Women writing in contemporary France

94 Writing the dynamics of identity
‘a neat definition’ of the literary genre of the blazon in all its variations
(blason poétique, blason-médaillon (medallion blazon), blason satirique
(satirical blazon)), especially since it was a short-lived form: ‘the blasons
anatomiques du corps féminin [anatomical blazons of the female body]
have been regarded by sixteenth-century scholars as an ephemeral vogue
springing into existence in the 1530s with Clément Marot’s Beau tetin
[beautiful breast], only to disappear into obscurity again, a few years later
as suddenly as it had appeared’. 9 Saunders also reminds us that blason,a
heraldic term which usually denotes the combination of illustration and
accompanying text, is ambivalent when applied to titles of poems: it may
well be commonly understood as praise of a woman’s body, but that does
not explain why the term ‘contreblason’ (counterblazon) was coined
simultaneously to designate its negative opposite. Saunders sums up the
difficulty of the blason poétique, a poetic form previously considered so
minor that du Bellay himself ‘disdains to mention such a genre which he
would presumably have ranked among the “episseries qui corrumpent le
goust de notre Langue” [spices which corrupt the taste of our Language]’
(p. 11). No wonder, therefore, that the same ambiguity and complexity can
be traced in Detambel’s version of the blason poétique, where she takes on
the challenging task of redefining the relationship between language and
the body. Detambel’s strikingly clinical writing of the body, a clear leitmotif
in her work, is in fact persistently intermingled with an analysis of the
writer’s role, a questioning of her tools, history, function and future.
Under Detambel’s sharp pen or scalpel – or at the end of her fingertips
typing on a computer, to use one of her up-to-date images of the writer’s
accessories – anatomy and desire become fused with the desire for
writing. Desire is inscribed as the desire for a new dissection of the
writer’s body and mind.
How ‘new’ is Detambel’s writing of the body or her re-presentation of
the writer? The discussion which follows will offer potential answers and
raise further questions on this subject. It is evident from Germaine Greer’s
The Whole Woman or Michel Serres’s Variations sur le corps, or indeed
from the exhibition ‘Spectacular Bodies’ (London, Hayward Gallery,
2000), that the body, the battlefield and old war-horse of feminist theory, is
also on the current philosophical and cultural agenda. 10 Like Susan Faludi
in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man, Detambel turns her gaze in
Blasons d’un corps masculin (blazons of a male body) to the representation
of masculinity. 11 It is not easy to say, however, who or what is ‘betrayed’ by
Detambel’s text: the image of the modern man, the phantasms of a modern