Next to Nothing: Jean Paulhan’s Gamble

Abstract

Articulating together Jean Paulhan’s texts on language, painting and the experience of the Resistance during the Nazi Occupation of France, this article distinguishes between the nothingness or silence that is one face of a totalising opposition – between signs and things – and the ‘small nothings’ that recur throughout Paulhan’s texts. It argues that these ‘nothings,’ odd snippets and scraps of a culture that are overlooked or dismissed rather than reduced to nothing by the priorities of power, offer the possibility of restoring a sense of community when a polity ceases to speak a common language, as arguably occurred in France during the Occupation. Thus it dismisses the claim that Paulhan’s work was essentially apolitical, and challenges the deconstructive approach that concludes on its aporetic nature. In contrast, it concludes that Paulhan offers a vital reflection on the power of words to ground a common purpose.