The canonical critical take on the ninth section of Louis Zukofsky’s long poem “A” tends to estab... more The canonical critical take on the ninth section of Louis Zukofsky’s long poem “A” tends to establish it as exemplary of his purportedly hyperbolically difficult, elitist and procedural mode of writing. However, this reading, focused on the proficiency of an ideal reader, appears to be the product of a static interpretation of the text which fails to account for the multiplicity of poetic gestures composing it and for the inquiry on the legible on which it is predicated.
Journée des doctorants de Paris 3 (VORTEX -ED 384). Le 4 avril 2009. Désirs de monuments chez Ezr... more Journée des doctorants de Paris 3 (VORTEX -ED 384). Le 4 avril 2009. Désirs de monuments chez Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams et Robert Smithson.
The multiplication of inaugural gestures in William Vollmann’s The Rifles is, paradoxically, pair... more The multiplication of inaugural gestures in William Vollmann’s The Rifles is, paradoxically, paired to a stubborn refusal to offer the reader a frame of reference within which it might be read. «Text», «book» or «dream» are as indefinite a characterization as could be wished for and, all we discover on the title page, is an enigmatic list of events standing in both for a generic tag and for a statement of the text’s argument. Such a strategy seems geared at dramatizing the crossing of this textual threshold while referring us back to the unadulterated, inductive activity of reading which alone is capable of reconstructing a narrative sequence from this allusive and disjunctive list. Yet, a certain degree of indeterminacy remains. In so far as it is generated by a writerly activity that is only hinted at by the phrasal verb “disassembled from”, this list cannot not merely be considered as a metonymy of the text to come. Must we not recognize that, depending on how we identify what has been disassembled, we find ourselves confronted to an array of possible readings each with its own methodology and objectives? Recognizing the impossibility of an a priori characterization of the text, we consequently turn to its composition as a guide for our reading. The importance of source material (whether archival or contemporary), the span it covers from quasi-documentary sociological sequence to personal testimony and its inclusion of graphic documents all suggest The Rifles’ proximity with the methodology of historical enquiry, distancing it from the literary. This epistemological preoccupation with facts and systems (as opposed to narratives), materialized by the title of this text understood as a programmatic, analytic concept, would announce the disassembly of the form of the novel as well as of the heroic and picturesque narratives of Franklin that could have supported it. This hypothesis would help to explain the strategic importance of paratext in the novel, as an ideal place from which this challenge to the literary might be made. In so far as it blurs the distinction between the referential and the diegetic, the paratext indicates metonymically that this text does not function as an organic whole but gestures towards a topical context, a pragmatic objective, a rational paradigm. It therefore comes as no surprise if Vollmann should choose this vantage to state what appears to be the purpose of the text, writing to the Makivik Corporation: "Tell me if there is anything that can be done, anything that you are doing, that has hope of addressing these long term problems, and if there is anything that my readers (by and large, US and British people of average decency, without much real knowledge of the Inuit) can learn from you, do with you or help you with." (401) As is suggested here, the author literally intends to put the text to work, informing the reader of a repressed historical truth and hence hoping to convert the latter from a passive aesthetic bystander to a social activist. Yet, this optimistic call to action based on the reinstatement of fact seems to be undermined, if only by the very limited scope of the readership considered and the apparent indifference of the Makivik Corporation to Vollmann’s proposal. The idealism of this posture of setting the records straight is far more ambiguous than might have been thought at first. As we read, we come to realize that the possibility of historical discourse, and the action which is predicated on it, are challenged by an arctic space not merely hostile but utterly foreign to it. Not only is narrativity disassembled but also the possibility of fact, universal reason, causality, objects and documents. This chapter argues that the notion of “dream”, evoked in the title of the series, comes to signify not so much the vague ambition to re-enchant the bleak reality of the arctic world but to qualify this constant shuttling back and forth between systematic enquiry and narrative quest which exposes the common dream of agency and liberation at the root of the expeditions of both the 19th and 20th centuries: that western history might be capable of fashioning and redeeming itself.
