The Spaces and Times of Abortion Complexity. Embodiment and Interruption in Contemporary Francophone Aborto-socio-biographies

Abstract

This thesis proposes a new theoretical framework of “abortion complexity” for analysing contemporary abortion narratives, considering the ways in which aborto-socio-biographical narratives of the extrême contemporain reorient and refigure space(s) and time(s). This concept encompasses a twofold objective: firstly, shifting, or widening legal-centric analyses of abortion towards ones foregrounding the emotional and affective dimension of this reproductive act; secondly, acknowledging the ambiguity within this affectivity to illustrate that abortion is a spectrum of experiences, rather than a dichotomy. Contributing to a timely increase in the awareness of abortion rights in the French social and cultural imaginary, this thesis examines ultra-contemporary autobiographical works from the post-MeToo era by Désirée Frappier, Aude Mermilliod, Sandra Vizzavona, and Pauline Harmange, in forms ranging from graphic narrative to essay, engaging with the lived and embodied reality of abortion (hi)stories. Addressing the spatial politics of graphic narrative, the first half explores the ways in which abortion’s spatialities are reoriented to facilitate a sense of bodily grounding and ownership for avortées, emphasising the ambiguous and complex representations of inside versus outside at the core of embodied experiences of pregnancy and abortion, as well as the regulation of reproducing/reproductive bodies. The second half turns to reorientations of pregnant temporalities, arguing that abortion and its narratives interrupt a quintessentially futural pregnant time by transforming it into a subjective progressive presentness of (self-)caring which entraps, empowers, extends, and evacuates, and permits aborto-socio-biographical transmission. More broadly, this thesis invites reflection on the possibilities encountered when using affectivity and emotion to inform our laws, politics, spaces, and times. It therefore advocates for an abortion politics of love and goodness, arguing for the emancipatory potential of reproductive justice as a tool for literary analysis, and literary analysis as a tool for reproductive justice.