Perception, Imagination, and the Self: Pierre Alferi’s Fmn

Abstract

Perception, Imagination, and the Self: Pierre Alferi’s Fmn Kate Lermitte Campbell (bio) Pierre Alferi plays directly on the visual dynamics of thought throughout his work, exploring what we see, what we don’t, and the extent to which this is conditioned by both sensory and linguistic habit. His poetry not only manifests the extent to which the relation between thought and experience is dynamic and interactive, it challenges the traditional dividing line between perceptual and imaginative experience. This has direct repercussions on our conception of the individual. In order to elaborate on these claims, I will focus on Fmn, drawing from recent work by the philosopher Colin McGinn. My aim is to suggest that Alferi’s concentration on the visual is bound to his belief that actual experience cannot be compartmentalized into experience of the real world on the one hand, and that of imaginary worlds on the other. Thought, for him, is characterized by the dynamic interaction of the two, and this makes experience what it is. All of his work is marked by his awareness of and attentiveness to this crossover. The role sensory experience plays in thought is largely dependent on perceptual habits developed throughout life. Film has, for example, become part of the way we see, and hence part of the way we think, and Alferi’s experimentation with film—reflected even in his most “textual” work—constitutes less an extrapolation from everyday experience of the world than a necessary outcome of his reflection on the nature of such experience. Hence his remark: “pour rendre compte de sa propre sentiment présent, il faut s’inventer des outils, des techniques ” (interview with P. Cassagneau, 2005). The alteration of perceptual habits necessitates the constant re-direction of the poet’s attention and the re-shaping of his tools in accordance with the matter of his experience. As I have discussed elsewhere, his “films-parlants” explore the nature of narrative structure and his “cinépoèmes” are direct reflections on the relation between the poetic act and the act of reading: they explore the way individual sentences can be made to function through manipulation of their syntax and of their visual and phonetic qualities (Campbell, 2008). Alferi’s experimentation with the DVD is therefore vital to his creative exploitation of the visual dynamics of thought. [End Page 91] In Alferi’s novel Fmn (1994), the nature of the narrator’s visual perception is not the result of self-imposed experimentation (as is the case in Le Chemin familier du poisson combatif); it stems from his hyperawareness of a potential other, manifested in the REGARD. The first line of the back cover description of this text reads as follows: “Un homme se dit prisonnier du regard d’une femme.” The first line of the book takes the form of a statement: “J’attendais une femme,” with an unexpected, added qualification: “cette femme était réelle” (9). The narrator’s use of the word “réelle” here is, however, rendered ambiguous, for it becomes clear that the woman’s presence does not imply her visibility: “jamais elle ne m’apparut” (11). What is more, throughout the book she remains nameless, and without any particular physical trait: Elle se logeait dans un regard, s’y résumait, s’y contractait pour s’y dissoudre, s’y émietter, s’y émettre et m’atteindre. Elle était ce REGARD sans yeux, le regard qui, dit-on, passe par eux quoiqu’il se passe d’eux peu souvent. Sans yeux, oui, non sans point d’émission, il se situait à quelques mètres en amont, inondant ma face de trois quarts. Onde et particules de conscience constamment renouvelées, feu nourri, rayon paisible régénéré. (13) Here, the “reality” of the woman is dissociated from any identity criteria we typically use to designate an individual; her existence seems to depend primarily on the dynamics of the narrator’s gaze. The word “virtuel” is relevant. It comes from the Latin virtus (defined as “la puissance souveraine de ce qui n’apparaît pas visiblement”) and is used to describe something that “n’est tel qu’en puissance, qui est à l’état de simple...