Becoming Édouard Louis and the Transmedial Social Novel

This article considers Édouard Louis’s extensive literary œuvre from En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (2014) to his latest novel, Monique s’évade (2024), in conjunction with his interactions in the public sphere. It first explores how the space of the novel becomes as much a space of exploration of the various processes of domination that shaped his and his family’s lives as it is a space of self-reinvention. In particular, it is Louis’s transformation practice that guides this article. Indeed, this article looks at the ways in which Louis engages in processes of branding, be it the act of making a product or the act of marking something or someone, in turn building one coherent cultural figure commited to social justice and making audible and visible vulnerable lived experiences. Not only an écrivain engagé, Louis has also become a theatre performer and a political activist who deploys and controls his narrative in literature and beyond.