Of Shadows and Lights: Double and Selfhood in the Works of Henry Bauchau

Abstract

By the singular handling of the theme of the doppelganger he offers, Le boulevard périphérique of Henry Bauchau (published in 2008) is a try to reconstruct the notion of subject. According to the writer, the con-temporary subject, beyond the death that characterizes it from the end of the Sec-ond World War, can be understood as a unity that subsumes its splittings in favor of an overall coherence. This position is embodied in the fiction through a «re-turn» of the personal hjstory (the achievement of a mourning) on one hand, and the collective History (the acceptance of the massacre of Holocaust) on the oth-er hand.