Ecological Reading: Nonhuman Others in Modern and Contemporary French Literature

Undergraduate / Graduate

It is an obstinately closed world. And yet we can open it," writes Ponge in "The Oyster." This course proposes to rediscover some 20th and 21st century French classics by authors including Annie Ernaux, Georges Perec, Francis Ponge, Nathalie Sarraute, and Boris Vian, through the nonhuman others that inhabit their works. We will practice literature in an ecological field in which we cultivate strategies for living with, and even living as and in, other forms of life. We will develop new modes for textual analysis and composition that integrate ecological thought, for instance by experimenting with creative ways in which literature runs on networks of metabolisms, and conjures up hybrid bodies. We'll learn to read the signs of how nonhuman others "secrete," "decompose," and "digest" literary works - often through us, their intermediate hosts. How does a poem co-evolve with figs, mollusks, or pebbles? Who composes the texture of a suburban supermarket? And what if our words are themselves living beings, even parasites?