Folie(s) de seuil: Voix, lieux et mémoires fracturées dans La Folie Elisa Gwenaëlle Aubry

Abstract

This study analyzes La Folie Elisa (2018) by Gwenaëlle Aubry, in which madness becomes a poetics of dissonance, linking personal traumas and collective violence. Our reflection explores how the novel transforms madness into a language of crisis, connecting individual wounds and societal fractures through a liminal space, polyphonic voices, and fragmented memory. The study aims to investigate this redefinition of madness as poetic and political resistance. Drawing on Bachelard, Caruth, and Kristeva, we examine the "madness-house," an organic refuge for four traumatized women: Emy, Sarah, Ariane, and Irini. Their polyphony reveals fractures—dissociation, embodied memory, discursive crisis, and exiled silence. From a political perspective, our analysis shows that madness becomes a form of dissidence through Ariane’s defiance, the women’s sorority, and Irini’s memory. Rejecting pathologization, Aubry crafts a counter-narrative in which the dissonance of marginalized voices reimagines a possible world.