Lecteur idéal, lecteur imaginaire: the intertextual relationship fostered by Linda Lê with an imaginary Ingeborg Bachmann

© Dr. Alexandra KurmannThe French writing author of Vietnamese origin, Linda Lê (1963- ), has spoken of the late Austrian poet-turned-writer, Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), as her literary kin. Having disclosed that she feels haunted by Bachmann, Lê also declares that her novel, Lettre morte (1999), was influenced by Bachmann’s canonized novel, Malina (1971). Further to these admissions, the self-exiled Bachmann also appears as a recurrent subject of study in Lê’s early literary essays and late fiction. Yet, despite such a wealth of direct intertextual references, to date no critical study has broached the subject of their literary relations. The present thesis therefore addresses this issue. In turn, I establish that this intertextual relationship holds particular sway over Lê’s formation as a writer in voluntary exile. At present, Lê is predominantly viewed by scholars as a postcolonial writer. However, the discovery of her engagement with an authoritative voice of the European tradition recasts critical interpretations of Lê’s writing. Rereading Lê through the lens of her relations with Bachmann reveals the associated evolution of an Antigone figure, whose feminist resistance is derived from Lê’s interpretation of Bachmann and of Malina’s narrator as a rebellious dissenter. I demonstrate that through the recurring Antigone motif, Bachmann’s ethical, post-war rhetoric can be heard to speak again in the contemporary, postcolonial context of Lê’s work. Concurrently, I argue that hybridity discourses in Lê’s exile-writing open out a third space of enunciation, which assists in revisiting the source text, Malina. In this way, analysis of the intertextual relationship in question begets a revision of both the work of the predecessor and her literary disciple. Lê is known for eliding her Vietnamese origins, excepting to grieve in her texts for the death of a metonymical father figure, representing her homeland. The ghostly father constitutes an absent “lecteur idéal […] lecteur imaginaire” (ideal […] imaginary reader) to whom Lê declares she writes. However, as the paternal figure fades in the text, I will demonstrate the way in which Bachmann takes his place as an intertextual interlocutor. Employing and differentiating Harold Bloom’s postulation that the burgeoning writer adopts a late precursor to emulate, I argue that Lê replaces her imaginary paternal reader with a female literary forebear. This substitution comes to pass by means of three intertextual processes, which I identify and trace in ten texts, over a sixteen year period in Lê’s early to mid-writing career. Lê can initially be seen to textually appropriate Bachmann the woman and writer in her earliest literary criticism (1989, 1991) by expropriating citations by and about her precursor. I subsequently argue that Lê produces a transformative imitation of Malina in her trilogy, consisting of Les trois Parques, Voix: Une crise and Lettre morte (1997-1999). Lastly, I show how Lê intratextually incorporates her pre-written portrayals of Bachmann as a resistant Antigone figure into her fiction and literary criticism (2000, 2005). The study in hand reveals that this intertextual project is ultimately an endeavour on the part of Lê to belong, in an imaginary sense, to the collectivity of post-war writers who formed her precursor’s literary family in self-exile