A Poetics of Society: Thinking Language with Henri Meschonnic

Abstract

Throughout his oeuvre, Henri Meschonnic pursued language and literary studies as a means to better understand meaning-making processes and the functioning of society. By systematically establishing what Meschonnic called a poetics of society, this article explores the connection between a theory of language and a theory of society. Meschonnic makes use of the old debate between realism and nominalism to criticize realism as totalitarian, and situates this on the side of a language theory exclusively based on the sign, to which he opposes his theory of rhythm, which emphasizes the semantic value of the continuous dimension of language. The language of the Hebrew Bible, with its particular accent system, represents for Meschonnic an alternative model for thinking language, changing our ideas about poetics and subjectivity, with ethical and political consequences. This article sheds light on this political dimension of Meschonnic's poetics, making the case for the cultivation of language awareness, for poetic thinking as a socially and politically formative activity. It contends that a different approach to language is a different approach to society, which entails that literature is of general social importance and poetics concerns much more than a narrow conception of literature.