| Abstract: | A number of critics have drawn attention to the increased number of violent women in film, media and literature and to the apparent collusion between women and violence in women's own fiction. This article examines three autofictional works by Duras, Hyvrard and Cixous to see to what extent, and in what ways, these ‘textes de sang’ rewrite and rework incidents of violence in the individual and the family, of self-mutilation and imperialism, and of illness, grief and mourning. In each case, a variety of narrative techniques is employed which enable the writer to engage with, and emerge from, identities affected by violence. In all three cases, the violent fracturing of identity into ‘je/s' and ‘elles' is co-opted into a strengthened authorial voice and a new, uncollusive persona. |
