Cyber-harassment in Myriam Leroy’s Les Yeux rouges (2019): Community, Agency, and Politics

Résumé En

In this article, I address the systemic nature of gendered cyber-violence through an analysis of Myriam Leroy’s novel Les Yeux rouges (2019). I argue that the novel is Leroy’s clever attempt to relate her own experience of cyber-harassment while, as she foregrounds its collective, gender-based, and systemic dimensions, she is offering her readers a sharp feminist critique of the world. By paying particular attention to the novel’s narrative form through the method of close-reading, my aim is to engage with the political and social aspects of online violence – from the victim’s agentic power to institutions and communities’ care-work (or lack thereof) – as well as with the perduring dichotomy online/offline. The novel systematically dismantles the widespread misunderstanding that online violence is separate from physical, “real life” violence, and methodically indict discourses that disengage from the systemic and political dimension of gendered cyber-violence. Ultimately, this article contributes to highlight the importance of narrative representations of gendered cyber-harassment as a means to raise the issue to public discourse, to call attention to its insidious effects, and to shape public opinion about it.