Thinking at the limit of poetry: Anne-James Chaton, social media and the post-public

Wourm, Nathalie (2022) Thinking at the limit of poetry: Anne-James Chaton, social media and the post-public. L'Esprit Createur 62 (1), pp. 29-39. ISSN 0014-0767.

Abstract

This article considers the ways in which the public can relate to contemporary French poetry outside the book, when all the usual markers that help define an artifact as art are absent. Taking the case of Anne-James Chaton, who publishes some of his works on social media, the question that is asked is whether poetry is still poetry if it is not identified as such by the public. While Chaton continues to publish books, he is also part of a double movement in current French poetic practice, the movement away from the customary setting of literature – the book page – and the deconstruction of the essentialist view of poetry. His oeuvre can be considered in the light of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, whose influence he acknowledges. This means that his poetic practice on YouTube or Instagram is twice removed from the traditional idea of poetry as a piece of verse. The article discusses how the resulting reconfiguration of the poetic affects its reception by the social media public, how through social media, people are able to immerse themselves in sophisticated poetic works that interrogate the tradition of poetry, lightly, seriously, and in-passing.

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