Gothic and Quasi-Gothic Aesthetic and the Mise en Abîme in Two Examples of Gay Men’s Life Writing About AIDS

• Main Author: Tomasz BASIUK
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) 2014-12-01
• Series: E-REA
• Subjects: Hervé Guibert; Mark Thompson; Sida; mise en abîme; gothic; prosopopeia
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/erea/4162

This comparison between Hervé Guibert’s autofiction and Mark Thompson’s memoir is focused on their use of the mise en abîme. Thompson’s unacknowledged use of the mise en abîme is symptomatic of the incoherence pervading his self-narrative. Thompson covers up moments of incoherence in his Gay Body—moments which represent missed occasions for self-reflexivity—by dissertating on Jungian psychology, with the odd result that textual effects readable as mise en abîme morph into a gothic, and gothic-like, aesthetic. In his earlier À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie, Guibert deploys the mise en abîme to indicate that self-examination need not result in positing a substantive content of the self. Guibert’s intellectual willingness to accept this paradoxical outcome reflects his readiness to play a witness to himself and others, in life and in death. His interest in himself and others is a form of love, capable of countering the stigmatizing shame, which Thompson struggles to overcome with his Jungian insights.