ABSTRACT
In 1985, that self-professed antihumanist and ringleader in the revolt against the Cartesian cogito, Alain Robbe-Grillet, not only published an autobiography, but proclaimed that even in his novels, he had been talking about himself all along, “from the inside.” 1 Should we be surprised at this apparent about-face in favor of a self-expressive literature? The nouveau romancier himself says not, affirming that this autobiographical turn was initially an act of provocation, a deliberate contradiction of his previous theoretical affirmations intended as a revolt against the terrorism of an entrenched antihumanism that had solidified into an ideology. He soon set the project aside, though, and by the time he resumed work on it in the early eighties, a “new humanism” was becoming so prevalent that he was tempted to scrap the original opening, but instead retained it, preluded by three new introductory pages. Hence, however perplexing the theoretical maneuvering of the opening pages may be, one thing at least is immediately evident: for Robbe-Grillet, autobiographical writing is indissociable from an ongoing theoretical battle, in which it constitutes a strategic move. Romanesques—as the three volumes of his autobiography would be entitled—is both a personal and a theoretical work.
