Lou Kanche - literature

Show & Culture

The Autonomy of the Snake is a contemporary fiction with gothic accents. It explores how trauma, by breaking in, transforms our perception of reality and the way we inhabit the world. The project is a continuation of my first novel, Rien que le soleil (Grasset, 2021), notably through the exploration of stream of consciousness, fantasy, and masculinities, while embracing new formal ambitions. The text follows Esther Keller, a historian sent to the heart of the Bauges massif to assess a medieval statue. Very quickly, she encounters administrative complications... until the day she opens the wrong door. A cruel, paranoid tale, The Autonomy of the Snake explores the links between desire and danger, the curiosity of girls, and rape culture. The title also refers to Aby Warburg and the motif of survival: the art historian was interested in the motif of the snake, seeing it as a resurgence of an ancient motif in later Renaissance art. In a similar manner, "a thing" survives here that the narrator neither sees nor names, but which compels her to act. One enters somewhere, a bit like in Bluebeard's chamber: "(...) it's the key to the cabinet at the end of the long gallery of the lower apartment: open everything, go everywhere; but as for this little cabinet, I forbid you to enter it (...) And the closer you get to what burns, the darker it gets."