Que fait #MeToo à la littérature ?: Lecture féministe et lecture littéraire

Résumé En

What does #MeToo do to reading and teaching literature? The #MeToo movement has contributed to a broad awareness of the linguistic issues related to sexual and gender-based violence: fighting against such violence first implies to name a rape a rape. But such a disambiguation can contradict the interpretative complexity valued in literary reading. It could also present the risk of reading texts that are distant in time and space by evaluating them according to contemporary notions and morality, which could be regarded as anachronistic. Extending the recent reflections of Gisèle Sapiro (Peut-on dissocier l’homme de l’auteur?) and Hélène Merlin-Kajman (La littérature à l’heure de #MeToo), this article studies the reception of Vanessa Springora's Consent: A Memoir (2020). By questioning the polarization of critical and theoretical discourses between “feminist” readings and “literary” readings, which are often presented as incompatible, it raises the question of the possible link between sexual violence and interpretative practices. It then theorizes a reading practice based on contextualizing the use of interpretive models mobilized in literary analysis, and criticizing them by questioning the power relations they conceal. It defends the hypothesis that the #MeToo movement invites us to reevaluate our reading practices and paradigms in terms of what they make possible.