Explorations identitaires dans les « confessions » d'Eugène Ionesco

Résumé (en anglais)

Even if the word identity is very much used, research in this field, mainly connected to individual identity, are still interesting from whatever theoretical point of view they are approached. Ionesco's texts, Journal en miettes (1967), Présent passé Passé présent (1968) and La quête intermittente (1987), which I will try to examine in connection with the generous and difficult theme of identity show the reader a speaking self searching for his psychic being and, at the same time, for the « place » where this « profound identification » stands, place where the universal and the particular, the impersonal and its personalization can be seen. The article comments on the discourse itinerary of Ionesco's hero, points out his postures either as agent or as patient, signals the traps he faces whenever he attempts to « make affects and adjoining phantasms accessible to verbal thinking » (J. McDougall, 1982: Théâtres du Je, p. 150 – translated by me), as well as his capacity not only to realize the emotional toxicity of these obstacles, but also to sometimes liberate himself thanks to his vocation of writing self.