Réveiller la mémoire de l’espèce. La récapitulation haeckelienne et la race de Lahor à Proust

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article revisits the foundation of Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation, that is to say, the bodily reincarnation of a species within an individual, which takes place within the broader context of interspecies competition. All individuals carry within them their race, and this is what differentiates them from others and places them in opposition with others. This image is ideally suited to poetry and to fiction, where the individual becomes loaded with multiple voices, which transcend him or her. These voices are not immemorial, but on the contrary, loaded with memory. We will be exploring these whispers of an incarnated memory as a vehicle for racial theories in the poems of Jean Lahor and in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu.