Notes entre aujourd’hui et demain

Abstract

In the late xxth and early xxist Century, how is it possible to conceive a “care for the future”, when the future is perceived as imminent and vaguely threatening? Starting from a general overview of contemporary French literature it becomes possible to understand what the “care for the future” has become nowadays. French literature experiences what Lionel Ruffel calls an “exhaustion” of future perspectives, compelling future and present to coincide in the literary imaginary and generating a loss of consistency in the literary Self. In this regard, new literary strategies are found, trying to restore the necessary distance between present and future. Three books will concur to bring the phenomenon to light: Pierre Guyotat’s Coma, Michel Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d’une île (The Possibility of an Island) and Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Faire l’amour (Making Love).