LE « SELFIE » LITTÉRAIRE : UNE ÉTUDE BRACHYLOGIQUE DE L’« AUTOPORTRAIT (À LA TOUSSAINT) »

Abstract

Within Toussaint's “Polaroïd” narrative, this study aims to analyze, from a brachylogical perspective, his Autoportrait (à l’étranger) by highlighting the permeability relationship between photography and literature which leads to a reflection on the concept of literary selfie, namely anextremely contemporary self-portrait, where the author becomes both the subject and the object of the narration. This "photoliterature" represents a visual writing, an autobiographical travel account made up of snapshots and, therefore, brief, immediate, incisive. This tendency to brevity leads the “I-narrator” to tell about a very personal and “infinitesimal” reality and in a brief and laconic manner, namely extremely contemporary. Toussaint’s literary selfie, which differs from the pictorial self-portrait but also  from  the  photographic  self-portrait,  brings  about  a  connection between the“I-microcosmic” and the world-macrocosm; it attests to the  "fleeting" experience of being in the world of this author, by representing a"sudden  testimony" to the passage of time, but also a way of resisting it. This “snapshots writing” inaugurates a Polaroid-narrative which immortalizesthe single moment which sums up, while minimizing it, the story of the entire trip.