ABSTRACT

As the dust settles in France on the two-decade-long debate on Autofiction, the two opposite sides remain unreconciled: the anti-essentialists and the rationalists haven't reached a theoretical agreement and everyone has gone on to work on different topics and projects. This might be the perfect time to take a step back and reconsider the other side's perspective. As far as I'm concerned, the concept of autofiction remains flawed, mostly, to make a long (theoretical) story short, because hybridity is cognitively unrealistic. However, among the arguments put forward by the anti-essentialists, one remains convincing and deserves in my opinion further consideration. It can be found in various forms in texts by Doubrovsky, Colonna and Vilain and consists in presenting Autofiction as an opportunity for the author to enter a fictional world while retaining her/his name, or her/his psychological/physical features; in other words, describing or even using oneself as an avatar. The purpose of this paper will be to define what an avatar really is within an artistic endeavour defined as an autofiction, its purpose beyond its playful intent and above all what distinguishes an autofictional avatar from the narrator of an autobiographical novel.

摘要

随着法国长达两个十年的自述小说之争尘埃落定，对立的两派仍未和解：反本质主义者和理性主义者尚未达成理论上的一致，每个人都继续致力于不同的主题和项目. 这可能是退后一步并重新考虑对方观点的最佳时机。就我而言，自传的概念仍然存在缺陷，主要是为了使长篇（理论上的）故事简短，因为混合在认知上是不现实的。然而，在反本质主义者提出的论点中，有一个仍然令人信服，我认为值得进一步考虑。它可以在 Doubrovsky 的文本中以各种形式出现，Colonna 和 Vilain，并将 Autofiction 呈现为作者进入虚构世界的机会，同时保留她/他的名字，或她/他的心理/身体特征；换句话说，描述甚至将自己用作化身。本文的目的将是定义在被定义为自传小说的艺术努力中，化身到底是什么，其目的超出了其有趣的意图，最重要的是，自传化身与自传体小说的叙述者的区别。