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Reseña del libro Morales Benito, L. (2022). La Habana textual. Patafísica y OuLiPo en la obra de Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Bruselas: Peter Lang, 314 pp, IBSN: 9782875744708.

This essay considers – and seeks to complicate – the critical tendency to gender constrained writing as ‘masculine’ and to read women’s experimental literature as a ‘feminine’ writing of the body. Via readings of Christine Brooke-Rose’s Between and Anne Garréta’s Sphinx (1986), it elucidates how the constraint in each novel actually produces the focus on the body – without thereby simulating a writing of the body – and on questions of gender and desire. In both novels, I suggest, gender itself emerges as a form of ‘constraint’. In so doing, the essay seeks to move beyond any facile polarisation of constraint and excess, the conceptual and the embodied, and to unpick the gender-political possibilities of certain experimental literary strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1961, the poet Jacques Roubaud was dismissed by the French military in Algeria after undergoing a series of "clandestine hunger strikes," an act he later referred to as his "very first constraint." By using a term that at once refers to a particular and increasingly prevalent resistance act, the rules and procedures used by post–World War II avant-garde artists and writers, and oppressive structures like prisons that delimit lives, "constraint" provides a way to rethink the history of avant-garde procedural poetry through the act of the hunger strike. This essay analyzes the constraint as a "score," a method of making that allows for the repeatability and transformation of forms across contexts. This repetition with a difference is underscored by a cast of 1960s and 1970s writers from France, the United States, and Morocco, including Roubaud, Norman H. Pritchard, Bernadette Mayer, Saïda Menebhi, and Abdallah Zrika. Foregrounding the hunger strike and seeing an aesthetics that accords with this provocative and popular act, this essay makes a case for avant-garde practice, rather than the avant-garde object, as acts that might not only reorganize everyday life into weapons and tools, but also thread trans-national possibilities of solidarity through a shared political form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of “constraint” is central to Oulipo’s work, yet the group has introduced this term into modern literary criticism without providing a consistent definition. The resulting ambiguities create challenges for researchers studying Oulipian constraints. This paper reviews Oulipo’s attempts to theorize constraint and legitimize its literature, examining these efforts through the lens of the group’s struggle for literary legitimacy. Indeed, the concept of constraint represents not only Oulipo’s poetic uniqueness, but also an important tool for the group to legitimize itself and gain power within the literary field. This paper argues that “constraint” has served as both an expression of Oulipo’s aesthetic singularity and a strategic lever in its bid for legitimacy.

This article aims to reveal and examine Oulipo's engagement with China. While individual members like Michèle Métail and Raymond Queneau have seemingly contributed to the group's affinity for China on a superficial level, a deeper analysis of the two Oulipism tendencies suggests this interest is fundamentally impersonal and detached. The essence of Oulipism means the group can never be fascinated by any single influence, even while remaining open to Chinese inspiration. Thus, Oulipo harbors what can be characterized as a disinterested interest in China—intrigued by its potential without becoming enthralled by it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to reveal and examine Oulipo's engagement with China. While individual members like Michèle Métail and Raymond Queneau have seemingly contributed to the group's affinity for China on a superficial level, a deeper analysis of the two Oulipism tendencies suggests this interest is fundamentally impersonal and detached. The essence of Oulipism means the group can never be fascinated by any single influence, even while remaining open to Chinese inspiration. Thus, Oulipo harbors what can be characterized as a disinterested interest in China—intrigued by its potential without becoming enthralled by it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Paradigma is the property of Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Édouard Levé's works are framed by a reading device that allows us to situate them in relation to the author's biography, to identify the main features of his poetics and to formulate genetic hypotheses. His works thus reveal themselves to be highly coherent, like so many variations on a series of gestures and questions that are both very simple and very radical. Inspired largely by Raymond Roussel's Process, Levé has based part of his work on a poetics of shifts that consists of blurring the relationship between words and images. This poetics is implemented in three series Homonyms, Anguish and America, produced by the same linguistic constraints and similar production protocols, but they respond to different attitudes and effects of these constraints and protocols. Anguish is about creating fiction, Homonyms is about interrogating the cultural pantheon and America is about offering a negative of the American dream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In André Schwarz-Bart's posthumous novel, Adieu Bogota (2017), three strong 'cords' tie his unfinished, and imperfect, novel to three authors whom he met at the Moulin d'Andé (Eure, France). First of all, there is Georges Perec's overwhelming impact, through echoes in the choice of [sub-]title[s], the impossibility of mourning, and stitching 'remembrances' into a coherent text. Second, there is the Colombian refugee, Arnoldo Palacios, whose horrendous story about the 1948 events remembered as La Violencia left a deep imprint on Schwarz-Bart's imagination. And third, there is Maurice Pons, the author of the cult novel, Les Saisons (1965), whose plot and characters owe a great debt to Schwarz-Bart's novel, The Last of the Just (Le Dernier des Justes, 1959). In two directions and with different 'reciprocities', satellites of loss circle around André Schwarz-Bart (1928-2006) and his wife and co-author, Simone Schwarz-Bart (1938-). This article deals predominantly with a decentred history of the intellectual post-Shoah and post-colonial issues around the world after World War Two. I elaborate particularly on Perec and Palacios, and less on Pons, who bridged all those artists, philosophers, anticolonial thinkers, and Shoah survivors who spent time together at the Moulin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study on the extent to which creative literature been used as a vessel to carry forward the development of mathematical thought. The role of mathematics as a driving force for literature is highlighted, and while many examples exist that clearly show an attempt to disperse mathematical ideas, with Lewis Carroll, OuLiPo and ancient poetry considered, the argument that the sole purpose of the writings was for the sake of mathematical development is not clear-cut. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questo contributo individua le prime anticipazioni di alcune pratiche di scrittura che si manifesteranno pienamente nel contesto culturale della digitalizzazione. L’Ubuweb, progetto fondato nel 1996, verrà considerato come risultato sperimentale della robopoetica, in dialogo con le precedenti esperienze dell’Oulipo e della poesia concreta. In quel contesto si osserveranno cambiamenti nell’ideazione delle composizioni poetiche caratterizzate dalla materialità combinatoria del linguaggio

