{"id":3735,"date":"2025-04-02T09:25:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T07:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zflprojekte.de\/zfl-blog\/?p=3735"},"modified":"2025-04-02T09:25:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T07:25:53","slug":"aurore-peyroles-for-or-against-political-literature-a-french-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zflprojekte.de\/zfl-blog\/2025\/04\/02\/aurore-peyroles-for-or-against-political-literature-a-french-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurore Peyroles: FOR OR AGAINST POLITICAL LITERATURE. A French Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January 2024, a small volume with a deliberately provocative title was published in France: Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique<\/em>[1]<\/a> \u2013 against political literature. The title, which suggests yet another attack on litt\u00e9rature engag\u00e9e<\/em> or message-oriented literature, is remarkable not only because it features contributions by a number of French authors known for the critical power of their texts, their radicalism, and\/or their commitment,[2]<\/a>\u00a0but also because the book was published by one of the most left-wing publishers on the French literary scene, La fabrique \u00e9ditions. It is not surprising, therefore, that the contributors do not target political literature as a whole, but a certain kind <\/em>of political literature, a certain way in which texts that they consider innocuous are labelled political. They criticize the depoliticization of literature at a time when its political significance is being elevated and call for a rethinking of the relationship between literature and politics, renewing the tensions between these two components rather than taking their interrelationship for granted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Repair the world<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

The book\u2019s cover claims that the word \u201cpolitics\u201d is omnipresent in contemporary literature, \u201cperhaps to such an extent that its meaning is diffused and its scope attenuated.\u201d Indeed, asserting its political significance seems to justify literary activity, the \u201cusefulness\u201d of which has been vigorously contested by the political authorities in France since the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy (2007\u20132012) and the subsequent neoliberal policies.[3]<\/a> This led to a certain anxiety in the literary field that sought to justify its existence by claiming a necessary socio-political mission; namely, that literature contributes to the common good.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this respect, Jacques Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s definition of the politics of literature seems particularly relevant \u2013 and indeed useful. By separating the politics of literature from \u201cthe politics of writers and their commitments,\u201d but also from \u201cthe modes of representation of the political issues and struggles of their times,\u201d he asserts that literature practices politics by overturning the configuration of the given, and by creating a new \u201cdistribution of the sensible.\u201d[4]<\/a> With this expression, Ranci\u00e8re refers to the configuration of places and the position to which each person or group is assigned within a hierarchically structured common space: Who occupies the center and who is relegated to the margins? Literature, through its ability to disrupt the established distribution of the sensible and the hierarchies of subjects worthy of attention, reaches the heart of politics as Ranci\u00e8re understands it, \u201cmak[ing] visible what had no business being seen, mak[ing] understood as discourse what was once only heard as noise\u201d and shifting \u201ca body from the place assigned to it.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Literature directs attention to subjects and objects that are often excluded from the public discourse. It represents<\/em> people who are not (or no longer) politically represented within the usual democratic processes.<\/em> It redefines what is important and what isn\u2019t. And, by introducing the voice of the voiceless into the public arena, literature sometimes aims to not only break the political and medial silence surrounding certain groups and individuals, but to \u201crepair the world.\u201d[6]<\/a> The title chosen by academic Alexandre Gefen to describe \u201cFrench Literature in the 21st Century\u201d sums up the (good) intentions of this kind of reparative literature:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe beginning of the twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a notion of writing and reading I would describe as \u2018therapeutic\u2019 \u2013 of a literature that heals, that cares for, that helps, or at least that \u2018does good.\u2019 It appears to me that, in our democracies lacking in major collective hermeneutical or spiritual frameworks, literary narrative holds the promise of considering the singular, of making sense of pluralized identities, of reweaving geographies through the formation of communities: these programs are not so much emancipatory as reparative.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is precisely this association of reparative literature with the adjective \u201cpolitical\u201d and the equation of politics with the laudable goal of reparation that the authors of Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique <\/em>challenge. They spot a double redefinition: literature is no longer primarily defined as a linguistic operation with an aesthetic goal, but as a social and transitive act of consolation; politics is no longer understood as a collective project of emancipation, but as an awareness of otherness with the aim to appease, coexist, and reconcile.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeaucoup d\u2019intentions, peu de crimes<\/strong>\u201d (many intentions, few crimes)<\/strong>[8]<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n

