Renegotiating Narrative Coherence: Édouard Louis’ Autobiographical Novel History of Violence as “Multidirectional Testimony” of Sexual Trauma

The autobiographical 2016 novel History of Violence by the French author Édouard Louis is commonly read as a personal trauma narrative, as it recounts an experience of sexual violence the author has had and seeks to reestablish his self, which was left shattered by this very experience. Yet, in one of its main scenes, the novel stages how one of the conventions for personal trauma narratives, i.e. narrative coherence, precisely prohibits the reestablishment of narrator Edouard’s self. This article investigates how Historyof Violence, especially through its digressive set-up, renegotiates the coherence norm for personal trauma narratives. It considers how this set-up exposes the racial and sexual lines along which conventional, coherent trauma narratives are elaborated, and coins and explores a new concept for the type of trauma narrative that it considers History of Violence to be instead: a multidirectional testimony of personal trauma.