The Practice of Writing and the Practice of Living: Michel Deguy's and Philippe Jaccottet's Ecopoetics

Journal article

This article investigates how Deguy and Jaccottet treat the question of dwelling in their carnets, analysing how they both use the highly fluid and adaptable form of the notebook to trace the subject’s interactions with its environment. It explores how Deguy’s experimental notes celebrate the idea that writing constitutes a form of dwelling, presenting linguistic experimentation as an inherently productive form of spatial engagement. It examines how Jaccottet problematises this idea, refusing to present his texts as part of an on-going linguistic practice that shapes everyday life, trying to shift the emphasis away from the formative capabilities of language to its receptive capabilities. Investigating this tension between Deguy’s poetics of invention and Jaccottet’s poetics of receptivity, this article explores the different ways in which the question of human agency is being framed in France at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Authors: McLaughlin, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Critical Review of French Contemporary Fixxion
• Journal: Revue Critique de Fixxion Française Contemporaine
• Publication date: 2015-12-01
• ISSN: 2033-7019
• Keywords: everyday; notebook; Jaccottet; ecopoetics; Deguy