The idea that literature fulfills a political function mainly<\/em> by ensuring the representation of the marginalized and thereby achieving a redistribution of attention must be questioned from both a literary and a political point of view.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, is it enough to want<\/em> to see the least visible, to hear the voiceless, in order to actually see or hear them? Is it enough to open one\u2019s eyes or to go out into the \u201cfield\u201d?[9]<\/a> Such an approach would lead to a misunderstanding of the deeper causes of social invisibility. The subaltern is inaudible not primarily because they lack a voice, but due to economic, material, and symbolic configurations that prevent them from being heard.[10]<\/a> Second, what form should the representation of the invisible take? By what syntactic, lexical, or linguistic means? By mobilizing which specific emotions? The narrative form is not neutral; it reformulates experiences and inscribes them into certain frames. What are these frames? Finally, can we really assume that the literary representation of the marginalized leads to better political representation? Does representation (Darstellung<\/em>) necessarily lead to mandate (Vertretung<\/em>) and political recognition? To deliberately confuse the two meanings of the term \u201crepresentation\u201d is to postulate that injustices in the distribution of attention, or injustices as such, could be solved by simply becoming aware of their existence. However, if we look at the number of works that have dealt with such representations for decades, works that are read and (by their own admission) even appreciated by political leaders, and if we then look at the policies pursued by these same leaders, there seems to be no logical progression from exposure to awareness and to more equitable policies.[11]<\/a> The profound injustice in the distribution of attention, and, by extension, of wealth, cannot be explained with ignorance, but by looking at structures that are maintained in full knowledge of the facts.<\/span><\/p>\n

This raises the question of the political reach of a literature that redistributes the sensible by focusing on individual scale and empathy, while ignoring the causes that actively marginalize and render invisible certain groups and individuals. By engaging in a non-confrontational redefinition of the political and by suggesting that marginalization can be resolved through representation, which would in turn require a degree of reparation and consolation, what the author Sandra Lucbert derisively calls \u201cla-litt\u00e9rature-politique\u201d[12]<\/a> would definitively depoliticize the very social issues it seeks to explain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique<\/em> does not oppose the politics of literature in Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s understanding, but its potential \u201cweak interpretation.\u201d It is not enough<\/em> to give a voice to the unheard in order to write political literature or to make literature political.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFaire politiquement de la litt\u00e9rature \/ pas de la litt\u00e9rature politique\u201d<\/strong><\/a> (make literature politically \/ not political literature)<\/strong><\/span>[13]<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

In her contribution, Leslie Kaplan calls for \u201cmaking literature politically \/ not political literature.\u201d[14]<\/a> This turns the articulation between literature and politics into an act that is never given as such but must always be performed anew. The political dimension of literature lies less in the choice of certain topics than in the way it is practised. Literature, then, becomes a means of disturbance and disquiet (which need not be agonizing) that actively and effectively disturbs what is presented as self-evident and unchangeable. In this way, everything can be politicized, i.e. questioned, including the purchase of a tomato plant and the narrative therein. The narrator of Nathalie Quintane\u2019s Tomates<\/em> (2010) struggles to choose between unusual tomato seeds and plants with more certain results, wondering how she can properly serve herself and her convictions:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe prospect of nothing to come or of stunted tomatoes prevailed: I did not buy seeds from Kokopelli, but plants from Jardiland, thus arranging a transition between a life without my own tomatoes and a life with rare tomatoes. I am well aware that this kind of precision is amusing, but the word Tomato should not take precedence over the others and their seriousness. The problem of choosing between a non-industrial seed and a plant derived from an industrial seed is akin to the dilemma of the activist who wonders whether to stay in the Socialist Party or leave it out of loyalty to a beloved past, and it hurts.