« Sur la banquise qui fond, formation d’un genre littéraire » : Mystique et esthétique de la catastrophe dans l’œuvre de Philippe Vasset

Abstract

Considering the theme of catastrophe in the works of Philippe Vasset entails encountering a paradox: almost all of his texts gravitate around various disasters affecting the contemporary world (from global warming to armed conflicts), and yet the author does not theorize this fact, nor do his texts contain an explicit denunciation of these catastrophes (with only one exception). This article examines theoretical and literary works by Vasset, and refers to critical studies of his texts (by Églantine Colon, Éric Trudel, and Pascal Mougin), to propose an explanation of this paradox. The absence of a condemnation of contemporary disasters in this author’s works is interpreted as the result of his idealization of a mystical type of ecstasy which possesses catastrophic features. I analyze the main thematical and formal aspects of this mysticism and of the literary aesthetics it generates (such as the erasure of the narrator and the use of parataxis) in “L’Exofictif,” Carte muette, Exemplaire de démonstration, and Un livre blanc. Based on the notion of parataxis as defined in Jean-François Lyotard’s Le Différend and on references to La Conjuration and Une vie en l’air, the article ultimately suggests a political function for the ecstatic experience of catastrophe elaborated by Vasset.