Poetics of Rerouting in Michaël Ferrier: A Mimetic Approach to the Fragment

Abstract

In the 2017 translation of his article “France-Japan: The Coral Writers,” Michaël Ferrier explores the concept of the coral writer, or écrivain du corail. Echoing Fabien Arribert-Narce (2021), this article initially identifies Ferrier himself as an écrivain du corail and expands this concept further as it unearths resonances between creolization and Ferrier’s own writing. This article revisits a multimedia project from the 2022 Winthrop-King conference Tokyo Stories: Writing the World with Michaël Ferrier in order to demonstrate that mirroring Ferrier’s unique style allows for participation in and promotion of creolization. Using content from the collaborative project entitled “Poétique de la déroute chez Michaël Ferrier : une approche mimétique du fragment” and created with doctoral candidate Carine Schermann, this brief commentary accentuates the unexpected but beneficial discoveries that await if one interprets the world in the style of Ferrier: writing “from the inside” (Ferrier, “France-Japan” 19) and composing seismographically (Ferrier, “L’écrivain sismographe” 96).