Christiane Rochefort (17 July 1917 – 24 April 1998) published some books under the pseudonyms Benoît Becker and Dominique Féjos, before the real beginning of her literary career with Le Repos du guerrier, at the age of 41.Queer Places:
Pere Lachaise Cemetery
Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Christiane Rochefort (17 July 1917 – 24 April 1998) published some books under the pseudonyms Benoît Becker and Dominique Féjos, before the real beginning of her literary career with Le Repos du guerrier, at the age of 41.
After unfinished studies in psychiatry, then ethnology and psychology at the Sorbonne, Christiane Rochefort held office jobs at the Ministry of Information and, for several years, journalism for the Cannes Film Festival from which she was fired. She also worked with Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque de Paris. In September 1960, she signed the Manifesto of the 121, entitled "Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War". An activist, she actively participated in the first MLF and, in 1971, contributed with Simone de Beauvoir, Gisèle Halimi, Jean Rostand and a few others, to create the feminist movement Choisir la cause des femmes. She is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery (22nd Division).
Twice winner of literary prizes (Prix de la Nouvelle Vague in 1958, Prix Médicis in 1988), she developed a composite work in which psychological studies (Les Petits Enfants du siècle, 1961) rubbed shoulders with studies of morals (Le Repos du guerrier, 1958, Encore heureux qu'on va vers l'été, 1975) and works appealing to the supernatural and the excessive baroque. such as Archaos ou le Jardin étincelant (1973), which describes, under the guise of a traditional tale if not an imaginary official historiography, the birth and adventures of the one who will become, by hereditary succession, the King of the country of Archaos.
Christiane Rochefort is best known for her feminist commitment. Member of the MLF, she participated in the laying of wreaths to the wife of the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in 1970. But the author's commitment was much broader: she fought against all dominations. That of adults on children for example, to which she has devoted several books. Interviewed by France Culture in 19764, it said: "We don't know children because while observing them we control and monitor them, simply because we are adults. We are the power, the child knows that he is controlled and that he can be punished." His masterpiece, The Bottom Door (1988), tells the story of the insubordination of a young girl confronted with an incestuous father. In Spring in the Parking lot (1969), a teenager runs away from his family and discovers homosexual love, while Encore heureux qu'on va vers l'été (1975) narrates the elopement of an entire fifth grade. An ecologist, she joined Friends of the Earth in the 1980s and contributed to the journal Le Sauvage, created by the founder of the association. She supported the first ecologist candidate in the presidential election René Dumont. In one of her best-known works, Les Petits Enfants du siècle, "Rochefort tackles urban planning, the violence of architecture, which imposes a way of life and thought, and she denounces the ravages of consumer society," explains French literature professor Martine Sagaert in Nouvelles Questions féministes.. "By the way, I like the literature of revolt, resistance, clarification," summarizes the author in an interview, in 1981.
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