“Born to an illiterate father and a mother with little education, I grew up in Drummondville, on Duplessis Street, in a working-class family ruled by fear, the main manifestations of which were hypochondria, xenophobia and homophobia.”
A true phenomenon of the literary spring, Duplessis Streetin which sociologist and presenter Jean-Philippe Pleau recounts his transition from a modest background to a rather enviable status in “the bourgeois world”, has been at the top of the sales charts since its publication in April.
With this autofiction, Jean-Philippe Pleau is part of a tradition consecrated in 2022 by the award of the Nobel Prize to Annie Ernaux; that of stories of class defectors, largely inspired by the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In addition to Ernaux, the author thus follows in the footsteps of Didier Eribon (Back to Reims), Edouard Louis (Putting an end to Eddy Bellegueule), Rose-Marie Lagrave (Pulling Yourself Together: An Autobiographical Investigation by a Feminist Class Defector) or Nicolas Mathieu (Their children after them), to name just a few.
The phenomenon, which follows in the wake of the popularity of self-narratives, is well established in France, but it is only just beginning to emerge in Quebec; which does not prevent it from making a big noise.
“The phenomenon is gaining in importance and visibility because we now have a name for it,” says David Bélanger, professor in the Department of Letters at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières and director of a research project on the subject. “This passage from class to another, a form of initiatory story that replaces the training story of the 19th centurye century, is not new. What is new is the way of considering it in the discourse.”
For several years, a major movement has aimed to highlight, through the media, inter-institutional struggles that have remained invisible and marginalized for too long, particularly those concerning the rights of LGBTQ+ and racialized people, as well as postcolonial struggles. “We are experiencing a certain backlash linked to a left-wing populism, led by white people who might be in positions of authority, and who want to show other dominations in place, economic and cultural dominations, for example. The stories of class defectors are a way for people of white origin to register in this great narrative of emancipation that everyone wants to be a part of. They offer a discourse and a grammar to belong to it, by raising questions about class and the social framework that prevents mobility,” adds the researcher.
Luck or merit?
It is therefore no coincidence that stories of class defectors also attract a lot of criticism and cynicism. “The great popularity of these stories comes at a time when the social elevator is broken,” explains Karine Rosso, professor in the Department of Literary Studies at UQAM, who is currently preparing a conference on the subject. “We saw this in France, with the Yellow Vest movement, which exposed the extent to which people are losing privileges at the moment. The media promotes stories of upward social mobility because they defend, in a way, meritocracy, this idea of “If you want, you can” advocated by the republican system of education in which we would all be equal, provided we work hard.”
The stories designated as belonging to the genre of the class defector only concern stories of social ascension. Although the opposite exists, it is not named as such by the media and the literary world. Not to mention that the defector often turns out to be much more critical of his background than of his arrival background.
“Although he borrows from Marxist vocabulary, the class defector generally removes any notion of class from his story, as well as the reflection that results from it on the exploitation and alienation of workers,” recalls Simon Harel, professor of literature at the Université de Montréal and director of the Laboratoire sur les récits du soi mobile. “The name says it all. A defector is someone who has crossed over to the other side. Most of the time, he tells of a world that he has chosen to leave behind. This notion allows one to situate oneself in the social world, to look at the past with contempt, regret or nostalgia, but not to become an agent of social transformation. We fall into a dimension associated with the working classes that can easily become exotic or folkloric. And we do not necessarily question the voice that we give to these classes in the novel.”
According to David Bélanger, it takes a lot of tact on the part of a writer to move beyond the individual revolution and the meritocratic idea, and thus avoid a social demobilization on the part of readers. “We have two magnificent examples of this in Quebec, which are the novel Where I hide by Caroline Dawson, and the essay Cecile and Marx by Michel Lacroix, both of which are shaped by the authors’ awareness of their luck. By emphasizing social obstacles and showing the exceptional nature of their journeys, these two authors manage to rhetorically create a sense of solidarity, reinforce the feeling of injustice and mobilize readers.
Recurring themes
Although research on class defector narratives is in its infancy in Quebec, it is difficult to ignore certain recurring motifs in the texts, directly inspired by the French tradition.
Leading the way? A double shame, as described by the French philosopher Chantal Jacquet. Thus, writers recount a certain contempt for their background, an anger linked to the inability of their parents to transmit the codes of a society to which they have difficulty adapting. This first shame can take the form of resentment, and thus create an impression of betrayal towards the family. The double shame occurs when the author, now at the top of the ladder, looks with empathy and love at this background which, deep down, played a role in the person he has become. The defector is then ashamed of being ashamed, and tries to cultivate a feeling of pride in his origins. This is what Jean-Philippe Pleau describes as being “a Duncan Hines cake on which truffle icing has been scrunched”. Benoit Jodoin also mentions it extensively in the essay Why I don’t write, also published this year.
According to Karine Rosso, this shame is rooted in the very etymology of the term. ““Transfuge” comes from the Latin transfugawhich means deserter. The word was first used in the military to describe traitors, then in politics to designate someone who changes parties. Chantale Jacquet suggests instead using the term “transclasse”, which would be stripped of its pejorative values, would describe a social movement that is both ascending and descending” and, one can assume, would leave aside these feelings of guilt, imposture and other subjective manifestations, reducing the question to the person themselves.
If it is difficult to understand why the concept of class defector is so widely used today, it is notably because this type of story has always existed in literature, particularly in fiction, whether we think of Balzac’s Rastignac, Stendhal’s Julien Sorel or, closer to us, Francine Noël’s Maryse; characters who today benefit from a retrospective reading.
For Karine Rosso, stories of transclassification deserve to be dissected from an intersectional perspective. “The sociologist of literature Kaoutar Harchi has made a criticism, which I share, on the fact that we do not often take into account the intersection between class and race in this type of story. In Quebec, we were lucky with Caroline Dawson to have access to a story that crosses these two dimensions. If we reread France Théorêt, we find ourselves at the intersection of class and gender, while Édouard Louis and Didier Eribon spoke of class issues mixed with oppression linked to sexual orientation. These stories offer a myriad of research possibilities, and we are still only at the very beginning.”