Christine Angot Reclaims Her Mother's Name in New Book on Incest and Patronymy
In "Je change de nom," the French writer returns to the incest she suffered as a child to examine how a family name carries male domination, according to Le Temps.
Christine Angot's new book, Je change de nom, revisits the incest she suffered as a child, this time to interrogate the weight of her own surname, according to Le Temps. The writer long carried her mother's name, Rachel Schwartz, after her father, Pierre Angot, refused to recognize her until 1972, the year she turned 13 — and the year she met him for the first time.
Angot keeps her pen name, but at the civil registry she has this year resumed her mother's name, Schwartz, Le Temps reports. The newspaper draws a parallel with Patrick Modiano, noting that in a more intimate, autobiographical and violent register, Angot too keeps writing, in a sense, the same book.
Far from thinning out, Le Temps writes, her body of work has grown denser since her debut in 1990. The paper describes the new book as both an intimate and a political account, using the transmission of the family name as a lens on male domination.
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