Geopoetics: The Politics of Mimesis in Poststructuralist French Poetry and Theory

By focusing on the problematic of mimesis in its linguistic, psychoanalytical, and cultural incarnations this book argues, in opposition to those who stress the political inadequacies of the French poststructuralists’ privileging of language, that what leads to a theoretical or practical apoliticism is not the emphasis on language and mimetic representation. Rather, it is the failure to examine closely the relationship between mimesis and politics that closes off the possibility of articulating an adequate response to any form of political imperative. To make this point, the book begins by considering the revolution in poetic language of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s waged by the politically motivated group of poets and theorists associated with the French journal Tel Quel. It examines the impact of its political radicalism on the writings of the major theoretician of the Tel Quel group, Julia Kristeva, and on the work of the most important Tel Quel poets, Marcelin Pleynet and Denis Roche. It also examines the writings of those more closely associated with deconstruction, whose resistance to the highly charged political rhetoric of the period led many critics to denounce the deconstructive approach for its failure to come to terms with the sociopolitical.