The children without stories (Les enfants sans histoires)

My talk will explore questions of integration into and separation from communities through contemporary French and Norwegian texts, written from a parent or sibling perspective, about a family member with a neurodevelopmental disorder – mostly autism and/or intellectual disability – that leaves them with little or no language. In France, these works include philosopher Elisabeth de Fontenay’s Gaspard de la nuit (2018), author and director Matthieu Mével’s Un vagabond dans la langue (2020), and author and journalist Minh Tran Huy’s Un enfant sans histoire (2022), from which I borrow my title. These texts have in common that they build on personal experiences and that they combine life writing with meta-thematical reflections on literature, art, and language. A similar current can be observed in Norwegian contemporary literature, where Tordis Ørjasæter (2021) argues that authors writing about “The Different Child” now constitute a community in themselves, built around intertextual references and common themes, in which “we are not alone”. But who, in this context, are “we”? A comparative view of these two national-literary trends can serve to highlight similarities and differences regarding both literary developments and cultural perceptions of neurodevelopmental disorders in France and Norway. What does these texts say about the ‘different child’s’ integration into or separation from communities such as the family or society (schools, work life, institutions)? And what kind of literary or textual communities do these authors write themselves into – and out of – when they set forth to write about ‘the children without stories’?