Texte de cadrage critique de la journée d'étude « Modernisme et Radicalisme : des traditions irré... more Texte de cadrage critique de la journée d'étude « Modernisme et Radicalisme : des traditions irréconciliables » organisé à la Sorbonne Nouvelle le 20 Mars 2010. Établir un panorama critique du rapport entre politique et esthétique dans l'Amérique des années 20 et 30 est une entreprise redoutable. Certes, l'on peut choisir de se fier à la distinction que nous avons choisi de remettre en scène à l'occasion de cette journée d'étude et répéter avec Walter Benjamin « [qu'] à l'esthétisation de la politique pratiquée par le fascisme, le communisme n'aurait eu d'autre choix que de politiser l'esthétique ». Toutefois, l'on se rend vite compte, non seulement que cette décision d'esthétiser le politique se retrouve chez les radicaux, mais plus fondamentalement combien cette antinomie demeure, au mieux, heuristique, rétrospective. Pour qui se penche d'un peu plus près sur la question, cette dualité commode entre modernisme et radicalisme recouvre, en fait, une multiplicité de voix divergentes et contribue à mettre en scène a posteriori un débat qui ne se fit pas à l'époque ou, du moins, pas dans ces termes. La question de savoir quels discours peuvent être convoqués pour conceptualiser cette période se pose également dès lors que l'on reconnaît, non seulement, la fréquence avec laquelle cette période fut revisitée au cours de la seconde moitié du 20 e siècle et combien ces interrogations bénéficient d'une histoire longue qui remonte au moins jusqu'à la République de Platon et la distinction praxis/poésis faite dans L'Ethique à Nicomaque d'Aristote. Faut-il considérer que les termes du débat sont définis à l'échelle mondiale sous la double impulsion de l'Internationale et du réseau informel des amitiés modernistes ou, qu'au contraire, la circulation des textes et des discours voile la spécificité des scènes nationales? Comment étudier une opposition dont un des termes n'émergera qu'a posteriori ? Enfin, même lorsque l'on s'attache à définir notre corpus critique de manière restrictive comment rendre compte de l'incroyable variété des biographies, manifestes, histoires littéraires, anthologies, essais, textes critiques qui pendant ces années tentent de constituer, de réevaluer et de rendre compte d'un mouvement historique en train de se faire souvent de manière contradictoire et changeante. Ce foisonnement est peut-être le phénomène le plus marquant de cette période et mérite dès lors lui-même d'être examiné. Certes, l'on pourrait regretter, comme le fait Johan Huizinga dans « History's Changing Form », que l'accélération entropique propre au début du 20 e siècle aie constitué le présent même comme objet historique et aie fait de chaque vie individuelle une preuve du devenir collectif au prix même de la rigueur historique. On pourrait au contraire y voir le désir des auteurs radicaux et modernistes d'anticiper leur propre pérennité littéraire, en reprenant les codes de la très populaire collection des American Men of Letters qui s'évertuait à établir un rapport empirique entre les Vincent Bucher Journée d'étude: Modernism/Radicalism 20 mars 2010
The canonical critical take on the ninth section of Louis Zukofsky’s long poem “A” tends to estab... more The canonical critical take on the ninth section of Louis Zukofsky’s long poem “A” tends to establish it as exemplary of his purportedly hyperbolically difficult, elitist and procedural mode of writing. However, this reading, focused on the proficiency of an ideal reader, appears to be the product of a static interpretation of the text which fails to account for the multiplicity of poetic gestures composing it and for the inquiry on the legible on which it is predicated.
Journée des doctorants de Paris 3 (VORTEX -ED 384). Le 4 avril 2009. Désirs de monuments chez Ezr... more Journée des doctorants de Paris 3 (VORTEX -ED 384). Le 4 avril 2009. Désirs de monuments chez Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams et Robert Smithson.
The multiplication of inaugural gestures in William Vollmann’s The Rifles is, paradoxically, pair... more The multiplication of inaugural gestures in William Vollmann’s The Rifles is, paradoxically, paired to a stubborn refusal to offer the reader a frame of reference within which it might be read. «Text», «book» or «dream» are as indefinite a characterization as could be wished for and, all we discover on the title page, is an enigmatic list of events standing in both for a generic tag and for a statement of the text’s argument. Such a strategy seems geared at dramatizing the crossing of this textual threshold while referring us back to the unadulterated, inductive activity of reading which alone is capable of reconstructing a narrative sequence from this allusive and disjunctive list. Yet, a certain degree of indeterminacy remains. In so far as it is generated by a writerly activity that is only hinted at by the phrasal verb “disassembled from”, this list cannot not merely be considered as a metonymy of the text to come. Must we not recognize that, depending on how we identify what has been disassembled, we find ourselves confronted to an array of possible readings each with its own methodology and objectives? Recognizing the impossibility of an a priori characterization of the text, we consequently turn to its composition as a guide for our reading. The importance of source material (whether archival or contemporary), the span it covers from quasi-documentary sociological sequence to personal testimony and its inclusion of graphic documents all suggest The Rifles’ proximity with the methodology of historical enquiry, distancing it from the literary. This epistemological preoccupation with facts and systems (as opposed to narratives), materialized by the title of this text understood as a programmatic, analytic concept, would announce the disassembly of the form of the novel as well as of the heroic and picturesque narratives of Franklin that could have supported it. This hypothesis would help to explain the strategic importance of paratext in the novel, as an ideal place from which this challenge