Snapshots by proxy : Witnesses and Scriptors of Forgotten Genocides in the Twenty-First-Century French-Language Fiction

This article analyses the changing structures of the contemporary texts dealing with trauma. What is the place of the witness and the author in these narratives? What role does the reader play? Can we talk about memory migrating outside the text through affective testimony, making the reader a participant as equally important as the author? And what about the authors? Do they enjoy being back into the spotlight? Finally, how do these texts use the photographs in their covers? The paper tries to show in a corpus of four contemporary texts written in French the disappearance of the eyewitness in favour of the second-hand witness, even when it is the author of the narrative himself/herself (see the case of G. Faye). This shift stems not only from memory's migration from the 'centre of the world' to the planetary periphery - a reflection of these writers' own transnational or cross-cultural identities - but also from its journey from the material book to the virtual social network (as in shared media archives like photos and documentaries). Furthermore, these works themselves attest to the central role of visual culture and intermediality in today's society.