Lire dans la gueule du loup: essai sur une zone à défendre, la littérature par Hélène Merlin-Kajman (review)

Reviews 205 Merlin-Kajman, Hélène. Lire dans la gueule du loup: essai sur une zone à défendre, la littérature. Paris: Gallimard, 2016. ISBN 978-2-07-075786-2. Pp. 317. At a time when the prestige and popularity of literature and literary studies is declining , the book’s title indicates the author’s willingness to run the risk of challenging some prevailing trends and attitudes in this area. Thus, in response to an alleged“crise de la littérature,”Hélène Merlin-Kajman’s goal is to“déplacer totalement les perspectives dans lesquelles cette crise est abordée, déplorée, déniée, moquée, dénoncée, etc.”(16). Consequently, she not only proposes a new way of reading literary works but also of understanding what literature is all about. The work of British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Daniel Winnicott provides her with an anthropological perspective on the function of literature. In theorizing the early development of consciousness, Winnicott proposes a transitional phase that accounts for the encounter between a self and an external reality. Accordingly, literature, like religion, myths, and the arts is seen as an element facilitating the process whereby an individual consciousness integrates its perception of reality for purposes of its own development. Equally important is the theory Roland Barthes develops in his reflection on photography in La chambre claire. Barthes makes a distinction between two kinds of photographs— those with a clear, unambiguous way of duplicating reality and those revealing a punctum, a troubling detail that clashes with the first, manifestly neutral appearance: the interplay between the two levels of perception can challenge, disturb, and even traumatize the viewer. Similarly, Merlin-Kajman appreciates literary texts for their capacity to function as transitional objects that highlight the virtual territory between two levels of writing: one that is immediately perceived in a referential, mimetic sense, and a second level that discloses itself in a manner that challenges or contradicts the first one. Moreover, as the author points out, the purpose is not to find a hidden or definitive meaning because “en mettant en lumière ce sous-texte, je n’élucide pas son sens. Je me contente de le faire bouger, de l’introduire dans un jeu d’associations possibles dont je déploie la pertinence (non la vérité) comme des questions [...]. Je le partage” (137). In making her case, Merlin-Kajman provides us with examples of reading experiences she has shared with her children and her students, each one illustrated and amplified with evocations of other affective experiences as well as contextualized by references to a vast repertoire of other critical and theoretical texts. It is then the act of sharing, of a common engagement in this transitional space between an internal, individual self and an external world that is the most important. The potential for sharing the pleasure of an aesthetic experience thus becomes an essential component of the meaning of literature, even at a time when “L’esthétique du choc, de la crudité sexuelle et de la violence physique est devenue envahissante et hégémonique”(268). Her ultimate purpose, in the final analysis, is thus to outline“les conditions d’une sortie de cette culture du trauma” (275). Ohio State University Karlis Racevskis ...