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N° 31, 2025 – Pathos and the Novel Since 2000, edited by Dominique Rabaté and Maïté Snauwaert

Proposal deadline: December 1, 2024

At the beginning of the years 2000, it was possible to ascribe a part of French literature to indecisive or playful narratives, “récits indécidables” or “roman ludique.” This time seems over. The “impassive novel” of Éditions de Minuit is no longer in fashion, and the initially marginal oeuvres of Marie Ndiaye (En famille in 1991) or Laurent Mauvignier (Loin d’eux in 1999) are evidences of this change of tone. The irony and second degree which after Nouveau Roman had come to characterize a significant portion of the French-language literary production are more discreet. It is as though, in an era haunted by catastrophe, terrorism, war, illness, violence against women, and late capitalism, literature’s aesthetic, social, or political task forbade distancing and demanded to confront head-on the harshness of the world.

In its long history since ancient philosophy, pathos has been navigating a line of tension between its status as a pejorative, derogatory term designating the exaggerated expression of emotions; and a positive consideration as an artistic modality eliciting virtuous affects – namely, according to Roland Barthes, “pity or compassion.” The same Roland Barthes, in his course at Collège de France The Preparation of the Novel, even called for a “pathetic history of literature.” At its best, pathos is the art of subtly recounting and/or generating affects; at its worst (then named “pathos” as opposed to “pathetic” as a genre), it is the vile exploitation of human suffering for the sake of spectacle.

In 2007, Philippe Forest published a short essay entitled “Petit éloge du pathos” (“In Praise of Pathos”). In it, responding to a notion common among critics, he asked what would remain of a literature from which all pathos had been expunged.

In his contrary view, literature had to stem from the wrench of the indomitable experience of being human, and this was the task of the novel since Faulkner and Camus to expose this struggle. Ten years earlier, Forest had likely ushered in this new pathetic era with his own début novel, a first-person, nonfiction narrative dedicated to his deceased daughter, distant from the identity games of autofiction.

This issue of Fixxion proposes to explore this accentuation of a pathetic dimension in literature since the years 2000, consistent with a change of time and generation. It is noticeable in a new emphasis on dramatic situations, the affective implication of narrative voices, a deliberate search for effects on the reader, and the choice to confront topics of burning current affairs. The publication of Emmanuel Carrère’s Lives Other than My Own is certainly emblematic of this new trend.

Consequently, this issue will seek to articulate a new definition of this pathetic regime through the contemporary bloom of its themes and motifs. For instance, it could be observed across the recurring representations of family violence: through a patriarchal system in Jaïli Amadou Amal’s Les Impatientes; through the figures of parricide and infanticide in Leila Slimani’s Chanson douce, Vincent Message’s Cora dans la spirale, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s Le Fils de l’homme, or Rebecca Lighieri’s Il est des hommes qui se perdront toujours. Or through the prominent role played by grief in fictional narratives of natural disasters and forced exiles, such as Nathacha Appanah’s Le Dernier frère or Carl de Souza’s Ceux qu’on jette à la mer; or again in retellings of colonial history, such as Abdelkader Djemaï’s Une ville en temps de guerre or Alice Zeniter’s L’Art de perdre.

However, this new tone infuses not only themes and stories, but the very modes of representation. The effort will therefore be placed on examining their specific economy, their tragic charge. A possible avenue could be the way recent novels play with the codes of sub-genres: horror in the case of Lighieri’s Les Garçons de l’été or Wajdi Mouawad’s Anima; thriller in Mauvignier’s Histoires de la nuit, roman noir in Nicolas Mathieu’s Aux animaux la guerre. Examining composition, especially through the building of suspense or the polyphony of viewpoints, will help shed light on what fuels this new pathétique. As memoirs and intimate narratives may occasionally seem better suited to the recounting of life’s pain and trauma, this analysis will make sure to consider these along the specific modes of the novel and the resources of fiction.

The proximity to tragic events as well as to the recipient of these new narratives will also call for a critical examination, so that the new definitions of pathos put forward don’t remain at the thematic level, but also elaborate its aesthetic essence.

After the contributions of Georges Molinié, Anne Coudreuse and Anne Vincent-Buffault on pathos and sensitivity, this work of critical definition remains needed for the contemporary novel.

Consistent with Fixxion’s mandate, the issue will also attempt to locate a number of reference points in the period from the years 1980s to the years 2020s. Going beyond monographic examinations, articles will attempt to conceptualize this new pathétique, so as to demonstrate both its limitations and its potential.

We welcome original contributions on the following issues (not exclusive):

  • the affective and moral charge of the novel; new modes of address;

  • change of tone and zeitgeist; second degree fatigue;

  • rise of documentary and nonfiction writing;

  • return and investment of codified subgenres;

  • new regime of first-person voices and novels;

  • disillusioned return to History from the standpoint of victims and the forgotten.

Deadline: December 1, 2024. Proposals for contributions (approximately 300 words), covering French-language literatures, should be sent in French or English to fixxion21@gmail.com (an assistant will register you as the author and send you the journal’s MSWord template).

After notification of the acceptance of the abstract, the text of the final article (entered in the Word template and respecting the styles and instructions of the Editorial Protocol) must be sent to fixxion21@gmail.com before Juin 15, 2025 for evaluation and proofreading by the members of the Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine/Critical Review of Contemporary French Fixxion.

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