Marcel Bénabou is one of the longest-serving members of one of France's most iconic and enduring literary groups, the Oulipo. Despite his dedicated service to the group's collaborative activity, little scholarly interest has been shown in Bénabou's solo literary projects. As a Moroccan francophone Jew, living and working in France (and French) since the 1950s, his playful and experimental autobiographical works demonstrate an attitude towards multilingualism that is characterized by conflict and creativity. This article introduces two of Bénabou's works that explore his relation to multilingualism, using Derrida's Le Monolinguisme de l'autre [The Monolingualism of the Other] as a point of comparison. I argue that Bénabou's multilingualism is at times a source of anxiety, a conflicted tension between different poles of his identity. Nonetheless, it has also bestowed him with a creative freedom that has allowed him to explore different subjectivities, and ultimately to find his place within the Oulipo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Oupoco Database is a collection of 4,872 French sonnets developed in the framework of the Oupoco Project. It is mainly composed of poems from the 19th and early 20th century. The sonnets come from different sources from the Internet and from a collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Every sonnet has a specific license (depending on the source it comes from), but the whole collection can be reused for free (under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license).

The contact zone between algorithms and creative writing has become an increasingly fertile ground for literary experimentation in the last decades, with more accessible digital technologies broadening the scope of potential artistic productions and allowing the exploration of new forms of creativity. Inspired by the playful collaboration between arts and sciences embodied by the experimental creations of the French literary group OuLiPo, we borrow from physics and mathematics the concept of self-avoiding random walk to create original poems. This model is adapted here to generate random poems through potentially infinite combinations of a finite set of verses distributed on a virtual two-dimensional grid. The highly versatile algorithm we designed allows to randomly generate unexpected poems and provide, for each, a unique path with the graphical representation of a random walk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der Artikel untersucht das Phänomen stark begrenzter Literatur, wie Palindromen oder Anagrammen. Während derartige Texte häufig als literarische Spielerei abgetan werden, weist der Artikel ihre Nähe zu Praktiken des Experimentierens nach, bei denen die Erkenntnisgegenstände erst in eingegrenzter Umgebung entstehen. Eingegrenzte Literatur wird vor diesem Hintergrund als eine „kleine“ Literatur im Sinne Deleuze und Guattari gelesen, die mit ihren Beschränkungen für produktionsseitige Verfremdungen sorgt und damit eine Irritation sprachlicher Automatismen initiiert. Gerade die enge literarische Grenzziehung erlaubt es neue sprachliche Möglichkeiten und Erkenntnisse freizulegen, was abschließend anhand eines Beispiels veranschaulicht wird.