\u201d[15]<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a far cry from justifying literature with its ability to compensate for the shortcomings of representative democracy. Quintane openly questions the political efficacy of her own practice and refuses to enter the predetermined terrain of a fixed definition of what political (literature) means. She represents no one but herself and is faced with a dilemma that, while not tragic, is nonetheless important: which tomatoes should she pick? Eventually,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cthe tomatoes, which in the meantime had become my tomatoes, were growing, that is to say, their stems, after the suckers had been removed, had widened and grown all the way down, and from the flowers little balls had sprouted, little peas that were getting rounder by the day, their skin shiny and firm. [\u2026] It is certain that this does not make a community, much less a couple, but a kind of art, the art of touching, of feeling, of grasping, of circumventing, of sensitive intellection.\u201d[16]<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The art form promoted here pays attention to contours and materials, processes and choices according to the principle of trial and error, while being firmly rooted in the sensitive world. It does not aim to depict the \u201creal world,\u201d but to make it the object\/subject of a (far-fetched) questioning, or to give it the disturbance of attention and astonishment. The text does not necessarily reveal the magic of the world or the extraordinary dimension of the most ordinary gestures. It merely invites us to take a different look at it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other contributions to Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique <\/em>also take this approach. Not only are they remarkably heterogenous, they also overwhelmingly reject the essay form and refuse to offer theories that question and subsequently redefine what is called political literature. Without a preface or epilogue providing a theoretical understanding of the issues at stake, each contribution explores what is practically raised by reflecting on the two terms in combination. We have not learned what a \u201creal,\u201d \u201cauthentic\u201d political literature should look like when we close the book, but it does present us with a range of possibilities. This way of practising literature does not hope to fulfill an important mission and reveal a part of reality that has remained invisible to an indifferent world. It acknowledges the fact that literature \u201cis undoubtedly not much and yet not nothing,\u201d \u201c[n]either demiurgic, nor heroic, nor rigorously worthless\u201d\u2014just like choosing a tomato plant. As Sandra Lucbert writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo say that literature can work on politics is not to say that its texts can raise the world by their power alone. [\u2026] The uprising of the world is a collective work: literature takes its place in it. Neither prodigious nor null. But it should at least take its place.\u201d[17]<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not believing in telluric powers of revelation and not hoping that it can change the world, literature can potentially offer a different perspective, a perspective situated closely to the ground and to the tomatoes growing from it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Romance literary scholar Aurore Peyroles<\/a> works at the ZfL on the project \u201cThe Cartography of the Political Novel in Europe<\/a>.\u201d This contribution is an abridged and adapted version of her article \u201cAgainst Political Literature: What\u2019s Next?<\/a>,\u201d in: Open Library of Humanities 11.1 (2025).\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Pierre Alferi, Leslie Kaplan, Nathalie Quintane, Tanguy Viel, Antoine Volodine and Louisa Yousfi: Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique<\/em>, Paris 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Nathalie Quintane makes serendipitous and sharp remarks on so-called \u201cpolitical literature\u201d; Louisa Yousfi rewrites extracts from the Iliad<\/em> in her powerful \u201cChant pour des armes splendides\u201d; Pierre Alferi dismantles the self-appointed celebrities of French intellectual life in sharp missives; Leslie Kaplan mixes observations and collected words in poetic fragments, insisting on how literature opens up a distance from the dominant languages; Tanguy Viel dreams of a literature that reconciles individual poetry and collective utopia; and, finally, Antoine Volodine invents a \u201cmoral tale\u201d that features a character who is expected to give a speech to an audience but ends up only repeating \u201cpropagandist nonsense.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> The question of the usefulness of literature and literary studies has been raised with particular urgency in France in 2006, when Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, criticized the inclusion of Madame de Lafayette\u2019s Princesse de Cl\u00e8ves<\/em> (1678) in the syllabus of an administrative exam. Not only did Madame de Lafayette\u2019s novel sell very well as a result, but many academics and writers came to the defence of literature in the name of its \u201cusefulness,\u201d especially in social terms. Cf. the overview of reactions in literary studies by Annick Louis: Sans objet. Pour une \u00e9pist\u00e9mologie de la discipline litt\u00e9raire<\/em>, Paris 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Jacques Ranci\u00e8re: \u201cThe Politics of Literature,\u201d in: SubStance<\/em> 33 (2004), p. 10\u201324.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Jacques Ranci\u00e8re: Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy<\/em> (translated by Julie Rose), Minneapolis 1999, p.