Literatures, Cultures, and Languages

Surprenante juxtaposition de deux noms dans cet article dont l'objectif est de suggérer que pour Proust, dans notre passé, au début du XXe siècle, qui est le moment où se situe son écriture, la métaphore s'inscrit dans une problématique du temps et de la longueur, de la durée et de l'espace, contrairement à ce qu'il nomme la « psychologie plane ». Pour Proust, la métaphore communique avec un au delà de la mort. Par opposition, le style de Houellebecq s'inscrit dans le plat, dans notre présent où le style doit être élagué, débarrassé de ses métaphores pour pouvoir avec un certain degré de succès -du moins selon Houellebecq -refléter ce présent. Pas de dépassement ou de transcendance dans l'écriture houellebecquienne.

Nature, Animaux, Taxinomie dans Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique de Michel Tournier Une précaution sur le concept général de bête, animal : on peut affirmer que les vivants, animaux et humains ont en commun d'être vivant, à supposer qu'on puisse en exclure les végétaux. Quelque soient les difficultés à concevoir la vie, ces vivants ont en commun la finitude de la vie, les lieux de cohabitation, habiter et cohabiter, monde et terre. De même, tous ces vivants finis ont rapport à la nature et même si Heidegger nous en disait-ce que je ne dis jamais-que les animaux ne meurent pas, tous les vivants ont une certaine expérience de la mort.

Loïc Rignol’s comprehensive study of French socialist thinkers from the first half of the nineteenth century is a monumental work of scholarship, by its sheer size (763 pages of text and 269 pages of notes) and the impressive range of topics, authors, and primary texts it covers. The premises of this book are simple, but convincing: the rich and complex thought of the likes of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais, among many others, is too often brushed aside as “utopian,” along the lines of Friedrich Engels’s distinction between “scientific socialism” (Karl Marx’s historical materialism) and their so-called “utopian socialism.” However, according to Rignol our perception of these authors labors under a fundamental misconception since these thinkers tried to achieve the exact opposite of what Engels described, and did not self-identify as utopian. For them, only a totalizing philosophical system based on sound scientific principles would be in a position to improve durably the structures of human societies, hence the crucial importance of epistemological reflection as a necessary first step towards the implementation of large-scale sociopolitical changes. Polemically reclaiming the term of “scientific socialism” to describe this phenomenon, Rignol attempts to set the record straight by providing insights into the multiple links between the respective philosophical systems of these authors and the relevant branches of nineteenth-century scientific thought.

A peer-reviewed paper analyzing the reception of multi-lingual Jewish American author Louis Wolfson’s Le schizo et les langues (1970) by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as a watershed moment in the latter’s “Anti-Hegelianism”. The paper focuses on Deleuze’s foreword to Wolfson’s book, titled “Schizologie”, while also arguing that Wolfson’s esthetics had a direct, if largely understudied impact on Deleuzian thought, from the theory of “schizo-analysis” in Anti-Oedipus’ (1973) to The Fold (1988).

[In French]

Laurent Demanze's eclectic study of " encyclopedic fictions, " taking Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet as its point of departure, covers a broad range of works and authors, from modern classics like Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec to contemporary authors like Pierre Bergounioux or Annie Ernaux. The theoretical framework of the study impresses by its coherence and ambition: according to Demanze, studying " encyclopedic fictions " like Queneau's Les Enfants du Limon, Hubert Haddad's L'Univers, or Olivier Rolin's L'Invention du monde offers a privileged vantage point from which to observe the relationship between literature and knowledge.

A peer-reviewed paper on the innovative narratological device of the “unreliable author” in the work of Yiddish Modernist writer Der Nister (1884-1950), focusing on his 1929 short story From my Estate (Fun mayne giter). The article situates the short story in the general context of the evolution of Der Nister’s oeuvre and of Soviet Yiddish literature, while also elaborating on the conceptual implications of the “unreliable author” as a compelling early example of the Foucauldian “death of the author”.

This guest lecture discusses Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s definition of Yiddish language and literature as a crucial element of the concept of ‘minor literature’ in their essay “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature” (1975). While acknowledging the numerous gaps and inaccuracies of Deleuze and Guattari’s description of Yiddish, this talk constitutes an attempt to historicize the debate by asking how Yiddish could become an object of critical inquiry in the first place, and showing how it operates as a concept in the context of their broader philosophical oeuvre.

Guest lecture given on August 27, 2017 at the Denkerei (Berlin) as part of the first Summer University for Yiddish Language and Culture in Berlin, co-organized by the Medem Library (Paris) the Institute for Jewish Studies of Free University of Berlin, and the Institute for Eastern European Studies of the Free University of Berlin.

This interview of Raphael Koenig and Benny Shaffer by Professor Shaun McNiff (University Professor, Expressive Therapies, Institute for Arts and Health, Lesley University) explores the development, goals, and outcomes of the 2019 exhibition and symposium at the Harvard University Asia Center entitled “Eye Eye Nose Mouth: Art, Disability, and Mental Illness in Nanjing, China and Shiga-Ken, Japan”.

McNiff, S. (2019). An Interview with Raphael Koenig and Benny Shaffer: Expanding Normality at the Edges of the Art World in China and Japan. Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (CAET), Pages 14 - 24.

The interview is available online at: https://caet.inspirees.com/caetojsjournals/index.php/caet/article/view/170

A peer-reviewed paper offering a new interpretation of the relationship between surrealist esthetics and Jean Dubuffet’s “art brut”, arguing that the latter constitutes a partial continuation of surrealist practices (automatism, specular function of the “objet trouvé”), while significantly breaking with a number of key tenets of surrealist theory, including the belief in a transcendent “surreal.”
The paper also contrasts the fluid, rapidly evolving nature of surrealist attempts at defining various categories and sub-categories of surrealist objects (“message automatique”, “art sauvage”, “objets-dieux”, “objets de fous”, etc.) with the relative rigidity of Dubuffet’s notion of “art brut”, condemned by Breton as a forced “welding” (soudure) of heterogeneous elements.

This book chapter offers a new interpretation of Hans Prinzhorn’s 1922 Artistry of the Mentally Ill [Bildnerei der Geisteskranken] by taking as its point of departure the material presentation of the book itself (cover, layout, illustrations) as a manifesto for the controversial theoretical ambitions of Prinzhorn’s work, largely based on Ludwig Klages’ anti-rationalist views.

A study of the interplay among Resistance networks, progressive psychiatric practices, artistic creation, multilingualism, and intellectual debates at the Saint-Alban Psychiatric Hospital during the Second World War, focusing on the Saint-Alban group’s interest in the relationship between mental health and social structures, as well as its theoretical and experimental work on the unraveling of language under a number of mental health conditions (involving notable contributions by Georges Canguilhem, Paul Éluard, and François Tosquelles). These developments had a demonstrable impact on Fanon’s anticolonial psychiatry as well as Guattari’s “schizoanalysis”.