Copyright of Wortfolge. Szyk Słów is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Oupoco Database is a collection of 4,872 French sonnets developed in the framework of the Oupoco Project. It is mainly composed of poems from the 19th and early 20th century. The sonnets come from different sources from the Internet and from a collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Every sonnet has a specific license (depending on the source it comes from), but the whole collection can be reused for free (under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Inger Christensen's poem alphabet (1981) in relation to Jacques Roubaud's assertion that "a text written according to a constraint must speak of this constraint [and] contain the consequences of the mathematical theory it illustrates." The mathematical and linguistic constraints of alphabet bear similarities to those that are present in the work of the Oulipo. The primary structure of the poem is determined by the Fibonacci sequence, with the number of lines in each section totaling the number of lines that comprise the two preceding sections. Furthermore, Christensen's integration of alphabetical order with this structure sees each section of the poem defined predominantly by words that begin with the relevant letter of the alphabet. In assessing the extent to which alphabet represents its own constraints, the article pays particular attention to how Christensen's syntax becomes more complex as the poem progresses, how Christensen juxtaposes imagery of the natural world with that of nuclear oblivion, and how the structure of the poem spirals into an oblivion of its own as a result of its formal constraints, which ultimately serve to reinforce the imagery of an environment in decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If an author's influence can be measured by the number of quotations in a newspaper, then the Oulipo can now be considered rooted in the French cultural establishment. However, this sweeping statement hides a set of more fine-grained facts. Through the analysis of literary criticism as well as articles published in the weekly magazine Télérama, this paper highlights how much friction exists between the members of the group Oulipo and the Oulipo itself. Reviewers of collectively authored works prefer to highlight the names of well-known writers' such as Roubaud, Queneau and especially Perec, who, despite his death, remains an important member of the Oulipo. Some individual books (Le Tellier, Fournel, Jouet) are reviewed but most references concern the Oulipo's performances, public readings or writing workshops, valuing their comic verve and their skillful wordplay rather than their books. In the end, the Oulipo seems to serve as reservoir of constraints' that can be deployed elsewhere, in comics, radio or the visual arts. In recent years, referring to the group has become almost a lexicalized expression synonymous with constraint or an impossible exercise, even if at the same time, Perec's position as the most famous Oulipian is under challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of aesthetics, the expression formal constraint is most often used in non-problematic ways by critics, who tend to consider it as a convenient and even redundant category, whose constitution need not be questioned. On the contrary, this paper will closely examine the lexical and conceptual association of constraint and form, to try to understand under what conditions and modalities constraints can give rise to aesthetic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview with Matthew B. Smith, Frédéric Forte reflects on the evolution of the Oulipo since its foundation in 1960, the stimulation he finds in formal challenges that may initially seem impossible to meet, his exploration of potentiality with and without explicit recourse to constraints, the encouragement and guidance of Jacques Jouet, translation, and collaborating with the band Deerhoof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the impact of the Oulipo on German-language literature? To answer this question I have submitted a questionnaire to a dozen contemporary Germanophone writers known in the field of "writing under constraint." It emerges that Oulipian texts are, of course, read and influential; but most of the authors also see themselves as anchored in the German-language tradition of experimental poetry, and especially inspired by the works of Ernst Jandl. This article will explore the Oulipian impact but also highlight Jandl's poems under constraint and reflect on parallels and differences between his playful, performance-oriented approach and the Oulipian practice of constrained writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After sixty years of existence, the recognition achieved by the Oulipo is undeniable. If major writers have emerged from its ranks, the group's role, its "visibility" and its reception in the literary field remain problematic. Recently portrayed by certain exegetes as a spent or "exhausted" organization, has the Oulipo had its day? This article examines the sometimes contradictory criticisms recently addressed to the group, particularly accusations of formalism and excessive popularization. Broadening the focus to take in structural upheavals in the literary field, it then attempts to redefine the delicate balances struck by this one-off collective agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One