\u00a030.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Alexandre Gefen: Repair the World. French Literature in the 21st Century<\/em><\/a> (translated by Tegan Raleigh), Berlin\/Boston 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., p.\u00a01. While Gefen only mentions Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick once, referring to her important essay Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity<\/em> (2002), he takes up the notion of the \u201creparative turn\u201d (ibid., p. 85) to make it a feature of \u201cthe bibliotherapeutic dream\u201d (ibid., p. 83) he exposes. By contrasting reparation with emancipation, he creates an opposition that Kosofsky Sedgwick might not have endorsed.<\/span><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> This is the title of Quintane\u2019s contribution to Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Terrain<\/em> has become a central concept in contemporary literary studies. Dominique Viart proposes the category of field literatures (litt\u00e9ratures de terrain<\/em>) to describe works that \u201cborrow some of their practices from the social sciences: surveys, excavations in archives, interviews, in-situ<\/em> research, [and] initiate a new kind of relationship with the social sciences, based on what the latter call \u2018fieldwork\u2019, whose difficulties they narrate and report rather than deliver or fictionalise\u201d (Dominique Viart: \u201cLes litt\u00e9ratures de terrain<\/a>,\u201d in: Revue critique de fixxion fran\u00e7aise contemporaine<\/em> 18 (2019), my translations).<\/span><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u2019s seminal essay \u201cCan the Subaltern Speak?,\u201d in: Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.): Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture<\/em>, London 1988, p.\u00a0271\u2013313.<\/span><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Advisers to the presidential palace have revealed that Emmanuel Macron has read the book Qui a tu\u00e9 mon p\u00e8re<\/em> (2018) by \u00c9douard Louis. Louis, who lists those he blames for the damage done to his father\u2019s body, namely all those in political power who have implemented reforms that affect the lives of the most disadvantaged, reacted very strongly to this revelation on Twitter<\/a>: \u201cEmmanuel Macron, my book is against what you are and what you do. Do not try to use me to disguise the violence you embody and practice. I write to shame you. I write to give weapons to those who fight against you\u201d (my translation).<\/span><\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Sandra Lucbert: D\u00e9faire voir. Litt\u00e9rature et politique<\/em>, Paris 2024, p.\u00a018.<\/span><\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Leslie Kaplan: \u201cDonnez-moi un mot, juste un mot,\u201d in: Contre la litt\u00e9rature politique<\/em>, p.\u00a0108.<\/span><\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Kaplan paraphrases Jean-Luc Godard inviting \u201cto make cinema politically, not political cinema\u201d in an interview published in Les Lettres fran\u00e7aises<\/em>, 19 April 1992, p. 20.<\/span><\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Nathalie Quintane: Tomates<\/em>, Paris 2014, p. 17, my translation: \u201cLa perspective de ne rien voir venir, ou du rachitique, l\u2019a emport\u00e9: je n\u2019ai pas achet\u00e9 de graines \u00e0 Kokopelli mais des plants \u00e0 Jardiland, m\u00e9nageant ainsi une transition entre une vie sans tomates personnelles et une vie avec tomates rares. Je sais bien que ce type de pr\u00e9cision amuse, pourtant le mot Tomate ne doit pas l\u2019emporter sur les autres et leur gravit\u00e9. Transpos\u00e9, le probl\u00e8me du choix entre une graine non industrielle et un plan issu d\u2019une graine industrielle \u00e9quivaut au dilemme du militant se demandant s\u2019il reste au Parti socialiste par fid\u00e9lit\u00e9 pour un pass\u00e9 doux ou s\u2019il le quitte, et cela le violente.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Ibid., p. 96: \u201cles tomates, devenues entre-temps mes tomates, poussaient, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire que leur tige, surgeons \u00f4t\u00e9s, s\u2019\u00e9tait dilat\u00e9e et munie d\u2019un duvet tout du long, et qu\u2019aux fleurs de petites boules avaient cr\u00fb, petits pois plus ronds de jour en jour, peau brillante et bien tendue. [\u2026] C\u2019est s\u00fbr que cela ne forme pas une communaut\u00e9, encore moins un couple, mais une sorte d\u2019art, l\u2019art du toucher, du t\u00e2ter, du cerner, du circonvenir, de l\u2019intellection sensible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Sandra Lucbert: D\u00e9faire voir<\/em>, p.\u00a036, my translation: \u201cMaintenir que la litt\u00e9rature peut travailler le politique n\u2019implique nullement que ses textes pourraient soulever le monde par leurs seuls pouvoirs. [\u2026] Le soul\u00e8vement du monde est une \u0153uvre collective : la litt\u00e9rature y prend sa place. Ni prodigieuse, ni nulle. Mais que du moins elle la prenne.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VORGESCHLAGENE ZITIERWEISE: Aurore Peyroles: For or Against Political Literature. A French Controversy, in: ZfL Blog, 2.4.2025, [https:\/\/www.zflprojekte.de\/zfl-blog\/2025\/04\/02\/aurore-peyroles-for-or-against-political-literature-a-french-controversy\/<\/a>].<\/span>
\nDOI: <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.13151\/zfl-blog\/20250402-01<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n