Calligraphy or photography? Representations of the city in Michaël Ferrier’s Tokyo, petits portraits de l’aube

Kawakami, Akane (2020) Calligraphy or photography? Representations of the city in Michaël Ferrier’s Tokyo, petits portraits de l’aube. Australian Journal of French Studies 57 (2), pp. 190-203. ISSN 0004-9468.

Abstract

This article examines Michaël Ferrier’s ‘La chambre du fond : quatre essais de kanjis malgré la nuit’, one chapter of his Tokyo, petits portraits de l’aube, as an instance of a writing which positions itself against an ‘écriture photographique’ – as defined by writers such as Hervé Guibert or Annie Ernaux – and models itself instead on Japanese calligraphy. I argue that Ferrier thus effects an instance of ‘aesthetic translation’ (Pamela A. Genova), translating the principles and praxis of Japanese calligraphy into a prose which therefore has ‘Japaneseness’ woven into its narrative structures at the same time as representing aspects of Japanese culture. Writing is thus foregrounded as both form and content in this brief essay on Tokyo; but at the end of his work, Ferrier acknowledges the dominance of photography in contemporary art, especially in depictions of Japan, and works it into his own calligraphic and writerly representation of the city.

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