Je suis un écrivain japonais de Dany Laferrière : À tous ceux qui voudraient être quelqu’un d’autre

Abstract

This article examines the narration and the narrative strategies in Dany Laferriere’s novel, Je suis un écrivain japonais. Indeed, the narration of this text puts into relief its generic issues and contributes to create a singular fictional form: short and long, simultaneously narrated and in the process of narration, fictional and non-fictional. The author paradoxically proposes that there the text says nothing and that nothing is happening in it. The result is a type of narration where author and reader share an ambivalent system of meaning and ending. As a result, we are obliged, as readers, to go with the flow of the text in a kind of incessant and perpetually potential movement.

Keywords:

• Contemporary literature
• identity
• fiction
• potential narration

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shereen Kakish

Shereen Kakish is an Associate Professor at the University of Jordan, where she teaches French literature as a member of the Faculty of Foreign Languages. She is specialized in French literature of the twenty-first century. She completed her Ph.D. at Laval University, Canada with a thesis entitled: L’Écriture “indécidable” de Régis Jauffret: Entre saturation, accumulation, minimalisme et maximalisme. She has published numerous articles in the field of contemporary French and francophone literature such as “Écrire l’oral dans Texaco de Patrick Chamoiseau” (Arcadia, International Journal for Literary Studies/ Internationale Zeitschrift für literarische Kultur, edited by Vladimir Biti / Vivian Liska, 2017); “Narrativité et fictionnalité dans Mon nom est personne de David Leblanc” (Littératures, PU de Midi, Université de Toulouse, 2019); and “Entre quête identitaire et fragmentation textuelle: Étude des enjeux génériques et narratifs dans L’odeur du café de Dany Laferrière” (forthcoming in the Australian Journal of French Studies).