Emmanuel Hocquard and the Poetics of Negative Modernity

Book excerpt: This critical work explores written and visual texts in light of the writer's understanding of negative modernity and professed adherence to its dimension of literality. In his pursuit of literality, contemporary writer-poet Emmanuel Hocquard enacts a model of the "discontinuous organization of language," a poetic practice known to some as an "action poetique." This book gives special attention to essays, letters, poems, fictions, etc. and also pursues the poet's attraction to Deleuze, Wittgenstein, and Rousseau. Professor Fetzer presents features of Hocquard's writings that reflect the imprint of negative modernity and explores these dimensions through interpretive readings.