Autour de l’extrême littéraire edited by Alastair Hemmens and Russell Williams (review)

This bilingual volume presents the proceedings of a postgraduate conference on ‘l’extrême littéraire’ at the University of London Institute in Paris in 2011. It brings together contributions by international academics (mostly doctoral students and early-career scholars) working in a range of fields within French Studies and Comparative Literature. A brief Introduction by the editors offers a rigorous working definition of the unifying concept as being ‘concerned with how the individual subject is situated in relation to a radiating point that represents a space of order and control’ (p. 2). The extreme is cast as something that lies ‘without’, or ‘beyond the familiar’ (p. 2). Not for the fainthearted, this fascinating volume inevitably focuses, with a few exceptions, on extremes of sex and violence in recent literature: representations of coprophilia, necrophilia, incest, exhibitionism, rape, and genocide are thoughtfully considered within the framework of ideas such as taboo, censorship, abjection, obscenity, trauma, transgression, and the problem of representation (or, ‘l’indicible’). Some contributions take a more aesthetic or linguistic approach, for example Jeremy Stubbs’s witty treatment of surrealist détournement by André Breton and Paul Eluard, in which the extreme, when taken to and beyond its limit, becomes funny instead of shocking. Overall, the quality of the essays is variable, but there are some noteworthy contributions to scholarship. Denis Saint-Amand’s ‘Sur la littérature sauvage’ is a fascinating introduction to ‘la paralittérature’ — texts that are officially censored or never widely diffused in the public sphere. Through the exploration of ephemera from the 1860s to the 1950s, such as an album of collected writings by the Zutistes, amateur schoolboy magazines, and the private diaries of a drug-crazed young female poet, this essay raises questions about authorship, implied readership, and public–private tensions. Zoë Roth provides a highly convincing analysis of Michel Houellebecq’s Plateforme, using Georges Bataille to connect aspects of literary style to the extinction of desire in the text. Russell Williams brings an original and entertaining approach to his scholarly treatment of coprophilia and religious cults (which hold a peculiar grip on the French imagination) in work by contemporary novelists. Opportunities were missed to make the volume more coherent via closer cross-referencing between chapters: for example, Francesca Forcolin, Gillian Ni Chellaigh, Russell Williams, and Nadia Bongo all contribute interesting essays that deal with extreme bodily experiences, and make reference, either explicitly or implicitly, to Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject, but a lack of overarching commentary fragments the impact of their responses. There is no obvious reason behind the ordering of the essays, and a diachronic approach might have added greater cogency to the volume. A noticeable lacuna is nineteenth-century decadent literature, whose coverage would have complemented the lively contributions on the medieval era (Leona Archer) and the legacy of Sade (Liza Steiner), and provided a logical link to later literature. Nevertheless, the collection remains an enjoyable, informative read, and begins the process of radical questioning of the commonly held assumptions regarding the representation of trauma, extreme corporeal experiences, and the nature of transgression.