Contemporary French literature – and this refers to the highly mobile, unlabeled, as yet uncanonised literature of the moment, littérature de l’extrême contemporain, is still one of the most diverse and lively literatures in Europe. It reacts like a highly sensitive seismometer to transformations and upheaval, collective fears and stranded utopias. Its highly differentiated voices speak of precarious living conditions, troubling breaks, of estrangement and of the contemporaneity of individual and collective pasts. These voices form a narrative which Cécile Wajsbrot describes as follows: „une plaine hantée par des consciences et des ombres, un fleuve dont elles remontent le cours, un océan où elles naviguent […].“ These and other questions lie at the heart of what one might call “écriture migrante”, a term encompassing social, geographic, and temporal migrations which allows one to order these prose texts along a thematic line. “Migration” (lat. migratio) is understood here as a movement which implies transition, departure, as well as crossings. My (provisional) selection of texts for my contribution to the public lecture series “Wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit? Poesie und Literatur in posthumanen Zeiten“ (8 May 2017 at the Institut français Bonn) includes the following works:
Maylis de Kerangal, Naissance d’un Pont (2010; dt.: Die Brücke von Coca), Marie NDiaye, La Cheffe, roman d’une cuisinière (2016) und Mathias Énard, Boussole (2015, dt.: Kompass); ferner: Hélène Cixous, Gare d’Osnabrück à Jérusalem (2016), Didier Éribons, Retour à Reims (2007; dt. Rückkehr nach Reims), Édouard Louis, En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (2014; dt.: Das Ende von Eddy), Shumona Sinha, Assommons les pauvres! (2012; dt.: Erschlagt die Armen!) sowie Leonora Miano, Écrits pour la parole (2012).
Flyer for the public lecture series Universität Bonn / Institut français Bonn