In this episode, we discuss the powerful, magisterial closing pages of Annie Ernaux’s The Years (pp.182-225) alongside philosophical work in progress by Alice Harberd, one of our hosts. In this paper, Alice considers various ‘narrative’ theories of the self, and argues that, when it comes to the articulation of a sense of self, ‘narrativity is a choice’. We examine Ernaux’s intertwining of personal and sociological selves and ponder to what extent it embraces, or resists, narrative form. We are joined in the UCL Studio by Emmanuel Campion-Dye, a Philosophy PhD student and an ever spirited and probing member of our Philosophy and Literature Reading Group.

Hosts: 

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Guest:

Emmanuel Campion-Dye, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss the experience and the representation of the self in time. We consider philosophical approaches to the question of personal change, focusing on a paper by Marya Schechtman entitled ‘Glad it Happened: Personal Identity and Ethical Depth’. Is the self diachronic, extending over time? Or is it episodic, identical with itself only for short periods?

For Schechtman, self-experience is multiperspectival, comprising both temporally extended and temporally local perspectives; we contain many selves and this fact is central to the complexity of our moral life. We look closely at pages 137-182 of Annie Ernaux’s The Years to see whether the author’s rendering of her own self in time reflects such multiperspectivalism.

Hosts: 

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss Annie Ernaux’s writing in The Years alongside a paper by Jenefer Robinson entitled ‘Style and Personality in the Literary Work’. We consider Robinson’s assertion that an author’s style expresses their personality, and set it in the context of influential views of style formulated by such modernists as Flaubert, Joyce, and T.S. Eliot, and by such literary theorists as Barthes, Bakhtin, and Kristeva. Ernaux’s own study of literature coincided with the heyday of literary theory in France. We use Robinson’s paper as a starting-point for reflection on the purposes and effects of the impersonal style Ernaux crafts in The Years.

Hosts: Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London and Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss Annie Ernaux’s The Years alongside, an article by Prof. Lucy O’Brien entitled ‘Shameful Self-Consciousness’. Shame, according to this paper, is a feeling which arises when we become conscious of ourselves as diminished by another’s appraisal of our social value. Prof. O’Brien joins us in the studio to discuss Ernaux’s frequent portrayals of shame in The Years and to consider how well they fit the theory outlined in her paper.

Hosts: 

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Guest: 

Lucy O’Brien, Richard Wollheim Chair of Philosophy at University College London.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of sociology to Annie Ernaux’s Nobel-Prize-winning literary project, specifically focusing on the influence of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’. Our special guest, Clare Carlisle, Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, introduces the concept, explaining what Bourdieu hoped to achieve by coining a new term to designate the idea of a collective disposition or class sensibility. Together, focusing on the opening of The Years (2008), Ernaux’s magnum opus, we consider the ways in which the book’s treatment of self, class, and nation can be read as ‘applied Bourdieu’. 

Our philosophical starting-point is a chapter by Karl Maton entitled ‘Habitus’ and published in Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, ed. Michael Grenfell, 2012. 

Our literary focus is on pages x-51 of Annie Ernaux’s The Years in Alison L. Strayer’s translation (Fitzcarraldo, 2018).

Hosts: 

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Guest: 

Clare Carlisle, Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London.

Literature in the Age of the Self: A Conversation with Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, and Vidyan Ravinthiran

This bonus episode consists in a recording of an authorial roundtable held at University College London on the 16th June 2025. Entitled ‘Literature in the Age of the Self’, it brought together three highly acclaimed contemporary writers whose work evinces a marked preoccupation with the experience and the representation of the self. 

In this conversation chaired by Scarlett and Alice, Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, and Vidyan Ravinthiran discuss the self in connection with notions of style, character, and time. They also reflect on the relations between creative and academic writing, between literature and other arts, and on the status of the self in the age of AI and social media.

Guest Speakers: 

Rachel Cusk, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and playwright.

Brian Dillon, essayist, memoirist, novelist, and curator.

Vidyan Ravinthiran, poet and memoirist and Associate Professor of English at Harvard.

Hosts: 

Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.

Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

In this episode, we discuss the fifth and final section of Cusk’s Outline alongside a draft book chapter by James Lewis entitled The Peculiar Allure of Another’s Aesthetic Worldview. Lewis argues that appreciating someone’s aesthetic tastes is a central part of achieving intimacy with them. We discuss Cusk’s narrator’s prose style as a reflection of her aesthetic taste and ponder what it allows us to infer about her sense of self.

Speaker names:

• Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
• Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.
• Dr James Lewis, Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University.

In this episode, we discuss Chapter 6 of Cusk’s Outline alongside an essay by Murdoch called The Idea of Perfection. In this essay, Murdoch argues that the way we pay attention to the world is ethically significant. We talk about how Cusk’s narrator attends to the world, and what this leads the reader to infer about her character and sense of self.

Speaker names:

• Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
• Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.

In this episode, we discuss Chapter 5 of Cusk’s Outline alongside Chapters 3 to 5 of Taylor’s book, The Ethics of Authenticity. Taylor identifies a tension between the sense of identity which is derived from belonging to a community, and contemporary culture’s emphasis on the importance of individual self-creation. We reflect on the ways in which Cusk’s book represents this tension.

Speaker names:

• Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
• Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.

In this episode, we talk about Chapters 2 and 3 of Rachel Cusk’s Outline alongside a chapter from Williams’s book Truth and Truthfulness. The chapter considers the differences between sincerity and authenticity as contending ideals of truthfulness about the self. These two ideals, on Williams’s argument, entail different ways of thinking about the self. We contrast Williams’s notion of authenticity with that invoked by various characters in Outline.

Speaker names:

• Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
• Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.