (resulting either from contradiction or a diegetic silence) which allow, require even the reader to take into account different possible worlds that might fill in these gaps. This potential space is, in both cases, created by the differential doubling effect inherent in reflexive writing. However, for the concept of "potential space" as I am here using it to acquire its full force, this play of the signifier must oscillate between different solutions, opening the text up in ways that can not easily be classified. This means that the images and metaphors used to create this uncontrolled space retain their own ambiguity. In the case of Gide, as we will see, the figure of the Devil, to which he so often has recourse, may be interpreted in many ways, both positive and negative--the doubt surrounding his very existence being one of the central themes in Les Faux-Monnayeurs. In the case of Perec, as I explain further on, it is not so much at the diegetic level that the potential space is opened up (though this is most certainly also the case), but rather at the level of the letters themselves which suggest links between symbols and letters that somehow bind victim and criminal (V, X, star of David and swastika) in ways that are disturbingly ambiguous. …