Gisèle Pineau, pour une auto-gyno-biographie littéraire et intellectuelle guadeloupéenne

Authors

Françoise Simasotchi-Bronès, Université Paris 8 Vincennes à Saint-Denis

Abstract

Unlike other authors in her literary field (P. Chamoiseau, R. Confiant, M. Condé, D. Maximin, etc.), Gisèle Pineau did not write an “intellectual or literary” autobiography strictly speaking ; we can nevertheless reconstruct it from the various interviews she has given or other writings in which she reflects on creative practice. The author draws her scriptural inspiration from empirical models, listening to the life stories (often involving violence) that West Indian women whisper to each other in the privacy of the kitchen. Discreetly disqualifying the scholarly literate library, it favors the female oral library, an illiterate memorial motherhood heritage which carries the teaching of a true narrative art. Practicing “racontage”, a guadeloupean storytelling technique, she says she writes “stories that resemble life” with her “guts”. She therefore weaves an autogyno-biography which takes its source in female knowledge and experiences – a women’s lore-material which garners her literary admiration through its exemplary status combining poetry and politics. Freeing herself from excessive reverence to academic models, valorizing these silenced enunciations, G. Pineau develops her own authorial paratopy, between simplicity and authenticity, attempting to preserve a living feminine orality at the crossroads of aesthetic and axiological creative injunctions.

Recommended Citation

Simasotchi-Bronès, Françoise (2024) "Gisèle Pineau, pour une auto-gyno-biographie littéraire et intellectuelle guadeloupéenne," Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature: Vol. 101: No. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/pf/vol101/iss1/8