Sarah Carlotta Hechler
VITA
Biografie
Sarah Carlotta Hechler has defended her thesis in General and Comparative Literature at Free University Berlin in the beginning of 2025 (summa cum laude). She was also member of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School in Literary Studies at FU. Since 2022, she is an associated PhD candidate at the Centre Marc Bloch, where she received a doctoral contract from 2019 to 2022 and where she has co-organized the research area “Critical Thinking in the Plural” (since 2025 “The Art of Critique”). Before, she completed her Master’s degree at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. During her Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and General and Comparative Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, she was a visiting student at Sciences Po Paris and the Venice International University.
Mutterinstitut:
Freie Universität Berlin
FORSCHUNG
Titel der Dissertation:
Lived contradictions, autosociobiographical forms. Annie Ernaux’s materialistic poetics
Institution der Dissertation:
Freie Universität Berlin
Betreuer*in
Prof. Dr. Irene Albers
Forschungsthema
Annie Ernaux uncovers social contradictions in her writings. Through subjective experiences she reveals the effects of objective power structures. My thesis explores how the mediation between the social and the personal, especially as analyzed by Pierre Bourdieu and Simone de Beauvoir, proves central to Ernaux’s autosociobiographical forms. Beyond that, it investigates the decentralization of the subject in forms of objectivation, drawing on Michel Leiris’ autobiographical writing and the thought of Michel Foucault. Starting from the intertwined perspective on psychological and socio-historical ‘facts’ Ernaux develops a materialistic poetics, that, despite her reference to a documentary approach, on the one hand, and to the ‘immediately’ experienced, on the other hand, is not limited to the visible and perceptible. Instead, the apparent ‘naturalness’ of the given becomes questionable in retrospect. This is demonstrated through an analysis of Ernaux’ various forms and methods of writing.