to the literary might be made. In so far as it blurs the distinction between the referential and the diegetic, the paratext indicates metonymically that this text does not function as an organic whole but gestures towards a topical context, a pragmatic objective, a rational paradigm. It therefore comes as no surprise if Vollmann should choose this vantage to state what appears to be the purpose of the text, writing to the Makivik Corporation: "Tell me if there is anything that can be done, anything that you are doing, that has hope of addressing these long term problems, and if there is anything that my readers (by and large, US and British people of average decency, without much real knowledge of the Inuit) can learn from you, do with you or help you with." (401) As is suggested here, the author literally intends to put the text to work, informing the reader of a repressed historical truth and hence hoping to convert the latter from a passive aesthetic bystander to a social activist. Yet, this optimistic call to action based on the reinstatement of fact seems to be undermined, if only by the very limited scope of the readership considered and the apparent indifference of the Makivik Corporation to Vollmann’s proposal. The idealism of this posture of setting the records straight is far more ambiguous than might have been thought at first. As we read, we come to realize that the possibility of historical discourse, and the action which is predicated on it, are challenged by an arctic space not merely hostile but utterly foreign to it. Not only is narrativity disassembled but also the possibility of fact, universal reason, causality, objects and documents. This chapter argues that the notion of “dream”, evoked in the title of the series, comes to signify not so much the vague ambition to re-enchant the bleak reality of the arctic world but to qualify this constant shuttling back and forth between systematic enquiry and narrative quest which exposes the common dream of agency and liberation at the root of the expeditions of both the 19th and 20th centuries: that western history might be capable of fashioning and redeeming itself.
Texte de cadrage critique de la journée d'étude « Modernisme et Radicalisme : des traditions irré... more Texte de cadrage critique de la journée d'étude « Modernisme et Radicalisme : des traditions irréconciliables » organisé à la Sorbonne Nouvelle le 20 Mars 2010. Établir un panorama critique du rapport entre politique et esthétique dans l'Amérique des années 20 et 30 est une entreprise redoutable. Certes, l'on peut choisir de se fier à la distinction que nous avons choisi de remettre en scène à l'occasion de cette journée d'étude et répéter avec Walter Benjamin « [qu'] à l'esthétisation de la politique pratiquée par le fascisme, le communisme n'aurait eu d'autre choix que de politiser l'esthétique ». Toutefois, l'on se rend vite compte, non seulement que cette décision d'esthétiser le politique se retrouve chez les radicaux, mais plus fondamentalement combien cette antinomie demeure, au mieux, heuristique, rétrospective. Pour qui se penche d'un peu plus près sur la question, cette dualité commode entre modernisme et radicalisme recouvre, en fait, une multiplicité de voix divergentes et contribue à mettre en scène a posteriori un débat qui ne se fit pas à l'époque ou, du moins, pas dans ces termes. La question de savoir quels discours peuvent être convoqués pour conceptualiser cette période se pose également dès lors que l'on reconnaît, non seulement, la fréquence avec laquelle cette période fut revisitée au cours de la seconde moitié du 20 e siècle et combien ces interrogations bénéficient d'une histoire longue qui remonte au moins jusqu'à la République de Platon et la distinction praxis/poésis faite dans L'Ethique à Nicomaque d'Aristote. Faut-il considérer que les termes du débat sont définis à l'échelle mondiale sous la double impulsion de l'Internationale et du réseau informel des amitiés modernistes ou, qu'au contraire, la circulation des textes et des discours voile la spécificité des scènes nationales? Comment étudier une opposition dont un des termes n'émergera qu'a posteriori ? Enfin, même lorsque l'on s'attache à définir notre corpus critique de manière restrictive comment rendre compte de l'incroyable variété des biographies, manifestes, histoires littéraires, anthologies, essais, textes critiques qui pendant ces années tentent de constituer, de réevaluer et de rendre compte d'un mouvement historique en train de se faire souvent de manière contradictoire et changeante. Ce foisonnement est peut-être le phénomène le plus marquant de cette période et mérite dès lors lui-même d'être examiné. Certes, l'on pourrait regretter, comme le fait Johan Huizinga dans « History's Changing Form », que l'accélération entropique propre au début du 20 e siècle aie constitué le présent même comme objet historique et aie fait de chaque vie individuelle une preuve du devenir collectif au prix même de la rigueur historique. On pourrait au contraire y voir le désir des auteurs radicaux et modernistes d'anticiper leur propre pérennité littéraire, en reprenant les codes de la très populaire collection des American Men of Letters qui s'évertuait à établir un rapport empirique entre les Vincent Bucher Journée d'étude: Modernism/Radicalism 20 mars 2010
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Recognizing the impossibility of an a priori characterization of the text, we consequently turn to its composition as a guide for our reading. The importance of source material (whether archival or contemporary), the span it covers from quasi-documentary sociological sequence to personal testimony and its inclusion of graphic documents all suggest The Rifles’ proximity with the methodology of historical enquiry, distancing it from the literary. This epistemological preoccupation with facts and systems (as opposed to narratives), materialized by the title of this text understood as a programmatic, analytic concept, would announce the disassembly of the form of the novel as well as of the heroic and picturesque narratives of Franklin that could have supported it.
