woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131\u00e0 <\/em>l\u2019aide.<\/em>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Pauline Klein, Alice Kahn (Paris: \u00c9ditions Allia, 2010).<\/span> <\/em>Written in a smaller font than the one used for the rest of the novel, this obscure dedication can easily be overlooked. To miss it\u200a\u2014\u200athough it is seemingly addressed to the reader\u200a\u2014\u200awould mean one had missed an important indicator of the overall tone of the book, as well as an important indication of how its content should be addressed. This cry for help is faintly shouted with the last breath of a slowly suffocating heroine.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nWho is she? We might never really figure it out save for the fact that she is the first-person, omniscient, female narrator and quite a schizophrenic one at that. What we know though is that she is slowly transforming herself into Anna, one of those \u201cgallery girls.\u201d Who is Anna then? Anna is an invention, a fiction of a young woman constructed through the gaze of a desiring man, William. On a sunny afternoon, sitting at a caf\u00e9, William came to her and asked if she was Anna. She spontaneously answered \u201cyes,\u201d but this statement was only true in its becoming. So this is how it all started for Anna. \u201cAnd me, I would be his work of art. He chose me on that terrasse to mould me to his ideas, to his delirium. To be his reality.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Ibid., 86. Loosely translated from the original text: \u201cEt moi, je serais son \u0153uvre. Il m\u2019a choisie sur cette terrasse pour me conformer \u00e0 ses id\u00e9es, \u00e0 son d\u00e9lire. Pour \u00eatre sa r\u00e9alit\u00e9.\u201d<\/span> The shell of a ghost is what Anna is.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe confessional tone of the novel brings to mind the author, Pauline Klein, who always desired to be invisible. Even more so after working as a gallery assistant in New York. Adding to the hall-of-mirrors effect, the book conjures Klein\u2019s desire to produce art without having to be an artist, and her insecurity about being in the public eye, while commenting on her experience not so much of the art world, but more specifically of the ways in which women conform to stereotypes. Yet could this mysterious author be a ghostwriter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait, the title\u2014who is this Alice Kahn? Alice Kahn is a ghost artist, another imaginary character created by the narrator, and who sometimes happens to be Anna. In order to fulfill her role as Anna for William, using fake credentials the heroine gains employment at a gallery, writes (real?) articles about fictional exhibitions by Alice Kahn for an art magazine, and promotes false rumours about Kahn\u2019s practice. Alice Kahn\u2019s practice consists of interventions in which she introduces a work of art of her own within an already existing exhibition without anyone noticing. Functioning as parasites, her artworks infiltrate the practices of other artists, thereby acquiring the aesthetic and monetary value of her host.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another art practice, again a parasitical one, is at work within the story. A little more discreet, situated between the project of the author and that of Alice, is the construction of Anna by the narrator. Almost pathologically, the heroine\u200a\u2014\u200awho is not Pauline, nor Anna, nor Alice\u200a\u2014\u200ais inventing a new self outside of herself, like an object. She carries her self out. She talks to her like a puppet, refers to her as a statue, as a doll, using the third person to talk about, to talk to, her other self. Even her voice sounds like it is emerging from an out-of-body experience. There is no mirror in Anna\u2019s home. Only Anna to look into, to see herself. One could almost refer to reverse personification, considering that she treats her Anna like something nonhuman. This is like a sculpture, or should I say, Anna is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only one who does not dissimulate his art practice is William, an exhibiting, somewhat established photographer. Throughout the novel, we are reminded by the narrator about his struggle in the face of a creative block. Oh, but just when he thinks he has discovered Anna\u2019s trickery about Alice\u2019s art practice, and stops caring about finding out who the real woman behind Anna\/Alice is, he picks up his camera again. At this point in the novel we are told: \u201cFall has come, and it is too cold to wear dresses.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Ibid., 126. Loosely translated from: \u201cLorsqu\u2019en septembre il a commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 faire trop froid pour se mettre en robe, je me suis mise \u00e0 enfiler un costume invisible pour que William ne me voit plus du tout.\u201d <\/span> As such, the heroine can now wear one of her invisible costumes and completely vanish. Fin<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAlice Kahn<\/em>\u2019s unfolding play of references shadows Sophie Calle\u2019s autofictions, but it would not be the first time a novel directly references Calle\u2019s work.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - For instance, Gr\u00e9goire Bouillier\u2019s L\u2019invit\u00e9 myst\u00e8re <\/em>(Paris: Allia, 2004), or more famously, Paul Auster\u2019s Leviathan<\/em> (New York: Viking Press, 1992).<\/span> Alice Kahn<\/em> is equally indebted to Andr\u00e9 Breton\u2019s Nadja <\/em>since both novels depict their heroine as supreme object of desire. Consequently, Alice Kahn <\/em>isyetanother brilliant addition to the tradition of written art objects of the likes of Mich\u00e8le Bernstein, Catherine Millet, and Chris Kraus, who construct literary projects with minutiae, using their feminine experience as material, with ambition to create abstract formal considerations not so far from Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s Un coup de d\u00e9s jamais n\u2019abolira le <\/em>hasard,5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9, Un coup de d\u00e9s jamais n\u2019abolira le hasard<\/em> (Paris: Gallimard, 1914). Translation: \u201cA throw of the dice will never abolish chance.\u201d<\/span> or as our heroine puts it: \u201cUn coup […], un silence, un hasard \u00e0 la Alice Kahn.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Klein, Alice Kahn,<\/em> 41. Translation: \u201cA trick [\u2026] a silence, a chance in the style of Alice Kahn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nAlice Kahn<\/em> also owes something to Volaire\u2019s Candide <\/em>and Oscar Wilde\u2019s Dorian Gray<\/em> in that its duplicitous heroine presents herself as an ingenue. Yet, as the heroine is an uncanny incarnation of the author, it is easy to believe that Pauline Klein\u2019s project is a calculated and deliberate manoeuvre to discreetly enter the terrain of sensitive topics such as the place of women in the art world. A ludicrous comment on feminism, the novel ultimately shares affinities, both in style and content, with Qu\u2019avons-nous fait de la r\u00e9volution sexuelle\u2009? <\/em>by Marcela Iacub, who, in her book, also gives the naive character a semblance of a neutral and innocent voice in order to approach difficult questions of gender inequality without making waves, to ultimately \u201cargue that the sexual revolution of the 1970s was, in part, a failure in that it abandoned its emancipatory ambitions.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Marcella Iacub, Qu\u2019avez-vous fait de la r\u00e9volution sexuelle\u2009? Conte sociologique<\/em> (Paris: Flammarion, 2002) 55.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n