Literary Plurimateriality and Poetico-political Vibrations in Muriel Pic’s Work

1 This contribution is originally from a paper presented in French, in relation to the issues of the research I carried out within the “HANDLING Project,” that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement n° 804259); thanks to Alexandra L. Martin for her help in translating it into English. Excerpts quoted from Muriel Pic's work are translated to preserve fluidity. All translations are our own. The reworking and finalisation of the article was conducted, for their part, as part of the Banting postdoctoral fellowship I am carrying out at Laval University (NRF: 180035), which was funded by the Government of Canada through its federal granting agencies (CIHR/SSHRC/NSERC).

Abstract

More and more works testify to the pictorial turn which marks francophone literary production since the end of the twentieth century, “immersed in the world of the modern images and mass media,” as Magali Nachtergael pointed out. The textual and visual regimes are thus no longer inscribed in a logic of competition but arranged in a perspective of co-adjunction, of fertile crossings. From this perspective, we examine Affranchissements (2020) by Muriel Pic; this “wandering-book” is structured in six parts which deploy a nonlinear narrative, brimming with many visual materials and where everything starts from “the magical grimoire of a stamp album” and from a “debt to be paid.” This article analyzes this fundamentally hybrid book which, in a decompartmentalization of semiotic regimes, activates a poetic plurimateriality and makes of the literary space a—political—place of renewal of the real, of a redrawing of the material and symbolic space, as Jacques Rancière would say.

Keywords:

• Iconopoeticity
• Semiotic Hybridity
• Poetic plurimateriality
• Montage
• Destandardization
• Literature and politics

Notes

1 This contribution is originally from a paper presented in French, in relation to the issues of the research I carried out within the “HANDLING Project,” that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement n° 804259); thanks to Alexandra L. Martin for her help in translating it into English. Excerpts quoted from Muriel Pic's work are translated to preserve fluidity. All translations are our own. The reworking and finalisation of the article was conducted, for their part, as part of the Banting postdoctoral fellowship I am carrying out at Laval University (NRF: 180035), which was funded by the Government of Canada through its federal granting agencies (CIHR/SSHRC/NSERC).

2 Found in a passage in the exact middle of the book, in the third part.

3 Translator’s Note: In French, “affranchissement” means both “postage,” as in conveying letters by mail, as well as “emancipation,” creating an internal wordplay in the work’s title and content.—A.L.M.

4 In her notes on documentary montage that follow his text En regardant le sang des bêtes, Pic refers to it as a practice that “couples shocks, surprises, astonishments” (82).

5 8 for the first, 5 for the second, fourth and fifth, 9 for the third and 6 for the sixth > PI: 2000; 1840; 1719; 1927; –225; 1965; 1911; 1949; PII: 0; 2001; 1999; 2019; 1918; PIII: 1923; 1936; 1914; 1872; 1907; 1917; 1868; 1933; 1940; PIV: 1949 bis; 1944; 1875; 1598; 2018; PV: 1592; 1953; 1721; 1877; 1969; PVI: 1989; 200; 2001 bis; 1997; 2016; 2017.

6 “From a ghost, Jim became a fantasy” (199), Pic argues in the fifth part of the book.

7 See back cover.

8 “Now we dance looby, looby light / Now we dance looby, as yester night / Shake your right hand a little / Shake your left hand a little / Shake your head a little / And turn you round about. / À présent, nous dansons follement, folle lumière / À présent, nous dansons aussi follement que la nuit d’hier / Secoue un peu ta main droite / Secoue un peu ta main gauche / Secoue un peu la tête / Et vite tourne sur toi-même.”

9 Original text: “[Cela consiste] à inventer de l’inédit, à se laisser traverser par le vif de l’événement à travers l’emploi et le réemploi des images en tant que produits culturels.”

10 See Affranchissements, 25–30 , 69–70, 78–79, 88, 94, 102–103, 109, 166–167, 206–209, 227–228, 234–235, 242–243, 255–256.

11 Also see ibid., 273. Its title is moreover presented as “the simplest of provocations to desire and freedom,” “[t]he most obvious call to disorder” (17).

12 See ibid., 54–56.

13 See ibid., 264–265.

14 Phrase borrowed from Marie-Hélène Lafon (128).

15 Phrase borrowed from the collective ZONADIR (21).

16 “[T]ravaill[er] avec les traces, [avec] les images qui sont là, pour rendre manifeste ce qui est dissimulé, montrer des possibles pour engager des actions, dont les moteurs sont les désirs et les rêves” (Lahouste & Reverseau, 2022 [online]).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Corentin Lahouste

Corentin Lahouste, recipient of a Banting postdoctoral fellowship (2022–2024), is a researcher at Université Laval in Professor René Audet’s team (Laboratoire Ex situ). His thesis, defended in March 2019 at UCLouvain (Belgium), resulted in the book Écritures du déchainement. Esthétique anarchique chez Marcel Moreau, Yannick Haenel et Philippe De Jonckheere (Classiques Garnier, 2021). His work, which focuses on contemporary French literature, is particularly concerned with the links between literature and politics as well as with the media diversification of the act of literary creation. From October 2020 to September 2022, he was associated with the HANDLING research program (ERC), led by Professor Anne Reverseau.