This hypothesis would help to explain the strategic importance of paratext in the novel, as an ideal place from which this challenge to the literary might be made. In so far as it blurs the distinction between the referential and the diegetic, the paratext indicates metonymically that this text does not function as an organic whole but gestures towards a topical context, a pragmatic objective, a rational paradigm. It therefore comes as no surprise if Vollmann should choose this vantage to state what appears to be the purpose of the text, writing to the Makivik Corporation: "Tell me if there is anything that can be done, anything that you are doing, that has hope of addressing these long term problems, and if there is anything that my readers (by and large, US and British people of average decency, without much real knowledge of the Inuit) can learn from you, do with you or help you with." (401)
As is suggested here, the author literally intends to put the text to work, informing the reader of a repressed historical truth and hence hoping to convert the latter from a passive aesthetic bystander to a social activist. Yet, this optimistic call to action based on the reinstatement of fact seems to be undermined, if only by the very limited scope of the readership considered and the apparent indifference of the Makivik Corporation to Vollmann’s proposal.
The idealism of this posture of setting the records straight is far more ambiguous than might have been thought at first. As we read, we come to realize that the possibility of historical discourse, and the action which is predicated on it, are challenged by an arctic space not merely hostile but utterly foreign to it. Not only is narrativity disassembled but also the possibility of fact, universal reason, causality, objects and documents.
This chapter argues that the notion of “dream”, evoked in the title of the series, comes to signify not so much the vague ambition to re-enchant the bleak reality of the arctic world but to qualify this constant shuttling back and forth between systematic enquiry and narrative quest which exposes the common dream of agency and liberation at the root of the expeditions of both the 19th and 20th centuries: that western history might be capable of fashioning and redeeming itself.
Recognizing the impossibility of an a priori characterization of the text, we consequently turn to its composition as a guide for our reading. The importance of source material (whether archival or contemporary), the span it covers from quasi-documentary sociological sequence to personal testimony and its inclusion of graphic documents all suggest The Rifles’ proximity with the methodology of historical enquiry, distancing it from the literary. This epistemological preoccupation with facts and systems (as opposed to narratives), materialized by the title of this text understood as a programmatic, analytic concept, would announce the disassembly of the form of the novel as well as of the heroic and picturesque narratives of Franklin that could have supported it.
This hypothesis would help to explain the strategic importance of paratext in the novel, as an ideal place from which this challenge to the literary might be made. In so far as it blurs the distinction between the referential and the diegetic, the paratext indicates metonymically that this text does not function as an organic whole but gestures towards a topical context, a pragmatic objective, a rational paradigm. It therefore comes as no surprise if Vollmann should choose this vantage to state what appears to be the purpose of the text, writing to the Makivik Corporation: "Tell me if there is anything that can be done, anything that you are doing, that has hope of addressing these long term problems, and if there is anything that my readers (by and large, US and British people of average decency, without much real knowledge of the Inuit) can learn from you, do with you or help you with." (401)
As is suggested here, the author literally intends to put the text to work, informing the reader of a repressed historical truth and hence hoping to convert the latter from a passive aesthetic bystander to a social activist. Yet, this optimistic call to action based on the reinstatement of fact seems to be undermined, if only by the very limited scope of the readership considered and the apparent indifference of the Makivik Corporation to Vollmann’s proposal.
The idealism of this posture of setting the records straight is far more ambiguous than might have been thought at first. As we read, we come to realize that the possibility of historical discourse, and the action which is predicated on it, are challenged by an arctic space not merely hostile but utterly foreign to it. Not only is narrativity disassembled but also the possibility of fact, universal reason, causality, objects and documents.
This chapter argues that the notion of “dream”, evoked in the title of the series, comes to signify not so much the vague ambition to re-enchant the bleak reality of the arctic world but to qualify this constant shuttling back and forth between systematic enquiry and narrative quest which exposes the common dream of agency and liberation at the root of the expeditions of both the 19th and 20th centuries: that western history might be capable of fashioning and redeeming itself.