“Deux cents mots et un gros marteau.” Virginie Despentes’s Skillful Construction of an Authorial Posture

This essay identifies and analyses the specific ways in which this female French writer and film maker has created herself as an author out of a biographical focus on her life as a sex worker and rape victim. Relying on the notion of “posture” which I tie in with art sociology and discourse analysis as developed by Pierre Bourdieu and revised by Alain Viala and Jérôme Meizos, I show how Despentes’ authorial posture regulates the transgressive readings of her works.