common response to the Oulipo is a reflexive rejection that is emotionally charged—expressing feelings ranging from mild irritation to anger or disgust—even as it attacks the group's excessively cerebral poetics. The negative response itself belies the alleged affective neutrality of the constraint; as an emotional effect, it raises the question of the role of "ugly feelings" (Ngai) in aesthetic judgment. An analysis of such reactions, and of their representation in fictional works, suggests that emotional aversion can be an intrinsic part of the aesthetic effect of Oulipian constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his autobiographical fiction Peut-être ou La nuit de dimanche, Roubaud blames the contemporary Oulipo members for betraying the founders' principles. Almost 60 years after its creation, such criticism reveals issues related to the group's openness to the world: the role of mathematics in the creation of structures, the place of women, Oulipo Lite / Hard. If the Oulipians are characters in Queneau's "unwritten novel," what chapter of this novel does Roubaud intend to write, fifty years after his co-option? This key novel emphasizes Roubaud's status as a disciple of Queneau, continuator of Le Lionnais, and "composer of mathematics and poetry." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental question of this essay is: what effect does Oulipian writing have on the telling of History? Most of the time, Oulipian writing falls under the rubric of experimental writing. However, the members of the group Oulipo often address events considered historic. There exists at the moment a theoretical discussion that is taking more and more seriously the relationship between History and fiction; sometimes the authors of fiction succeed at telling another version of History. From the perspective of fiction, we look at Comme une rivière bleue by Michèle Audin and on the theoretical side we look at the latest texts by Ivan Jablonka and most specifically, L'Histoire est une littérature contemporaine. Does Audin's writing respond to the criteria Jablonka proposes for considering fiction a serious telling of History? These are the stakes of this essay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How far has the Oulipo gone in the directions of conceptual writing and automation? Conceptualism is built into the very idea of potential literature, but the group's interest in automation has gradually waned. Computer-assisted literary composition was delegated to an offshoot workshop (the Alamo), which has not thrived. If the Oulipo's activity is essentially craftlike, as Jacques Roubaud has written, this is not surprising. Nevertheless, some of the group's members have used their craft to imagine or simulate automation. Georges Perec and Marcel Benabou's P.A.L.F. ("Production automatique de littérature française") project, and Perec's radio play Die Maschine illustrate this strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks into fictitious meals and the use of culinary recipe form in experimental and procedural literature, namely, works of constrained writing associated with OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle). The recipe form is first scrutinized from the procedural, structural, and historical viewpoints, also concerning its lesser-known imaginative and esoteric genealogy. In addition, its connections to the notions of narrativity and fiction are discussed. The recipe's relationship to action is depicted by a simple procedural model. There is a metaphorical and conceptual, but also formal and operational, similarity between the coded procedures of cooking and writing. A recipe is a procedure, a script for an infinity of possible meals, and a literary procedure is a recipe for writing. It is not surprising, then, that Oulipian writers have utilized the recipe form in their food-related works. Four such literary recipes (by Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, Harry Mathews, and Alastair Brotchie) are closely examined, after discussion of key concepts of Oulipian poetics from the culinary viewpoint. The article's special point of reference is the parodic, satirical, absurd, and other humorous meanings that literary recipes often seem to produce, which is linked to the operational and structural dimensions of the recipe -- its comically posited procedural form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Faculty of Letters / Edebiyat Fakultesi Dergisi is the property of Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pierre Menard, el personaje del cuento de Borges posteriormente reelaborado por Michel Lafon en su novela Une vie de Pierre Ménard, se encuentra agazapado detrás de algunos de los procedimientos compositivos empleados por los autores del OuLiPo, como el «plagio por anticipación» o las técnicas de escritura restrictiva como forma de expansión textual. Basándonos en una concepción dinámica y paródica de la literatura, en la noción de intertextualidad y en la capacidad de proyección del personaje en otros textos, en el presente estudio analizamos uno de sus más peculiares desdoblamientos, el que se produce en el relato de Georges Perec Le voyage d’hiver. Partimos de las afinidades tanto formales como conceptuales que presentan las tres obras para finalmente asistir a la paulatina disgregación de los dos personajes en la propia narración, revelando así su condición de mero artificio textual.

