ABSTRACT

In 1930, Claude Cahun published Aveux non Avenus, a lengthy collection of diverse texts and photomontages. Taken together, these poetic verses, succinct aphorisms, fragmentary statements and complex images operate as a form of autobiography under erasure, articulating an active, desiring female subject and yet never finally determining ‘her’. Transgressing genre borders, as this work does, is a common strategy in women's erotic writing, since established literary forms are not usually conducive to the enunciation of women's desire as positive and particular. 1 Cahun was ideally placed to utilise such a transgressive strategy to interpellate her desiring ‘self’ between texts, images, body and discourse in Aveux, given the wider remit of her artistic practice during the 1920s.