Compte rendu de Mark Lapprand, Pourquoi l’Oulipo ?, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2020.

This study aims to open a reflection on the problems connected to the translation of potential literature. Potential literature is a term used in the context of the Workshop of Potential Literature (OuLiPo), a French experimental group established in 1960 in order to interconnect literature and mathematics. It is characteristic of OuLiPo to create texts with the aid of a "contrainte", a mostly formal restriction applied during the creative process, limiting the set of potential outcomes. These specific creative methods bring a higher level of difficulty for the translator and raise the question of "untranslatability". The paper proposes several alternative concepts of a "translation" in order to get past this idea of impossibility. Similar properties of both potential literature and translation as creative processes are also discussed. This brings new light on their connection and enables us to characterize a translator of potential literature as one of the authors of the text.

Purpose Founded in France in 1960, Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (OuLiPo - Workshop of Potential Literature), is a literary game group that conducts experiments to improve creativity in the act of writing. The discoveries and inventions of the group in literature have also created an adaptable potential for non-literary fields. In this study, the work of Raymond Queneau Exercises in Style, one of the early works of OuLiPo, is translated into the medium of a different discipline. With this proposal, the study aims to make an external contribution to the creativity of disciplines which produce space. Design/Methodology/Approach The study uses an interdisciplinary approach to practice a translation process between the Oulipian literature and architecture. By exploring the possibilities of language with 99 variations of the same story, Exercises in Style establishes strong links with translation and creativity; it has been reproduced in many different fields and translated into different languages. In light of this source text, and its reproductions in many different disciplines, 33 variations of a space are produced. Findings With this study, space is redefined as a translation object and the potential of the spatial medium is examined with an Oulipian approach. This translation process shows lots of equivalent aspects between linguistic and spatial expressions. Beyond adaptation of the Oulipian techniques used in the text, new creative methods also come to the fore. Therefore, this productive game represents a potential for the educational environment of space design. Originality/Value The reproduction produced in this study is the first spatial translation of Exercises in Style. While being a sign of respect as trying to keep the original text alive, this translation can open the ways for the text’s other adaptations for several scales of space medium or even different disciplines that have not been studied in this context yet. Furthermore, 33 variations of this space can be varied infinitely and this game can be continued as an open work.

This article exemplifies the concept of performance writing through an essay that falls at the crossover point between academic (Apollonian) and artistic (Dionysian) piece of work caricaturing rationalist conservatism. By using an unconventional approach coming from French literature (pataphysics), this article explores the hilarity of well-constructed rationalist conservatism by irrationalizing it through a rigorous absurdity and visual entities. Such writing experience leads the reader to a visual Oulipo-ian dialogue illustrating the tension that an extreme rationalism might generate between thinkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swiss composer Annette Schmucki (*1968) has written compositional work for the concert hall, a laptop duet with Petra Ronner (band) and collaborative radio plays (Hörspiele) with Reto Friedmann (blablabor). In this interview, she describes her work as related to, but essentially different from, the ideas presented and exemplified by Cornelius Schwehr. Responding to Schwehr's article on the topic of music and language, during this discussion Schmucki explains her aesthetic position, her lifelong engagement with music and language, and the ways that these concerns translate practically into her compositional approach. In relation to this, Schmucki describes her growing distance to the traditional composer/performer divide, in preference for her increasing interest in collaborative work. One of the main consequences of this has been the ways that her scores are notated, becoming more instruction-based and inviting her performers to share responsibility for the piece. In 2018, Lauren Redhead and Alistair Zaldua commissioned Schmucki to write a piece for organ and live electronics. The piece that ensued, a discussion of which concludes this interview, is 54 stops/gresillement/alphabet des rauschens (2019). As a score that consists almost entirely of instructions, the piece exemplifies her specific approach to collaborative work in the field of music and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper shows how Stéphane Vanderhaeghe's work goes against the grain of a literary mainstream whose most prominent authors (and literary prizes) favor autofiction or narratives re-exploring a more or less recent historical past. Instead, Vanderhaeghe's radical writing seeks to challenge the formal potentialities of literature, thus inscribing his work in the experimental traditions of Oulipo and Nouveau Roman. Charøgnards, his first published novel, opens with a twenty-page prologue written in an invented, futuristic French language. The remainder of the text functions as an unpaginated journal whose chronology is constantly re-assessed in light of the numerous rewritings to which the unreliable narrator confesses. Graphemes gradually disappear from the page, figuring the slow disappearance of language as a result of the takeover of invasive crows. The color of pages veers from white to gray before turning into black, so that the book stands out in its unique materiality. Though À tous les airs presents itself as a more traditionally manufactured book, the text proves no less experimental, through the forgoing of characters and repetitions with minor mutations. These literary practices reveal the author's singular literary identity whose ambitious nature runs the risk of alienating readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]